Facebook, Google, Twitter agree to delete hate speech in 24 hours: Germany

If it's speech condoning or encouraging harm against others, then it should be removed. But if people are just voicing their opinions, even hateful opinions, then it doesn't take a genius to figure out that banning such speech makes the sentiment run deeper, and only offloads it to even less "tolerant" parts of the web, like 4chan.

The title of this article needs to be changed. There is a world of difference between "anti-immigrant comments" and hate speech that incites violence (which is what's really being discussed here.) @dang

I don't understand how deleting an online record of hate speech and threats of violence is going to do anything to help solve any problems. It will make the net look prettier, but the people who would post such things will still be there thinking and feeling exactly as they do now.

They are now introducing &quot;hate-crimes&quot; here in the EU. This punishes there mere act of publicly saying or writing a hateful comment. (non threatening, non endorsing or inciting criminal acts)<p>If people take offence, you will be persecuted. So it&#x27;s a great law to further tighten the control over what can be discussed and what can&#x27;t.<p>And if that wasn&#x27;t enough, our government now allows NGO&#x27;s and other non state organisations to police Facebook and other social media to prevent and contain types of thoughtcrime that haven&#x27;t been yet criminalised.<p>No approval from a court needed, some privately funded NGO will in future decide for us.

Don&#x27;t like what someone is saying? Point out why they&#x27;re wrong, but don&#x27;t send guys with guns (the police) to force them to shut up. That&#x27;s far more unethical than anything anyone could say.

Free speech, European style.

I think it&#x27;s a really good idea to read the wikipedia article about the law this is based on:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Volksverhetzung" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Volksverhetzung</a><p>It makes some things clear, what is allowed, what isn&#x27;t and why.

I don&#x27;t follow the topic closely but it seems there would be a difference between &quot;hate speech&quot; and not wanting large numbers of immigrants from a poor violent region immigrating into one&#x27;s society. I suspect the second is sometimes confused with the first, maybe on occasion deliberately by policy makers or others with an agenda.