Problem with HateAid is that it doesn't focus on helping on hate crimes alone, but also combats hate speech, which is very widely interpreted. This sometimes have included criticism to politicians in power. Although its mission might be noble, the execution is sometimes murky. Of course if we get to the future where the government draws the line between the hate and the murky, the line will be drawn by White House for the US companies, not the EU.
US companies doing business in the EU are bound by EU law, not US law. The US set that precedent so it's only fair that this works both ways. You may disagree with the law but using sanctions like this to go after people whose opinions you disagree with is textbook censorship and to do so in the name of free speech is absolutely ridiculous.
As an example of this, I personally know several feminists who have been censored and even banned from major social media platforms for speaking up on women's rights. Their words were incorrectly flagged as "hate" and removed.
I'm sure that these organizations do some good work in removing actual threatening content but often it's also used to censor views that their operatives find objectionable simply because it doesn't concord with their own beliefs.
Is the "murky" part "criticism to politicians in power" or what exactly is unclear about combating hate speech?
> the line will be drawn by White House for the US companies, not the EU.
I don't think there is "one line" drawn by a single person, there are multiple entities here drawing their own lines wherever they want. In some governments, the lines have already been drawn between what is hate speech or not.
> Is the "murky" part "criticism to politicians in power" or what exactly is unclear about combating hate speech?
Chiefly, the subjective definition beyond "speech someone hates". Social media is trending towards establishing lockstep opinions and smushing disagreement. Using such labels is effective in cowing dissent.
It's tempting to objectively label something as bad through a subjective process, as appeals to authority are powerful. Your point about diverging lines being drawn highlights the importance of skepticism of these appeals.
I wonder if they could integrate a secondary "world model" trained/fine-tuned on Rollercoaster Tycoon to just do the layout reasoning, and have the main agent offload tasks to it.
Also what has changed is that European countries came up with extraterritorial laws and started to fine the US companies and want to have saying how they run their business. GDPR was the first step, and was still reasonable, but now there are several censorship laws. Most notable UK and Italy, where the latter wants to nuke anything they say from global DNS in 15 minutes without due process.
Extraterritorial? Those companies are doing business in the EU, it's exactly the same in any country on Earth: if you want to do business in their territory there are local laws to follow.
What happens is that European companies buy services that are produced in the US, not in Europe. The European countries are free to ban and fine companies buying those services like Russia does. Italy, for example, can start by fining companies using Cloudflare, IP blocking Cloudflare and face the political consequences of it. But they don't want politicalconsequences which is the source of the friction. An Italian would be really pissed off for politicians if someone shows up their house and takes away computer because of watching football illegally.
Doesn't matter where they are produced, it matters where they are sold.
They are sold in the EU, they need to follow the laws for the market where they are sold. I can't go to the US, produce a death trap of a car, and sell it in the US because it goes against US laws; I could produce the same car in the US, not sell it in the US, and be fine if I find a market where I can export it to, it's stupid but not against the law.
US companies want to sell to Europeans, they could choose to not do business here and wouldn't face any repercussions if breaking EU law. Since they do like the money from a very rich bloc of countries they do business in the EU and need to follow its laws.
It's very very simple, I don't know why you are trying to complicate a rule (or worse, victimise companies) that exists anywhere in the world. If I want to sell something in the USA I need to follow USA's laws regarding that, if I don't then I can't do business there.
Internet is a global service. If a european connects to my server in the US where was the service sold? American companies can easily argue the sale was made at the server in the US. European countries would of course disagree, but that doesnt actually mean anything because the company doesnt have any assets in the europe and then it's just a political battle of american government vs european governments.
> If a european connects to my server in the US where was the service sold?
Did you sell something? If you sold something, it's in Europe.
> American companies can easily argue the sale was made at the server in the US.
No, they can't, the server's physical location has nothing to do with the delivery of the sale.
> European countries would of course disagree, but that doesnt actually mean anything because the company doesnt have any assets in the europe and then it's just a political battle of american government vs european governments.
If there are no assets or representation in Europe then there's nothing the justice system can directly affect, so of course it becomes a political matter between governments to enforce it in case the importing country determines the product is doing illegal stuff, that's not a secret and it's how it's worked for a long time.
The internet being global doesn't mean it's lawless, no idea why people still believe that.
Fairly sure the US started this process with things like the PokerStars case, the MegaUpload raid, heck even further back Dmitry Skylarov's PDF reader. Not to mention the secondary sanctions on Cuba and the complex rules about providing financial services to overseas Americans.
I'm also fairly sure that the Italian requirement only applies to blocking Italian DNS access.
The NatWest Three - UK nationals, working in the UK, for a UK company. "Defrauded" their UK employer and were convicted by a US court and jailed in the US for the crime.
The only link that made them liable for US extradition was "wire fraud" relating to a message transmitted in the US. Exactly the sort of extraterritorial law that the US are complaining about when it happens to them.
> The authority set the multi-million euro fine with the resolution now published based on one percent of Cloudflare's global annual revenue. It justifies this calculation with the company's cross-border structure: Since Cloudflare's infrastructure is globally oriented and enables the circumvention of local blocks, the sanction must also have a corresponding "deterrent effect" and go beyond the national framework.
This is only going to change if prosecution is brought against Meta itself, which it looks like the "recklessly" clause is intended to imply. I look forward to Meta facing criminal charges for profiting from fraud.
What's the Irish equivalent of Hansard, by the way? Can we look up the debate?
There hasn't been a debate. The headline is not reflective of the facts. There hasn't been any agreement to fast track this bill, but the politician sponsoring it has said in a radio interview that (surprise!) he thinks it should be fast tracked.
The Dáil record can be found here, but there's nothing of interest in it:
HN: "Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse"
TFA: "Calls to fast track Bill to criminalise harmful misuse of someone’s voice or image"
Call to action. Not action. And the call is coming from the bill's proposer! He would say that, wouldn't he? But what matters is if the actual government takes that bill further. If they don't, we don't need to care about what this guy thinks.
HN headline (possibly an earlier headline of TFA) is fundamentally misrepresenting the situation.
What makes you think Meta will do a better job of policing this than the actual police?
Granted, they might be able to crack down harder in some respects since unlike the police they don't have to worry about due process, but is that really "doing a better job" on balance?
Because it'd give companies like Meta has a strong incentive to stop profiting from it or else people start getting fined/jailed.
It also addresses the problem at (what is often) the source. Police in Ireland don't have the ability to march into Facebook's server rooms and start removing posts, so requests have to be made to Meta anyway which takes additional time. Making Facebook clean up their own mess directly would mean cutting out the middle man and all the red tape and hoops police have jump though to get them to take action.
>What makes you think Meta will do a better job of policing this than the actual police?
Meta announce they will stop political/electoral advertising in EU, so this ios proof that Meta can do but we need to foce them to act, otherwise Meta makes money from all the scams in the ads that are published, in fact I remember Meta looked into the scam problem and decided to stop looking sicne solving the problem would reduce their profits.
Now in case all those well paid engineers at Meta can't find a solution here is an idea I had just by thinking at it for a few seconds, those geniuses shoudl be able to find better ones if they want.
1 when a scam ad is reported block that account and their ads
2 before the ad is published have an AI scan it, if it looks to be related to politics, crypto or other scam friendly domains have someone review it . do not allow fresh accounts to publish this kind of shit without a human review
3 for Facebook content when someone shares fake shiot, like a proven fake document, or scam or faked video block the account and then notify all the people that liked or shared the scam that they were scammed/tricked ... when your users will get 10 daily notifications "You are an idiot you shared this fake shit" you might realize you should do something about scams or users will stop engaging with your stuff.
I am talking here about proveable scams and fakes , so not about some gray area. I mean scams, faked videos/images/documents etc
These are public posts we're talking about, right? Or are we saying Meta should be cracking down on content in private communication too? (And if so, isn't that the same concern I just mentioned about due process, but for privacy instead?)
If we're talking about profiting from fraud, then we're talking ads. Which are semi-public, you only see them if you fall within the targeting bucket, which definitely wouldn't include "law enforcement officer".
As a common-law legal system, I would expect Ireland to have something similar to Canada's Criminal Code identity fraud.
403 (1) Everyone commits an offence who fraudulently personates another person, living or dead,
(a) with intent to gain advantage for themselves or another person;
(b) with intent to obtain any property or an interest in any property;
(c) with intent to cause disadvantage to the person being personated or another person; or
(d) with intent to avoid arrest or prosecution or to obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice.
Marginal note:Clarification
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), personating a person includes pretending to be the person or using the person’s identity information — whether by itself or in combination with identity information pertaining to any person — as if it pertains to the person using it.
Marginal note:Punishment
(3) Everyone who commits an offence under subsection (1)
(a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 10 years; or
(b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.
Except they don't - enforcement is circumvented by psuedo-anonymous users pushing illegal ad campaigns that revert back to inoffensive content or a similar cop-out by the time Meta/X responds to the report
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/germany...
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