alt Hacker NewsThe key thing to understand is that Europeans want clear rules around hate speech, online harassment and such. Thus lawmakers are acting to find laws which encapsulate these. In Germany, we have some simple ones surrounding using Nazi symbols and speech. These rules generally work well in our civil law context. Civil law usually is rather broad strokes and there might be cases where something injust happens which requires tuning laws.
If you come from a common law context the whole idea might seem strange.
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> The key thing to understand is that Europeans want clear rules around hate speech, online harassment and such.
Do they? Or is it being pushed upon them? And why is it "the key thing" here?
> Thus lawmakers are acting to find laws which encapsulate these.
I suspect it has been the reverse, the ruling class desperately wants those powers and if the common people are now in favor of them it is more than likely because of intensive campaigns from their governments and corporations to change their minds.
> In Germany, we have some simple ones surrounding using Nazi symbols and speech. These rules generally work well in our civil law context. Civil law usually is rather broad strokes and there might be cases where something injust happens which requires tuning laws.
Some laws existing does not mean some other laws won't be unjust. Or that legislated laws will always be right and not require "some tuning".
> If you come from a common law context the whole idea might seem strange.
The different systems of law don't seem all that strange to me at least, but the thread you are replying to is discussing censorship in the European nation of the UK.
Further, what we are discussing involves executive police powers (intimidation, arrests, compiling lists), as well as legislated laws, so it is not really just some quirk of common law at all.
I think if you come from a German context the concept of free speech is probably strange to you in general - because no one in living memory has ever had it. Not in Weimar, not in the Nazi period, not in East Germany and not in the Federal Republic.
Unless you understand concepts like "Natural Rights" the idea of a government not being able to curtail what you say will remain completely foreign to you.
> The key thing to understand is that Europeans want clear rules around hate speech
Regardless of my personal thoughts on this (complicated), simply putting "many" in front of "Europeans" does a lot to diminish further alienation of those who don't, helping you achieve your goals. It takes 0.5 seconds.