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Comment by Manuel_D | Hacker News Reader

Laws like this sound well-intentioned enough but are rampant for abuse and unequal application. If someone is outraged at some controversial policy or statement, how does that play out? Especially when the people in question are public figures:

> professional wrestler Hana Kimura died in 2020 at age 22 following cyberbullying on social media over her remarks on a reality romance show that she had been part of.

Imagine if someone was locked up for a year because they said mean things about Tucker Carlson. This makes more sense if it's narrowly defined to encompass people without public presence, but it seems to include public figures as well.

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Maybe people shouldn't say evil and hateful things about anyone, no matter how bad they are, because it makes the entire culture of public discourse more toxic. Americans seem to have very little reverence for the quality and civility of public discourse in general anymore, and often say "the other side is worse" or "I'm intolerant of intolerance" as their justification for personally contributing to the normalization of uncivil ways of speaking.

Japan doesn't seem to have these problems with people culturally defecting from civility even when they disagree, and I believe their willingness to not tolerate it to any degree is what keeps the rest of society defecting to low quality behavior patterns.

There are many morally self righteous individuals who think they are doing the right thing and don't realise their counterparts they spew (self righteously) hatred towards are the exact same as them.

I think both groups should receive censure for valuing their personal crusades over the quality of stability and civility of society the rest of us value; who have more nuanced and humble opinions of our own self righteousness. Really glad there's another country that agrees with me!

This is exactly the mentality I'm afraid of. The worst censors are the ones that don't realize that they're being censorious, they think they're just promoting civility. What happens when, say, someone says that disapproval of natal males competing in women's sports is a violation of civility? What happens when someone claims support for termination of a pregnancy is violation of civility? The issue is that people have widely varied - and often conflicting - ideas of "civility".

I think the fact that Americans have trouble understanding how one could express the full range of political ideology while still remaining civil and not bullying each other is part of the problem.

One can express any proposal for legislative or judicial course of action without demeaning the inherent humanity of another and resorting to profanity, lewdness,and hatred. Learning to express opinions in this way can help contribute to us recognizing ways to solve our mutual problems as a society,ans avoid people feeling so dehumanised that they harm themselves or others.

I do appreciate your concern though for preserving our ability to disagree and express any political belief without censure.

And again, what happens when people claim that a certain political view inherently demeans humanity of another? This is already the case: people already proclaim that some political views are inherently dehumanizing.

Invariably, those in power will enforce these restrictions against their opponents to their own benefit.

Well, we could at least start with having people not use profanity, or tell each other to kill themselves.

I admit though I can't think of a good way to legislate the nuances of someone expressing an opinion that one ought not to be able to compete in sports of a gender they believe they belong to, without making them feel they are being dehumanized.

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On the subject of what led to this law, my girlfriend and I were avid watchers of the show Terrace House as the events that led to this person's death unfolded.

The girl had been quite rude to a foreigner on the show.

This was considered a huge disgrace to the nation of Japan, to have one of their own act so meanly to another, especially on as international of a platform as Netflix, especially to someone from what is considered a partner country, like the U. S..

This led to social ostracization where many Japanese were (civilly) telling her that she was no longer respected in general society, and questioning the extent of her ability to behave with civility.

I believe this (civilly said) cultural censure for her imopliteness likely contributed more to her feelings of worthlessness than any truly hateful and ignorant things said to her. Or maybe because she grew up in Japan she was just not emotionally prepared for hearing some of the hateful things people can say on the Internet (this is the public narrative).

Either way, it's a tricky situation, and many in Japan felt she was actually the one who began the degregation of civility with her behavior on the show, but none the less the resulting way people spoke to her was also not considered acceptable.

How can one balance expressing the idea that she brought shame to the nation while also not making her feel dehumainzed? I don't know. But I'm quite sure in the minds of the Japanese who wrote this law, the main thing they want to avoid is people telling others to kill themselves directly or cursing at them, rather than avoiding expressing judgemental ideas on one's behavior, which is common enough in Japanese society, to be subtly hinting at one disapproving of the behavior of others, while remaining civil.

> Maybe people shouldn't say evil and hateful things about anyone

Noone is debating that. The concern here is about having law enforcement step in to such delicate personal issues. It won't work the way lawmakers say it would, and the abuse potential for such laws are too high.

> Japan doesn't seem to have these problems with people culturally defecting from civility even when they disagree

I assure you that Japanese people are every bit as human as the rest of the global population, for better or for worse. If you need an example, just look into the incident that prompted this law.

I've lived in both countries, living with citizens of both countries, seeing popular media in both countries, long enough to know there's a massive difference in the degree of hateful and impolite behavior the average person is willing to engage in for any given topic of conversation, and that citizens of both countries seem to enjoy the same degree of freedom of expression of political views which diverge from the interests of those in power. The difference is how they choose to say things, and that has downstream effects of their ability to continue to view those they disagree with as humans worthy of at least some degree of compassion and respect.

>Maybe people shouldn't say evil and hateful things about anyone, no matter how bad they are, because it makes the entire culture of public discourse more toxic.

We both know this isn't what is being discussed here.

>Americans seem to have very little reverence for the quality and civility of public discourse in general anymore, and often say "the other side is worse" or "I'm intolerant of intolerance" as their justification for personally contributing to the normalization of uncivil ways of speaking.

Certainly interesting to see this. In my experience Americans tend to be rather christian and the love thy neighbour stuff. They are also very extroverted and willing to talk and become friends with anyone and everyone. Their understanding of 'good customer service' isn't the british example of 'help you as fast as possible and get you out the door' but rather talk to you and learn about you. Build a relationship that brings you back. Being uncivil is literally the opposite of what the average american is.

It's super curious how you came to this opinion? Where have you seen Americans being so 'uncivil'? Is it mainly places like Reddit and twitter? Certainly not real life. If you are conflating reddit or twitter with the general populous you missed the target by astronomical scale.

>Japan doesn't seem to have these problems with people culturally defecting from civility even when they disagree, and I believe their willingness to not tolerate it to any degree is what keeps the rest of society defecting to low quality behavior patterns.

What are the consequences to Japan? There is certainly consequences. Japan is in multiple crisis already and this isn't going to help the situation. Japan's situation is going to become that much worse.

>I think both groups should receive censure for valuing their personal crusades over the quality of stability and civility of society the rest of us value; who have more nuanced and humble opinions of our own self righteousness. Really glad there's another country that agrees with me!

I read this and can only come to the conclusion that you don't understand. Worse you seem to exemplify what makes these 'censures' that much worse.

You see this as attempting to maintain civility in society which is great if it were to happen but that's not at all the outcome.

What's your opinion on Hikikomori?

How well do you feel the Minister of Loneliness is doing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetsushi_Sakamoto

How about that suicide rate in Japan?

How about that aging population and silver crime problem?

How about that crippling government debt and inevitable collapse of japan?

How about abenomics being a failure?

How about those government slaves? Hard labour and 99% conviction rate? LOL.

How about that population decline they are showing to be around 30% decline by 2050 and 50% decline by 2100?

Japan is beyond screwed. Good thing I am not in Japan because I'd be sent to the gulag for this post.

> Laws like this sound well-intentioned enough but are rampant for abuse and unequal application

It already has and is frequently discussed on r/japanlife.

You really don't have to make up a guy/situation to be mad about. This also isn't really a new law, just different possible penalties for an existing law plus a longer statue of limitations, so if your theoretical situation happened, you can go back and see how it played out. Are the new possible penalties too harsh? Well, there is even a built in review process for that:

Due to concerns expressed during the Diet deliberation process that tougher laws could curb freedom of expression, the revised law requires examination by an expert panel three years after its enforcement.

are you suggesting that they could bully others with the law?

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