Hacker News Reader

Comment by froggy | Hacker News Reader

Trolls get traced and fined in Germany. It ought to be done everywhere. The 1st Amendment is taken too literally in the U.S.. Insults, abuse, and blatant lies have no place in public discourse.

View on HN

The First Amendment is not what grants you freedom of speech. You are born with it. It is your right, regardless of what any law, contract or person says. The First Amendment simply prohibits the government from infringing on it.

Fun fact, Weimar Germany back in the 1920s also had a lot of those types of laws (defamation lawsuits were very common, hate speech laws were also rather strict for their time, etc). The US on the other hand had more restrictions on speech (due to contemporary jurisprudence and interpretation of the 1st amendment) than it does now, but the law was still overall rather similar to what it is now.

So I sure know which model I prefer, and even though Germany today isn't Germany of the 1920s, the US still has had a much better track record when it comes to sensible free speech policy. Again, not saying that Germany is "worse" w.r.t free speech nowadays, just that the US has a system that has worked for centuries, and the fact that Germany has different laws don't make them better.

As an American who appreciates a strictly literal interpretation of the first amendment, it's very funny to me that a German not only takes pride in their government hunting down and suppressing inconvenient speech, but wants the rest of the world to fall in line.

Yeah they’re real Nazis about it.

I’m an American. I saw it on 60 Minutes last night. Any reason why you prefer the strictly literal interpretation? The difference between a personal insult and a criticism of something someone has done seems pretty clear cut to me. We could use more constructive discourse especially in the US.

Every amendment should be taken literally. How else should your rights be interpreted? Figuratively?

I agree with you that people are much better off using constructive dialogue, and communities like HN are much better off because of moderation, but the idea of some government agency tracking down and fining trolls is to me a laughable suggestion.

Stretching and bending can go long way. Did you know there are zillons of sexes now? It's not the brain, it's the wrong body. For each psychological disorder.

You know the first amendment was written by people who would shoot you for running your mouth, right?

you mean this one: “I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say...

I am referring to the history of dueling in this country, but I’m not seeing a whole lot of people engaged with reality here.

duels happened everywhere, that was normal. you can't judge ancestors by modern standards.

The power of brainwashing. The results are somewhat unreal. Britons want Ukrainians to fight more than Ukrainians themselves. The explanation is Britons don't see hundreds of thousands deaths. Their media reprints reports from Zelinkiy office which state just a few thousands. This is called 'Support Ukraine' and they are proud of it. Till the last Ukrainian. Some politicians are more open and clearly say it's a cheap way to kill Russians. They want the war to continue. This is called 'strong position' or 'position of power'.

We are kind of in the middle of a speech war right now. The speech doesn't directly cause harm - but susceptible individuals cause harm via non-speech actions on the basis of that speech.

It's fine if your opinion on the best way to fight a war is to not fight, but that's just your opinion and not necessarily a good one.

Didn’t Germany just have a recent major free speech issue where people were jailed for using “the wrong language” while protesting?

Doesn’t seem like it’s a good policy.

You might want to check in on protestors in the US.

An over-militarized police state is an entirely different issue than suppression of speech as national policy.

Still extremely serious, but not at all the same thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com