Germany Law to Force Algorithm Boost for State-Approved News | Hacker News Reader

Germany Law to Force Algorithm Boost for State-Approved News

nonogra.ph

42 points382hi53 comments

FYI Apollo News isn't really known for its factual accuracy plus they don't disclose the document they're basing their claim on.

I think creating a government whitelist of default-promoted sources is almost scarier than action taken against specific ones. There's less friction to prevent abuse of power.

At least from an American law perspective, you could point to clear damages on a blacklist and sue.

From a US law perspective it's an immediate nonstarter on constitutional grounds.

Which is funny because it is the US postwar authority that set up freedom of expression laws in Germany.

"Do as we say, not as we do."

If you are concerned about the AfD remember that they would get this power if they win.

If things keep going on as it is in Germany, it’s not if but when they win

Bro if they win they get power to do whatever they want and even more

Time and again Europe makes me appreciate the First Amendment.

Yeah, it’s working out pretty well.

Oh yeah, you'd definitely want the TRUMP administration in control of what we all get to express and who we can associate with.

As miserable as this admin is, it's also a great example of why some powers shouldn't be in the government's hands.

I agree, I meant the first amendment ain’t working like it should. It’s more or a “I can talk trash about whoever I want unless they have powerful lawyers” rule of thumb nowadays.

You’re talking like it a hypothetical when it’s literally already happening. The First Amendment no longer exists and the Trump administration is already using the powers of the state and the powers of corruption to remove critics.

Great in theory, bad in practice. See for instance, the administration's obvious meddling in the CBS/Skydance merger.

Now consider all the horror it has prevented. But that requires seeing things that aren't there, so superficially you don't consider it.

In contrast to bad policies out of Europe and living there, this seems trivial to be honest.

Me too. I wish I could live in a society that protects free speech, and not just "free" (the kind that needs no protection in the first place) speech.

Before this blows up:

- The world has very diverse ideas about how media regulation works. Germany has a strong public service broadcast tradition that is constitutionally anchored. You may not like it, but that's the cultural and legal tradition and changing it is not easily done. Please respect that especially coming from a country with a more liberal tradition (and perhaps a less functional media system, e.g. in the US).

- The source is a fringe right-wing outlet that most Germans would consider a bit suspicious (not necessarily factually wrong, but tasteless and a bit hysteric perhaps?)

- Public service broadcasting in Germany is not influenced by the state (note this says state, not politics or politicians) by design.

- Prioritizing public service broadcasters is a pretty logical conclusion from a certain tradition of media regulation and has precedent, e.g. in must carry rules for cable, EPGs etc.

So sure, debatable whether this is sensible, but it's at least neither surprising nor evidently nonsensical.

Source: Was a tiny bit of an expert on this for a short while.

How is it guaranteed that public service broadcasting in Germany is not influenced by government?

To me this seems like a gross intervention in the media so I'm struggling not to be critical here. Just because different cultures have different values does not make them equal.

I mean, that's a very intuitive question if you're not used to the system, and a bit surprising if you are.

The historic precedent is that Germany's first Chancellor wanted to establish a state-funded and state-directed TV station. This was explicitly shut down by the constitutional court.

As a result, a system was established to (1) ensure funding is not decided upon by state institutions but instead by an independent body of experts (KEF). (2) control over the meta-level content decisions is exercised by a body (essentially like a parliament) of representatives from societal groups (e.g. including politicians, doctors, churches etc etc.)

Now the "gross intervention in the media" is a very recent American idea - up until pretty recently the US did have the fairness doctrine, it has licensing and so on, all of these are gross interventions in media. And so are libel laws etc. So the German insight that underpins its media regulation is: You cannot have functional mass media without enabling them through some form of state action, you can only try to be light-handed and implement checks and balances.

I understand it's difficult for an outsider to understand the system, especially since I don't know who is part of the KEF or how it's run, same with the body of representatives. And I also acknowledge that having foreign tech companies curate media isn't much better.

In my country the federal government heavily subsidises media in addition to their own state-run broadcaster, and there is noticeable bias which is a point of contention. Perhaps the German system is superior in this regard. But I am heavily skeptical of interventions like this.

Because it is a "public broadcast", so it obviously "Cannot Give In To Government Pressure": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9tzoGFszog

It is influenced by the government indirectly through complaisance. The heads of the stations are always aligned with CDU, SPD and the positions are passed on accordingly.

It was installed by the US after WWII, because the Nazis took over the media and this public broadcasting system was installed to prevent that in the future. It's technically not paid by tax money and the government can not shut them down or stop their funding.

I believe watching some "tagesschau", the primary format of the public media in Germany would be something of interest for every US citizen. Just to experience the style.

It's part of German culture, all movies on all channels start at 8:15, because that's when tagesschau ends. The structure, the style, how news are reported has not really changed since the 80s, maybe it has basically never changed.

They do framing, I don't think you can report news without framing them, but it never gets wild and they try to show what different sides have to say about a matter.

Others have already pointed out that the source of this article is not reliable, so we should wait what actually gets proposed.

To back up your third point, here is a study of the political bias in the German public service broadcasters (in German):

https://web.archive.org/web/20240207032743/https://polkom.if...

Can you summarise this?

Thanks, that's a great point. I know a huge amount of the literature exactly in this area, and I'm honestly still pretty skeptical of the theoretical idea of the diversity principle. Mostly because there doesn't seem to be a good consensus what actually is a good amount of diversity.

But in practical terms, while there are some very obvious gaps and biases, I think the German media system is still pretty good in a lot of ways and everybody does have a lot of freedom.

I'd even go so far as to say - the typical accusations of censorship are mostly from right-wing actors who are not censored, but who demand more views and make a spectacle out of claiming to be censored.

Public service broadcasting is influenced by the state in Germany. Not directly, but there are clear common boundaries and influences. The Rundfunkräte (broadcasting boards) have the job to ensure impartiality, but are often occupied by party officials.

As for tradition, I do think the model should be reviewed...

In Austria, one must pay an "ORF Tax", where 30 fine euro's of your monthly income are devoted to the ORF broadcaster, which is the 'official' mandatory contribution made by your household, or else, to the 'broadcaster of society' that is the ORF media organ.

It is mandatory to pay for it because, they say, it produces the public good of countering fake news.

I have literally seen an apartment tear itself to pieces over who has to pay their portion of the ORF fee, such that it is within the penny-scrimping classes of media consumers, and indeed, have even seen people breaking up over it.

It is truly a dastardly affair of state.

Apollo (the original publisher of this) is a right-conservative outlet and has been involved in a few disinformation scandals before (like during the Mannheim Christmas market attack where they spread a forged police note saying that the suspect was a black man) so I’d take this with a grain of salt.

The article is also pretty clickbaity. Current law says that media paid for by taxes shouldn’t be purposefully buried deep in menus or made hard for an average user to find than private media. It does not mean they have to be ranked above everyone else in search results or algorithmic feeds; search and ranking still have to be non-discriminatory. And now Apollo claims to have seen an internal draft from media regulators on a state level that would expand this to individual posts in algorithmic feeds, that's it. They're blowing it out of proportion. Nobody's talking about "forceful algorithm boost" or changing the ranking or search or stuff like that. Also Apollo won't share this doc so none of their claims can really be verified either way.

> like during the Mannheim Christmas market attack where they spread a forged police note saying that the suspect was a black man

can you back this up with a source? cause my google search didn't reveal anything of that kind.

OP, please post the source link, not whatever copy'n'paste version this is.

https://reclaimthenet.org/germany-social-media-approved-news...

I was worried about why it got [flagged], but if it's not the primary source and the primary source has no paywall, then I'm OK with that outcome.

Well intentioned but hard to do.

I’d posit that even if you somehow do this in a neutral way, consumer adoption will fall in three buckets: (1) largely supportive, (2) largely unsupportive, (3) ambivalent/silent majority.

People who are largely supportive are already seeking out additional data points in their news consumption. Similarly, people who are largely unsupportive will gravitate towards their chosen echo chamber. The silent majority will remain largely ambivalent and, if they vote, will remain single issue voters.

The risk is that the government doesn’t find an effective neutral way for deciding what’s included and what’s not.

This is not only undemocratic, but it’s essentially a mild form of censorship.

It would be, if you had any control over what the algorithm feeds you. But you don't, so what does really change?

What is the source for this? I doubt the reporter who wrote this publishes on nonogra.ph. Isn't there a rule about using the original article and then paywall bypasses are allowed in comments?

It looks like this is a generic paste-whatever-you-want site where someone duplicated the article from ReclaimTheNet [0]. AFAICT there is no paywall or subscribe wall.

[0] https://reclaimthenet.org/germany-social-media-approved-news...

>Instagram, and TikTok will be legally required to make those outlets’ content more visible in users’ feeds.

That can be a good thing, something is really needed to make sure people see real verifiable facts instead of people's made up conspiracy theories. Add on top of that AI, things could get real bad quickly.

But this can easily be abused, I have to wonder what checks will be applied.

It will be abused. Usually free (counter) speech is the only reliable solution in the long run.

Germany has sent people to jail for calling what's going in Gaza a genocide, despite the majority of genocide scholars and human rights groups all saying it's a genocide.

This proposal is less about verifiable facts and more about the German government forcing its narrative on its populace.

Springer journalists (Die Welt. Politico) already have to sign that they will publish largely US friendly content.

Die Welt censored its comment section that contained too many independent entries in 2022.

The entire German press only repeats what Trump says in any given hour, without any reflection. They will criticize the persona of course, but they'll never question fundamental issues like increased US energy dependency or the real causes behind US wars.

Germany and the entire EU have been completely neutered by US propaganda. It was different during the Irak war.

Now they try censorship to prevent people from voting AfD, Here is a hint: Nothing at all will change anyway if Goldman Sachs ex-employee Weidel is chancellor. She'll be invited to a "talk" to Washington and come back as a puppy dog just like Meloni.

Huh? I think the press in germany was never as free as it is now. A lot of new publications and competition. And that Trump is not reflected critically, nope, i do not agree.

It will be ironic if AfD wins and then pushes their right wing viewpoint to the max to everyone.

There will be immediately be a "no wait, you can't do that" backlash from the same actors that are proposing this.

It's part of the scam, they actually want the AfD to later have that power so that they can say "Hey, look at what these fascists are doing, vote us back with urgency to prevent more fascism".

Win-win for the CDU/CSU and the AfD, the CDU gains power and has a boogeyman to use to scare voters into voting for them.

"State-Approved" is a scary word for "democratically legitimized", as opposed to engagement-optimized.

I would take this with a very huge grain of salt.

The only source seems to be a fringe right-wing news webpage (Apollo News) citing from an internal paper (which, it sounds to me, is just a vague proposal from a media oversight body). I have not seen any reports in major news publications, and would assume there's a lot of context missing in this reporting.

There are already several examples for where their investigative journalism covered highly relevant subjects that state approved media didn't.

I don't know how I feel about this, conceptually.

It's clear that social media are natural monopolies, and are being politically leveraged by the people who run them. So the status quo is definitely far from free speech. It's more of a "command economy of ideas" than a "marketplace".

But is this a reasonable solution? I feel like rules around algorithmic neutrality and penalties for misinformation might be better?

stunning to watch one of the countries the world owes so much to in terms of scientific and intellectual progress drift toward something this dumb .. if the reporting is accurate.

I lived in Hamburg for thrre years, and the town center constantly felt like a stage for some protest .. activist NGO campaign .. or ideological cause., .. and every time you mentioned it .. folks would respond with the same almost predictable utterence about how “protest is part of German democratic tradition” and how proud they are of it ..

what was interesting though was that privately, a lot of them quietly agreed with my observations .. especially coming from an Indian guy, because they knew I wasn’t coming at it from some stereotypical right wing European angle...

Not sure what your point is. Exercising democratic rights by organizing protests is a good thing, isn't it? You didn't like watching it, so what?

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