German anti-racism body leaves X over 'rise in hate speech'

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 443 points – German anti-racism body leaves X over 'rise in hate speech' – DW – 10/11/2023
dw.com

German anti-racism body leaves X over 'rise in hate speech'::A German agency that tackles discrimination and racism says it is quitting the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. It cited a rise in hate speech since owner Elon Musk took over last year.

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Many German officials have resisted calls to quit X, saying there was no substitute channel at present that would allow them to reach a broad section of the online public.

That's it right there - this line really emphasizes why Musky came up with the idea to buy the platform in the first place.

It's also an exit condition. When it no longer serves as a channel to reach enough people, they leave, and more leave as a result.. the interesting question is there that threshold lies

There certainly isn't a shortage of government-run mastodon servers in Germany. It's probably a good idea to make sure everything gets posted there and agencies with small and specialised audiences can get off twitter (also, facebook) quite easily. Say if you're interested in updates to discussions about updates to the tax code.

Others will stay as long as there's people to reach and the information is important. E.g. the weather service can withdraw when they get tired of the platform, while catastrophe relief just plainly won't as long as there's people on there. Everything actually important that the weather service says is also said by catastrophe relief (imminent bad storm, extreme UV/heat, what have you).

I guess depending on how many are just bots vs. actual users.

I honestly don't get Elon's obsession with X. First it was his thing with x.com and PayPal, then it was SpaceX, then he called his son X, then Twitter....

No wonder his wife became his X wife.

I think he believes that 'X' is 'the unknown' and that makes it cool and mysterious.

still not out of puberty, it seems.

Have you seen his Tweets? He's definitely got a 10-year-old mentality. He changed his screen name to 'Harry Bolz' for a while. That's the level of 'humor' he's at.

I just read them. He thinks those "jokes" are funny or something. His comments just suck overall, glad that Twitter is dying.

Tbh it has taken far longer than I expected but people do love their Xitter

I'm amazed that the EU or Germany still haven't blocked Twitter for that matter.

That would be concerning. What would stop them from banning something like a US mastodon server?

No, it's not concerning that they can block it heavily fine a website that does not follow their hate speech laws. We do have severe laws against hate speech in Europe because we suffered the consequences of not reigning that in in the past.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

FADA said hateful comments and disinformation had "increased particularly" since Tesla tycoon Elon Musk took over the platform formerly known as Twitter last year.

In a statement, FADA said there had been an "enormous increase" in anti-trans and homophobic hostility, racism, misogyny, anti-semitism and other misanthropic content.

Ataman said FADA could only try to combat the surge in hate comments by channeling more resources to the platform, which could be a questionable use of public money.

A rise in disinformation on the platform, with doctored images and misleading claims, has been reported since the Palestinian terror group Hamas launched a massive surprise attack on Israel on Saturday.

Many German officials have resisted calls to quit X, saying there was no substitute channel at present that would allow them to reach a broad section of the online public.

X said it had taken steps to curb the recent spread of inappropriate posts and that it had removed newly created Hamas-affiliated accounts to "prevent terrorist content from being distributed online."

The original article contains 340 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 51%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I finally deleted Twitter from my phone a couple weeks ago.

I only used it for porn for the last 3 years and hadn't been on in over a month but I saw an article on here and was curious. So I opened it up and looked to see how the porn situation was going. I was going to keep it around if I could find a bit of good porn. But I scrolled and scrolled down through my feed and I only had politics, bigots, ragebait, and hateporn. I hadn't realized it had gotten so bad... I also have no idea where all my porn creators fled to.

Oh well, nothing of value was lost.

Exact same reason why I still use Reddit via the web. Not because I like it but because I have porn there.

Shouldn't that be exactly why they don't leave the place they're "needed most?" Why exist solely to "preach to the saved?" The only reason Religion does that is to exploit the congregation out of their money.

Shouldn't the anti-racism group, like... Fight harder instead of just letting the racists have at it? 🤔

Making a statement by leaving a racist platform is fighting harder.

In what way? Even one of their own people is quoted in the article:

Ataman said FADA could only try to combat the surge in hate comments by channeling more resources to the platform, which could be a questionable use of public money.

Leaving the platform altogether isn't fighting against the discrimination or misinformation. They're more worried about how their agency would be perceived staying on the platform. This isn't a statement. It's giving up.

Something tells me they were paid to move to one of the other proprietary platforms.

put your tinfoil head on again

I guess we'll see if they choose Mastodon or one of the proprietary platforms.

You must be woefully innocent if you think people aren't paid to switch and promote different platforms.

I recommend looking into how Red Bull got big. They literally paid influential people on college campuses to shill their product to people who can't think for themselves.

Uh, your comment doesn't make sense. Mastodon is part of the fediverse and is Foss.

Choosing Mastodon would be okay.

Here, just for you ❤️: I guess we’ll see if they choose Mastodon, or one of the proprietary platforms.

You know you fucked up when Germany chastises you for racism.

Doesn't Germany have the strongest anti-racism laws in the world since the end of Nazi Germany? And also the country accepting the most immigrants during the refugee crisis (and among the top counting per capita I think)?

among the top counting per capita

That's Pakistan if I remember correctly.

All the rich countries are far away.

I visited Germany recently, and I did notice more racism than I've seen at home. There were some distant relatives of mine, who I've never met before, casually making racist jokes to each other, without attempting to hide it.

and your distant relatives are representative of the rest of the country

Not at all, but I was told by someone that it was the case in certain rural parts of the country. I'm not saying I know what I'm talking about, it's just my personal experience when I was there.

Doesn’t Germany have the strongest anti-racism laws in the world since the end of Nazi Germany?

Possibly, but not by a large margin compared to other European countries

And also the country accepting the most immigrants during the refugee crisis (and among the top counting per capita I think)?

Not by a long shot, Turkey took in 3.7 million Syrians, Germany 788k, and both countries have ballpark the same population.

Not by a long shot [...]

Right, I concede. The neighboring countries did accept way more. Germany is still accepted significantly more than the vast majority of countries (though it bears mention that Germany is also quite a massive country, for example Sweden's number of refugees seem small in comparison but is fairly close in refugees per capita).