cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/56719476
Italy fined Cloudflare 14.2 million euros for refusing to block access to pirate sites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service, the country’s communications regulatory agency, AGCOM, announced yesterday. Cloudflare said it will fight the penalty and threatened to remove all of its servers from Italian cities.
As a European, I’ve really come around to a more American view of Free Speech.
Over the last few years, we get more and more laws requiring more and more surveillance and censorship to protect copyright, stop hate speech, enforce GDPR, … We’re building up this infrastructure and the population thinks it’s fine. The courts go along and ask for more.
What is going to happen when a European Trump comes to power? You think it’s terrible that Big Tech goes along with Trump? That Must bought Twitter? We ain’t seen nothing yet.
Wait what do you have against GDPR?
Yeah I don’t get that. How did free speech help when the Nazis humiliated jews publicly in the 1930s? How does it help now that the US president says that Somalis are trash people? Nick Fuentes saying the “organized Jewry in America” being a problem?
It seems obvious that I want the state to prevent hate speech, especially against minorities.
How did it help taking “jew-baiters” like Julius Streicher to court during the Weimar Republic? Obviously it didn’t.
You want the state to act against hate speech coming from the elected head of state. What about that seems like a good plan?
You can’t convince people that Trump is a bad guy, and so you want the state to go after the bad guys. Maybe you can convince people that the state should smash bad guys. It’s not hard. But Trump is in charge of the state and not you. He’ll decide who’s a bad guy.
just to be clear, it seems like you are referring to the claimed american view of free speech, not the reality
Are there examples of censorship or prior restraint you’d like to highlight?
the white house encouraging witch hunts is a good one
It is real. There is a lot of hypocrisy, particularly among the right. But the difference between Europe and the US is stark.
Compare the criticism of the DMCA or Google’s Content ID to this affair. It’s on completely different levels.
The US has no limits which is fucking stupid, meanwhile Canada has limits on hate speech while still being far more free than the US speech wise.
which is bullshit: not being merely offended is not a fundamental liberty, no imminent risk of damage to an interest a person has a basic right to results from merely expressing an opinion.
such laws are readily abused
& ineffective at preventing the ideas & ideologies they oppose from taking root & gaining power. the advocates of repressive policies are only mildly inconvenienced or continue undeterred underground. the German AfD isn’t struggling. far-right parties like Reform UK keep going. so, they fail to keep anyone in check while also undermining basic freedoms.
ability to justify truth & correctness is far more important than attempting to coerce conformity to correctness through dogma, taboo, & censorship. weak ability to justify makes people incompetent defenders & weak believers of correctness. individuals hone justifications & acquire competence to deliberate effectively through practice of vigorous & open deliberation with adversarial positions. censorship, even of incorrect belief, robs both those whose speech is suppressed and their audience of open deliberation they need to justify their beliefs and actions competently & effectively.
only cowards fear words.
I’m all in on no limits for free speech. The government’s job is to provide services, not determine and police morality. And hate speech does not have a concrete definition, so it’s a moving target (the government could define talking shit about Republicans as hate speech and make it illegal, for example). I don’t like Nazis or racism or homophobia, but i like the idea that you are legally allowed to say nazi, racist or homophobic shit and I can hear it and choose to shun you.
I’m glad Canada is there for you with their rules if that makes sense to you. Not everybody has to agree with no limits on free speech – plenty of places to live with mostly free-ish speech laws.