'Anti-meme law' could see Mexicans jailed for posting insulting images
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Re: 'Anti-meme law' could see Mexicans jailed for posting insulting images
#2Memes and Editorial/Political cartoons have been our oldest way of poking fun at government officials, of course they would want to ban them, and bullying is the perfect cover to do it. Think of the children!
Re: 'Anti-meme law' could see Mexicans jailed for posting insulting images
#3Is there a defining feature of this (or other) cyber bullying laws that make them antithetical to freedom of expression and the tools of oppressive regimes, rather than laws which promote more civil and effective discourse in the public sphere?
I want to say trolling is somewhat like obscenity—in that you know it when you see it—but that is a deeply unsatisfying response when so much discourse online is so polarized.
Because it’s Ok for me to disagree with, even hate and detest, what someone is saying. It’s Ok for me to shocked and angered and deeply offended by a thing you say. It’s not Ok for me to go around clubbing people when they do this.
I think the current laws on libel, defamation, and slander are appropriate and fairly functional. Public figures in particular have a higher burden as well they should.
The new generation of anti-speech laws here and in the UK I find are deeply flawed and dangerous, and appear to me to be tools of oppression rather than the opposite.
Re: 'Anti-meme law' could see Mexicans jailed for posting insulting images
#4If the last name of the congressman who proposed this is Kirsch, then I support this law. I'm sure it's for the betterment of our society.
Re: 'Anti-meme law' could see Mexicans jailed for posting insulting images
#5Is there a defining feature of this (or other) cyber bullying laws that make them antithetical to freedom of expression and the tools of oppressive regimes, rather than laws which promote more civil and effective discourse in the public sphere? I want to say trolling is somewhat like obscenity—in that you know it when you see it—but that is a deeply unsatisfying response when so much discourse online is so polarized.…
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Re: 'Anti-meme law' could see Mexicans jailed for posting insulting images
#6Is there a defining feature of this (or other) cyber bullying laws that make them antithetical to freedom of expression and the tools of oppressive regimes, rather than laws which promote more civil and effective discourse in the public sphere? I want to say trolling is somewhat like obscenity—in that you know it when you see it—but that is a deeply unsatisfying response when so much discourse online is so polarized.…
> in that you know it when you see it
I would contend that one takeaway from companies like Facebook is that this phrase doesn't actually hold up all that well on a global Internet.
Facebook originally classified breast-feeding as explicit. At the time there was actual controversy about whether or not it fit into that category (public perception now is mostly that it didn't). Facebook's shift from "no pornography" to "here's a giant document about exactly what is and isn't pornography down to the number of nipples you show" feels to me like the white flag of a company that has decided it no longer knows it when it sees it.
I think "you know it when you see it" works very well for small, tight-nit communities, and maybe not quite so well as soon as as you start operating on the scale of a country. On that scale, I kind of prefer the narrower definitions we have on stuff like libel and slander.
Re: 'Anti-meme law' could see Mexicans jailed for posting insulting images
#7Mexicans jailed... and the problem is?
Re: 'Anti-meme law' could see Mexicans jailed for posting insulting images
#8Is there a defining feature of this (or other) cyber bullying laws that make them antithetical to freedom of expression and the tools of oppressive regimes, rather than laws which promote more civil and effective discourse in the public sphere? I want to say trolling is somewhat like obscenity—in that you know it when you see it—but that is a deeply unsatisfying response when so much discourse online is so polarized.…
>I want to say trolling is somewhat like obscenity—in that you know it when you see it
Depends. What an American considers obscenity and what an Italian or French or Japanese person can be very different.
Re: 'Anti-meme law' could see Mexicans jailed for posting insulting images
#9Is there a defining feature of this (or other) cyber bullying laws that make them antithetical to freedom of expression and the tools of oppressive regimes, rather than laws which promote more civil and effective discourse in the public sphere? I want to say trolling is somewhat like obscenity—in that you know it when you see it—but that is a deeply unsatisfying response when so much discourse online is so polarized.…
> Is there a defining feature of this (or other) cyber bullying laws that make them antithetical to freedom of expression and the tools of oppressive regimes
If the law is in regard to protecting how people feel (which implicitly controls how they think), it will be used to enforce what can be said. That's the only tool you need for oppression. If it's to limit exposure to ideas, like pornography or explosive manufacture, it's ironically less oppressive because it's more objective than "how random human might feel on a given day".
Re: 'Anti-meme law' could see Mexicans jailed for posting insulting images
#10Is there a defining feature of this (or other) cyber bullying laws that make them antithetical to freedom of expression and the tools of oppressive regimes, rather than laws which promote more civil and effective discourse in the public sphere? I want to say trolling is somewhat like obscenity—in that you know it when you see it—but that is a deeply unsatisfying response when so much discourse online is so polarized.…
> in that you know it when you see it I would contend that one takeaway from companies like Facebook is that this phrase doesn't actually hold up all that well on a global Internet. Facebook originally classified breast-feeding as explicit. At the time there was actual controversy about whether or not it fit into that category (public perception now is mostly that it didn't). Facebook's shift from "no pornography" to…
I think the problem there is that "you know it when you see it" scales poorly. Humans are (usually) reasonably good at handling "you know it when you see it" heuristics, even if there is disagreement on edge cases. But "you know it when you see it" is difficult to implement algorithmically, and handling content at the scale of Facebook requires that you have algorithmic processes in place to automatically handle most of the firehose.