Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

joindiaspora.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 197 posts

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#61

Post by znaji »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #57
znaji wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no free speech in Germany, so chances are that someone will say something on Diaspora that the government of Germany won't like. Then, if the owner of Diaspora refuses to delete the "illegal" post, he will be thrown in jail, so he doesn't really have a chance not to censor whatever the government forces him to censor.

>There is no free speech in Germany You might want to read Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

I'm sure somewhere in the Chinese constitution it says Chinese citizens have a right to free speech too :-)

There is no practical right to free speech in the EU, this happened a few weeks ago: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6316567/Woman-corre...

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#62

Post by throwaway8879 »

chmod775 wrote: post #45
throwaway8879 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-US and non-EU person, I can confidently say that the US has better free speech laws than anywhere else on this planet. I am open to being educated on this though.

The US only ranks 45th place on the Freedom of Press Index for instance, so it appears there are actually quite a few things not even the press is allowed to write about, much less your ordinary person. https://rsf.org/en/ranking

That is quite irrelevant. We're talking about freedom of speech here. Not the freedom of the press. When I think of freedom of speech, I have a simple question. If I say something that one finds offensive, am I committing a crime and will be prosecuted for my words? That's the only criteria I have. Now, the consequences that come from saying what you want, for eg. losing a job, or business - those have nothing to do with freedom of speech.

Obviously there are exceptions, in the form of breaking contracts. Can't go around leaking classified information or industrial secrets - contracts you agreed to when you signed up for the gig.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#63

Post by JimGuns »

ForHackernews wrote: post #2

How does Diaspora compare to Mastodon? My naive impression is that Mastodon is a decentralized Twitter clone and Diaspora tries to be a nonprofit Facebook. Is that correct?

Mastodon is when you can't handle any one having an alternative option than you, so you log on to a twitter clone where you are the only person using it and are always right.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#64

Post by some-username »

9712263 wrote: post #34

The most successful decentralized communication system - email as it turned out, people would concentrated to large free provider like Google. Decentralized server does not protect privacy for normal user because not most people could handle owning their server. The most success decentralized service is BitTorrent. It is decentralized and it is decentralized in client level. Though it also caused uncontrollable pirac…

I fully agree. The problem is that it's even harder to design something that is fully p2p than something federated. (One thing that tries to be exactly what you want would be https://secushare.org/ But its in a very very early stage, right now. There exist others, though.) And you have to agree that (even if most people choose the biggest provider) simply having the choice of different providers or even being your own provider is a huge improvement.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#66

Post by jnurmine »

throwaway8879 wrote: post #23
bionoid wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where would you propose as an alternative, in terms of better rights to free speech than europe? Surely not the US? Right?

As a non-US and non-EU person, I can confidently say that the US has better free speech laws than anywhere else on this planet. I am open to being educated on this though.

All places have some limits on free speech. EU places some exceptions, just like USA does, on the freedom of speech.

In the USA things like defamation, incitement to riot or lawless action, speech covered by copyright, terrorist threats etc. may land you in big trouble. In the EU same thing for for example holocaust denial. And in other places, such as for example Russia, the constitution might grant you the freedom of speech, but the system enforcing the constitution does not.

It is difficult to compare countries directly because of different laws and legislative systems. The use of some form of proxy metrics like the Freedom of Press Index might be useful, but then the question becomes which metrics should be used, and when presented with several metrics, there is a danger to select only those metrics which enforce existing viewpoints.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#67

Post by znajl »

pjc50 wrote: post #24
znaji wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not happy with these new services because they are all hosted in the EU where there is no right to free speech, so to me they are not an improvement over what they are supposed to replace.

Europe has a conditional right to free expression which is balanced with other rights: "Article 10 – Freedom of expression 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadca…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6316567/Woman-corre...

There is no free speech in the EU.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#68

Post by omnimus »

seszett wrote: post #20
thiago_fm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it have to do with living in Germany? I live in Berlin and we have the most vibrant community of privacy, security etc I've ever seen.

> What does it have to do with living in Germany? Americans are often "horrified" at free speech in Germany because glorifying Nazis and terrorists is forbidden there (as in France and a handful other European countries). My take is that this platform at least probably allows posting pictures with nipples, unlike most US-based services.

Wow this thread escalated quickly.

Well US is in many ways slowly starting to look like Nazy germany in its beginings. I hope this turns around because i really dont want nuke war. But it seems germany atleast tries to do something and learn from the past. While US in its hard defense of indivilualism (its just illusion btw) is really loosing it. I mean some people in us gov now are literaly evil and want to harm others. Thats never a good sign.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#69

Post by seszett »

vanderZwan wrote: post #37
seszett wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does it have to do with living in Germany? Americans are often "horrified" at free speech in Germany because glorifying Nazis and terrorists is forbidden there (as in France and a handful other European countries). My take is that this platform at least probably allows posting pictures with nipples, unlike most US-based services.

EDIT: As pointed out below, I probably misread the intent of the comment I was replying to as its exact opposite (because I thought the user was the same as GP). If so my apologies. So you're saying a country that censors Nazis but not nudity has crazier stances on free speech than one that censors nudity but not Nazis? Ever heard of the paradox of tolerance? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

> you're saying a country that censors Nazis but not nudity has crazier stances on free speech than one that censors nudity but not Nazis

No, I said the contrary. I am rather content with the state of free speech in France (and by extension, Germany, which is almost the same on this respect) because it fits very well my own view of how a tolerant society, respectful of its citizens, should behave.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#70

Post by vanderZwan »

FabHK wrote: post #51
vanderZwan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: As pointed out below, I probably misread the intent of the comment I was replying to as its exact opposite (because I thought the user was the same as GP). If so my apologies. So you're saying a country that censors Nazis but not nudity has crazier stances on free speech than one that censors nudity but not Nazis? Ever heard of the paradox of tolerance? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

> So you're saying a country that censors Nazis but not nudity has crazier stances on free speech than one that censors nudity but not Nazis? I don't think he said that, just the opposite. I don't think he was being sarcastic. Hard to say, though, with this internet text thingy.

Hmm, upon rereading I think you're right. You see, I had not noticed it was a different user from GP, which biased my interpretation of intent.

> Hard to say, though, with this internet text thingy.

Tell me about it. Poe's Law[0] is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to communication difficulties on the web, and with trolls (paid trolls even) and algorithms that favor imflammatory content for stronger virality and increased watch time it's getting worse.

Then again, that was exactly one of the main things that Adam Curtis was warning about in HyperNormalisation, and Clay Shirky in his work in general[1][2]. We're still coming to grips with this new medium of communication and haven't quite figured out adequate protective systems against abuse and exploitation yet.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation

[2] https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_...

Post reply on HN