71–80 of 197 posts
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Try writing left-leaning comments and see how long Voat respects your right to free speech.
So it's basically the opposite of US services, where conservatives are hushed.
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…
Maybe. But then there's a question of where does the content live? Most people don't have a desktop they leave connected all the time, and don't want to be hosting videos and photos off their mobile device. So you're stuck with replicating that data out to all the peers, which means you've just lost control of "your" data again.
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“where there is no right to free speech“ Yes, there is. At least in my experience as a happy EU citizen. So want to cut the hyperbole and substantiate your claim?
Which country in the EU? Free Speech, in the USAmerican sense, seems to be strongly curtailed in the UK.
You do see the flawed reasoning, don't you?
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No, most EU countries have laws in some form that prohibit Holocaust denial. But as with any country that has the rights to freedom of speech, these rights are inevitably balanced and restricted by other laws. This is a good thing, because while freedom of speech is important, the general wellbeing of the population and preventing people getting hurt is important as well. It is my belief for example that allowing rac…
On the other side of the argument, I think many would ask where do you draw the line? And who draws that line? It seems like the majority of the people I know feel like it's better not to draw that line at all and instead focus on teaching people why these arguments are wrong. The failing of our education system is another (bad) problem entirely. Ex: what if the government one day decides that criticizing the governm…
Unfortunately, I don't see this happening anymore. I don't want to sound gloomy, but the web back in the day had a completely different feel to it. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I can feel it's vibrancy dying. Maybe it started a while ago.
Anyway, there's still hope with decentralization and such. I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.
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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.
“where there is no right to free speech“ Yes, there is. At least in my experience as a happy EU citizen. So want to cut the hyperbole and substantiate your claim?
If you're happy with the status-quo, you're hardly a good test for your society's freedom of speech, no?
Freedom of speech means the freedom to say unpopular things.
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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…
If you can't even exercise free speech where it really matters in regards to your democracy, you hardly have total freedom of speech.
Also Snowden is hardly the only example of whistleblowers from within a branch of a democratic government speaking out. However the US is an extreme outlier in how it handled the matter.
Another thing many western democracies manage to do without is an equivalent to the US's National Security Letters, which are also a form of the government policing speech where it might matter.
So apparently you have to be afraid to speak out when it really matters, but at least you can deny the holocaust I guess.
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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
You seem to confuse freedom of speech with freedom of press.
Treating freedom of speech as completely disjoint from freedom of press is wrong.
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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.
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.
The most comprehensive survey on various freedoms in the World that I know of ranks Germany at 94, ahead of France at 90 and the US at 86. (100 is the perfect score)
Freedom of speech is also a guaranteed right in the German constitution, as it is in the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
In every jurisdiction there are limits to the freedom of speech. This applies to the US as well as everywhere else:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
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Which country in the EU? Free Speech, in the USAmerican sense, seems to be strongly curtailed in the UK.
Responding to the sibling re: censoring pornography. The 1st amendment prevents the government from interfering with the free exchange of ideas (among other things). We generally believe that letting the government regulate this kind of thing is a dangerous slippery slope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_v._California
There are myriads of other exceptions to 1st Amendment protections (including, even if people often don't think of it that way, intellectual property rights):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
The whole idea that "Free speech is protected in the US but not in Europe" is just an (libertarian?) meme with no basis in fact.
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“where there is no right to free speech“ Yes, there is. At least in my experience as a happy EU citizen. So want to cut the hyperbole and substantiate your claim?
> At least in my experience as a happy EU citizen. If you're happy with the status-quo, you're hardly a good test for your society's freedom of speech, no? Freedom of speech means the freedom to say unpopular things.