Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in New Zealand, and finding the Christchurch shooter's manifesto was harder than you'd think. The "it's not foolproof, so it's fruitless"-argument strikes me as missing the point. We can't prevent many things from happening (rape, thieving, excessive drug use, etc.) but that doesn't mean that efforts to contain this are useless.
It was very easy to find if you know where to look. If you know the domain for 8chan you could find it in seconds. The massive attempt to hide the video probably made it much easier to find as so many people who saw it saved it expecting it to be gone in the future.
EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content
161–170 of 222 posts
Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
>A free society is one, where people and ideas can show up, be given a chance, and stand or fall on their character and merits. How do you square this with the recent surge in flat Earth and anti-vaccination beliefs? The merits of truth aren't guaranteed to win this battle.
The anti-vaxxers are to a large extent caused by the recent rise of anti-rationalist "burn the heretics" nonsense: http://www.mysuncoast.com/2019/03/19/it-made-me-feel-really-... Anti-vaxxers are what you get when you use death threats and not civil discourse.
The anti-vaxxers send death threats to people who correct their erroneous claims. That's how you shut down reasoned discourse -- by having fervent zealots attack anyone who contradicts them.
Obviously attacking people who disagree with you is the opposite of them having free speech. It suppresses the speech of anyone not willing to be subject to the threats and allows the erroneous information to proliferate unchallenged.
So the problem isn't that the anti-vaxxers got to speak their piece, it's that they're caught up in a subculture that suppresses dissent. Then their subculture declares that two times two equals six and anybody who tries to show otherwise is attacked, which deprives them of reasoned debate as a method for correcting misconceptions, and so the misconceptions persist.
Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content
#163Politicians do not care about the ramifications of this. They only care about granting themselves power over who sees what when through the guise of combating hate speech, terrorism, child porn, etc. Posting a blog about this will change nothing.
Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spain banned speech critical of the government several years ago, and several people have been jailed already. At least one person has been jailed over a tweet. Europe isn’t one big whole, parts of it are already obviously worse than others.
> Spain banned speech critical of the government Could you please provide some reference? I seriously doubt that what you said is correct.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/Spain-Counter...
Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has always struck me as a weird sort of edge case, because the hypothetical situation is pretty disconnected from all the other situations where people might seek restrictions on free speech that it doesn’t really matter which way I go. If I say that yes, I suppose we can carve out some sort of exception for people who directly cause harm to life and limb by falsely proclaiming the existence of immediate dangers…
There are other small and well established edge-case restrictions on free speech I am willing to accept, mind you, eg market manipulation or giving false statements to police. But I don’t see the classic fire-in-theatre one as being relevant to anything. This contradicts the point you were making before, which I was responding to, where no agency is qualified to establish limits, so I guess this part of the thread is…
No it doesn't, you don't need an agency butting in case-by-case to have specific exclusions.
> Hillsborough Disaster
Too many people, bad management of the crowd, how is this relevant to speech at all?
> Italian Hall disaster
I think it's fair to blame the design of the building and overcrowding here. Blaming the person that yelled fire is good for vengeance but not very good for safety and accident-prevention.
Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in New Zealand, and finding the Christchurch shooter's manifesto was harder than you'd think. The "it's not foolproof, so it's fruitless"-argument strikes me as missing the point. We can't prevent many things from happening (rape, thieving, excessive drug use, etc.) but that doesn't mean that efforts to contain this are useless.
It was very easy to find if you know where to look. If you know the domain for 8chan you could find it in seconds. The massive attempt to hide the video probably made it much easier to find as so many people who saw it saved it expecting it to be gone in the future.
Just like terrorist content (how to make bombs/attack infidels and such) still exists, and those looking for it would probably find it, but the governments are trying to make it so that innocent people that have no inclination to perform horrible acts don't run into it by "chance". And just like they did to Muslim extremists and violent ideas in that front, they are now trying to do in other areas.
Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would argue the US draws the line in a clearly categorical way, while European countries draw it past a categorical boundary. In the US, what you say has to break an already existing criminal law or be pursuant to a criminal act for it to be criminal. For example, lying to someone about your company's financial situation is fraud, telling someone you're going to injure them is threat of battery, and falsely yelling…
I have to disagree. A lot of the time in America we tend to believe we have an absolute right to freedom of speech, but the reality is that our rights to speech are already tied to our race, sexuality, etc. A black man mouthing off to a police officer for example would be very likely putting himself in a dangerous situation and anything the officer does would end up 'justified' in the court of law. Or you'll be arres…
That would be illegal.
> Or you'll be arrested if you laugh at someone powerful, like what happened with the Jeff Sessions incident
That didn't happen.
> The great irony of our rabid belief in freedom of speech is that it simply doesn't exist in America.
As you can see from the very public arrest of Louise Mensch. Which totally happened in a different universe.
Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a path that pre-dates the EU. We're a crowded continent with a huge amount of diversity and a long and bitter history of war. We have learned through bitter experience that, while free speech is a precious right, it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances. Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. Free speech is not unc…
> We have learned through bitter experience that, while free speech is a precious right, it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances. Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. Have they learnt the right lesson though? What's the alternate history theory here? You toss Hitler in jail after he makes an inflammatory speech to a…
Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
The anti-vaxxers are to a large extent caused by the recent rise of anti-rationalist "burn the heretics" nonsense: http://www.mysuncoast.com/2019/03/19/it-made-me-feel-really-... Anti-vaxxers are what you get when you use death threats and not civil discourse.
Wait, am I being unclear or are the downvotes from anti-vaxxers? The anti-vaxxers send death threats to people who correct their erroneous claims. That's how you shut down reasoned discourse -- by having fervent zealots attack anyone who contradicts them. Obviously attacking people who disagree with you is the opposite of them having free speech. It suppresses the speech of anyone not willing to be subject to the thr…
Also anti-vax isn't something new. It dates back to at least the mid 90s and the original Wakefield paper. There were no cult like organisations pushing it at that time. What did exist was a mainstream media willing to push the story for many years, even long after they knew the original paper was faulty. The problem wasn't born out of fervent zealots, it was created by con artists and co-conspirators in the media who exploited liberal ideas of "free speech" and "media balance" to knowingly spread a conspiracy for their own financial gain. There was no "subculture" at the time. I'm not sure you can even really say there is one now, given that anti-vax is one of the conspiracy theories that has wide appeal across different groups (i.e. it exists across the left/liberal/conservative/right political spectrum).
You are trying to push your own ideological position (more "free speech" is good and will solve the problem) onto an issue, and it doesn't fit what actually happened at all, or what we know about how conspiracy theories spread (it's not a lack of counter-information, because conspiracy theories by definition include the fact that they are being suppressed by central authority).
Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
When will the UK leave? The latest extension offered to Brexit is until Oct 31. And another extension is likely to be offered then.
I feel like, at this point, a possibly likely option is a continued bump of leave dates until the British population gets sick of the BS and forces a stay decision in like 20 years once the old racists go away - but my money is still on UK doing a no-deal brexit because they can't decide on anything else... that will probably happen during the next european recession when the EU gets sick of wasting bureaucratic effo…