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Uganda bans social media ahead of election

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Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of election

#71

Post by onethought »

ImamBayildi wrote: post #69
onethought wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn’t and isn’t unthinkable in most of the world. “Free Speech” is an US thing. It pretty much doesn’t exist anywhere else as a right, and never has.

What about in Canada, Germany, England, France, India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Spain, Italy, etc?

It's quite different:

Canada it isn't an absolute right and has much more willingness from the country to amend "unacceptable expression". Which is different to the US quite substantially.

Germany you are right it has a similar framework to the US.

UK doesn't have this as a right outside of parliament (parliamentary speech is protected). So not sure why you raise this as a counter example.

France is a weird one to bring up... where they have banned certain kinds of expression in different settings (i.e no religious symbols). Extremely different from the US.

India similar to Canada has so many provisions (and willingness) in which to revoke this right, it's definitely not as strong as a constitutional right that the US gives.

Italy again its freedom of expression is tempered by a host of restrictions on that freedom.

I could go on... none of them are like the US having a constitutional right for freedom of expression that quite literally supersedes other laws.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of election

#72

Post by [deleted] »

tmpz22 wrote: post #67
johndevor wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I'm saying that leftwing violence is distributed. Rightwing is centralized. The radical left is smart. There's no head antifa leader. Doesn't mean antifa is any less dangerous, I might argue more dangerous because there's no head to the hydra.

Are you making the argument that there are coordinated, yet distributed, Antifa cells spread across America that pose a greater or equal threat then: 1) the mob that stormed the capitol building with threats to kill and kidnap US congressmen, senators, and the VP? 2) the several dozen Michigan militia members currently indicted for attempting to kidnap the governor of Michigan 3) the texas commuters who attempted to…

[deleted]

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of election

#73

Post by wolco5 »

dang wrote: post #59
wolco5 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they were shutting down the internet during the arab spring uprising?

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum.…

I've created 4 accounts over four years.

wolco - which had 5000 karma over three years wolco2 - which had 500 karma over three months wolco3 - negative - one day wolco5 - active

The first one got hacked. The second one I created a super difficult password and couldn't remember when I cleared my stored passwords. The third I started off poorly by replying to a Trump thread and wanted to start fresh.

I'm not a spammer creating accounts for some purpose other than losing accounts and I would love to get back my wolco account if possible.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of election

#74

Post by dang »

wolco5 wrote: post #73
dang wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum.…

I've created 4 accounts over four years. wolco - which had 5000 karma over three years wolco2 - which had 500 karma over three months wolco3 - negative - one day wolco5 - active The first one got hacked. The second one I created a super difficult password and couldn't remember when I cleared my stored passwords. The third I started off poorly by replying to a Trump thread and wanted to start fresh. I'm not a spammer…

Ok, I've clearly misclassified you—sorry! There are a lot of accounts doing less defensible things and it's not always easy (well, basically impossible) to tell who's up to what.

I'd be happy to help you get the wolco account back, but can you email hn@ycombinator.com? The process for account recovery is best not performed in public.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of election

#75

Post by RankingMember »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #29
RankingMember wrote: post #7

The difference, as I understand it, is that the government made the choice for people rather than a private organization. Under the US constitution, free speech means that the government cannot limit your speech except in narrow circumstances. This has no bearing on private organizations, which is why Twitter can ban users.

This is splitting hairs. Twitter has no problem booting millions of people off their platform for political purposes. Clearly, they also don't mind that a rising competitor (Parler) was put out of business overnight. Yet, they don't like it when a country blocks them. This is hypocrisy, regardless how people might try to distinguish one kind of "blocking" from another. It would be better if Uganda didn't block social…

> It would also be better if social media didn't block users here in the U.S.

Would it, though? Do you think social media should be a completely unbounded venue for discourse? HN has rules; if I violate them by attacking others or otherwise being a jerk and get banned, is that really a bad thing? I don't think so, personally. We've all been places online with lax standards and absent/ignorant mods, and, generally, it's a shitshow race to the bottom of personal attacks and racism.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of election

#76

Post by [deleted] »

tmpz22 wrote: post #67
johndevor wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I'm saying that leftwing violence is distributed. Rightwing is centralized. The radical left is smart. There's no head antifa leader. Doesn't mean antifa is any less dangerous, I might argue more dangerous because there's no head to the hydra.

Are you making the argument that there are coordinated, yet distributed, Antifa cells spread across America that pose a greater or equal threat then: 1) the mob that stormed the capitol building with threats to kill and kidnap US congressmen, senators, and the VP? 2) the several dozen Michigan militia members currently indicted for attempting to kidnap the governor of Michigan 3) the texas commuters who attempted to…

[deleted]
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