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Poland plans to make censoring of social media accounts illegal

theguardian.com

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Re: Poland plans to make censoring of social media accounts illegal

#61

Post by ArnoVW »

charliesome wrote: post #16
ArnoVW wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the confusion stems from the fact that it should be illegal for a private business to censor someone. But that does not preclude the democratically created law from censoring someone, as interpreted by the judiciary. The issue in the US has been that the executive and judiciary part of the state did nothing for four years. As per the first sentence of the article: "Polish government wants to protect posts tha…

There is simply far too much content being created all the time for current judicial systems to keep up with. Much of the law breaking content out there is never pursued. If we agree that greater censorship on social media is necessary, and if private companies aren't taking on the role of censor here, I think that suggests governments must become more active in their roles as censor. What would that look like and ho…

Well I suppose if I were put in power, and "only" had to apply the law (and not come up with censorship laws), the idea would be focus my effort to have the maximum effect.

So perhaps not focus on an individual Twitter account with 10 followers, but do focus on influencers, media or politicians with 10's or 100's of thousands of followers.

That's still a hairy prospect, because - justly - we are weary of censoring policitians. But if they are breaking the law, they are breaking the law (or we have to change the laws). And start with the few cases that are the most likely to be convicted. Those cases will then set precedent, be reported on in the press, and hopefully help society refind a path to legal discourse.

A bit like we do with almost all other crimes really. For exemple, when people started flaunting COVID restrictions, we did not hire thousands more officers to enforce the law. We prosecuted the most willful cases, and reported about them in the press.

Re: Poland plans to make censoring of social media accounts illegal

#62

Post by goldcd »

schlupa wrote: post #43
klunger wrote: post #15

This is absurd. Twitter etc are private companies and can do what they want wrt their user's accounts. If they don't want their far-right politicians getting censored, then they can ban those platforms from the country completely. As the saying goes, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

A restaurant is a private company and if they don't want to serve blacks and jews they can completely do it. You see now how absurd that argument is?

But that isn't the argument, so put your straw-man away.

Nobody is saying anybody should be banned/blocked for who they are - just for what they say.

e.g. Similar to the "gay cake" case (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-45789759). Issue isn't that the customer was gay, the issue was the bakers didn't want to make this particular cake for anybody.

Re: Poland plans to make censoring of social media accounts illegal

#64

Post by stephenr »

ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote: post #57
stephenr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I've said time and time again, people say "free speech" but what they mean is "consequence free speech".

Why would you say that more than once? Freedom of speech, whatever your take on it, is by definition freedom from some consequences. The argument is over which consequences are acceptable.

Because people don't understand? Because people don't read? I don't know. Why would people keep failing to make the distinction between "free speech" and "consequence free speech"?

Free Speech is, in most societies considered to be a concept that applies to the government's ability to censor people's speech. This is well defined in the case of the US 1st amendment: it has zero implication on private entities.

Edit to add:

So in the example case, the US President has been banned from Twitter. People are claiming he's been "censored" by twitter. The government has done nothing to stop him saying whatever the fuck he wants, on national television even.

The hypocrisy on this topic by right wingers is pretty crazy when you think about it: Apparently a baker can refuse to make a cake because he can't sleep at night if two dudes kiss, but a social media platform can't stop someone from posting violence inciting messages on their website?

Re: Poland plans to make censoring of social media accounts illegal

#65

Post by BlackFly »

doctor_eval wrote: post #28

All I see lately is people conflating the right to free speech with the right to be heard . Free speech means that you can't be put in jail for something you say. That's it . But nobody has an entitlement to be amplified . That's not a right. Nobody has the right to unfettered access to someone else's platform. That's never, ever been the case. You never had the right to edit the front page of a newspaper that you do…

You're only seeing a straw man version of the view opposing yours.

Claiming to have a right to use a telephone isn't a demand to be heard, it is a demand to let a person talk to people that want to hear them. People blocking a number because they don't want to hear from it is another story. While some people are demanding the right to speak, most defenders aren't demanding the right to be heard, those people are demanding the right to hear something.

Yes, the company may be facilitating communication is doesn't approve of, but it isn't amplifying it. The amplification with social media occurs because people that want to hear the message tell other people that want to hear the message about it and it is so easy to go out and hear the message. Telephone companies helped facilitate organization of all kinds of odious things, but rarely is it suggested that the phone companies should deny access.

Censorship is equivalent to the censor telling people, "Because we don't like the message, we won't let you hear this message."

The debate is on how necessary social media is to our communications and how reasonable it is to deny access. That is, how similar is it to a telephone or mail.

Re: Poland plans to make censoring of social media accounts illegal

#66

Post by Asraelite »

ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote: post #57
stephenr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I've said time and time again, people say "free speech" but what they mean is "consequence free speech".

Why would you say that more than once? Freedom of speech, whatever your take on it, is by definition freedom from some consequences. The argument is over which consequences are acceptable.

It's similar to when "human rights" is brought up.

There is no exact immutable universal definition, especially when it comes to edge cases and specifics. It varies across cultures, jurisdictions, and time.

Re: Poland plans to make censoring of social media accounts illegal

#67

Post by praptak »

ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote: post #57
stephenr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I've said time and time again, people say "free speech" but what they mean is "consequence free speech".

Why would you say that more than once? Freedom of speech, whatever your take on it, is by definition freedom from some consequences. The argument is over which consequences are acceptable.

Freedom from some consequences, yes, but it's secondary. The primary meaning is the ability to say things to the public.

In the Soviet bloc all media were state controlled and even xerox machines and typewriters were tightly controlled. It was non-trivial to even publish something (not to say there weren't consequences).

Re: Poland plans to make censoring of social media accounts illegal

#68

Post by ArnoVW »

pelliphant wrote: post #52
ArnoVW wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see what you mean. I did not mean to say that censorship is not controversial. I was refering to the comment, that was commenting the article. What I tried to say was that the controversy about private entities censoring other private entities should be relatively small. That does indeed not diminish the fact that the state censoring someone is more complicated, I agree.

That is an american take on censorship. Here is one from the other side of the pond: Private entities setting up rules for their services and then enforcing those rules are not that controversial.

Actually, I am Dutch, but have lived in the UK and am now living in France. I agree that "freedom of speech" is less of an issue for the average European, than for an average American. But Angela Merkel for example critisized strongly the actions of Facebook, Twitter et al.

You may agree with private entities censoring now, because you disagree with the censored statements. What if the roles are reversed? What if Mark Zuckerberg runs for president and uses his platform to this end? What if whomever-you-disagree-with pays private entities to censor your newspaper / internet site?

Democratically defined censorship, enforced by the state is one thing (and already complicated). Censorship without all those guarantees is, IMHO, quite another.

Re: Poland plans to make censoring of social media accounts illegal

#69

Post by BlackFly »

stephenr wrote: post #64
ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you say that more than once? Freedom of speech, whatever your take on it, is by definition freedom from some consequences. The argument is over which consequences are acceptable.

Because people don't understand? Because people don't read? I don't know. Why would people keep failing to make the distinction between "free speech" and "consequence free speech"? Free Speech is, in most societies considered to be a concept that applies to the government's ability to censor people's speech. This is well defined in the case of the US 1st amendment: it has zero implication on private entities. Edit to…

> Free Speech is, in most societies considered to be a concept that applies to the government's ability to censor people's speech.

While this is mostly technically true, unique aspects of the law in the US compared to other countries makes this false for practical purposes.

For example, labor protection laws in other countries protect employees from retaliation for their speech: a company is usually only allowed to fire employees for cause related to their employment. Private speech unrelated to my employer wouldn't suffice in the country I live in. Effectively, this means my employer cannot censor me.

A standard retaliatory consequence for disapproval of speech that people seek in the USA on the other hand is to have a person fired.

Re: Poland plans to make censoring of social media accounts illegal

#70

Post by nanonan »

egwor wrote: post #20
julienreszka wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think lies continue to spread?

Deep question. Sometimes people repeat ideas without sufficient critical thought. That critical thought may well be due to lack of understanding around the subject which limits the ability for the person to review whether it is correct before spreading the information wider. I think that some of this is because the news that we get from credible sources doesn't explain why they're credible (e.g. no sources). Conseque…

Great answer. I did want to highlight the selling of ads as I believe this is the primary and largest reason behind influencing less informed masses to take unwarranted actions in a harmful 'us vs them' way. Engineered (human or otherwise) attention/action getting ads have given us clickbait, raigebait, and cross-sectional identity politics. I believe that without regulation on the beancounting ad algorithms that fight for attention this will continue and we will have even more extreme "us vs them" attitudes and fallouts in the future. How that is done, I have no idea, but cancel culture seems inherently wrong to me. Perhaps educational reform is the place to start and should focus on helping people be both open-minded and skeptical in their openminded-ness ie, switching from 'i'm right, they are wrong' to 'no one is right'. and from there, humbly rejecting objectively(scientifically) proven falsehoods and seeking to understand the fallacies we all fall victim to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
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