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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

#81

Post by true_religion »

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?

Alexandria, Virginia had a whites only bar until sometime in the mid 2000s.

There was no state law against racial discrimination and the bar only used local products so didn’t engage in interstate commerce.

You see, unless we specifically make laws to protect a class of people, private companies will discriminate on that basis.

I guess the question here is do we want to make “people who lie and spread disinformation about important matters” into a protected class. As if is now, we barely discriminate against them. You have to lie for 4 solid months, culminating in a violent riot against the central government before any private entity will ban you.

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

#82

Post by xeyownt »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #35

> Censorship of free speech, which is the domain of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, is now returning in the form of a new, commercial mechanism to combat those who think differently. As terrible as PiS are for other reasons, Morawiecki has a point here, although I don't see he is standing by this point consistently when it comes to, e.g. , those who "think differently" about sexuality.

The fact that PiS is terrible is clear indication that they have a bad agenda behind this move.

In some countries, it is illegal to promote racist speech, or to call for violent actions, etc. These countries define a limit to free speech. Morawiecki would call these limits censorship of free speech, but these are not.

Moreover, anyone crossing these limits may be sued in court. No such things with FB / Twitter ban. This makes Mariewki's statement even more pointless.

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

#83

Post by inglor_cz »

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.

One of the reasons why laws actually even exist is to limit the freedom of private actors to do what they want.

You, I and many others actually cannot do whatever we want, even on our own property.

It is true that the software world isn't used to the same level of regulation as manufacturing or agriculture, so the idea of application of, say, antitrust laws to digital giants seems unusual to software people.

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

#84

Post by peteretep »

ArnoVW wrote: post #68
pelliphant wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Mar…

> But Angela Merkel for example critisized strongly the actions of Facebook, Twitter et al.

If we’re talking about her recent comments, I think “strongly criticised” is a reach. The comments were essentially “Twitter was right to flag Trump's inaccurate tweets about the 2020 U.S. election, banning his account altogether was a step too far ... governments, not private companies, should decide on any limitations to freedom of speech”.

She missed the fact that freedom of speech in the US doesn’t protect incitement to violence, by law that was decided by the legislature.

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

#85

Post by xeyownt »

newbie578 wrote: post #73

Let's not act surprised here, it was only natural it would come to this, and I expect other countries to follow suit. If the (still current) president of the world's largest power can be silenced, then just how easily can Jack Dorsey silence a president of a country like let's say Moldavia... I'm not arguing if someone is a bad person or good person, just stating the obvious POV one might get looking at the status qu…

Exactly. Let's have US companies be ruled by US laws. But then, should Poland ban Twitter? Who's censoring who?

The move here is only pushed by bad political agenda. If the move would come from EU, it would be much more neutral and more protective of civil rights and freedom, which is not what Poland wants here.

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

#86

Post by doctor_eval »

BlackFly wrote: post #65
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 dema…

It’s not legal, and you don’t have the right, to threaten or harass or people over the phone. There are all sorts of laws about your conduct over a phone. Owning a phone isn’t a constitutional right. And a phone doesn’t amplify your voice - you can only call one person at a time.

I accept your point that people want to hear the message. But that’s irrelevant. There is no legal or historical basis for forcing a company to give someone a platform.

You might not agree with that in principal, but the legal argument is about the right to speak without being punished, not the right to be heard.

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

#87

Post by austincheney »

newbie578 wrote: post #75
austincheney wrote: post #44

If I were a US based social media company I would simply deny service to any IP address from that country. Liability averted.

And by doing that you allow a competitor to emerge. You are free to do that, however note that there are more than enough companies willing to jump at the opportunity...

That is a simple arithmetic question: Which results in higher operating expenses, the loss of a minor market or the increased liability imposed by that market?

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

#89

Post by rhn_mk1 »

rob74 wrote: post #34
MStrehovsky wrote: post #17

Ironic that this news from Poland comes a day after activists go on trial for replacing halos with rainbows in a picture in Poland: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9142821/Poland-tria...

Not only ironic, also hypocritical: they are proposing to make it illegal to censor views that don't break Polish laws, while replacing a halo with a rainbow in a photo of an icon does break Polish laws, because it "offends religious sentiment", so it could (and probably also should, if you ask them) be censored.

Where's the hypocrisy in that? They are consistent: lawful views must not be censored, unlawful ones must.

I can see how there could be bias in determining what is lawful, but that's not hypocrisy.

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

#90

Post by ArnoVW »

peteretep wrote: post #84
ArnoVW wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Mar…

> But Angela Merkel for example critisized strongly the actions of Facebook, Twitter et al. If we’re talking about her recent comments, I think “strongly criticised” is a reach. The comments were essentially “Twitter was right to flag Trump's inaccurate tweets about the 2020 U.S. election, banning his account altogether was a step too far ... governments, not private companies, should decide on any limitations to fre…

The Financial Times disagrees with your assesment. They also note that Alexei Navalny agrees with her.

https://www.ft.com/content/6146b352-6b40-48ef-b10b-a34ad585b...

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