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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

#91

Post by doctor_eval »

ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote: post #72
stephenr wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They're not making the distinction because there isn't one. Speech can have all sorts of consequences, from losing a friendship to being imprisoned or executed. "Consequences" are a spectrum, and you're simply drawing the line in a different place to other people. > 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 a bold claim wit…

> This is a bold claim without any evidence. Certainly it's not the understanding that I grew up with, but I had the good fortune to have a history teacher who liked JS Mill.

What are you talking about? It doesn’t matter who your history teacher is, the entire concept of free speech is about not locking people up for what they say.

That said, here in Australia we actually don’t even have a legally protected right to free speech. We don’t even have a bill of rights. And while I support the right to say anything without being punished by the government, I definitely don’t think that people should be able to broadcast a political message without doing the hard yards of actually, you know, telling the truth and formulating a reasonable argument.

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

#92

Post by pulse7 »

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.

The proposal is that only the court can censor but not other individuals or companies.

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

#93

Post by soco »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #79

Politics aside this is an interesting situation in that social media companies have forever sought special protections based on the claimed impossibility of their moderating user content - turns out they can moderate content just fine when they want to, so maybe it’s time for their special protections to end, and for them to be responsible for their content. You can blame Twitter for shattering the myth since they ke…

Deleting one guy's account requires much less moderating resources than evaluating each post of an army of bots. So this particular case doesn't prove anything about their moderation capabilities. Yes, they COULD technically look at each and every account and each and every post, but I can't imagine any entity, private or not, having the resources to do so. Which leaves us to the manual banning (irregular, mostly high profile = low hanging fruit) or AI based solutions (and we know already how good they work)

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

#94

Post by rhn_mk1 »

klunger wrote: post #80
latch wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poland is a country. They aren't responsible for upholding US law. They can do what they want to companies that decide to operate in Poland. Not only can they have their cake and eat it too, they will - unless said companies stop operating there.

ok. This is basically what I said, so it seems like I did not explain it well enough. It's like what Google did in China. They did not want to agree to the censorship terms imposed by the Chinese government so they stopped operating there. (It looks like they are reversing course on this now and may release a censored version soon, but that is neither here nor there) The Polish government cannot make Twitter do somet…

The Polish government can make Twitter choose: do this, or face the consequences. Consequences being getting out, or facing fines, or whatever.

What Twitter wants is irrelevant if it's not within what the local government wants. There's nothing absurd about that.

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

#95

Post by ZGDUwpqEWpUZ »

doctor_eval wrote: post #91
ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not making the distinction because there isn't one. Speech can have all sorts of consequences, from losing a friendship to being imprisoned or executed. "Consequences" are a spectrum, and you're simply drawing the line in a different place to other people. > 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 a bold claim wit…

> This is a bold claim without any evidence. Certainly it's not the understanding that I grew up with, but I had the good fortune to have a history teacher who liked JS Mill. What are you talking about? It doesn’t matter who your history teacher is, the entire concept of free speech is about not locking people up for what they say. That said, here in Australia we actually don’t even have a legally protected right to…

Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. [1]

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient."Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

I am confident that my teacher was correct. Mill even shows up in the first article :)

> That said, here in Australia we actually don’t even have a legally protected right to free speech.

Yes, in countries that inherited the UK's common law system it is rarer for rights to be explicitly iterated. This only adds to the absurdity of claiming that "freedom of speech" is a purely legal concept, mind you.

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

#96

Post by newbie578 »

austincheney wrote: post #87
newbie578 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Completely agreed.

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

#97

Post by praptak »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #89
rob74 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's hypocrisy to paint themselves as protectors of free speech.

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

#98

Post by guerrilla »

So I've been reading everybody's comments as this comes up about five times a day now and did a little research [1] and the following is what I've come up with for these platforms:

- They must censor what's illegal

- They may censor what violates TOS

- They may not censor what is not illegal and does not violate TOS

I think breaking these rules would automatically convert you from a platform to a publisher and you'd have to follow whatever those rules are. Spam handling would have to be part of the TOS. I'm looking for feedback. What would be the problem with this? Doesn't it seem fair?

I haven't thought about it much but I wonder if this would also work for cancelling contracts/refusal of service but that's a whole other topic.

1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/

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

#99

Post by tremon »

stephenr wrote: post #53
schlupa wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Racial discrimination is a crime. No one has been banned from Twitter for being black, or jewish. You see now how absurd that argument is? If you go into a restaurant and start screaming at people that the election was rigged, or waving a nazi flag, or telling everyone they should storm the kitchen to demand gluten free pasta, they will kick you the fuck out.

Racial discrimination is a crime.

And what makes it so? The law, I presume?

If so, then "censoring a user" is equally a crime, because this Polish law says so.

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

#100

Post by bengillies »

ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote: post #72
stephenr wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They're not making the distinction because there isn't one. Speech can have all sorts of consequences, from losing a friendship to being imprisoned or executed. "Consequences" are a spectrum, and you're simply drawing the line in a different place to other people. > 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 a bold claim wit…

> I see open debate as part of a healthy society. I value the ability to hear perspectives other than my own. That's what "freedom of speech" means to me

I don't think this open debate you're talking about actually happens much on social media. At least, outside of a few select Subreddits, I've very rarely seen it.

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