No it can’t.
A court ruling in Austria could censor the internet worldwide
101–110 of 131 posts
Re: A court ruling in Austria could censor the internet worldwide
#102> The case started with an April 2016 Facebook post, in which a user shared an article featuring a photo of Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek, then-chair of Austria’s Green Party, along with commentary labeling her a “lousy traitor,” “corrupt oaf,” and member of a “fascist party,” apparently in response to her immigration policies. This is core, protected speech in the United States. But it was deemed defamation under Austria…
Fundamentally, I believe that everyone has the right to not be subjected to death threats and systemic harassment from hate and conspiracy groups
I've thought about this problem and there may be solutions (and even profitable business) based on existing harassment laws, but AFAIK no one has tried it. Imagine scaling the Hulk Hogan lawsuit using "copyright troll" style tactics. This could create a "scared straight" deterrent effect on harmful social media.
Re: A court ruling in Austria could censor the internet worldwide
#103Users everywhere have had to put up with U.S law for a long time. The laws and norms of the USA are more or less "fully baked in". Try posting a nipple or copyrighted track, for example. If Facebook had come from a different place, all songs and body bits might be Ok but perhaps discussion of government would be banned. I can't tell if that would actually be a better facebook than the one we got.
Are you uploading the nipple to an American site?
Also, most sites ban nudity as a term of service, not as legally required.
Re: A court ruling in Austria could censor the internet worldwide
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But what happens when it's China? What happens is US companies quickly capitulate and start appeasing the chinese authorities! They still get access to the american market if they sacrifice core western and american values like freedom of speech and privacy but they lose the growing chinese market if they refuse to do so. It's an easy decision for them.
Lol. Companies are already “capitulating” for the US market. Nike will run ads for Colin Kaepernick but then use questionable ethics in their production line. Of course we as consumers eat all that up. Why do you care if Nike wants to put on a fake face for their brand in China? They are already doing the same thing here and probably several other places.
> Nike will run ads for Colin Kaepernick
I think you have that backwards.
Re: A court ruling in Austria could censor the internet worldwide
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are several US based sites which allow nipple posting, if that's your thing.
There is a big difference between “treated as porn” versus “this part of anatomy is specially evolved to be inserted into the mouth of an infant, so we don’t care if you show pictures of that exact scenario”.
You can post nipples all day long on Facebook. They just have to be cleverly blended with the rest of the photograph when you do
Re: A court ruling in Austria could censor the internet worldwide
#106That's quite the problem we are in, as a global society. Obviously no one wants to give North Korea any say about what can and what cannot be published in the web. But between sovereign, free, democratic societies, different standards might exist. And if you want to do business with, say, the EU as, say, a US tech company you cannot expect US law and commons to apply everywhere. Then it becomes a race to the bottom i…
I would argue that the internet as we know it today would not exist without the American 1st amendment. If that ever goes away, the internet as we know it today will no longer exist. The majority of the worlds hosting companies are here and there is a reason why people throughout the world use a vpn just to have simple online conversations that we freely enjoy.
Re: A court ruling in Austria could censor the internet worldwide
#107Facebook is not "the internet worldwide", it is one website among hundreds of millions of websites available on the internet.
> Facebook is not "the internet worldwide"
It's really not that simple. For most people in many countries[0], FB is the only internet they have. It comes packaged free with their phones.
[0] I believe, dont have exact figures. I know from experience that it's true of a large majority of people in the Philippines.
Re: A court ruling in Austria could censor the internet worldwide
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Obviously no one wants to give North Korea any say about what can and what cannot be published in the web. But between sovereign, free, democratic societies, different standards might exist. The problem is that whether a country can enforce its speech restrictions against outsiders has very little to do with how much we agree with them. If you don't want to follow the law of North Korea, you'll lose access to the N…
> But what happens when it's China? What happens is US companies quickly capitulate and start appeasing the chinese authorities! They still get access to the american market if they sacrifice core western and american values like freedom of speech and privacy but they lose the growing chinese market if they refuse to do so. It's an easy decision for them.
Want to know why the Chinese market is growing? This very reason. A capitalist economy doing business at all with a communist regime economy of China’s flavor and caliber is a good recipe to have your wealthy business owners and politicians sell you out
Re: A court ruling in Austria could censor the internet worldwide
#109> The case started with an April 2016 Facebook post, in which a user shared an article featuring a photo of Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek, then-chair of Austria’s Green Party, along with commentary labeling her a “lousy traitor,” “corrupt oaf,” and member of a “fascist party,” apparently in response to her immigration policies. This is core, protected speech in the United States. But it was deemed defamation under Austria…
> but (...) truly people need to be responsible for what they post online.
I strongly disagree. Anonymity is an important and integral part of the internet and the free speech it enables. Moving towards this sort of thing will only be used for abuse and censorship. It saddens me how much this has become an accepted position, even on hn, and I'm quite tired of all the justifications for giving up important rights, anonymity is closely related to privacy for example, just because of some scarey boogeyman of the day.
Anonymity offers the ability to criticize entities (governments, corporations, people), to communicate in ways more freely than otherwise, to discuss personal issues without fear, to have a presence online without stalkers or other abusers attack, it also avoids the most common rhetorical abuse I see, which is overreliance on argument from authority by separating the identity of the person making the argument from the argument itself, and I could go on. I could go on...
Do you really think the vast amount of negatives that come with your proposal would be worth the tradeoff?
https://youtu.be/sKOk4Y4inVY?t=518 [1]
1. "In 1995, there was a debate at Harvard Law School – four of us discussing the future of public key encryption and its control. I was on the side, I suppose, of freedom. It’s where I try to be. With me at that debate was a man called Daniel Weitzner who now works in the White House making Internet policy for the Obama administration.
On the other side was the then Deputy Attorney General of the United States and a lawyer in private practice named Stewart Baker who had been chief council to the National Security Agency, our listeners, and who was then in private life helping businesses to deal with the listeners. He then became, later on, the deputy for policy planning in the Department of Homeland Security in the United States and has much to do with what happened in our network after 2001.
At any rate, the four of us spent two pleasant hours debating the right to encrypt and at the end there was a little dinner party at the Harvard faculty club, and at the end, after all the food had been taken away and just the port and the walnuts were left on the table, Stuart said, “All right, among us now that we are all in private, just us girls, I’ll let our hair down.”
He didn’t have much hair even then, but he let it down.
“We are not going to prosecute your client, Mr. Zimmermann," he said. “Public key encryption will become available. We fought a long, losing battle against it, but it was just a delaying tactic.” And then he looked around the room and he said, ”But nobody cares about anonymity, do they?"
And a cold chill went up my spine and I thought, all right, Stuart, and now I know you’re going to spend the next twenty years trying to eliminate anonymity in human society and I am going to try to stop you and we’ll see how it goes.
And it’s going badly. We didn’t build the net with anonymity built in. That was a mistake. Now we are paying for it." -Eben Moglen
Re: A court ruling in Austria could censor the internet worldwide
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just don't see the equivalence here. I agree that platforms have a responsibility not to enable harassment and death threats, but calling a politician "traitor", "corrupt", "fascist" is neither of those things. What are you supposed to do when a politician is corrupt or fascist, if you aren't allowed to talk about it?
I closely associate calling someone a "traitor" with a threat of death. Its history up to the modern day makes it equivalent to a statement that your opponent should be killed for their opposition. National politicians will certainly see that as a specific threat. Jo Cox (UK Member of Parliament) was murdered in 2016 by someone repeating claims that she was a "traitor".
That makes sense. I don't have that association, since the term "traitor" gets tossed around all the time in American politics, but I can definitely see how it would come across as a threat in an environment where it's not commonly used.