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Staying ahead of censors in 2025

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Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#211

Post by poszlem »

esperent wrote: post #208
poszlem wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flaw in your argument is that it assumes a clear and workable distinction between "a joke" and "obvious hate speech." Yet one of the strongest objections to the very concept of "hate speech" is precisely that we lack a reliable way to stop the term from expanding indefinitely. The case of Count Dankula is a textbook example: it is plainly a joke, and interpreting it as Nazi promotion or hate speech requires an ex…

This is what I mean by everywhere having an agenda. Because if you just read that Vice article you'll come away thinking he's a "Scottish comedian" who was just joking around to annoy his girlfriend. And after all, they're well known to like off color jokes, the Scottish. This is clearly unfair. But if you dig a bit deeper, you'll find out that he soon after became a member of the far right UKIP party and was conside…

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the state arrests someone for a joke, and that person, feeling persecuted, joins an anti-establishment or far-right group, the state cannot then say, "See? We were right to arrest him because he's now a member of that group."

You are using Meechan’s political actions in 2018 and 2019 to justify a legal conviction for a video made in 2016 (which you said happened "soon after").

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#212

Post by sanskritical »

daveguy wrote: post #210
sanskritical wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBTimes: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/terrified-naked-mum-four-arrested-... Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15302729/Assault-vi... The Sun: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/37356128/mum-convicted-hate-cr... MSN: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/crime/general/terrified-and-naked-... Inkl: https://www.inkl.com/news/terrified-and-naked-mum-of-four-ar... Revolver News: https://revolver.news/2025/12/uk-mother-arre…

So, no.

At this point, assertions such as these are a form of ad hominem fallacy against half of society. You are discrediting the multitude of sources who have covered this story because of the nature of the speaker while no hardline liberal outlets have covered this story at all and presented a counterargument. If you want to have an alternative narrative, you need to link a major outlet showing her to be a liar. The case has been presented to the public. You don't like the people presenting the case. That doesn't invalidate the case. You must, at this point, present a member of your team making a reasonable, evidenced based deconstruction of her claims. The fact that there isn't any coverage from your side at all of this incredibly well televised and written embarrassment for the legitimacy of crown prosecutors speaks volumes.

The UK is extremely litigious in regards to libel. Her lying would be an act of public libel against the crown prosecutor. She went on TV to talk about it. It's been well covered in everything from the IB Times to The Sun to the Daily Mail (as linked above), as well as fully televised on Piers Morgan. Naturally the team you obviously root for can just refuse to cover any prosecutions which are embarrassing for them and you can simply smugly say "well it's not in any source I personally recognize as valid so it didn't happen."

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#213

Post by phatfish »

chimprich wrote: post #70
RobotToaster wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put that into perspective, the number arrested in Russia was 3,253 in 2023.

That's a stupid perspective. That's presumably Russia's self-reported numbers, not the actual numbers of people who were detained for speech Putin's regime didn't like. For example, in 2023, Alexei Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in a special regime colony, his lawyers were arrested, and then Navalny was murdered in prison.

Don't bother, getting arrested and spending 2 hrs in a police station is the same as political prisoners going to a Siberian camp for 5 years, in the eyes of Americans.

It is scary how Trump has really taken over America. This war on European ideals is directly from Trump and Vance in the Whitehouse. Americans seem to be loving it.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#214

Post by curtisblaine »

immibis wrote: post #205
curtisblaine wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting that the cases that spring to mind for you are literal neo-Nazis. Free speech is repugnant speech. But I can make the case for far-leftists supporting Palestine action as well.

Do you find supporting Palestine action to be repugnant?

No, but it's repugnant to many. It's illegal in the UK for starters.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#215

Post by Ray20 »

esperent wrote: post #208
poszlem wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flaw in your argument is that it assumes a clear and workable distinction between "a joke" and "obvious hate speech." Yet one of the strongest objections to the very concept of "hate speech" is precisely that we lack a reliable way to stop the term from expanding indefinitely. The case of Count Dankula is a textbook example: it is plainly a joke, and interpreting it as Nazi promotion or hate speech requires an ex…

This is what I mean by everywhere having an agenda. Because if you just read that Vice article you'll come away thinking he's a "Scottish comedian" who was just joking around to annoy his girlfriend. And after all, they're well known to like off color jokes, the Scottish. This is clearly unfair. But if you dig a bit deeper, you'll find out that he soon after became a member of the far right UKIP party and was conside…

So we come to the conclusion that this is not just a violation of freedom of speech, but also persecution of political opponents? The situation didn't look any better.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#216

Post by drnick1 »

squidbeak wrote: post #190
drnick1 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, communications should not be surveilled at all by the state. It shouldn't matter that the Internet is sometimes used to commit crimes, the bigger issue is that the vast majority of non-criminal traffic is subject to snooping.

What proof do you have that this is the result of surveillance rather than from responses to complaints?

I don't have proof, but systems are certainly designed to make this possible. And since it's possible, it is safe to assume that it is happening. (The Snowden leaks corroborate massive information sharing between "Big Tech" and the U.S. government, for example.) Hence you should categorically refuse to use anything Meta (that includes, among others, Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp), or Google, or Microsoft.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#217

Post by n4r9 »

curtisblaine wrote: post #167
n4r9 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I'd say I'm being "charitable" when I guess that the vast majority of left-wing activists are not in fact cannibals.

It's a quote that justifies homicide of the wealthy class, popularised during the French revolution: "When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich"

That's the first I've heard of that. Has the phrase been associated with cases of homicide or attempted homicide against wealthy people?

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#218

Post by orbital-decay »

berkes wrote: post #142
nomilk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also surprised the post focusses on Rus/Iran when Australia, UK, and many more countries (Malaysia, Thailand) have/are introducing laws to prevent large swaths of free speech (banning mediums by age, banning conversation by topic, or by making speaking one's mind online too risky, as almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech').

> swaths of free speech Which is very cultural dependent as well. "Not being able to log in on TikTok if you are under 16" is not "preventing free speech". And "having no access to pornhub" is not preventing free speech either. Edit: TBC: this is not me defending these laws or rules. E.g. Freedom of speech in the US, is rather narrow. It merely states you may "speak, write, and print with freedom" but not that you ma…

>"Not being able to log in on TikTok if you are under 16" is not "preventing free speech". And "having no access to pornhub" is not preventing free speech either.

Right. It's having to profile yourself under the excuse of not letting kids use TikTok or PornHub.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#219

Post by passing_by_and »

esperent wrote: post #141
lukan wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"as almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech'" Are you serious here? In russia you get problems for calling a war a war and worse problems if you say it is a bad war. In UK you certainly can call a war a war and you can critize the government or other people all day long. What you cannot do is calling for violence against them. Or do you have counterexamples?

I've been hearing lots of crazy things about people getting arrested in the UK for posting "memes" or things like that. So I decided to look for examples. All the examples I can find are clearly hate speech, policed more strongly than I would prefer but not that much more strongly, if I'm honest. The most egregious case I could find was someone arrested for a meme of a pride flag morphing into a swastika. Probably no…

Why on earth would you support arresting people for any speech, hate or otherwise? It is just so obviously a terrible idea that has been regurgitated over and over for thousands of years, countless books, wars, philosophical treatise and here we are. No wonder we aren't going to make it.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#220

Post by orloffm »

Russia was already complicated two years ago, most of-the-shelf VPNs blocked, and with Intel/Microsoft websites blocking themselves due to sanctions it was rather difficult to set up a fresh laptop - it couldn't download drivers, and obvious channels were all blocked.

This year they've blocked almost all of the VPNs and additionally calls in all messenger apps and FaceTime. The only thing that works is Outline - but one has to set up the server somehow, and if you're in Russia without a western credit card it might be difficult to do. For some reason the iOS app for Outline is still in the Russian App Store.

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