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Staying ahead of censors in 2025

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Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#221

Considering the staggering number of arrest for online/offensive communications in England & Wales, we should add Britain to the list of Russia and Iran 2017: ~5,500 arrests 2019: ~7,734 arrests 2023: ~12,183 arrests

Why has Europe gone nutso ? They were the ones who kept lecturing us (Global South) about "freedom of speech and media is critical to democracy", yadda-yadda at every global conference. Now many of their laws are even worse than much of the third world and people are getting arrested for saying banal stuff online. Why did this happen ? What changed ?

In the absence of god suicide is the highest form of self-expression.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently it isn't very hard to define as you just did so quite accurately. It's just whatever those who control the definition don't want to hear.

Murder is just the killing of people who are liked by those who control the definition of murder. But everyone still agrees murder should be illegal.

Murder is a far brighter line than hate, and therefore a law against it enables far less arbitrary power.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#223
post #107
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').

"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?

South Korea had ID-based web for two decades, everything you say is recorded and tied to your identity, forever. Please do educate yourself about the state of the political speech in the Korean part of the web.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#224
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"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_the_rich

I guess the French Revolution was a good example of murdering the rich tbf.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#225
post #18

Considering the staggering number of arrest for online/offensive communications in England & Wales, we should add Britain to the list of Russia and Iran 2017: ~5,500 arrests 2019: ~7,734 arrests 2023: ~12,183 arrests

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').

India why forget us. Only thing is you may not find exact data.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate speech has not been tolerated in the U.K. for many years. Other subversive speech hasn’t been tolerated in many counties, from nazi worship to glorifying terror, from obscenity to copyright. America bans Harry Potter, in the past The U.K. banned Lady Chatterly, Germany bans nazi worship but America is quite happy with it. Just because an american view on what is and isn’t acceptable exists doesn’t mean others ha…

Too much to address here and I don't have the time. But you are jumping around a lot and conflating culture war nonsense with legal enforcement. While also implying huge swaths of people are right wing nazis.... Harry potter has never EVER been banned in the USA and to say that with a straight face means we are in completely different universes and further engagement is pointless. Many groups may have lobbied a retai…

That jhst highlights the difference. In Europe people are concerned about whether something is available. They aren’t interested if the book was banned by a federal government or a school librarian, it’s still banned.

American view is that private companies banning something or spying on someone is fine as long as it’s not the government doing it.

It comes down to the accountability. Europeans tend to believe in the ability to hold large organisation to account via the ballot box, Americans prefer the free market.

What we see in the U.K. is a view shared by most people that incitement to violence, glorifying terror etc is illegal. Americans are happy to have Musk or Zuck do the censorship instead, with them being able to use their wallets to hold them accountable.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#227
post #198
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this source trustable? (I have no idea, I'm not german) https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/kriminalitaet/article2521783...

The source is somewhat trustable mainstream but not really good, as already the headline is wrong. The other person was not jailed for insults against the rapists, but threats of violence. And that is a attack on the state monopol of violence itself, hence the harsh sentence. But indeed, the rulings against the rapists don't seem allright and very much out of balance with the other sentence.

It appears that the ruling regarding the rapes was not so straight forward [1], certainly not something that you can use as a one-line argument. There are also other articles describing what presumably happened there in 2020.

Regarding the case of 'Maja R.', here's a summary [2] (e.g. she didn't show up for the first two hearings [3] - that would certainly raise the anger of the righteous if somebody not in their favor did that).

I'm in doubt whether this one case is sufficient to prove the downward spiral that some people claim to perceive (it was also brought up in context of migration here on HN recently, and from the sources which I could find I‘m not sure it fully qualifies there either).

[1]: https://www.mopo.de/hamburg/details-aus-dem-prozess-darum-ka... [2]: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/57113 [3]: https://www.mopo.de/hamburg/ehrloses-vergewaltigerschwein-20...

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK the arrests are mostly about "grossly offensive" speech. That's more of a grey area than the clearly defined hate speech. Often there are arrests and investigations but convictions on these are less. Convictions of hate speech also occur but are not news worthy and no one objects. The two different offenses are being confused and so it becomes news. In the US they don't have the grossly offensive category.…

Yeaaaah, the Communications Act 2003 is not fit for purpose in the modern information age where [seemingly] the vast majority of conversation is taking place in digital spaces. Sidenote, I do think it's amusing how, prior to the Online Safety Act 2023, it was an offence to Cunningham's Law someone (posting a knowingly-false statement online to annoy someone into correcting you). That said, I'm more or less ambivalent…

> being gratuitously abhorrent and should have known better.

This is an incredibly stupid take, and I would vote for a legislation to penalise incredibly stupid ones before gratuitously abhorrent, and more harshly so. It would be gloriously wonderful, too.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can explain it away all you want. Those sources are garbage. They pay for stories, don't confirm sources, or do anything else required of journalism. I get you may be GenZ and have been fed garbage soup your whole life about how "all news bad", but fyi there are still some publications with journalistic standards. You might as well add the National Enquirer from the US. Your sources are such sensationalist rags that they were selling attention long before the internet.

It's not ad-hominem it's ad-practices. For all you know every single one of those articles is based on the same half-baked rumor.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can explain it away all you want. Those sources are garbage. They pay for stories, don't confirm sources, or do anything else required of journalism. I get you may be GenZ and have been fed garbage soup your whole life about how "all news bad", but fyi there are still some publications with journalistic standards. You might as well add the National Enquirer from the US. Your sources are such sensationalist rags t…

Firstly, IB Times is one of the biggest news sources in existence. They own Newsweek. They do not pay for stories, and they do confirm sources, as they are an institutional capitalized outlet operating out of the UK (the friendliest jurisdiction for libel litigation in the world) that does not want to be sued out of existence. They are not a politicized outlet and generally swing left-wing, in contrast to some of the other sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Business_Times

All the sources you claim have standards repeated corporate-state lies during COVID (I know this because they all did). They have zero integrity, they are just mouthpieces for a government that would cover up its lies and never have accountability. I am not GenZ and your assertion that this is a generational issue is another form of ad hominem attack, showing your own personal willingness to dismiss speakers on the basis of perceived identity, as well as fraudulently attribute their speech to groups that you perceive as intellectually lesser. Regardless, it is her word and the case records against the UK government. The latter has been caught lying countless times and is immune from prosecution for doing so, while she and the publications in question can be held accountable for any false claims. Ergo, they have skin in the game, they are taking the risk, and the government is not, and you should assume that she is telling the truth as the incentives are aligned with her to do so.

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