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Staying ahead of censors in 2025

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Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#261

Post by graemep »

naasking wrote: post #182
kolektiv wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, there's some context missing from those summaries though, no? In the first case it's not just "arrested for praying" it's "arrested for being in an exclusion zone specifically designated to try and stop you harassing people undertaking a lawful activity". They would have been arrested regardless of activity, it's effectively a restraining order and describing it as "for praying" is nonsense. In the second case, i…

> In the first case it's not just "arrested for praying" it's "arrested for being in an exclusion zone specifically designated to try and stop you harassing people undertaking a lawful activity". They would have been arrested regardless of activity, it's effectively a restraining order and describing it as "for praying" is nonsense. I think part of the absurdity being pointed out is that "just standing there with you…

> bviously a whole mob of people gathered around an abortion clinic and silently praying while you're trying to enter is intimidating and should qualify as harassment, but one person doing that clearly is not.

The case I know of all involve individuals.

Apart from silent prayer, a woman was arrested for holding up a sign saying that coercion was a crime and offering to talk to anyone who wanted to. Is that intimidating?

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#262

Post by systemtest »

lurk2 wrote: post #180
systemtest wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of sources, it is not being suppressed. We even had a journalist shot and killed. Look up Robert Bas, Bart Mos, Joost de Haas, Bas van Hout, Koen Voskuil, Peter R de Vries. Yet The Netherlands is in third place for World Press Freedom Index. How is that even possible.

He’s asking you to provide sources.

An article about it: https://www.villamedia.nl/artikel/deze-journalisten-werden-e...

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#263

Post by immibis »

FergusArgyll wrote: post #153
thrance wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do not equate demands for more taxations with calls to do more genocides of jewish people. The far right is uniquely problematic in our modern political landscape. And I disagree, free speech is a liberal value, you don't get to say nazi shit and hide behind free speech. Being a groyper is not a crime, but calling for genocide is and should be punished. Else we run the risk of normalizing these abhorrent ideas…

What does "hide behind free speech" mean?

It means defending Nazi shit by claiming you're allowed to say anything you want.

Timmy: "I think it should be legal to kill Jews."

Moderator: (bans Timmy)

Timmy (elsewhere): "Help, I'm being persecuted for expressing my beliefs!" / "Moderator X is a fascist oppressing people based on their opinions!" / "Platform X hates free speech!"

XKCD covered this phenomenon years ago, but wasn't heeded: https://xkcd.com/1357/

You can see it even in the comments on this post about the UK. Most complaints about UK censorship don't say what was being censored. If Timmy said why the moderators banned him, his argument wouldn't even survive a cursory glance.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#264

Post by jjgreen »

lukan wrote: post #107
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').

"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?

Try holding a piece of paper bearing "I support Palestine Action" anywhere near a plod.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#265

Post by graemep »

fasbiner wrote: post #43
earthnail wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d much rather get arrested in Britain than Russia or Iran. And I certainly wouldn’t put the UK in the same bucket as Russia and Iran. Not even close. Hate speech is a problem. If it wasn’t, why are Russia and China spending so much on troll farms? It’s a direct attack on a democracy’s ability to form consensus. I don’t think we’ve found the right, effective way to deal with this problem yet, but I applaud any democ…

So to be clear, your sole expectation of a liberal democracy is that it have a better judicial system than Russia or Iran. And beyond that, you applaud any democratic country's efforts to reign in speech by arresting their own citizens in order to combat foreign influence operations? And the fulcrum of this argument is that we believe that Russia and China have uniquely pernicious influence operations and there are n…

> And beyond that, you applaud any democratic country's efforts to reign in speech by arresting their own citizens in order to combat foreign influence operations?

The US has adopted policies based on that argument in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism and I think its generally agreed it was a bad thing.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#266

Post by immibis »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #28
earthnail wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That comparison is not only highly inaccurate, it’s also harmful in that it distracts from the real problem at hand. Putin and Khamenei are ruthless, brutal dictators. You don’t need to like Starmer, but he’s none of that. He’s a proper democrat. The implication that they’re all somewhat the same delegitimises democracies and legitimises these dictators. That’s how they win. I personally don’t think UK’s age verifica…

> I love Australia‘s banning of Social media for kids. Talking about ruthless dictators and true democrats in the same post.

Banning children from accessing things proven to be harmful to children does not a dictator make. Or else you'd be rallying just as hard to allow children to drink alcohol.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#267

Post by graemep »

lenkite wrote: post #200
throwfaraway135 wrote: post #17

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 ?

Because they only suppress "bad" speech, where as we (identifying with one of my two nationalities, for those looking at my other comments which may seem contradictory) are suppressing "good" speech. Nothing subjective of culturally specific about any of that!

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#268

Post by immibis »

lenkite wrote: post #200
throwfaraway135 wrote: post #17

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 ?

What were people arrested for saying?

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#269

Post by graemep »

logicchains wrote: post #209
lenkite wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Economies failing due to bad economic management but the people in charge don't want to lose power so they're resorting to silencing criticism to stay in office.

It think its not thought through, but a lot of people benefit from these sorts of "culture war" issues deflecting attention from elsewhere. Its not the silencing that benefits them, its the controversy.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#270

Post by immibis »

grumbel wrote: post #78

Why is Tor making it so difficult to change the region/ExitNode then? Geo-Blocking is by far the most prevalent form of online censorship and while Tor can work around it, it requires fiddling with config files and restarting the service instead of clicking a button.

Patches welcome, but try to design it in a way that spreads load proportionally to the bandwidth available in each country.
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