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Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

thenewhumanitarian.org

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Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#281

Post by goatcode »

disgu wrote: post #276
goatcode wrote: post #138

I have trouble taking this article seriously when Canada, where a bill is under consideration to regulate posting on social media, is colored more free than the United States (at least if that awful heat diagram is accurate).

Also having trouble seeing the US as basically a free country when jaywalking exists.

I'd agree with that. The rules and regulations that are in place in the United States would make the founding fathers weep, by their existence alone and that they're open to use to targeting people in a way that does not speak to equal justice for all.

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#282

Post by techdragon »

Hizonner wrote: post #279
michaelmcdonald wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still city / township board meetings. You have the ability to converse with your neighbors. You can write to / contact your local representatives. If you feel that being kicked off social media is the same as the removal of your ability to engage in public discourse can you tell me what people did BEFORE social media?

They went to where the people they wanted to communicate with were, and communicated with them. The people they want to communicate with have all moved to social media. Before the Internet, there were systems in place for public discourse. Most of them have been dismantled. In the 1970s or 1980s, you read or wrote letters to the editor (now nonexistent or ignored), subscribed to specialty publications (all moved to s…

You have elegantly outlined my major concern with everything related to freedom of speech/expression online.

Society, generally speaking, functions by collective agreement. So as corporations begin to control the ways that collective agreement is reached, all the ways that corporations are different from real people (as opposed to being “legally people”) and different from the government begin to make the decades/centuries of legal mechanisms, built up to protect this crucial delicate and completely imperfect balance that underlies the functioning of society, begins to break down.

It’s like a corroding bridge. It’s still structurally sound… (a.k.a. “The system works”) … until it doesn’t. I have no idea what the breakdown will be, when it might be, or how it might unfold. I’m not a bridge inspector, or a structural engineer, but I know the bridge didn’t squeak or sway when it was built, and now it does, and that there’s lots of examples from history of how bridges like this eventually fall down when something important gives way.

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#283

Post by r00fus »

californiadreem wrote: post #263
r00fus wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a summary of the pivotal point of the intolerance paradox is key: "tolerance of viewpoints requires reciprocity of tolerance from those viewpoints"

I can almost guarantee that Karl Popper (the person who wrote a book on the reductive tendencies of proto-totalitarian societies) would fundamentally disagree with this summary of his 750 page work. He might point to the next five decades of his life as evidence for a repudiation.

Can you expound on why you view my summarization is a reductionism?

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#284

Post by Fatnino »

Blackstrat wrote: post #278
greenthrow wrote: post #159

This is not talking about bogus "my freedoms" claims of people being kicked off Twitter, it's talking about actual loss of freedom of expression, where the government imprisons people for saying the wrong things. In the US we have loss sight of what real freedom of expression means.

As a retiree, I'm older than most here, and can attest to the fact that the freedom of expression in the United States is suppressed to a greater degree than at anytime in my lifetime. And it's only getting worse. To accept censorship on Big Tech platforms, e.g., Facebook & Twitter because they are "private companies", is to ignore revelations over the recent years of working in concert with offices of the federal go…

You fit the stereotype quite well

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#285

Post by Melatonic »

orangepurple wrote: post #34
Victerius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It lines up with the Corruption Perception Index: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Map_of_c... Judging from this map alone, one would logically conclude that Homo Sapiens is a pretty corrupt species. The average human being lives in a corrupt dictatorship.

Germany is GREEN on that map?! (Was this map commissioned by Germans?) To be fair I can't tell if large German corporations and politicians are corrupt or instead lack direction, are criminal, or incompetent and are funded by mandatory spending by the government. See Brandenburg, Dieselgate, Gazprom Germania for the tip of the iceberg.

Alternatively it could just be that you are more aware of what corruption is going on in Germany because the press is not regularly rounded up and shot when they expose the wrong ringleader.

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#286

Post by Melatonic »

Hizonner wrote: post #279
michaelmcdonald wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still city / township board meetings. You have the ability to converse with your neighbors. You can write to / contact your local representatives. If you feel that being kicked off social media is the same as the removal of your ability to engage in public discourse can you tell me what people did BEFORE social media?

They went to where the people they wanted to communicate with were, and communicated with them. The people they want to communicate with have all moved to social media. Before the Internet, there were systems in place for public discourse. Most of them have been dismantled. In the 1970s or 1980s, you read or wrote letters to the editor (now nonexistent or ignored), subscribed to specialty publications (all moved to s…

Have you actually tried any of these things that you claim are now no longer used?

In my experience physical letters are taken more seriously than ever. People receive so few of them it is a treat to even get a personal letter. Emails are often straightup ignored or lost in the fray and social media contacts are, at best, manned by an intern.

Most of the people I know are using social media less and less. Facebook is now only for "old people" and chat apps are becoming vastly more popular. Some of these chat apps have features of social media but are not at all in the same realm.

More things are meeting physically than before and I do not know of any meetings that are only organized on social media. Only one person complains that I am not on Facebook and that is because they are the ones always starting Facebook groups and meetings exclusive to Facebook. I still find out about all of these events when someone calls, texts, or sends me a message in a chat app. Most people use communication that is cross platform.

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#287

Post by Melatonic »

TobyTheDog123 wrote: post #213
SiempreViernes wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I never understood the sarcastic, smarmy, dismissive tone people take when talking about these kinds of issues. The parent poster obviously was not implying getting banned on Twitter is in any way similar to the government imprisoning you for your speech, yet you straw-man him while being on some kind of unearned intellectual high-horse. He is, however, stating the fact that being banned from the platform is having y…

The real problem here is the SIZE of the social media companies.

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#288

Post by orangepurple »

Melatonic wrote: post #285
orangepurple wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is GREEN on that map?! (Was this map commissioned by Germans?) To be fair I can't tell if large German corporations and politicians are corrupt or instead lack direction, are criminal, or incompetent and are funded by mandatory spending by the government. See Brandenburg, Dieselgate, Gazprom Germania for the tip of the iceberg.

Alternatively it could just be that you are more aware of what corruption is going on in Germany because the press is not regularly rounded up and shot when they expose the wrong ringleader.

This is a corruption perception index not a press freedom index

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#289

Post by aaroninsf »

wikitopian wrote: post #22
aaroninsf wrote: post #13

There is a real, and serious, and worsening, conflict between "free expression" of noble and necessary kinds, and weaponized speech, such as disinformation and other tools for sentiment steering. Which is arguably now a significantly worse problem for most societies than mere suppression. Not to mention merely venal "corporate speech" and the deluge of commercial speech (much of it undisclosed).

Is there a way that adults who are capable of critically thinking for themselves to opt out of your crusade to protect us from ideas you disagree with?

Part of the challenge we face as a society is that the hypothetical "war of ideas" picture, in which adults think critically and are swayed by logic, fact, and reasoning, as a function of their experience and values,

is not just a fantasy, it's become a weapon used by exactly those who work more successfully to sway opinion and in effect public behavior through mechanisms that entirely bypass or undermine exactly this scenario.

The premise that it is the responsibility, indeed the "appropriate" role, of "critically thinking adults" to individually defend themselves in an information sphere almost totally controlled by entities whose resources and expertise in manipulating individuals,

is outright dangerous.

The entire peril we are in as a society is that weaponized speech is like other weapons of war: something that individuals cannot defend against and are helpless before.

QED what we need is a societal response, and society-level defense.

That starts with awareness of how f---d we already are.

Re: Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

#290

Post by Georgelemental »

tgv wrote: post #277
Georgelemental wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Independent" of who? Who gets to decide what is "independent" and therefore deserving of the human right to free speech, versus what is "not independent" and therefore subhuman and not deserving of rights?

Well, ask the parent of my comment, which introduced the term. But it's not as if you don't know. The dictionary provides two useful definitions of the word: * not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence * capable of thinking or acting for oneself which both apply here. So, media that does not depend on some benefactor (such as a state or larger corp) to stay alive, and that is free to form its own opinion…

> not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence

Unless your journalists are hunter-gatherers living in the woods, they depend on someone for subsistence. Even if it is just their readers. But probably also their editor, boss, colleagues, government, philanthropic donors, etc. We all live in a society, we all depend on the people around us.

And we all deserve the human right to free expression. If bad people don't get human rights, then the whole concept of human rights is meaningless.

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