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A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

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Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#41

Post by lurk2 »

rpdillon wrote: post #25
jmull wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This bill is about enhancing the protections of lawful free-speech under the US constitution. Generally speaking, we deem various kinds of speech that harms people as NOT protected under the first amendment, and that kind of speech would not be protected here. Yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, libel and slander, speech calling for violence, and fraudulent advertising are some typical examples of speech not protec…

For what it's worth, yelling fire in a crowded theater is First Amendment protected speech. https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/14/setting-1st-amendment-my... I'm just stating facts. https://www.popehat.com/p/the-first-amendment-isnt-absolute

This video was extremely disingenuous.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#42

Post by root_axis »

carlosjobim wrote: post #29
chmod775 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apparently they missed Ron Wyden (co-sponsor) of the bill is a Democrat and the bill is a bi-partisan effort? And thank god for that. I hope this is indicative of a larger trend in the opposite direction. I'm not in the US, but here too free speech and other democratic values have been something the far right could contrast themselves on against the center and left. It pisses me off to no end that the issues I've b…

> ideologically opposed to me Are you sure they are? Probably most people in your country would label you as far right for championing free speech, no other issues considered. Probably you are doing the same for others.

Every faction claims they support free speech and every faction also supports suppression of certain types of speech.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#43

Post by rayiner »

plagiarist wrote: post #37
chmod775 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apparently they missed Ron Wyden (co-sponsor) of the bill is a Democrat and the bill is a bi-partisan effort? And thank god for that. I hope this is indicative of a larger trend in the opposite direction. I'm not in the US, but here too free speech and other democratic values have been something the far right could contrast themselves on against the center and left. It pisses me off to no end that the issues I've b…

What? The far right is against free speech. They only ever screech about free speech when someone is experiencing social consequences. They whine about actual Nazi rhetoric earning bans on private companies' platforms, then turn around and open investigations on people criticizing their masked police force. Attending protests gets you added to the terrorist watchlist.

The proper response to that is to support free speech values in both circumstances. Otherwise, we’re just going to be fighting about the details of whether particular conduct falls within the letter of the free speech protections.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#44

Post by ToucanLoucan »

carlosjobim wrote: post #36
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, freedom of speech does not guarantee you freedom from consequences of your speech. The government can't stop you from saying stupid shit, however it also can't stop other people from telling you you're stupid. Second, horse dewormer doesn't cure COVID. Censoring dangerous misinformation from fools like yourself who will believe it because it's given to them via the right mouthpiece is a good idea, because if…

> Firstly, freedom of speech does not guarantee you freedom from consequences of your speech. It really does, that's the entire point. If you go find somebody and physically attack them for what they've written on HN about for example medicine, that makes you the law-breaker. I understand from the way you write that you might consider it your right to do such things to other people who don't have the same opinions as…

> It really does, that's the entire point. If you go find somebody and physically attack them for what they've written on HN about for example medicine, that makes you the law-breaker.

Yeah if I did this thing you completely made up, that would be illegal. Just like if the parent commenter was imprisoned for the post he made, that would also be illegal. Have you considered basing your politics on real things?

> I understand from the way you write that you might consider it your right to do such things to other people who don't have the same opinions as you,

Oh don't flatter yourselves. I have no interest at all in going to prison for slapping the shit out of COVID deniers. I'll happily tell you you're wrong though.

> but freedom of speech protects them against retribution from you or anybody else, including from the government.

Correct, but it doesn't protect them from social consequences, in this case getting downvoted, which is what they were pissing and moaning about.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#45

Post by convolvatron »

chmod775 wrote: post #34
gleenn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't you care more about the actual issue than who is writing the laws around it? Why are you so pissed off about the "who" instead of happy you are getting what you want?

I'm not getting what I want on free speech, because the center left form the ruling parties. And I wouldn't want the right to be in power anyways, though soon they couldn't do much worse to this democracy. People here are getting police visits and legal mail because they called a politician a name on twitter or get investigated over a sign they held at a political protest. Thousands of cases at this point.

and in the US we're having serious free speech issues with the right right now. sorry to be confusing, I just wonder why you think there's necessarily a direct equivalence between the left-right politics of two different countries, and not more concerned about actual rights violations instead of who's scoring political points.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#46

Post by foco_tubi »

jazz9k wrote: post #17
idiotsecant wrote: post #3

Phew, they better be careful what they ask for. The current regime might find themselves hoisted upon their own petard.

Huh? We have more free speech than ever online at this moment. The last regime colluded with the major social media companies to censor people they didn't like and it's also recently come to light that they attempted to get the Joe Rogan/Spotify deal nuked, all based on censoring speech they don't like. The liberal government of the UK is moving toward complete online censorship with their bill to prevent children fr…

Collusion is the wrong word. Coercion is more appropriate.

> I just wish the people claiming to be champions of free speech and rights will just admit that this all goes out the window when it applies to speech and people you don't like

Try using the word "cis-gender" on Twitter and let us know how that goes.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#47

Post by infinite_spin »

nxm wrote: post #27
platevoltage wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you that Liberals are also antagonistic towards online free speech, but pretending that we have more free speech online right now than ever before is the most insane thing I've ever heard. Just because you can post nazi shit on Twitter now does not mean we have more online freedom.

Please provide evidence that online speech in the USA is restricted in any way, unlike in Europe where you get fined and/or arrested for mean memes

This was pretty easy to find examples of.

https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/when-complaining-about...

https://ij.org/press-release/supreme-court-rejects-appeal-of...

https://www.rcfp.org/supreme-court-throws-out-1876-criminal-...

https://www.fire.org/cases/larry-bushart-v-perry-county

There's a lot more.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#48

Post by platevoltage »

nxm wrote: post #27
platevoltage wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you that Liberals are also antagonistic towards online free speech, but pretending that we have more free speech online right now than ever before is the most insane thing I've ever heard. Just because you can post nazi shit on Twitter now does not mean we have more online freedom.

Please provide evidence that online speech in the USA is restricted in any way, unlike in Europe where you get fined and/or arrested for mean memes

Do I need to list the people who have been threatened with deportation for pro-palestine speech or can you find those yourself?

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#49

Post by foco_tubi »

nxm wrote: post #27
platevoltage wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you that Liberals are also antagonistic towards online free speech, but pretending that we have more free speech online right now than ever before is the most insane thing I've ever heard. Just because you can post nazi shit on Twitter now does not mean we have more online freedom.

Please provide evidence that online speech in the USA is restricted in any way, unlike in Europe where you get fined and/or arrested for mean memes

Larry Bushart was arrested and jailed for more than a month for posting a Charlie Kirk meme.

Douglass Mackey was arrested and convicted for posting satirical Clinton election ads, though this was later overturned after he spent months in prison.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#50

Post by jmyeet »

So the EFF and ACLU seem to support this bill. I'm skeptical given one of the sponsors is Ted Cruz who famously said [1]:

> After earlier stating he first ran for Congress in 2012 “with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States Senate,”

Texas has laws that government contractors must promise not to boycott the state of Israel [2]. 35+ US states have similar laws [3]. This on its face seems like a government restriction on speech, squarely violating the First Amendment. The Supreme Court, who otherwise love to pay lip service to the First Amendment, go out of their way to avoid anti-BDS challenges [4]. Courts have generally split hairs here saying anti-BDS impacts commerce and is speec-neutral. That's a complete cop out.

So do I think that Ted Cruz really cares about free speech? Not for a second. I suspect that if this passes, it'll only ever be applied in cases where governments officials attack conservative misinformation (eg stolen elections, anti-vaxxer anything). Any speech contradicting US foreign policy will be labelled as domestic terrorism so First Amendment freedoms don't seem to apply (I suspect).

US tech platforms already have incredible conservative bias. Meta's policy chief, Jordana Cutler (who worked in Benjamin Netanyahu's office), boasts about taking down pro-Palestinian content [5]. Twitter is a Nazi shithole [6]. And worse [7]. The whole manosphere, which is an alt-right entry point, flourishes on every platform.

So, no, I have no confidence in anything Ted Cruz supports.

[1]: https://www.christianpost.com/news/ted-cruz-cites-genesis-12...

[2]: https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/anti-israel-policies-are-ant...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws

[4]: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/supreme-court-declines-t...

[5]: https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palesti...

[6]: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-mus...

[7]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/07/27/twitter-...

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