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US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

reuters.com

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Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#611

Post by marbletiles »

Gareth321 wrote: post #538
bargainbin wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, people are being arrested for making malicious communications. They would have suffered the same punishment if they had used email, letter, graffiti on a billboard. You cannot go around threatening to harm people without repercussions.

"Malicious communications" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. This veteran was arrested for retweeting this meme ( https://abuwjaawap.cloudimg.io/v7/_lgbtqnation-assets_/asset... ). https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11066477/Veteran-ar... He was offered to undergo "re-education." You might not like this meme. You might find it offensive. But should he be arrested by several officers for it? Of course not. This i…

He was arrested for refusing to allow officers to enter his home on a pre-agreed return visit to discuss the complaints:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/arrest_of_mr_darren_b...

This is why the Daily Mail causes rolled eyes (along with Spiked and the rest of the right-wing agitprop).

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#612

Post by guerrilla »

kjksf wrote: post #584
balls187 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porn Sites? How about an interview with a politician on a late-nite network television show.

[flagged]

There has never been a leftist government in the US. You seem a bit lost.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#613

Post by selfmodruntime »

syspec wrote: post #344

Meanwhile, you can't even go on pornhub in certain states in the US, but yes let's let people go on X and engage in hate speech. In fact I'm sure bad actors will use that site FROM the us, to anonymize their hate speech from Russia/China

I agree that hate speech must have limits but I have no idea where government trust comes from, especially in the current times. It's like people forget that voting swings and sways and that at some point in time, a government you won't agree with will be able to wield all these shiny new tools for censorship.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#614

Post by stinkbeetle »

generic92034 wrote: post #448
stinkbeetle wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is calling people nazis hate speech?

It depends. One prominent figure of the right-wing populist party AfD in Germany has been called a Nazi. When he sued the originator the court decided that, considering the circumstances, was not an insult in the sense of the law.

That was argued to be a satirical skit rather than sincere statement I think. Which is quite an outlier but would be still probably quite interesting to compare with other cases.

But in general if you were walking down the street or talking about something on the internet and somebody else called out or posted and said you are a nazi. Hate speech?

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#615

Post by ruszki »

randomNumber7 wrote: post #403
ruszki wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which book is that?

Gutenberg.org was DNS blocked for a very long time. Now it's not DNS blocked anymore but I think it will detect your IP and restrict access for some books if you are in the EU. Of course very easy to circumvent if you know s.th. about tech.

What is the difference between those cases and Steamboat Willie? Besides the obvious that those happened in different countries.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#616

Post by selfmodruntime »

pms wrote: post #434

It's a waste of resources, but please do it! The entire "European Union censors" narrative is a hoax [1], so the portal will achieve nothing, but you've got to do what you've got to do! [1] First, the EU countries have much higher World Press Freedom Index than the US. Second, once you start reading how little there is of the alleged "censorship" in the EU, you realize it's a no-brainer aiming to protect people.

[flagged]

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#617

Post by selfmodruntime »

RealityVoid wrote: post #525
jbstack wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone living in an EU state who has to regularly turn my VPN on and off to have full internet access, I can't agree with you that it's a "hoax". It's inconvenient enough for me that I'm looking into having a custom router that will switch between VPN destinations depending on what site I'm accessing. Also "EU countries have higher press freedom than the US" is a strawman argument. We're not talking about press f…

What content are you missing? Off the top of my head, the type of content most likely to ve missing in Europe would be: - geofenced media - commercial sites intentionally removing eu access because of gdpr. That's it. Those are the only cases where I could not access sites from tbe EU. At least the ones I encountered. And do notice, both of them are not filtered by the EU or anything like this. They are enforced at t…

Notice how you went from "censorship is a hoax" to "not having access to these things is not important", while also implicitely assuming control of deciding the matter.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#618

Post by intended »

Argonaut998 wrote: post #447
pms wrote: post #434

It's a waste of resources, but please do it! The entire "European Union censors" narrative is a hoax [1], so the portal will achieve nothing, but you've got to do what you've got to do! [1] First, the EU countries have much higher World Press Freedom Index than the US. Second, once you start reading how little there is of the alleged "censorship" in the EU, you realize it's a no-brainer aiming to protect people.

Press freedom !== entirety of freedom of speech European politicians are calling every day to censor social media. People are arrested regularly for social media posts. Censorship is absolutely an issue in Europe and it’s only getting worse. I welcome such an attitude as this.

I think nations should add content moderation as part of mandatory volunteer duties.

The online commons and tasks are too complex and absurd, and we have many people who value speech, who would be the ideal people to take on these tasks. Putting their values into action so to speak.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, so the moment people volunteer for this, they will themselves see whether the claims of misinformation and disinformation are overblown, and then vote accordingly.

Obviously speech is a super important part of our online lives, and should be treated as such.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#619

Post by Sharlin »

pasc1878 wrote: post #435
schoen wrote: post #38

I just chaired a session at the FOCI conference earlier today, where people were talking about Internet censorship circumvention technologies and how to prevent governments from blocking them. I'd like to remind everyone that the U.S. government has been one the largest funders of that research for decades. Some of it is under USAGM (formerly BBG, the parent of RFE/RL) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agen…

But part of Agency has just been defunded https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/19/us-funding-for...

[flagged]

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#620

Post by mikkupikku »

ta20240528 wrote: post #469
carlosjobim wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech. I didn't expect to have to spell it out.

Note that in 36 odd states in the USA companies and their officers (i.e real people) cannot boycott Israel (or even say nasty things) and then do business with the state. By law. So, not so much free speech.

But if you say the American government is occupied by zionists loyal to a foreign government, that's "hate speech" and would land you in prison if not for the enduring strength of the first ammendment (which several Europeans ITT think is bad, because they think "hate speech" is bad and they lack the mental fortitude to admit that sometimes right wing meanies might actually have a valid point.)
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