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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

#661

Post by selfmodruntime »

phatfish wrote: post #606
Gareth321 wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am European and I would like to challenge you a little. Both the US and Europe have major issues with press and freedom of expression. To give you some examples from the European side. Specifically, the UK: * Police in England and Wales recorded 12,183 arrests in 2023 for online speech. This number is growing fast, but the government isn't releasing the data anymore. A few years ago this man retweeted a meme (prett…

Thanks for your input on UK society. FWIW, despite the coordinated attacks we are doing just fine. If you live your life through social media it might look like we are one step from North Korea though.

> FWIW, despite the coordinated attacks we are doing just fine.

What a sad handwaive of the current state of affairs

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

#662

Post by rrr_oh_man »

joe_mamba wrote: post #650
generic92034 wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a overall very rarely occurring abuse of power of a politician in charge of leading local law enforcement. It was declared illegal later. And you take that as a proof for what about the whole of Germany?

>It was declared illegal later. You're missing the point. That's exactly how democratic governments cloak fascist behavior everywhere: The punishment IS THE PROCESS. People in Germany (and the UK and other places) have to self censor because they don't want to be visited by the police and then dragged through courts for months/years, even though it eventually gets thrown out and you get to walk away innocent, you sti…

> You're missing the point. That's how democratic governments masquerade fascist behavior: The punishment IS THE PROCESS.

YES.

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

#664

Post by frumplestlatz »

mortarion wrote: post #639
kjksf wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we can. But that's not what "hate speech" is code word for. At this point in time any opinion to the right of extreme leftist ideology is considered by said leftist to be "hate speech". Examples of "hate speech": criticism of muslims (but jews are ok), or minorities, or men playing in women's sport or breast amputation of 15yr olds, or immigration. Nick investigating Somali fraud is racist and hateful. The "hate…

Countries in Europe (and most of the world) have positive constitutions, which defines what the government "must do" (for its citizens), whilst the USA has a negative constitution that defines what the government "cannot do" (against its citizens). What constitutes hate speech is carefully defined in the constitutions of EU countries. Politicians can't just amend or extend the definition at will, except in the UK whi…

Hitler was literally banned from public speaking for two years.

The Nazis came to power through widespread normalized political violence, not speech, and banning Hitler from speaking did nothing but further undermine the legitimacy of the government’s mandate to rule.

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

#665

Post by flohofwoe »

jbstack wrote: post #482
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.

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…

> who has to regularly turn my VPN on and off to have full internet access,

Is this because the EU or your country has blocked access, or some news site from the US blocking access from the EU because they don't want to deal with GDPR?

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

#666

Post by jbstack »

intended wrote: post #609
jbstack wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italy. Examples of sites I can't access without VPN: torrent sites (including legal uses), betfair.com (which I use as a more accurate political predictor than polls), and various non-EU sites which block access because they've decided it's easier than complying with extra-territorial requirements imposed by the EU (this one isn't direct EU censorship, but it amounts to the same thing indirectly. Sometimes I set my V…

This is a definition of censorship that seems to equate restrictions to any website or data stream as freedom, not whether the content of the site breaks local laws. This is a bit extreme, since most countries have laws against gambling, and if you could get around it by just setting up servers abroad, what value are local laws?

I'm not sure I see any practical difference between a government saying "we will block website X because we don't like it" and "we will block website X because we say that website X is illegal". For example if Iran blocks a website which is critical of the regime, do you consider it important whether such criticisms are against the law or not in Iran? I think most people would consider it censorship either way.

If you want to make gambling illegal, then make gambling illegal and then enforce that law. You don't need to resort to indirect measures that go beyond the law (e.g. by preventing me from merely viewing the odds on a gambling website).

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

#667

Post by selfmodruntime »

dgxyz wrote: post #522
dirasieb wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://archive.ph/bdEqK >>Police make 30 arrests a day for offensive online messages >The police are making more than 30 arrests a day over offensive posts on social media and other platforms. >Thousands of people are being detained and questioned for sending messages that cause “annoyance”, “inconvenience” or “anxiety” to others via the internet, telephone or mail. >Custody data obtained by The Times shows that off…

Ignore the cherry picking and sensationalism around this. There are a few cases which are thrown out which were overreach. But nearly all of them are direct threats to people, stalking, repetitive abuse, support for terrorism and admissions of actual criminal activity. If you wrote these things on a wall outside your house you'd be arrested. If you said them down the pub you'd get the shit kicked out of you in 30 sec…

> It's not a hoax, it's a straight up lie

> There are a few cases which are thrown out which were overreach > Well overreach and sentencing is happening, but it's not common enough to care

> Yeah sentencing to prison is common now, but as long as you stay within the confines of the law you won't be affected

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

#668

Post by selfmodruntime »

hananova wrote: post #593
throwaway140126 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany there are some examples for the suppression of speech. For example popular examples are: (1) getting your house raided for calling a politician a dick (2) getting your house raided for calling a politician stupid (3) most recent, just in this week, a retiree gets into trouble with the police for asking worried questions about migration (1) https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/hamburg-wohnungsdurch... (2)…

(1) Is also because it's literally vandalism. (2) Also points out that there were posts of holocaust denial, which has been illegal in most of europe for literal decades. (3) Is an article about an investigation into whether or not the cart was protected by freedom of expression or whether there would be grounds for further trial. Nobody is in trouble yet. Isn't it convenient how all posts that say something that rhy…

> Also points out that there were posts of holocaust denial, which has been illegal in most of europe for literal decades.

The arrest wasn't made for this but for the insulting of a politican. Stop lying. The press has been correcting this case for months.

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

#669

Post by selfmodruntime »

throwaway140126 wrote: post #622
hananova wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) Is also because it's literally vandalism. (2) Also points out that there were posts of holocaust denial, which has been illegal in most of europe for literal decades. (3) Is an article about an investigation into whether or not the cart was protected by freedom of expression or whether there would be grounds for further trial. Nobody is in trouble yet. Isn't it convenient how all posts that say something that rhy…

(1) Calling a politician a dick is vandalism? That's nonsense. (2) The corresponding prosecutor made clear that his house was raided for calling the politician stupid and NOT for anything else. You would have known that if you would have read the document I linked to. To quote it: Wegen des Tatverdachts einer gegen Personen des politischen Lebens gerichteten Beleidigung gem. §§ 185, 188, 194 StGB erfolgte am vergange…

People will lie in your face about number two even though both the Amtsgericht Bamberg as well as the press have been saying that the arrest was made in a case of 188 StgB for months now.

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

#670

Post by BSDobelix »

k3vinw wrote: post #655
duckerduck wrote: post #630

Maybe the EU can open a book portal for the US. https://pen.org/report/the-normalization-of-book-banning/

So not books banned from the general public? Got it!

If you compare that list of "really banned" books, it sounds like creating a European portal would be a net negative.

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

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

The US list one (1) banned book in a earlier version (Operation Dark Heart) because of national security.

>The first, uncensored printing of 9,500 copies was purchased for $47,300 in early September and destroyed by the publisher at the request of the Pentagon

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

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