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Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

rnz.co.nz

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Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#81

Post by jakeogh »

krapp wrote: post #78
chrisco255 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a slippery slope. For all intents and purposes we're accelerating down the slope. The Orwellian nightmare you talk about already exists in countries like China. The naive presumption that the West will always support free expression is baseless. It will not unless it's vigilantly defended by Westerners. And once given up, liberty is not easily regained (see Venezuela, Cuba, USSR, East Germany, etc). It's also w…

All Western countries have governments and are states based on the rule of law, and all place some limits on speech and expression. Even the US doesn't allow certain forms of expression, such as libel, slander, falsehoods, terroristic threats, etc. The West has therefore never supported free expression, just as it has never supported free markets. We are already on, and have always been on, that slope. Yet not all We…

Ah, the "cant happen here" argument.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#82

Post by [deleted] »

bilbo0s wrote: post #56
basetop wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rather live with the remote threat of extremism rather than live in a censored world. Would you rather live in North Korea with no extremism? You have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning than dying from extremism and yet you'd give up your right to free speech for some remote threat? That kind of thinking is the cause of north korea and nazi germany. Authoritarians always use remote threats to justify t…

> You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than dying from extremism... I know this is pedantic, but you got me curious so I went to check the numbers. Odds of death in mass shooting (US only): 1 in 11,125 Odds of death by lightning strike (US only): 1 in 161,831 So it seems that it's actually a lot more likely for an American to die in a mass shooting than it is for us to die in lightning strikes. Edi…

[deleted]

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#83

Post by krapp »

jakeogh wrote: post #81
krapp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All Western countries have governments and are states based on the rule of law, and all place some limits on speech and expression. Even the US doesn't allow certain forms of expression, such as libel, slander, falsehoods, terroristic threats, etc. The West has therefore never supported free expression, just as it has never supported free markets. We are already on, and have always been on, that slope. Yet not all We…

Ah, the "cant happen here" argument.

No, more the "isn't inevitable" argument implied by the slippery slope fallacy.

But that may be too subtle a distinction for a thread like this.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#84

Post by DuskStar »

chrisco255 wrote: post #75
krapp wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What constitutes ‘extremism’? It’s a term so vague as to be practically meaninglessness. No, it isn't. Inevitably someone like yourself will come into threads like these and attempt to start a slippery slope argument by trying to imply that the subject at hand is meaningless and, therefore, all attempts to address it are arbitrary. It really is strange how, for certain subjects, people just forget how English works…

It is a slippery slope. For all intents and purposes we're accelerating down the slope. The Orwellian nightmare you talk about already exists in countries like China. The naive presumption that the West will always support free expression is baseless. It will not unless it's vigilantly defended by Westerners. And once given up, liberty is not easily regained (see Venezuela, Cuba, USSR, East Germany, etc). It's also w…

Exactly. If we start censoring now, where's the Schelling Fence [0] between this and censoring mainstream political opinions? What logic used to censor things here won't be used to censor more things later?

0: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelling-...

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#85

Post by jakeogh »

krapp wrote: post #83
jakeogh wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the "cant happen here" argument.

No, more the "isn't inevitable" argument implied by the slippery slope fallacy. But that may be too subtle a distinction for a thread like this.

Parent didn't imply it was. Freedom is often lost incrementally. Framing that basic fact of history as a logically fallacy is unwise.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#86

Post by writepub »

prolepunk wrote: post #49
writepub wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

> When the discussion comes to any other topic such as police brutality, racism, discrimination etc. these voices are conspicuously absent.

Patently untrue, and a baseless accusation. If anything, the recent spate in enforcing compulsory body-cams for cops, and livestreams of actual police brutality have faced ZERO calls for censorship, especially from free speech advocates.

> things are illegal but let's not make any laws or have any clear legal mechanisms to effectively enforcing this

What does this even mean? If something is illegal, those with standing can obviously enforce the law.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#87

Post by DuskStar »

anigbrowl wrote: post #38
dx87 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of years ago, Cloudflare refused to remove access to ISIS websites, and said it's not the job of ISPs or themselves to police content. https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/anonymous-opisis-cloudflare-refuse...

The policy of one internet infrastructure firm doesn't validate the original claim of ISIS' online activity being 'ignored for well over a decade.'

It does imply they take it less seriously than stormfront, though.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#88

Post by phil248 »

hugh4life wrote: post #70
phil248 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has plenty of laws against the use of speech to promote violence. The Netherlands has, in practice, some of the most expansive free speech rights of any corner of the planet, yet they had no problem signing on (to this non-binding agreement).

"The US has plenty of laws against the use of speech to promote violence." What laws are you talking about?

An example is the law against distributing information on making bombs/weapons with the intent of promoting/enabling violence.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/842

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#89

Post by shiado »

Considering that religious speech and the guiding religious books are often completely intolerant of all other views of the world and can thus be considered extremist, it would appear that such an agreement could ironically cause the censorship of the very religion that was brutally targeted in these attacks. Or perhaps they have specific censorship goals in mind? Think of the result in Alabama just yesterday, it is abundantly clear that Christianity as an ideology causes real tangible harm to women and ought to be completely scrubbed from social media.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#90

Post by pnw_hazor »

krapp wrote: post #78
chrisco255 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a slippery slope. For all intents and purposes we're accelerating down the slope. The Orwellian nightmare you talk about already exists in countries like China. The naive presumption that the West will always support free expression is baseless. It will not unless it's vigilantly defended by Westerners. And once given up, liberty is not easily regained (see Venezuela, Cuba, USSR, East Germany, etc). It's also w…

All Western countries have governments and are states based on the rule of law, and all place some limits on speech and expression. Even the US doesn't allow certain forms of expression, such as libel, slander, falsehoods, terroristic threats, etc. The West has therefore never supported free expression, just as it has never supported free markets. We are already on, and have always been on, that slope. Yet not all We…

The US allows just about all expressions without prior restraint. Even shouting fire in a theater is allowed speech until a court says otherwise -- after the fact and with due process.

In contrast, censorship is a kind of prior restraint that restricts speech in the absence of judicial review or due process contrary to the rule of law.

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