cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/56719476
Italy fined Cloudflare 14.2 million euros for refusing to block access to pirate sites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service, the country’s communications regulatory agency, AGCOM, announced yesterday. Cloudflare said it will fight the penalty and threatened to remove all of its servers from Italian cities.
Based. Censorship no bueno
What about censoring neo Nazis? What about banning Trump from Twitter?
A lot of people don’t seem to remember Alex Jones getting banned from YouTube in 2018. While rightwing, ultra-MAGA’s were already a thing, they were relatively small compared today. Alex Jones was the first high profile ban from social media and it was like tossing gasoline onto a small bush fire.
You have to remember that Trump did not win the first time because he had an army of fanatics. A lot of other factors were at play; from people still upset about the DNC’s snubbing of Bernie, to people who weren’t fully paying attention (remember, politics used to be boring), to people who voted for Trump simply “for the lols” (don’t discount this last group, any historical account that doesn’t factor in how important internet memes were to getting that man elected is being willfully ignorant) . Die-hard MAGA’s were relatively rare, and usually a source of ridicule.
Until their spokespeople started getting banned from places. It seems so small by today’s standards. People get banned and deplatformed all the time. But Alex Jones was the first real incident, and people saw it as a massive attack on free speech. To his relatively small number of followers, the man had his free speech rights violated by the left-wing news cabal for daring to speak the TRUTH™. Suddenly, all their bullshit was justified.
I’ve always been pretty far-left but I got a deep chill when that happened. I remember remarking to my friends that banning political speech, no matter how full of shit, would only cause problems in the long run, and so it has. Precedent was broken, and the right took it as a declaration of war. I truly believe things would not have gotten nearly as insane as they are had Google not decided to ban him. He deserved it, but they opened a door that couldn’t be shut again; and following this was a couple years of high-profile bans of rightwing figureheads and safe-spaces, all cumulating to the shut down of /r/theDonald in 2020. And the infection, which had been contained to a few small corners of the internet, suddenly exploded.
banning political speech, no matter how full of shit, would only cause problems in the long run, and so it has.
I really cannot follow the argument. In Germany, we have a law making it illegal to deny the holocaust. People will say that seven million jews never died, and the police will investigate them, they are taken to court and put into prison if necessary.
Nothing bad ever came from this. We simply get to put one specific kind of asshole into prison if they spread lies to sow hatred.
Nothing bad ever came from this.
Except everything bad that came from it? That’s some serious selective attention.
I truly believe things would not have gotten nearly as insane as they are had Google not decided to ban him.
Popular culture became complacent by over-relying on censorship instead of openly educating, criticizing, and discrediting idiots as was effectively done before with deference to free speech values.
What about censoring neo Nazis?
ineffective, disastrous, & still no bueno. better to educate & discredit their weak reasoning.
As a European, I’ve really come around to a more American view of Free Speech.
Over the last few years, we get more and more laws requiring more and more surveillance and censorship to protect copyright, stop hate speech, enforce GDPR, … We’re building up this infrastructure and the population thinks it’s fine. The courts go along and ask for more.
What is going to happen when a European Trump comes to power? You think it’s terrible that Big Tech goes along with Trump? That Must bought Twitter? We ain’t seen nothing yet.
The US has no limits which is fucking stupid, meanwhile Canada has limits on hate speech while still being far more free than the US speech wise.
limits on hate speech
which is bullshit: not being merely offended is not a fundamental liberty, no imminent risk of damage to an interest a person has a basic right to results from merely expressing an opinion.
such laws are readily abused
- German repression of political expression: live police suppressing pro-Palestinian protests as anti-semitic, raids & arrests over calling a politician pimmel, internet patrols penalizing vitriol, insults, & satirical images of politicians showing fake quotes
- UK repression of political expression: designate Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, arrest pro-Palestinian protesters, arrest someone over a social media post backing Palestine Action
& ineffective at preventing the ideas & ideologies they oppose from taking root & gaining power. the advocates of repressive policies are only mildly inconvenienced or continue undeterred underground. the German AfD isn’t struggling. far-right parties like Reform UK keep going. so, they fail to keep anyone in check while also undermining basic freedoms.
ability to justify truth & correctness is far more important than attempting to coerce conformity to correctness through dogma, taboo, & censorship. weak ability to justify makes people incompetent defenders & weak believers of correctness. individuals hone justifications & acquire competence to deliberate effectively through practice of vigorous & open deliberation with adversarial positions. censorship, even of incorrect belief, robs both those whose speech is suppressed and their audience of open deliberation they need to justify their beliefs and actions competently & effectively.
only cowards fear words.
Are they becoming less shitty or is this accidentally doing the right thing?
They did as sort of positive thing while praising Elon and Vance, despite both their visions of “free speech” as being “free speech for what I like and not you”
So a hearty fuck Cloudflare, fuck American tech for one again operating in a country and refusing to follow their laws, and fuck the entire billionaire apparatus who are so deep in the circle jerk they don’t know how to come up for air and not act like fascists for 10 seconds.
the Italian law is overly broad here, but that doesn’t excuse this behaviour.
fuck American tech for one again operating in a country and refusing to follow their laws
Fuck government overreach. And fuck anyone defending it.
You fight government overreach by civil disobedience, not by corporatist overreach in the same manner.
If you give a free pass to corporations disobeying laws just because you personally dislike those laws, soon you’ll find all regulations are pointless because no corporation follows them…
Also, there’s no such thing as “governmental overreach” in a well working system that is FOR the people and BY the people. You elect the representatives, you have a say in what laws get passed. I do agree that we could do with a refresher because the current forms of representative democracy are breaking thanks to (primarily right wing) political false marketing with no repercussions, and nowadays we do have a way to have people give direct input on laws and regulations before they get passed, but that doesn’t negate the fact that the government isn’t supposed to be some shady ruler class but rather a form of communal governance.
there’s no such thing as “governmental overreach” in a well working system that is FOR the people and BY the people
Nope: two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.
Coercive power can be turned against the individual democratically. A system that gives government the power necessary to protect individual liberty but also denies it authority to abuse liberties is necessary.
civil disobedience, not by corporatist overreach
“corporatist overreach” can be civil disobedience & legal challenges.
