It does. That's why GrapheneOS left France; Signal is considering doing so to if ChatControl passes. Von Der Leyen and Breton clearly mentioned the possibility of banning X. And there are many other "signals".
But yeah we get it, there's bad censorhip (Iran, China, Russia), and there is the good censorhip, sorry, i meant "protection of children", when it's the EU. :o)
> there's bad censorhip (Iran, China, Russia), and there is the good censorhip
I understand that you're being facetious here, but this is literally true.
Words kill people sometimes, and in the same way that my right to swing my arm stops where your nose begins your right to say whatever you want stops where my safety begins.
Or to rephrase it, nobody can have free speech at all if others are allowed to threaten your health and safety for it, which automatically implies that violent and hateful speech must be curtailed. It is a variation on the paradox of tolerance.
Yes, there is room to debate exactly where the line is, but the fact that there is a line is fairly well settled except amongst the rabid.
I dont need Thierry Breton or Van Der Leyen to tell me which podcasts I am allowed to listened to, but thanks for the well-intentionned thoughts for my safety anyway.
I dont care at all for your safety, I care for mine and that of my family and I think it's fair to insist that you don't get to put my life in jeopardy because you feel like you should be immune to the consequences of your speech.
I would be very interested in hearing some of these words capable of killing. I have only heard of such words in fiction so I am quite surprised to learn they are real.
In the 1950s, the Reverend Ian Paisley would organise rallies in the streets of Belfast and when speaking at those rallies, read out the addresses of Catholic homes and businesses on those streets. The crowd would then attack those homes and businesses.
If there is a direct call to action then they should be held responsible, but like I said I don't know what the context is or what was said in the Belfast situation.
The words the Nazis said were irrelevant. They directed people to kill and as such they were guilty.
I think someone who goes and attacks somebody is guilty. They cannot use the excuse they were following orders. The words didn't take control of them like a spell. They made the conscious choice to commit violence and as such the guilt is on them, not the bat.
We've had several World Wars (so far) thanks largely to words. I'm not sure what your contention really is, except that maybe you dont like the idea of freedom coming with responsibility for the ways in which you use it.
World War 1 and 2 were both the result of actual military actions, alliances, invasions, etc.
If you want to censor the internet, claiming it is "to protect the children" is still a much better bet than claiming that it is because free speech causes world wars, if you want my opinion.
Nobody died from the words? Did Hitler say millions should die and millions dropped dead? It was the war, the concentration camps, etc that killed people.
Yes, words led to that, but the onus of the deaths are on those who did the killing, not the words. Could the Nazis in the Nuremberg trials have used the excuse that it was actually the words doing the killing and as such they were innocent?
If you want to say words kill, in the way you are saying, then words have killed most people that have been killed. If we take an example where somebody gets turned down and then gets killed for it, would you say words killed that person? Should we ban turning people down? You do want words that kill to be banned after all.
I'm reminded of a phrase I leaned as a kid that starts with sticks and stones...
Ahhh. Another of Elon's absolutists? Fine all words are ok now. So we make all these things legal:
Obscenity in any context - Won't someone not think of the children?
Child sexual abuse material - Fine in the new regime as long as you didn't record it yourself, right?
Incitement to imminent lawless action - You only told them who to murder, right?
True threats and harassment - All those people can just die. Speech is the ONLY freedom that matters. Serious expressions of intent to commit unlawful violence be damned.
Fighting words - Sure - Bait them till they hit you then the cops can come arrest THEM. Aren't you clever! And totally free from consequences for your actions! Ideal!
Defamation - Why CAN'T we just make stuff up about our enemies, friends, and loved ones? Those suckers rights are far less important than ours after all!
Fraud and false commercial speech - All legal now! Finally the freedom to rip off old ladies and the mentally unwell! Thank god for liberty!
IP violations - Again, free speech is absolute now so nobody can own anything that can be conveyed via language. Yay!
Or... we could just be reasonable about it and say that the limit's of free speech are where they start to impinge on other peoples liberties. Your call.
First, let me start off saying I don't like Elon and think he is a terrible person.
Next, my issue is primarily on your issue with hateful speech, I should have been more clear. I wrote it on my phone and didn't feel like expanding upon what I was trying to say. I should have conveyed my thoughts better.
I will explain my position more clearly.
I think pushing what you are when it comes to hateful speech is dangerous. Using your own logic the comment I am replying to could be illegal. You said "hateful speech must be curtailed". What you said about Elon is clearly derogatory and could easily be considered hateful. If the laws were in place, I think with how petty Elon is, he would go after people who are critical of him like yourself.
Having emotional harm is not really something that can be determined which is the primary harm that hate speech causes. Every person is different so you wouldn't have a way to know what you could say. The only way to know if something is hateful is to ask the person if they were intending it to be hateful or if the recipient found it hateful.
When you have vague terms that could be determined by emotion rather than an objective measure you are going to run into issues. Obviously sometimes there will be subjective measures, but we need to minimize them whenever possible.
If somebody is directing somebody to kill somebody that is causing physical harm towards an individual and should be illegal.
Going back to the world war examples. Hitler would be guilty of directing people to cause physical harm.
If Hitler said to kill somebody I don't consider that to be different than if Hitler just pointed and somebody and then turned his finger into a gun. The issue wasn't what he said or didn't say, it was what he was directing somebody to do.
If Hitler said something like we have economic issues and Jews run the banks, that would probably be considered hateful by many people. I don't think it should be illegal. If Hitler added let's kill the Jews, that would be directing people to commit violence and would not be legal.
Hitler hating the Jews in the first statement doesn't mean he should go to jail. It didn't cause a normal person to go out and commit the Holocaust.
> What you said about Elon is clearly derogatory and could easily be considered hateful.
It was from an actual quote of his in which he claimed to be a "free speech absolutist." I did mean it in a derogatory way, because just repeating it makes him seem silly, but it's an actual quote so not slanderous or anything.
That said, I agree that nobody has the right to live a life free of criticism and some folks need thicker skin (including myself from time to time).
>If somebody is directing somebody to kill somebody that is causing physical harm towards an individual and should be illegal
Well there you go. We both agree that some speech has to be illegal, we just disagree as to exactly where that line is. I think it's perfectly reasonable for us to disagree about *exactly* where the line is, as long as everyone understands that there is a line.
To me that line is very simple: My rights end where yours start, and vice versa. As far as I can tell it's the only sensible basis for any kind of society. You can make it more complicated if you want, but the only way to get more "freedom" than with my plan is to take away someone else's and I'm not cool with that.
>"[...] But we should claim the right to suppress them [intolerant ideologies] if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."
The paradox of tolerance is not about censoring others. If anything, censorship lands on the side of the intolerant of this paradox.
By that standards, an EU army would have gone to war in Irak in 2003, dragging french soldiers and the french aircraft carrier despite them being right from the very start.
Sure, but how many "correct" decisions are not made or drag on forever because of vetos?
Allowing veto power to single participants is often crippling for institutions in practice, because you allow every political adversary (internal and external) to freely pick the weakest link whenever he wants to sabotage or paralyze decisionmaking.
This already happens in practice with the EU, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is a textbook example of how such a mechanism essentially doomed the whole thing.
Yeah of course, Europe has already been destroyed by the EU bureaucracy, but lets give them even more powers to implement their dumb ideas even faster, such as... "oh, how about we stopped producing cars by 2030?", or again... "oh, war is bad, guns kills, how about we pass CSR laws that dissuade banks from funding military companies".
They are not European. They are French, or Swiss, or Scandinavian, each of those countries who may sooner or later not align anymore with your strategic interests. Countries should only trust themselves for sensitive stuff.
Why EU-native rather than nation-native ? If you are French, your sensitive stuff must be French-native, just like Switzerland does, not "EU-native whatever that means".
There is no EU, each country has very strong different interests, on some topics, some will decide to stay close to the US, on some other topics, some will seek proximity with the BRICS, etc, etc. Constantly being in an in-between is what has destroyed Europe.
Many EU countries have bought US fighter jets (Denmark for instance). Many EU countries still make it clear that they want US technology (Poland for instance). Germany is sending extremely mixed signals.
So, when it's "EU sovereignity", which is it, the Polish flavored one, or the French-flavored one ?
No. "Stronger together" is a hoax, and is only true if all participants are in agreement, otherwise you are "weaker together". 20 years of failed projects (apart from the law saying that bottles should have their cap attached) show that it is impossible to reach consensus with 27 participants.
Put 27 people in a room, all wanting something different, nothing comes out.
Every country in EU is materially better in the bloc, and the only country that left it is much worse for it.
Brexit was such a monumental disaster for the UK that even far right morons in other EU countries had to massively tone down if not abandon any "exit" rhetoric. Now their strategy is to "reform" the EU (i.e.: weaken it).
> 20 years of failed projects (apart from the law saying that bottles should have their cap attached)
This alone shows you are unwilling to engage with the idea of the EU in good faith, thus this conversation with you is a massive waste of my time.
The EU is not perfect (and in fact the expectation of unanimous decisions via veto powers is one if its main weaknesses). But every country, including my own, would be much worse without it.
I will not reply any further, feel free to have the last word.
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