6 ms·

The United States are a great country, but in the topic of censorship, balanced politically correctness and easy to speak about all the topics, I believe that t

by antirez 10y ago

The United States are a great country, but in the topic of censorship, balanced politically correctness and easy to speak about all the topics, I believe that the old Europe has very interesting things to say, so I'm also a bit worried that the technological leadership of US may have an effect on what is believed to be sensible to discuss / post in Europe too. I hope is the other way, that is, we european can in some way mitigate certain extreme positions I see in the US regarding what is appropriate or not.

dmix 10y ago
France in the 18-19th century had many smart people who spoke against this type of stuff (everyone loves to quote Voltaire). But modern France has become the absolute counter-point for wishing to have less censorship and centralized social control. So this problem isn't limited to the United States. This is an issue in all modern liberal societies. Big government and centralized control has exploded over the last century, nation-states have become bigger than they've been in any time in history. The first half of the book "Fourth Revolution" has a really great history of how the state has massively grown, largely starting after WW2, to the point it becomes embedded in every parts of our lives (whether it's explicit or not). This type of thing always happens through small slivers and cuts, largely promoted via community complaints calling for government to solve issues - much like what Facebook has experienced. This is the side-effect of a society where the hair-trigger response to every small problem is to look to government to solve it - not just economic but social issues too. Instead of resolving them internally or via community, or just moving on because the solution is sometimes worse than the problem (see: terrorism). [1] https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Revolution-Global-Reinvent-State/dp/0143127608/ https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Revolution-Global-Reinvent-Sta...
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  Admittedly I have not read this book you recommend. However, my experience with such arguments is that they never persuade me "big government" is suddenly intruding into places it didn't previously, since the truth is more often that government was suddenly being deployed in support of people it was traditionally deployed against, and against people it was traditionally deployed in support of.
  - dmix 10y ago
    Even if the government power is smaller than previous authoritarian states/monarchies, the simple fact is that the scope and scale of government has massively grown. We're fortunate to be in the only(?) major industry that isn't heavily regulated. Where you can build a sizable business without having to wrangle with regulations at every step (outside of HR and financial regulations). The best example in the book is how interior designers need a required 4 yr bachelor diploma, pass a difficult test, and buy a licence, in order to choose what furniture and paint colors will look best in a persons living in Florida. Similar regulations exist for cutting/styling hair. Or cutting nails professionally. Or look at the 'Burkini' ban happening in France right now. This wasn't some partisan blanket criticism of 'the welfare state' that US republicans take while simultaneously supporting the 100 different agencies and offices that are now involved in fighting terrorism. It was a serious analysis of how far we've come from being able to solve issues society faces without creating another administrative blackhole. 21 million people are working for the US government alone. That's 16% of employed people and not counting the massive amount of private industry that works directly off of gov contracts (particularily significant in the defense industry). So it's probably closer to ~20%. More than all Fortune 500 companies combined. How many people do you think worked for the crown in France/England in the 1800s?
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      The best example in the book is how interior designers need a required 4 yr bachelor diploma, pass a difficult test, and buy a licence, in order to choose what furniture and paint colors will look best in a persons living in Florida. Similar regulations exist for cutting/styling hair. Or cutting nails professionally. So, would you like to compare to how long an apprenticeship you'd have to serve, or what hoops you'd have to jump through and payments you'd have to make, to get into a skilled-trade guild in the golden old days? Or look at the 'Burkini' ban happening in France right now. Sumptuary laws and other regulations on clothing are millennia old. 21 million people are working for the US government alone. That's 16% of employed people and not counting the massive amount of private industry that works directly off of gov contracts (particularily significant in the defense industry). So it's probably closer to ~20%. More than all Fortune 500 companies combined. In a feudal society 100% of people worked for either the government or the church. 16% is a nice downsize from that.
- hx87 10y ago
  The state is ubiquitous now, but it also administers with a much lighter hand than it used to--even relatively liberal states in the past regulated public and private morality rather heavily, and even the most authoritarian states rarely police as harshly as the average 19th century government does.
- nvarsj 10y ago
  It's absurd to think governments grew because of "community complaints". The rise of nation states happened precisely to benefit the megacorps that now exist - to support massive, centrally planned economies and subsidize megacorps that now rule the planet. The gov (or rather, the public, us) have every right to demand certain basic guarantees from these companies that benefit so much from public investment.
  - dmix 10y ago
    So megacorps regulation = always bad, community-backed regulation = always good? I agree with you that large companies can have a significant influence of policy and legislation. And yes they definately contributed to the problem. But considering the standard approach to everything (including your own comment here) is that 'more centralized control is the solution' it's not surprising that corporations are playing the exact same game to their advantage. I'm questioning the value of using that approach as a default solution. With the exception of it being the very last resort rather than the go-to solution to every problem. Because the state is good at a few things but it many cases it's heavy handed, expensive, time consuming, and very slow to adapt to change. Regulation, policy, and agencies should only be used carefully and there should be a culture of constantly re-evaluating the necessity of programs/agencies/policies - which doesn't seem to happen. Once it's set up it stays, scope and legislation only grows in size, government employees are incredibly hard to fire, etc, etc, and that's how a nation-state grows into a massive unwieldly beast. It's a complicated problem no doubt with many sources. But the status quo of the modern nation-state is very dysfunctional. It's sad that people so passionitely defend it blindly on ideological grounds. Questioning the value of government as the solution to all things brings out people who defend it like a religion. Which is how it ends up functioning in places where it often doesn't belong or worse ends up contributing to societal problems. This same ideology is the reason why Facebook gets blamed every time there is something posted that makes people uncomfortable. Instead of the person who posts the content.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    That's an exceptionally revisionist history.
John23832 10y ago
I think people often forget the other side of the coin. These companies "cross-pollenate" American morality across the world because they are American companies. Based in America. On American soil. Responsible to America's laws. To ask that these companies not spread American morality (or French morality if they were based in France, or German etc.) is to ask that they not be made to operate under the laws of the country that they're based in. That they hold some status above countries. And one could argue that that is even more dangerous than the situation we have now.
- saint_fiasco 10y ago
  Morality is not the same as legality.
  - John23832 10y ago
    Legality is group morality codified.
    - nzjrs 10y ago
      Interesting definition. Does it have a basis in fact? It also operates with some weird time lags.
      - John23832 10y ago
        That's the logical definition that I've always known. From MW: (1) : a binding custom or practice of a community : a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority (2) : the whole body of such customs, practices, or rules (3) Offhand, I can't think of one group of people who adhere to customs, practice or rules, that they think are immoral. > It also operates with some weird time lags. I'm not sure what you mean by this.
        nzjrs 10y ago
        > I'm not sure what you mean > by this. That things often continue to be legal (or illegal) well after the consensus on their morality has shifted. And that is to completely put aside those laws that were patently immoral
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
> I believe that the old Europe has very interesting things to say If anything European countries are much more deeply invested into censorship than the US. The UK's incredibly short sighted libel laws for example. Or the EU's ridiculous "hate speech" laws. I find it amusing you decry US political correctness in favor or Europe's much more tough legislation. Also the EU censors items on Facebook all the time, usually in regards to protecting minorities from "hate speech." Facebook is beholden to every government it has a presence in. Lots of examples of how the European system works here: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8189/social-media-censorship https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8189/social-media-censors... I'm not even going to go into eastern Europe's epidemic of murdered journalists and other basic human rights issues that Europe can't or won't fix.
- antirez 10y ago
  I totally agree that governments are at least as bad, what I think here is the ability of the average people to be less sensible and more open to the amount of subjects that can be talked / posted / ... About governments, I see US much more able to avoid succumbing to attempts to limit Internet freedom and so forth. However even if the American elite is doing great, Facebook will tend to employ censorship to make happy the average person, so there is the risk of restrictive policies that are not needed or even counter-productive for the rest of the world.
- alva 10y ago
  100% agree with you regarding "hate speech", but I can't help but feel the US public have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to libel laws. Seems to be a current issue as Trump brought it up recently. As far as I understand libel laws in the UK are as follows. Person A makes mass public claim X about person B. Person B suffers financially or in reputation by claim X. If claim X is proven to not be true, alongside some evidence that A knew this, then B is entitled to compensation and a full retraction by A. That seems super fair to me and a great idea for other Governments.
  - smsm42 10y ago
    > That seems super fair Wait until you make a political commentary and spend next 5 years in courts because the person you criticized has a lot of money to spend on lawyers. You may be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt you criticism is true, or maybe not (just read any political argument and see how much of political criticism is provable by law? Is "Trump unfit to be president" provable or "Hillary is corrupt" provable in court? Would you want to risk your life savings and economical well-being of your family on it?) Now add to it that the court is also held in the country you've never been to, don't know the laws of and don't have the money do go there. How fair is that now? In fact, the issue of libel tourism got so bad that both UK and US made specific laws to target it. [1] And that's what the UN HRC has to say about it[2]: The Committee is concerned that the State party's practical application of the law of libel has served to discourage critical media reporting on matters of serious public interest, adversely affecting the ability of scholars and journalists to publish their work, including through the phenomenon known as "libel tourism." The advent of the internet and the international distribution of foreign media also create the danger that a State party's unduly restrictive libel law will affect freedom of expression worldwide on matters of valid public interest. If the UN says you have problem with freedom of speech, you do have problem with freedom of speech. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism#Laws_addressing_libel_tourism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism#Laws_addressing_... [2] http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/hrcommittee/ireland2008.html http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/hrcommittee/ireland2008.html
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
smsm42 10y ago
> I believe that the old Europe has very interesting things to say Like UK libel laws that are so nice that they created a phenomenon of "libel tourism" where people come into UK to sue others for libel because in other places they'd be laughed out of court? Or like courts forcing search engines remove pages because some person feels uneasy with true public information about them being out there? Or criminal penalties for "insulting a public servant" in France, bans on "hate speech" according to day-to-day political considerations in many countries and over EU in general [1], etc. Note that unlike Facebook, which is private company and can only manage its content, these laws would apply to every platform in EU. Yes, it'd be terrible if something like First Amendment would have an effect in Europe too. That smacks of freedom of speech or something awful like that! [1] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1873_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1873_en.htm
- BlackFly 10y ago
  Very solid whataboutism. Yes, Europe is not perfect and has some serious problems with freedom. That being said, the first amendment (jurisprudence) in the USA suffers from two serious flaws not necessarily suffered by freedom of expression legislation in other countries: 1. The first amendment has the egregious exception for obscenity with an absurdly subjective community standards test. 2. The first amendment is only applicable to the government as an actor. Because of the 2nd defect, Americans are all too willing to refuse to label censorship by parties that are not the government as censorship. Book burning is still book burning. Removal of napalm girl is censorship; the whole reason for that censorship is this one defect in the first amendment (jurisprudence) that the USA refuses to acknowledge. The irony being that the exception isn't even in the first amendment, it was created by the courts because "obscenity" was supposedly always understood as not being actual speech.
  - bostonpete 10y ago
    > The first amendment is only applicable to the government as an actor. I don't consider this a flaw. I wouldn't want government intervening in private websites (like this one) attempts to moderate discussion on the grounds of first amendment rights.

by antirez 10y ago

dmix 10y ago

France in the 18-19th century had many smart people who spoke against this type of stuff (everyone loves to quote Voltaire). But modern France has become the absolute counter-point for wishing to have less censorship and centralized social control. So this problem isn't limited to the United States. This is an issue in all modern liberal societies. Big government and centralized control has exploded over the last century, nation-states have become bigger than they've been in any time in history. The first half of the book "Fourth Revolution" has a really great history of how the state has massively grown, largely starting after WW2, to the point it becomes embedded in every parts of our lives (whether it's explicit or not). This type of thing always happens through small slivers and cuts, largely promoted via community complaints calling for government to solve issues - much like what Facebook has experienced. This is the side-effect of a society where the hair-trigger response to every small problem is to look to government to solve it - not just economic but social issues too. Instead of resolving them internally or via community, or just moving on because the solution is sometimes worse than the problem (see: terrorism). [1] https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Revolution-Global-Reinvent-State/dp/0143127608/ https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Revolution-Global-Reinvent-Sta...

ubernostrum 10y ago
Admittedly I have not read this book you recommend. However, my experience with such arguments is that they never persuade me "big government" is suddenly intruding into places it didn't previously, since the truth is more often that government was suddenly being deployed in support of people it was traditionally deployed against, and against people it was traditionally deployed in support of.
- dmix 10y ago
  Even if the government power is smaller than previous authoritarian states/monarchies, the simple fact is that the scope and scale of government has massively grown. We're fortunate to be in the only(?) major industry that isn't heavily regulated. Where you can build a sizable business without having to wrangle with regulations at every step (outside of HR and financial regulations). The best example in the book is how interior designers need a required 4 yr bachelor diploma, pass a difficult test, and buy a licence, in order to choose what furniture and paint colors will look best in a persons living in Florida. Similar regulations exist for cutting/styling hair. Or cutting nails professionally. Or look at the 'Burkini' ban happening in France right now. This wasn't some partisan blanket criticism of 'the welfare state' that US republicans take while simultaneously supporting the 100 different agencies and offices that are now involved in fighting terrorism. It was a serious analysis of how far we've come from being able to solve issues society faces without creating another administrative blackhole. 21 million people are working for the US government alone. That's 16% of employed people and not counting the massive amount of private industry that works directly off of gov contracts (particularily significant in the defense industry). So it's probably closer to ~20%. More than all Fortune 500 companies combined. How many people do you think worked for the crown in France/England in the 1800s?
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    The best example in the book is how interior designers need a required 4 yr bachelor diploma, pass a difficult test, and buy a licence, in order to choose what furniture and paint colors will look best in a persons living in Florida. Similar regulations exist for cutting/styling hair. Or cutting nails professionally. So, would you like to compare to how long an apprenticeship you'd have to serve, or what hoops you'd have to jump through and payments you'd have to make, to get into a skilled-trade guild in the golden old days? Or look at the 'Burkini' ban happening in France right now. Sumptuary laws and other regulations on clothing are millennia old. 21 million people are working for the US government alone. That's 16% of employed people and not counting the massive amount of private industry that works directly off of gov contracts (particularily significant in the defense industry). So it's probably closer to ~20%. More than all Fortune 500 companies combined. In a feudal society 100% of people worked for either the government or the church. 16% is a nice downsize from that.
hx87 10y ago
The state is ubiquitous now, but it also administers with a much lighter hand than it used to--even relatively liberal states in the past regulated public and private morality rather heavily, and even the most authoritarian states rarely police as harshly as the average 19th century government does.
nvarsj 10y ago
It's absurd to think governments grew because of "community complaints". The rise of nation states happened precisely to benefit the megacorps that now exist - to support massive, centrally planned economies and subsidize megacorps that now rule the planet. The gov (or rather, the public, us) have every right to demand certain basic guarantees from these companies that benefit so much from public investment.
- dmix 10y ago
  So megacorps regulation = always bad, community-backed regulation = always good? I agree with you that large companies can have a significant influence of policy and legislation. And yes they definately contributed to the problem. But considering the standard approach to everything (including your own comment here) is that 'more centralized control is the solution' it's not surprising that corporations are playing the exact same game to their advantage. I'm questioning the value of using that approach as a default solution. With the exception of it being the very last resort rather than the go-to solution to every problem. Because the state is good at a few things but it many cases it's heavy handed, expensive, time consuming, and very slow to adapt to change. Regulation, policy, and agencies should only be used carefully and there should be a culture of constantly re-evaluating the necessity of programs/agencies/policies - which doesn't seem to happen. Once it's set up it stays, scope and legislation only grows in size, government employees are incredibly hard to fire, etc, etc, and that's how a nation-state grows into a massive unwieldly beast. It's a complicated problem no doubt with many sources. But the status quo of the modern nation-state is very dysfunctional. It's sad that people so passionitely defend it blindly on ideological grounds. Questioning the value of government as the solution to all things brings out people who defend it like a religion. Which is how it ends up functioning in places where it often doesn't belong or worse ends up contributing to societal problems. This same ideology is the reason why Facebook gets blamed every time there is something posted that makes people uncomfortable. Instead of the person who posts the content.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  That's an exceptionally revisionist history.

John23832 10y ago

I think people often forget the other side of the coin. These companies "cross-pollenate" American morality across the world because they are American companies. Based in America. On American soil. Responsible to America's laws. To ask that these companies not spread American morality (or French morality if they were based in France, or German etc.) is to ask that they not be made to operate under the laws of the country that they're based in. That they hold some status above countries. And one could argue that that is even more dangerous than the situation we have now.

saint_fiasco 10y ago
Morality is not the same as legality.
- John23832 10y ago
  Legality is group morality codified.
  - nzjrs 10y ago
    Interesting definition. Does it have a basis in fact? It also operates with some weird time lags.
    - John23832 10y ago
      That's the logical definition that I've always known. From MW: (1) : a binding custom or practice of a community : a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority (2) : the whole body of such customs, practices, or rules (3) Offhand, I can't think of one group of people who adhere to customs, practice or rules, that they think are immoral. > It also operates with some weird time lags. I'm not sure what you mean by this.
      - nzjrs 10y ago
        > I'm not sure what you mean > by this. That things often continue to be legal (or illegal) well after the consensus on their morality has shifted. And that is to completely put aside those laws that were patently immoral

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

> I believe that the old Europe has very interesting things to say If anything European countries are much more deeply invested into censorship than the US. The UK's incredibly short sighted libel laws for example. Or the EU's ridiculous "hate speech" laws. I find it amusing you decry US political correctness in favor or Europe's much more tough legislation. Also the EU censors items on Facebook all the time, usually in regards to protecting minorities from "hate speech." Facebook is beholden to every government it has a presence in. Lots of examples of how the European system works here: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8189/social-media-censorship https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8189/social-media-censors... I'm not even going to go into eastern Europe's epidemic of murdered journalists and other basic human rights issues that Europe can't or won't fix.

antirez 10y ago
I totally agree that governments are at least as bad, what I think here is the ability of the average people to be less sensible and more open to the amount of subjects that can be talked / posted / ... About governments, I see US much more able to avoid succumbing to attempts to limit Internet freedom and so forth. However even if the American elite is doing great, Facebook will tend to employ censorship to make happy the average person, so there is the risk of restrictive policies that are not needed or even counter-productive for the rest of the world.
alva 10y ago
100% agree with you regarding "hate speech", but I can't help but feel the US public have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to libel laws. Seems to be a current issue as Trump brought it up recently. As far as I understand libel laws in the UK are as follows. Person A makes mass public claim X about person B. Person B suffers financially or in reputation by claim X. If claim X is proven to not be true, alongside some evidence that A knew this, then B is entitled to compensation and a full retraction by A. That seems super fair to me and a great idea for other Governments.
- smsm42 10y ago
  > That seems super fair Wait until you make a political commentary and spend next 5 years in courts because the person you criticized has a lot of money to spend on lawyers. You may be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt you criticism is true, or maybe not (just read any political argument and see how much of political criticism is provable by law? Is "Trump unfit to be president" provable or "Hillary is corrupt" provable in court? Would you want to risk your life savings and economical well-being of your family on it?) Now add to it that the court is also held in the country you've never been to, don't know the laws of and don't have the money do go there. How fair is that now? In fact, the issue of libel tourism got so bad that both UK and US made specific laws to target it. [1] And that's what the UN HRC has to say about it[2]: The Committee is concerned that the State party's practical application of the law of libel has served to discourage critical media reporting on matters of serious public interest, adversely affecting the ability of scholars and journalists to publish their work, including through the phenomenon known as "libel tourism." The advent of the internet and the international distribution of foreign media also create the danger that a State party's unduly restrictive libel law will affect freedom of expression worldwide on matters of valid public interest. If the UN says you have problem with freedom of speech, you do have problem with freedom of speech. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism#Laws_addressing_libel_tourism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism#Laws_addressing_... [2] http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/hrcommittee/ireland2008.html http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/hrcommittee/ireland2008.html

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

smsm42 10y ago

> I believe that the old Europe has very interesting things to say Like UK libel laws that are so nice that they created a phenomenon of "libel tourism" where people come into UK to sue others for libel because in other places they'd be laughed out of court? Or like courts forcing search engines remove pages because some person feels uneasy with true public information about them being out there? Or criminal penalties for "insulting a public servant" in France, bans on "hate speech" according to day-to-day political considerations in many countries and over EU in general [1], etc. Note that unlike Facebook, which is private company and can only manage its content, these laws would apply to every platform in EU. Yes, it'd be terrible if something like First Amendment would have an effect in Europe too. That smacks of freedom of speech or something awful like that! [1] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1873_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1873_en.htm

BlackFly 10y ago
Very solid whataboutism. Yes, Europe is not perfect and has some serious problems with freedom. That being said, the first amendment (jurisprudence) in the USA suffers from two serious flaws not necessarily suffered by freedom of expression legislation in other countries: 1. The first amendment has the egregious exception for obscenity with an absurdly subjective community standards test. 2. The first amendment is only applicable to the government as an actor. Because of the 2nd defect, Americans are all too willing to refuse to label censorship by parties that are not the government as censorship. Book burning is still book burning. Removal of napalm girl is censorship; the whole reason for that censorship is this one defect in the first amendment (jurisprudence) that the USA refuses to acknowledge. The irony being that the exception isn't even in the first amendment, it was created by the courts because "obscenity" was supposedly always understood as not being actual speech.
- bostonpete 10y ago
  > The first amendment is only applicable to the government as an actor. I don't consider this a flaw. I wouldn't want government intervening in private websites (like this one) attempts to moderate discussion on the grounds of first amendment rights.