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> 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. Th

> 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
  - alva 10y ago
    All good points and I appreciate you including [2], I had not come across it before. [1] was a good set of laws introduced to curtail some of the issues you have raised. The libel suits that I have read about tend to be "A publicly claims B is a pedophile", "B is having an affair", "B steals orphans sweets after giving them a slap" etc. In these cases, I think the libel laws are sensible however I do recognise that it can be exploited by the wealthy in an unreasonable way. I suppose we have to introduce new laws to protect against this, or rely on the wisdom of our judges.
- r_smart 10y ago

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
- alva 10y ago
  All good points and I appreciate you including [2], I had not come across it before. [1] was a good set of laws introduced to curtail some of the issues you have raised. The libel suits that I have read about tend to be "A publicly claims B is a pedophile", "B is having an affair", "B steals orphans sweets after giving them a slap" etc. In these cases, I think the libel laws are sensible however I do recognise that it can be exploited by the wealthy in an unreasonable way. I suppose we have to introduce new laws to protect against this, or rely on the wisdom of our judges.
r_smart 10y ago