7 ms·

The really scary part of that article is the screenshot of Weibo with every message censored automatically with "content is illegal". If you think this sort of

by mabbo 9y ago

The really scary part of that article is the screenshot of Weibo with every message censored automatically with "content is illegal". If you think this sort of thing could never happen in the west, I think you're underestimating how quickly it could happen. The constitutions and bills of rights of any country are not laws of nature that can't be broken- they're words on paper that governments or populist movements can easily ignore. Consider any politician you disagree with deeply and ask yourself: if they could ban dissent from their views, wouldn't they?

maeln 9y ago
It is already happening. In France some website are already censored and send you to a website of the Interior affairs Minister. Some are also "shadow-banned" (the default DNS of the ISP return nothing), like the pirate bay (but I think it depends on your ISP).
- arnaud12 9y ago
  Are you seriously comparing freedom of speech in France and China?
  - FrozenTuna 9y ago
    Is there something seriously wrong with that? The whole argument people here are trying to make is how quickly freedom of speech can erode. In that context, it is absolutely apples to apples when you compare freedom of speech in US, France, Germany, China, wherever.
    - arnaud12 9y ago
      As a French person, the American view of "everything else than absolute free speech is not free speech" annoys me. Our view on that subject is different and I don't feel like living in China.
      - liberte82 9y ago
        Not to mention that the American view of free speech also is not absolute. They just define theirs as the "most free". It's just hypocrisy.
      - maeln 9y ago
        I am also French and I was not comparing France and China. I was just presenting fact: In France (and in other European country as well), we also censor content. Now, obviously France and US have a different idea of what is free-speech and both view have advantages and disadvantages, I am not going to argue about this. But, at least for speech, we know what is allowed and what is not allowed to be said. But when in come to internet censorship, the minister of interior affair is almost a unregulated black-box. As far as I remember, their was still the control of a judge , but their was no obligation to publicly have a list of banned website and the reason for their ban. Plus, all the government have been weakening the frontier between the executive and the juridical system for decades now, so the independence of judges regarding theses issues as been really weakened. If that doesn't scare you enough, you can read some articles by Yve Sintomaire[0] which explain why France is one of the European country with the least defense against a derive to authoritarianism. [0] http://civic-forum.eu/espace-public/yves-sintomer-la-france-peut-evoluer-vers-un-regime-autoritaire http://civic-forum.eu/espace-public/yves-sintomer-la-france-...
- BrandoElFollito 9y ago
  Would you have examples of the first case?
netsharc 9y ago
Try sending a piratebay URL on Facebook Messenger... nope! "Malicious website! Please calm down while we protect you!" (I paraphrase...).
- 0xfeba 9y ago
  Well, they aren't wrong. I never go to TPB without NoScript on.
yoz-y 9y ago
One advantage we have here is that the government is separated enough from the people who have actual executive power to ban content. A sudden ban is quite impossible but we should probably be beware of being a slowly cooked frog.
- nine_k 9y ago
  We could start with entirely well-intentioned self-censorship, e.g. with banning the word "gun" from shopping search :-\
  - 0xfeba 9y ago
    Or ban the gun emoji: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/02/apple-replaces-gun-emoji-water-pistol-revolver-violence-debate https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/02/apple-rep... I jest, I realize it's not "banned".
tuxracer 9y ago
> they're words on paper that governments or populist movements can easily ignore For example, China's constitution also contains "Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration." However various words and phrases to even mention Article 35 itself are banned in some chat apps, etc... in China even though the full text of the constitution is available anyways.
- JudasGoat 9y ago
  China's constitution sounds very unlike their real policy. Is there no recourse for Chinese citizen's to challenge unconstitutional actions?
  - barkingcat 9y ago
    You must be mistaken. China's Constitution matches exactly with daily life in China. Of course there's a way to challenge unconstitutional actions, through the Communist Party member dispute process where you can escalate to each level of political officers in the township you live in. If you go high enough, you might get personal attention from the regional or even provincial governors, who also have to make sure they have enough food, water, shelter, jobs, and prisons to fit the population of their jurisdiction.
    - dTal 9y ago
      I do not understand this comment. Is it sarcasm? Or do you use some unusually restrictive definitions of "freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration"? China has literally just banned the word 'disagree'. https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/02/27/china-drowns-critics-lifetime-xi-jinping-presidency-disagree-among-words-censored-online/ https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/02/27/china-drowns-critics-l...
      - davidgay 9y ago
        It's sarcasm. Note the last element in the list.
jernfrost 9y ago
I see Trump fans frequently utter that they like to shut up mainstream media. In their view anybody who is lying or criticizing their great leader doesn't deserve free speech.
weberc2 9y ago
The reason constitutions are relatively stable in the west is that people take them seriously and expect violations to be punished. You're more likely to violate the constitution if you think the people won't demand recourse. The constitutional tradition is really the more significant factor. Sadly, ours seems to be weakening. > Consider any politician you disagree with deeply and ask yourself: if they could ban dissent from their views, wouldn't they? I'm less concerned about politicians in the US and more about grassroots censorship from the political fringes.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Consider any politician you disagree with deeply and ask yourself: if they could ban dissent from their views, wouldn't they? Anyone ambitious and competent enough to gain power would. That is the wisdom of the Constitution: balancing checks on power instead of relying on the “right” leader. Based on that, I would amend your question to: would they use the law against others in power who seek to silence dissidents?
tibarun 9y ago
It already happened several times. Twitter admitted to hiding tweets with hash tags like #wikileaks; #podestaemails... So I guess the USA isn't all that different, if you dismiss the propaganda. You just don't have the universal healthcare and you get to spend 10 times more on the military and NSA snooping.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- croon 9y ago
  They admitted to banning bots, which is what they did. If someone doesn't like the fact that bots inflated propaganda that they happened to believe in doesn't make it censorship.
landryraccoon 9y ago
Isn’t the more important question, if you disagree with someone and had the power to censor them, would you do it? Unless people believe in free speech even when it benefits points of view they disagree with, its future in society is in peril. Nobody wants opinions they like to be censored, it’s much more difficult to say that the NRA or religious fundamentalists should have the same protected right of speech as everyone else.
- tannerwj 9y ago
  Exactly. We don't need protections for the speech we like. Free speech exists for the speech we don't like.
- liberte82 9y ago
  Democracy requires shared values. It's what allows us to disagree in a civil manner. Once values become divergent enough, democracy is no longer really possible because accepting the outcome of losing becomes intolerable.
Overtonwindow 9y ago
Absolutely. As a lobbyist I encounter this issue all the time. Unfortunately it's both parties, albeit one more so than the other. Still, issue exists in both parties which is scary.
tarken 9y ago
consider that the internet is the new imperialism of the west. people are so quick to wag the finger at china but no one stops to think that they are looking iut for themselves. Companies like google and facebook promote western values and they do it subversively: whats the old Billy G quote? Integrate, assimilate, dominate, elimate or some such? this article is just another western propaganda piece trying to paint China as this overbearing big brother entity (which I will admit is a very compelling narrative to western individualists).

by mabbo 9y ago

maeln 9y ago

It is already happening. In France some website are already censored and send you to a website of the Interior affairs Minister. Some are also "shadow-banned" (the default DNS of the ISP return nothing), like the pirate bay (but I think it depends on your ISP).

arnaud12 9y ago
Are you seriously comparing freedom of speech in France and China?
- FrozenTuna 9y ago
  Is there something seriously wrong with that? The whole argument people here are trying to make is how quickly freedom of speech can erode. In that context, it is absolutely apples to apples when you compare freedom of speech in US, France, Germany, China, wherever.
  - arnaud12 9y ago
    As a French person, the American view of "everything else than absolute free speech is not free speech" annoys me. Our view on that subject is different and I don't feel like living in China.
    - liberte82 9y ago
      Not to mention that the American view of free speech also is not absolute. They just define theirs as the "most free". It's just hypocrisy.
    - maeln 9y ago
      I am also French and I was not comparing France and China. I was just presenting fact: In France (and in other European country as well), we also censor content. Now, obviously France and US have a different idea of what is free-speech and both view have advantages and disadvantages, I am not going to argue about this. But, at least for speech, we know what is allowed and what is not allowed to be said. But when in come to internet censorship, the minister of interior affair is almost a unregulated black-box. As far as I remember, their was still the control of a judge , but their was no obligation to publicly have a list of banned website and the reason for their ban. Plus, all the government have been weakening the frontier between the executive and the juridical system for decades now, so the independence of judges regarding theses issues as been really weakened. If that doesn't scare you enough, you can read some articles by Yve Sintomaire[0] which explain why France is one of the European country with the least defense against a derive to authoritarianism. [0] http://civic-forum.eu/espace-public/yves-sintomer-la-france-peut-evoluer-vers-un-regime-autoritaire http://civic-forum.eu/espace-public/yves-sintomer-la-france-...
BrandoElFollito 9y ago
Would you have examples of the first case?

netsharc 9y ago

Try sending a piratebay URL on Facebook Messenger... nope! "Malicious website! Please calm down while we protect you!" (I paraphrase...).

0xfeba 9y ago
Well, they aren't wrong. I never go to TPB without NoScript on.

yoz-y 9y ago

One advantage we have here is that the government is separated enough from the people who have actual executive power to ban content. A sudden ban is quite impossible but we should probably be beware of being a slowly cooked frog.

nine_k 9y ago
We could start with entirely well-intentioned self-censorship, e.g. with banning the word "gun" from shopping search :-\
- 0xfeba 9y ago
  Or ban the gun emoji: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/02/apple-replaces-gun-emoji-water-pistol-revolver-violence-debate https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/02/apple-rep... I jest, I realize it's not "banned".

tuxracer 9y ago

> they're words on paper that governments or populist movements can easily ignore For example, China's constitution also contains "Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration." However various words and phrases to even mention Article 35 itself are banned in some chat apps, etc... in China even though the full text of the constitution is available anyways.

JudasGoat 9y ago
China's constitution sounds very unlike their real policy. Is there no recourse for Chinese citizen's to challenge unconstitutional actions?
- barkingcat 9y ago
  You must be mistaken. China's Constitution matches exactly with daily life in China. Of course there's a way to challenge unconstitutional actions, through the Communist Party member dispute process where you can escalate to each level of political officers in the township you live in. If you go high enough, you might get personal attention from the regional or even provincial governors, who also have to make sure they have enough food, water, shelter, jobs, and prisons to fit the population of their jurisdiction.
  - dTal 9y ago
    I do not understand this comment. Is it sarcasm? Or do you use some unusually restrictive definitions of "freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration"? China has literally just banned the word 'disagree'. https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/02/27/china-drowns-critics-lifetime-xi-jinping-presidency-disagree-among-words-censored-online/ https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/02/27/china-drowns-critics-l...
    - davidgay 9y ago
      It's sarcasm. Note the last element in the list.

jernfrost 9y ago

I see Trump fans frequently utter that they like to shut up mainstream media. In their view anybody who is lying or criticizing their great leader doesn't deserve free speech.

weberc2 9y ago

The reason constitutions are relatively stable in the west is that people take them seriously and expect violations to be punished. You're more likely to violate the constitution if you think the people won't demand recourse. The constitutional tradition is really the more significant factor. Sadly, ours seems to be weakening. > Consider any politician you disagree with deeply and ask yourself: if they could ban dissent from their views, wouldn't they? I'm less concerned about politicians in the US and more about grassroots censorship from the political fringes.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> Consider any politician you disagree with deeply and ask yourself: if they could ban dissent from their views, wouldn't they? Anyone ambitious and competent enough to gain power would. That is the wisdom of the Constitution: balancing checks on power instead of relying on the “right” leader. Based on that, I would amend your question to: would they use the law against others in power who seek to silence dissidents?

tibarun 9y ago

It already happened several times. Twitter admitted to hiding tweets with hash tags like #wikileaks; #podestaemails... So I guess the USA isn't all that different, if you dismiss the propaganda. You just don't have the universal healthcare and you get to spend 10 times more on the military and NSA snooping.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
croon 9y ago
They admitted to banning bots, which is what they did. If someone doesn't like the fact that bots inflated propaganda that they happened to believe in doesn't make it censorship.

landryraccoon 9y ago

Isn’t the more important question, if you disagree with someone and had the power to censor them, would you do it? Unless people believe in free speech even when it benefits points of view they disagree with, its future in society is in peril. Nobody wants opinions they like to be censored, it’s much more difficult to say that the NRA or religious fundamentalists should have the same protected right of speech as everyone else.

tannerwj 9y ago
Exactly. We don't need protections for the speech we like. Free speech exists for the speech we don't like.
liberte82 9y ago
Democracy requires shared values. It's what allows us to disagree in a civil manner. Once values become divergent enough, democracy is no longer really possible because accepting the outcome of losing becomes intolerable.

Overtonwindow 9y ago

Absolutely. As a lobbyist I encounter this issue all the time. Unfortunately it's both parties, albeit one more so than the other. Still, issue exists in both parties which is scary.

tarken 9y ago

consider that the internet is the new imperialism of the west. people are so quick to wag the finger at china but no one stops to think that they are looking iut for themselves. Companies like google and facebook promote western values and they do it subversively: whats the old Billy G quote? Integrate, assimilate, dominate, elimate or some such? this article is just another western propaganda piece trying to paint China as this overbearing big brother entity (which I will admit is a very compelling narrative to western individualists).