7 ms·

Wow, are we know so scared of mob mentality that we don't condemn brazen free speech interference? I know social media platforms can create mobs, but since whe

by jopsen 8y ago

Wow, are we know so scared of mob mentality that we don't condemn brazen free speech interference? I know social media platforms can create mobs, but since when are we all scared that: > That digital rights and press freedom advocates might now sympathize, if not agree, with Sri Lanka’s action. This seems questionable to me, and problematic for people trying to find each other.

danharaj 8y ago
"I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death (of other people) your right to say it."
- manfredo 8y ago
  There's a reason why we set the bar for prioritizing safety over speech at credible, immediate threat rather than an abstract threat. Effectively every movement or political group has committed acts of violence. Whether its Islamists blowing up marathons or shooting up nightclubs, or right wingers shooting up churches and mosques, or liberals trying to assassinate congressmen at a baseball game. If you look hard enough you can point to deaths or criminality caused by most political speech, and use that as justification for bans.
  - weaksauce 8y ago
    > liberals trying to assasinate congressmen at a baseball game. One deranged man not liberals in general. There have been numerous right wingers shooting up churches and mosques and planned parenthood buildings.
    - meowface 8y ago
      You know full well that their post was discussing a more abstract point. Violent extremists exist among all ideologies and groups, and always will.
      - weaksauce 8y ago
        it just is way out of place compared to the frequency of the other acts of terrorism to the point of being silly to include. it's how people "both sides" things and it's dangerous to the focus of where we should be worrying.
        pmorici 8y ago
        I think his point stands broadly regardless of the specific example you take issue with. The heyday of radical left wing terrorism in the US was the 60's and 70's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_terrorism
        DuskStar 8y ago
        > it's how people "both sides" things and it's dangerous to the focus of where we should be worrying. I'd say it's the people going "But not MY side!" that we really need to be worrying about here.
        siosonel 8y ago
        I agree both or all sides engage in self-serving agenda and bad policies. Nobody is perfect. But it is hard not to see that extreme ideology drives the agenda of one or a few sides, while most sides are willing to compromise with reasonable, evidence-based solutions that the ideologists reject outright. It is irresponsible to say in that case that both sides are being unreasonable - that false equivalence promotes an unhealthy stalemate and gives cover to those who blindly delay progress.
        anigbrowl 8y ago
        Even when available date supports such a claim?
        DuskStar 8y ago
        Well, the example here was "my side only does this a little, so Not MY Side!"... In other words, the data did not support such a claim.
    - shoes_for_thee 8y ago
      Please see SDS and the Weather Underground, in that case.
      - weaksauce 8y ago
        perfect. thanks for proving my point. if all you have are some radicals from the 60s and 70s you can't say that liberals are an issue nowadays on the scale that is radical right wing terrorism.
        braythwayt 8y ago
        Speaking as someone old enough to remember the Weather Underground, I would not conflate “anti-authoritarianism” with “Liberalism.” Liberalism in today’s society is stuff like taxing people to pay for health care, or living wages, or supporting the right of workers to unionize. The Weathermen’s stated political goal was to overthrow U.S. imperialism. That is not something I would lump in the same basket as liberalism. So I would say that this isn’t an example of liberal thinking at all, whether from the 60s or any other decade. Just because it isn’t “conservative” doesn’t make it liberal, and trying to lump everyone into a false dichotomy is rather Fox News, in my opinion.
        mirimir 8y ago
        I used to love the "US out of North America NOW!" graffiti. But maybe that was AIM, not Weather Underground.
lambdasquirrel 8y ago
I'm sure this isn't going to be a popular opinion here, but for most of the people in the world, "free speech" isn't as important as the safety of their loved ones. If most people in the world wanted "democracy" as it is in the United States, they would have chosen it. Or as the Chinese put it, people are much less likely to choose "freedom" if you instead frame it as a responsibility. Are we speaking responsibly?
- everdev 8y ago
  > If most people in the world wanted "democracy" as it is in the United States, they would have chosen it. Taking power from a non-democratic leadership is incredibly difficult, risky and almost always violent. And non-democratic leadership very rarely self-democratize. Unfortunately, we don't know if much of the world wants democracy as it's aggressively stamped out in many places and illegal to pursue it.
  - lambdasquirrel 8y ago
    Democracy happened in South Korea and Taiwan, and across all of Western Europe over the course of the 19th century. There are also places that have implemented democratic systems, but the people hardly seem to have benefited. Do you then blame the people for not contributing more to their democracy? While I agree with you, that it’s difficult, sometimes bloody, and elites almost never give up power voluntarily (isn’t that true even in democracies though?), one can see that it can be done. Even in “speech,” there is a matter of quality — quality that has been taken for granted in much of the “free” world. It is this quality that is the responsibility of speech. Now, on topic, another comment on this thread points out quite well that some of our social media platforms are not designed for quality. They were designed to be viral.
    - spinach 8y ago
      Democracy didn't just happen in Korea though, the people didn't choose it, it was done in part with America's interference/help after the end of the war. I agree that democracy isn't going to work everywhere in the world but I don't think it has to do with what people want (whatever that means, the majority?, since everyone has a different opinion...). I agree with you on the short-comings of social media though, with their algorithms designed to push up the things that make people out-raged (those that go viral the fastest) and enable people to deepen and solidify their beliefs with very narrow curated feeds. These have led to hate crimes all over the world. There is definitely a dangerous element to them that people who harp on about 'free-speech' seem to want to sneer at.
mikeash 8y ago
I’m a firm believer in free speech and think this is a bad move. However, there’s a vast difference between targeted censorship of forbidden topics and a temporary blanket ban on certain forms of communication. This isn’t good, but it’s pretty mild. Temporary limits on fundamental freedoms during an emergency are pretty common, even in the good old USA.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  It's not that mild. Still an attempt to stop information government doesn't like from spreading. Still targeted, more broadly, but targeted. Still requires internet censorship infrastructure to even be able to order ISPs to block websites and power, so much power to get there, pretty much dictatorship level power. China, the anti freedom villain, does this kind of thing regularly. I get why people are making excuses though. Pretty much no political systems in the world can actually exist with truly free speech, because they all rely on controlling free speech to function. And now that actual free speech got out of their control it threatens them and makes them push against it, promoting restrictions to free speech.
- code_sloth 8y ago
  Free speech is about the right to __articulate__ opinions and ideas. To articulate ideas and opinions, you have to think and formulate your thoughts. What Facebook enables and optimizes for can hardly be called free speech. Articulation is not encouraged, merely the spreading of thoughts (both good and bad). Engagement has been optimized for advertising purposes. It led to banal agreement in the form of likes and reshares. There is hardly any discourse, people get silo-ed in echo chambers, and the extreme ends of the spectrum get magnified. Confirmation bias rules, and bad ideas aren't defeated by good ideas because they hardly come into contact. So no, Facebook isn't enabling free speech, as much as they'd like to claim they are. At best they are a communication tool, nothing more.
  - tdhoot 8y ago
    Free speech is not only about articulation. It's also about the ability to share, disseminate, and influence others.
screye 8y ago
A big part of why social media websites/apps (FB and WhatsApp) are banned is because they are the central means of communication and agglomeration. Forcing people to slow down in their ability to react to a massive amount of information/emotion, by letting them sit on for a while may not be a bad idea. All too often a flurry of incomplete information leads only to a large degree of noise that organically sorts itself out inside of a couple of days.
- DenseComet 8y ago
  See: 9/11 Trading Halt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_the_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_the_Septem... Giving people time to think and force them to slow down is a proven method to prevent all out chaos.
chriselles 8y ago
Agreed that a social media ban makes contacting people more difficult, but not impossible(voice,txt,email,forums). Recent amplification of fake news and violence(30+ deaths attributed) on social media in India probably plays a big factor, as does last year’s anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka.
mirimir 8y ago
I don't know about "we", but the Sri Lankan government clearly are. I certainly sympathize. What would happen if a US president were assassinated now? Several cities burned after Martin Luther King was killed. Lots of LA burned after officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted. And now, with social media? It'd be total chaos.
- jopsen 8y ago
  Not really, social media was there during many of the BLM demonstrations. People have become less violent over the years and with social media responsible organizers have a better shot at preventing violence.
wisty 8y ago
I'm very pro free speech, but having the ability to discuss ideas on a public platform being temporarily curtailed is only worrying if it's overused.
- johnisgood 8y ago
  Does it mean that you are OK with censorship for an arbitrary length of time, as long as it does not reach whatever your definition of "overused" is? It seems like you are OK with censorship as long as it is done at the right time, with the right length. Right being arbitrary and whatever you personally prefer, i.e. it is censorship in my favor, therefore it is good. Please correct me if I am wrong, but to me it reads as: "as long as it is in my favor".
ww520 8y ago
I might be wrong but I believe U.S. is the only country has the right to free speech enshrined in the laws. Most countries, including European's, don't have free speech. I'm a firm believer in free speech but it's hard to talk to other countries about it when no one else values it as much as us.
- Tomte 8y ago
  Most European countries (would have said "all", but am not sure how to categorize the Vatican and Belorussia) have Free Speech. Just not the extremist version that America favors. Germany tempers it with the legal doctrine of "practical concordance", where a global maximum over all Basic Rights is sought, not just a local maximum for Free Speech, and all other rights lose.
- jopsen 8y ago
  The Danish constitution (or foundational law) has it. It's also in the Human Rights convention. In Europe a few counties has minor limitations on a few sensitive subjects. Don't confuse that for censorship, or free speech restrictions.
  - dingo_bat 8y ago
    > In Europe a few counties has minor limitations on a few sensitive subjects. Yeah, that's why they don't have free speech.
  - johnisgood 8y ago
    > Don't confuse that for censorship, or free speech restrictions. Why do not those "minor" limitations fall under censorship or free speech restriction?
- Throwway32 8y ago
  I’ve made this point before: the US government has killed at least one citizen in a drone strike because he was making terrorist propaganda. Free speech, even within the loose limits set in US law is not as clearly guaranteed as you may believe it to be.
- 8y ago
arc19 8y ago
The most commonly used social platform is whatsapp in Sri Lanka, they have only blocked media, It is possible to exchange messages but not download photos or videos without a VPN.
hliyan 8y ago
> This seems questionable to me, and problematic for people trying to find each other. People here are finding each other through traditional point-to-point comms -- SMS and phone calls. The social media blackout probably saved lives today and prevented a lot of retaliatory bloodshed.
biql 8y ago
This seems more like a failure of those platforms to be honest. If they could actually moderate the content and not allow incitement, which is illegal in some jurisdictions, I don't think there would be any problems. After all, they do moderate it to some extent since there is no CP, drug markets, etc.

by jopsen 8y ago

danharaj 8y ago

"I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death (of other people) your right to say it."

manfredo 8y ago
There's a reason why we set the bar for prioritizing safety over speech at credible, immediate threat rather than an abstract threat. Effectively every movement or political group has committed acts of violence. Whether its Islamists blowing up marathons or shooting up nightclubs, or right wingers shooting up churches and mosques, or liberals trying to assassinate congressmen at a baseball game. If you look hard enough you can point to deaths or criminality caused by most political speech, and use that as justification for bans.
- weaksauce 8y ago
  > liberals trying to assasinate congressmen at a baseball game. One deranged man not liberals in general. There have been numerous right wingers shooting up churches and mosques and planned parenthood buildings.
  - meowface 8y ago
    You know full well that their post was discussing a more abstract point. Violent extremists exist among all ideologies and groups, and always will.
    - weaksauce 8y ago
      it just is way out of place compared to the frequency of the other acts of terrorism to the point of being silly to include. it's how people "both sides" things and it's dangerous to the focus of where we should be worrying.
      - pmorici 8y ago
        I think his point stands broadly regardless of the specific example you take issue with. The heyday of radical left wing terrorism in the US was the 60's and 70's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_terrorism
      - DuskStar 8y ago
        > it's how people "both sides" things and it's dangerous to the focus of where we should be worrying. I'd say it's the people going "But not MY side!" that we really need to be worrying about here.
        siosonel 8y ago
        I agree both or all sides engage in self-serving agenda and bad policies. Nobody is perfect. But it is hard not to see that extreme ideology drives the agenda of one or a few sides, while most sides are willing to compromise with reasonable, evidence-based solutions that the ideologists reject outright. It is irresponsible to say in that case that both sides are being unreasonable - that false equivalence promotes an unhealthy stalemate and gives cover to those who blindly delay progress.
        anigbrowl 8y ago
        Even when available date supports such a claim?
        DuskStar 8y ago
        Well, the example here was "my side only does this a little, so Not MY Side!"... In other words, the data did not support such a claim.
  - shoes_for_thee 8y ago
    Please see SDS and the Weather Underground, in that case.
    - weaksauce 8y ago
      perfect. thanks for proving my point. if all you have are some radicals from the 60s and 70s you can't say that liberals are an issue nowadays on the scale that is radical right wing terrorism.
      - braythwayt 8y ago
        Speaking as someone old enough to remember the Weather Underground, I would not conflate “anti-authoritarianism” with “Liberalism.” Liberalism in today’s society is stuff like taxing people to pay for health care, or living wages, or supporting the right of workers to unionize. The Weathermen’s stated political goal was to overthrow U.S. imperialism. That is not something I would lump in the same basket as liberalism. So I would say that this isn’t an example of liberal thinking at all, whether from the 60s or any other decade. Just because it isn’t “conservative” doesn’t make it liberal, and trying to lump everyone into a false dichotomy is rather Fox News, in my opinion.
        mirimir 8y ago
        I used to love the "US out of North America NOW!" graffiti. But maybe that was AIM, not Weather Underground.

lambdasquirrel 8y ago

I'm sure this isn't going to be a popular opinion here, but for most of the people in the world, "free speech" isn't as important as the safety of their loved ones. If most people in the world wanted "democracy" as it is in the United States, they would have chosen it. Or as the Chinese put it, people are much less likely to choose "freedom" if you instead frame it as a responsibility. Are we speaking responsibly?

everdev 8y ago
> If most people in the world wanted "democracy" as it is in the United States, they would have chosen it. Taking power from a non-democratic leadership is incredibly difficult, risky and almost always violent. And non-democratic leadership very rarely self-democratize. Unfortunately, we don't know if much of the world wants democracy as it's aggressively stamped out in many places and illegal to pursue it.
- lambdasquirrel 8y ago
  Democracy happened in South Korea and Taiwan, and across all of Western Europe over the course of the 19th century. There are also places that have implemented democratic systems, but the people hardly seem to have benefited. Do you then blame the people for not contributing more to their democracy? While I agree with you, that it’s difficult, sometimes bloody, and elites almost never give up power voluntarily (isn’t that true even in democracies though?), one can see that it can be done. Even in “speech,” there is a matter of quality — quality that has been taken for granted in much of the “free” world. It is this quality that is the responsibility of speech. Now, on topic, another comment on this thread points out quite well that some of our social media platforms are not designed for quality. They were designed to be viral.
  - spinach 8y ago
    Democracy didn't just happen in Korea though, the people didn't choose it, it was done in part with America's interference/help after the end of the war. I agree that democracy isn't going to work everywhere in the world but I don't think it has to do with what people want (whatever that means, the majority?, since everyone has a different opinion...). I agree with you on the short-comings of social media though, with their algorithms designed to push up the things that make people out-raged (those that go viral the fastest) and enable people to deepen and solidify their beliefs with very narrow curated feeds. These have led to hate crimes all over the world. There is definitely a dangerous element to them that people who harp on about 'free-speech' seem to want to sneer at.

mikeash 8y ago

I’m a firm believer in free speech and think this is a bad move. However, there’s a vast difference between targeted censorship of forbidden topics and a temporary blanket ban on certain forms of communication. This isn’t good, but it’s pretty mild. Temporary limits on fundamental freedoms during an emergency are pretty common, even in the good old USA.

zzzcpan 8y ago
It's not that mild. Still an attempt to stop information government doesn't like from spreading. Still targeted, more broadly, but targeted. Still requires internet censorship infrastructure to even be able to order ISPs to block websites and power, so much power to get there, pretty much dictatorship level power. China, the anti freedom villain, does this kind of thing regularly. I get why people are making excuses though. Pretty much no political systems in the world can actually exist with truly free speech, because they all rely on controlling free speech to function. And now that actual free speech got out of their control it threatens them and makes them push against it, promoting restrictions to free speech.
code_sloth 8y ago
Free speech is about the right to __articulate__ opinions and ideas. To articulate ideas and opinions, you have to think and formulate your thoughts. What Facebook enables and optimizes for can hardly be called free speech. Articulation is not encouraged, merely the spreading of thoughts (both good and bad). Engagement has been optimized for advertising purposes. It led to banal agreement in the form of likes and reshares. There is hardly any discourse, people get silo-ed in echo chambers, and the extreme ends of the spectrum get magnified. Confirmation bias rules, and bad ideas aren't defeated by good ideas because they hardly come into contact. So no, Facebook isn't enabling free speech, as much as they'd like to claim they are. At best they are a communication tool, nothing more.
- tdhoot 8y ago
  Free speech is not only about articulation. It's also about the ability to share, disseminate, and influence others.

screye 8y ago

A big part of why social media websites/apps (FB and WhatsApp) are banned is because they are the central means of communication and agglomeration. Forcing people to slow down in their ability to react to a massive amount of information/emotion, by letting them sit on for a while may not be a bad idea. All too often a flurry of incomplete information leads only to a large degree of noise that organically sorts itself out inside of a couple of days.

DenseComet 8y ago
See: 9/11 Trading Halt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_the_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_the_Septem... Giving people time to think and force them to slow down is a proven method to prevent all out chaos.

chriselles 8y ago

Agreed that a social media ban makes contacting people more difficult, but not impossible(voice,txt,email,forums). Recent amplification of fake news and violence(30+ deaths attributed) on social media in India probably plays a big factor, as does last year’s anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka.

mirimir 8y ago

I don't know about "we", but the Sri Lankan government clearly are. I certainly sympathize. What would happen if a US president were assassinated now? Several cities burned after Martin Luther King was killed. Lots of LA burned after officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted. And now, with social media? It'd be total chaos.

jopsen 8y ago
Not really, social media was there during many of the BLM demonstrations. People have become less violent over the years and with social media responsible organizers have a better shot at preventing violence.

wisty 8y ago

I'm very pro free speech, but having the ability to discuss ideas on a public platform being temporarily curtailed is only worrying if it's overused.

johnisgood 8y ago
Does it mean that you are OK with censorship for an arbitrary length of time, as long as it does not reach whatever your definition of "overused" is? It seems like you are OK with censorship as long as it is done at the right time, with the right length. Right being arbitrary and whatever you personally prefer, i.e. it is censorship in my favor, therefore it is good. Please correct me if I am wrong, but to me it reads as: "as long as it is in my favor".

ww520 8y ago

I might be wrong but I believe U.S. is the only country has the right to free speech enshrined in the laws. Most countries, including European's, don't have free speech. I'm a firm believer in free speech but it's hard to talk to other countries about it when no one else values it as much as us.

Tomte 8y ago
Most European countries (would have said "all", but am not sure how to categorize the Vatican and Belorussia) have Free Speech. Just not the extremist version that America favors. Germany tempers it with the legal doctrine of "practical concordance", where a global maximum over all Basic Rights is sought, not just a local maximum for Free Speech, and all other rights lose.
jopsen 8y ago
The Danish constitution (or foundational law) has it. It's also in the Human Rights convention. In Europe a few counties has minor limitations on a few sensitive subjects. Don't confuse that for censorship, or free speech restrictions.
- dingo_bat 8y ago
  > In Europe a few counties has minor limitations on a few sensitive subjects. Yeah, that's why they don't have free speech.
- johnisgood 8y ago
  > Don't confuse that for censorship, or free speech restrictions. Why do not those "minor" limitations fall under censorship or free speech restriction?
Throwway32 8y ago
I’ve made this point before: the US government has killed at least one citizen in a drone strike because he was making terrorist propaganda. Free speech, even within the loose limits set in US law is not as clearly guaranteed as you may believe it to be.
8y ago

arc19 8y ago

The most commonly used social platform is whatsapp in Sri Lanka, they have only blocked media, It is possible to exchange messages but not download photos or videos without a VPN.

hliyan 8y ago

> This seems questionable to me, and problematic for people trying to find each other. People here are finding each other through traditional point-to-point comms -- SMS and phone calls. The social media blackout probably saved lives today and prevented a lot of retaliatory bloodshed.

biql 8y ago

This seems more like a failure of those platforms to be honest. If they could actually moderate the content and not allow incitement, which is illegal in some jurisdictions, I don't think there would be any problems. After all, they do moderate it to some extent since there is no CP, drug markets, etc.