6 ms·

I feel like free speech has never been under such attack. Culturally, we don't care about it, we find offensive content more offensive than censorship of offens

I feel like free speech has never been under such attack. Culturally, we don't care about it, we find offensive content more offensive than censorship of offensive content. Politically, they can censor you completely if they want to by hitting you with an NSL. EFF says that happens 60 times a day. The most hard hitting journalist in the west, Julian Assange, was just put in jail. I'm scared about the future. It's not any particular point, it's just the movement overall.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>I feel like free speech has never been under such attack. Culturally, we don't care about it, we find offensive content more offensive than censorship of offensive content. Speak for your own filter bubble. Most people in my filter bubble seem to be coming around to the fact that the way things are going they might have to "get off the porch" (metaphorically and maybe literally too in a few cases) in the coming decade or three.
youarewrongstfu 7y ago
Julian Assange is to journalism what Aaron Swartz was to civil disobedience. Nothing.
wavefunction 7y ago
I disagree with the notion that Julian Assange is a journalist. I don't find the way he goes about his activities to be commendable. I contrast his/Wikileak disclosures with the way the Snowden materials were disseminated and reported on as the the boundaries of proper and improper journalism of these subjects.
- mduerksen 7y ago
  A journalist is a person who collects, writes, or distributes news or other current information to the public. [1] Check. You can argue about whether his style is commendable or not (for codes of conduct see [2]), but that does not change the fact that he is a journalist. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard...
  - wavefunction 7y ago
    I reject your Wikipedia links as authoritative sources on what constitutes a journalist as well as your contention that he's doing anything other than dumping documents (selectively).
    - mduerksen 7y ago
      Okay, do you have a better definition? And, of course he does more than dumping documents. For example, he has to come by them (collecting as a journalist does), which is no small feat considering which kind of documents we are taking about. If you're genuinely curious, just take a look at his work [1] to see that it's absolutely not "just dumping documents". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
    - berbec 7y ago
      If "dumping documents" doesn't qualify as a journalist, should the New York Times return it's Pulitzer for the Pentagon Papers? [1] 1: https://www.pulitzer.org/article/race-publish-pentagon-papers https://www.pulitzer.org/article/race-publish-pentagon-paper... 2: https://www.nytimes.com/1972/05/02/archives/the-times-wins-a-pulitzer-for-the-pentagon-papers-the-times-wins.html https://www.nytimes.com/1972/05/02/archives/the-times-wins-a...
      - gmueckl 7y ago
        No, because they read these papers and wrote the story on them. Wikileaks just provided mostly unprocessed data dumps. Explaining the story is a very big part of a journalist's job.
        behringer 7y ago
        Source?
    - SkyBelow 7y ago
      I reject your rejection. Are you going to provide any alternatives, because if not my rejection overrides yours. I would also point out that outright rejecting something without presenting either an argument or alternative why leads up away from productive discussion.
Chazprime 7y ago
Julian Assange is a journalist? Not sure I agree with that labeling.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- sjg007 7y ago
  He most definitely is, and has been awarded by his peers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Honours_and_awards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Honours_and_awa...
- grenoire 7y ago
  Not calling Assange a journalist does a great deal of unwarranted justice to the plenty clickbait bloggers, who also happen to be labelled as journalists.
  - camel_Snake 7y ago
    You can be a shit journalist and still be a journalist. If I push a csv to a GitHub repo does that make me a journalists? I think this is the semantics posters are trying to highlight. A publisher, maybe. But I'm squarely in the 'not a journalist' camp.
- mduerksen 7y ago
  A journalist is a person who collects, writes, or distributes news or other current information to the public. [1] Check. You can argue about whether his style is commendable or not (for codes of conduct see [2]), but that does not change the fact that he is a journalist. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard...
  - krapp 7y ago
    Assange doesn't write news, and classified documents are not, themselves, the product of journalism merely for being leaked. Writing a story about the Pentagon papers is journalism, printing them verbatim without context or comment is not journalism. If running a website which publishes third party content makes one a journalist then I guess Reddit makes spez a journalist too.
api 7y ago
In the US I seem to be able to find people saying virtually anything. Certain privately owned and operated platforms have kicked off certain voices (as is their right if you believe in property rights), but they've just moved to other platforms that are easy to find. Assange is being charged with a crime, not speech. He deserves a fair trial of course, but what got him in trouble is not merely speaking. I can't think of much I could say in the US that would actually get me in legal trouble except for directly threatening or inciting violence against someone.
- monocasa 7y ago
  Daniel Ellsberg was charged with a crime, not speech too. He only got off because the Nixon administration bungled things so bad that he got a mistrial.
  - ataturk 7y ago
    And what is Mr. Ellsberg's opinion of Julian Assange today? I'll let you go look because it speaks volumes about the politics at work and who is afraid of what information Assange is holding.
amalcon 7y ago
Assuming we are taking a US centric view here, I feel just the opposite: that speech has scarcely ever been so free. It was less than a decade ago that the U.S. military had a policy literally called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". It was only fifty years ago that Martin Luther King Jr. was being investigated by the FBI, for speech that is now broadly considered necessary. About 100 years ago, check out the Sedition Act of 1918. Such a thing would not even pass the smell test today. Sure, we've had some recent setbacks in some areas. The journey is not in a straight line. The destination is pretty clearly in a place of "more freedom".
- CamperBob2 7y ago
  The US government has rarely been less engaged in censorship than it is today. That much is true, and certainly it's a good thing. The trouble is, any sufficiently-dominant corporation is indistinguishable from a government.
  - amalcon 7y ago
    You're not wrong about that. I don't think this is a case of that, though. CBS is one of four major legacy broadcast networks. They are owned by National Amusements, whose other assets basically amount to a lot of movie theaters. This contrasts with NBC (owned by Comcast), ABC (owned by Disney), and Fox (also owned by Disney now). This show is exclusive to the CBS web streaming service, an arena with even more competition. That doesn't seem like a sufficiently-dominant corporation to me. They are a major player, yes, but at best second strongest in their domain.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > CBS is one of four major legacy broadcast networks. They are owned by National Amusements, whose other assets basically amount to a lot of movie theaters. This contrasts with NBC (owned by Comcast), ABC (owned by Disney), and Fox (also owned by Disney now). National Amusements owns Viacom, which kind of undermines the contrast you are drawing. And Disney doesn't own Fox (the broadcast network) it owns 21st Century Fox, which uses to be the corporate parent of Fox Broadcasting, but Fox Broadcasting, Fox News, and a number of other assets were spun out to make Fox Corporation which didn't go with 21st Century Fox to Disney, and which is still controlled by Rupert Murdoch.
gscott 7y ago
The fact that hundreds of thousands of Muslims are put into concentration camps and the world does nothing is amazing. I think that is how bad the world wants cheap stuff.
- rocqua 7y ago
  Who is doing that, the Chinese? Any terms to search for? This is the first I am hearing of it.
  - simantel 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
    - AareyBaba 7y ago
      Also nytimes has done several articles. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/asia/china-uighur-muslim-detention-camp.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/asia/china-uighur-m...
      - taobility 7y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xyMloesl58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xyMloesl58
- ativzzz 7y ago
  Nazi Germany had concentration camps as early as 1933 (Dachau) and nobody did anything either until they started invasions and a war. Most genocides have happened as the world watches and says "oh wow that's terrible we should do something" and then do nothing. This is simply how humans behave on an international scale. There is nothing 'amazing' about it.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    See also: Armenia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Rwanda...
basetop 7y ago
People care about it. It's the wealthy elites who don't care about it. The problem is that through control over media and social media, the elites can make it seem like nobody cares about it. Also, the relentless censorship has been a fairly recent phenomenon. Oddly enough, pushed for by media elites like the nytimes and others. It is a strange time where both the "left" and the "right" want censorship. But I doubt it will last too long. People are going to start pushing back sooner or later.
leggomylibro 7y ago
>Mr. Coulton said that he was told that CBS had concerns for the safety of its employees in China if the segment were included. Sounds like you're right to be scared. US comedy television isn't allowed to mention Tiananmen Square because the owners fear violent retaliation? How did we get here? This is insane.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

>I feel like free speech has never been under such attack. Culturally, we don't care about it, we find offensive content more offensive than censorship of offensive content. Speak for your own filter bubble. Most people in my filter bubble seem to be coming around to the fact that the way things are going they might have to "get off the porch" (metaphorically and maybe literally too in a few cases) in the coming decade or three.

youarewrongstfu 7y ago

Julian Assange is to journalism what Aaron Swartz was to civil disobedience. Nothing.

wavefunction 7y ago

I disagree with the notion that Julian Assange is a journalist. I don't find the way he goes about his activities to be commendable. I contrast his/Wikileak disclosures with the way the Snowden materials were disseminated and reported on as the the boundaries of proper and improper journalism of these subjects.

mduerksen 7y ago
A journalist is a person who collects, writes, or distributes news or other current information to the public. [1] Check. You can argue about whether his style is commendable or not (for codes of conduct see [2]), but that does not change the fact that he is a journalist. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard...
- wavefunction 7y ago
  I reject your Wikipedia links as authoritative sources on what constitutes a journalist as well as your contention that he's doing anything other than dumping documents (selectively).
  - mduerksen 7y ago
    Okay, do you have a better definition? And, of course he does more than dumping documents. For example, he has to come by them (collecting as a journalist does), which is no small feat considering which kind of documents we are taking about. If you're genuinely curious, just take a look at his work [1] to see that it's absolutely not "just dumping documents". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
  - berbec 7y ago
    If "dumping documents" doesn't qualify as a journalist, should the New York Times return it's Pulitzer for the Pentagon Papers? [1] 1: https://www.pulitzer.org/article/race-publish-pentagon-papers https://www.pulitzer.org/article/race-publish-pentagon-paper... 2: https://www.nytimes.com/1972/05/02/archives/the-times-wins-a-pulitzer-for-the-pentagon-papers-the-times-wins.html https://www.nytimes.com/1972/05/02/archives/the-times-wins-a...
    - gmueckl 7y ago
      No, because they read these papers and wrote the story on them. Wikileaks just provided mostly unprocessed data dumps. Explaining the story is a very big part of a journalist's job.
      - behringer 7y ago
        Source?
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    I reject your rejection. Are you going to provide any alternatives, because if not my rejection overrides yours. I would also point out that outright rejecting something without presenting either an argument or alternative why leads up away from productive discussion.

Chazprime 7y ago

Julian Assange is a journalist? Not sure I agree with that labeling.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sjg007 7y ago
He most definitely is, and has been awarded by his peers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Honours_and_awards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Honours_and_awa...
grenoire 7y ago
Not calling Assange a journalist does a great deal of unwarranted justice to the plenty clickbait bloggers, who also happen to be labelled as journalists.
- camel_Snake 7y ago
  You can be a shit journalist and still be a journalist. If I push a csv to a GitHub repo does that make me a journalists? I think this is the semantics posters are trying to highlight. A publisher, maybe. But I'm squarely in the 'not a journalist' camp.
mduerksen 7y ago
A journalist is a person who collects, writes, or distributes news or other current information to the public. [1] Check. You can argue about whether his style is commendable or not (for codes of conduct see [2]), but that does not change the fact that he is a journalist. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard...
- krapp 7y ago
  Assange doesn't write news, and classified documents are not, themselves, the product of journalism merely for being leaked. Writing a story about the Pentagon papers is journalism, printing them verbatim without context or comment is not journalism. If running a website which publishes third party content makes one a journalist then I guess Reddit makes spez a journalist too.

api 7y ago

In the US I seem to be able to find people saying virtually anything. Certain privately owned and operated platforms have kicked off certain voices (as is their right if you believe in property rights), but they've just moved to other platforms that are easy to find. Assange is being charged with a crime, not speech. He deserves a fair trial of course, but what got him in trouble is not merely speaking. I can't think of much I could say in the US that would actually get me in legal trouble except for directly threatening or inciting violence against someone.

monocasa 7y ago
Daniel Ellsberg was charged with a crime, not speech too. He only got off because the Nixon administration bungled things so bad that he got a mistrial.
- ataturk 7y ago
  And what is Mr. Ellsberg's opinion of Julian Assange today? I'll let you go look because it speaks volumes about the politics at work and who is afraid of what information Assange is holding.

amalcon 7y ago

Assuming we are taking a US centric view here, I feel just the opposite: that speech has scarcely ever been so free. It was less than a decade ago that the U.S. military had a policy literally called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". It was only fifty years ago that Martin Luther King Jr. was being investigated by the FBI, for speech that is now broadly considered necessary. About 100 years ago, check out the Sedition Act of 1918. Such a thing would not even pass the smell test today. Sure, we've had some recent setbacks in some areas. The journey is not in a straight line. The destination is pretty clearly in a place of "more freedom".

CamperBob2 7y ago
The US government has rarely been less engaged in censorship than it is today. That much is true, and certainly it's a good thing. The trouble is, any sufficiently-dominant corporation is indistinguishable from a government.
- amalcon 7y ago
  You're not wrong about that. I don't think this is a case of that, though. CBS is one of four major legacy broadcast networks. They are owned by National Amusements, whose other assets basically amount to a lot of movie theaters. This contrasts with NBC (owned by Comcast), ABC (owned by Disney), and Fox (also owned by Disney now). This show is exclusive to the CBS web streaming service, an arena with even more competition. That doesn't seem like a sufficiently-dominant corporation to me. They are a major player, yes, but at best second strongest in their domain.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > CBS is one of four major legacy broadcast networks. They are owned by National Amusements, whose other assets basically amount to a lot of movie theaters. This contrasts with NBC (owned by Comcast), ABC (owned by Disney), and Fox (also owned by Disney now). National Amusements owns Viacom, which kind of undermines the contrast you are drawing. And Disney doesn't own Fox (the broadcast network) it owns 21st Century Fox, which uses to be the corporate parent of Fox Broadcasting, but Fox Broadcasting, Fox News, and a number of other assets were spun out to make Fox Corporation which didn't go with 21st Century Fox to Disney, and which is still controlled by Rupert Murdoch.

gscott 7y ago

The fact that hundreds of thousands of Muslims are put into concentration camps and the world does nothing is amazing. I think that is how bad the world wants cheap stuff.

rocqua 7y ago
Who is doing that, the Chinese? Any terms to search for? This is the first I am hearing of it.
- simantel 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
  - AareyBaba 7y ago
    Also nytimes has done several articles. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/asia/china-uighur-muslim-detention-camp.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/asia/china-uighur-m...
    - taobility 7y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xyMloesl58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xyMloesl58
ativzzz 7y ago
Nazi Germany had concentration camps as early as 1933 (Dachau) and nobody did anything either until they started invasions and a war. Most genocides have happened as the world watches and says "oh wow that's terrible we should do something" and then do nothing. This is simply how humans behave on an international scale. There is nothing 'amazing' about it.
- philwelch 7y ago
  See also: Armenia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Rwanda...

basetop 7y ago

People care about it. It's the wealthy elites who don't care about it. The problem is that through control over media and social media, the elites can make it seem like nobody cares about it. Also, the relentless censorship has been a fairly recent phenomenon. Oddly enough, pushed for by media elites like the nytimes and others. It is a strange time where both the "left" and the "right" want censorship. But I doubt it will last too long. People are going to start pushing back sooner or later.

leggomylibro 7y ago

>Mr. Coulton said that he was told that CBS had concerns for the safety of its employees in China if the segment were included. Sounds like you're right to be scared. US comedy television isn't allowed to mention Tiananmen Square because the owners fear violent retaliation? How did we get here? This is insane.