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Freedom of speech/expression is a right of every individual on this planet. Any regime that does not support that should face pushback from its citizens, busine

Freedom of speech/expression is a right of every individual on this planet. Any regime that does not support that should face pushback from its citizens, businesses, and other countries.

anovikov 6y ago
Why? If we are certain that values of free speech are important for national success, then if others suppress them, fine! It only provides us competitive advantage, let them suffer from their mistakes.
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  Yeah, fuck em. Who cares what other countries do, let them exterminate their minorities too it just means less competition for resources. /s
  - anovikov 6y ago
    I'd say, only option for caring about that is if we actually suspect that values of free speech and personal freedoms in general are NOT important for development: rather, those are the luxuries which we simply can afford because we're rich. And it's wise to press values onto poor countries to prevent them from becoming richer and thus a threat to us. The experiment of helping countries to become rich so they become friendly, failed on China and Russia examples: becoming rich they got only more hostile just because they could, so assumption that it's good to separate countries into friendly or hostile regardless of how is their economy going, and simply suppress growth of the latter, seems a wise one.
vbezhenar 6y ago
> Freedom of speech/expression is a right of every individual on this planet I'm not aware of any country with unlimited speech. Definitely not US or EU countries. I'm not observing huge pushback from US citizens, business and other countries when Facebook and Twitter tried to silence Trump and some other conservative leaders. There are topics that are forbidden by law to discuss in EU, for example to deny Holocaust. Those are examples of lack of freedom in so-called "free" countries. So obviously freedom of speech is not universal approach and some limitation of that freedom is an accepted norm.
- kristianc 6y ago
  This is simply tu quoque - clearly there are limits to free speech in every country but where possible the right to free expression should outweigh the the state’s desire to silence political opposition. Twitter was a pretty good example of this actually - protecting people’s right to hear from the President (despite him saying and doing many things that would have got regular users banned) right up until the point where he led an insurrection on the Capitol. I don’t think you can argue anything other than Twitter taking their responsibility to free speech incredibly seriously - to the point where they were often accused of being complicit to juice user metrics. And perhaps do some research into Joel Kaplan before you claim the same of Facebook. Clearly this is not in the same realm as Holocaust denial (which is incidentally also legal in roughly half of the EU countries).
  - wyattpeak 6y ago
    > This is simply tu quoque Not the original poster, but I don't think it is. The problem is that, since all countries acknowledge that there should be limits on speech, it's inappropriate for one country (or company, for that matter) to decide what should be the limit in another country. If it were black and white, there'd be a much stronger case. But this is a company saying "our shade of grey is preferable to yours". I obviously don't agree with what the Turkish government demanded, but I'm unconvinced that this in particular is a strong argument for a foreign company to decide to overrule local law. And I really think that should be a very high bar.
    - kristianc 6y ago
      The issue is that once you go down that road, you preclude discussion of any issues by one country / company if that country also imposes limitations. You need to pick a principle somewhere - and I’m not sure ‘we’ll simply block access to any material the host government finds objectionable’ is going to be one that’s going to lead us toward a better world.
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  > Freedom of speech/expression is a right of every individual on this planet I do think that it's slightly more nuanced. On certain issues there is no freedom of speech. This is when it is determined that the opinions expressed are detrimental to the human race and largely false. Nazi beliefs are in this category. They are so harmful to the public that individual freedom is quashed. incitement to murder is another. You certainly don't have freedom to say everything you like. That would lead to anarchy. Edit: the only true freedom is freedom of belief. You are free to believe anything you like. However you may not always be allowed to pass on those beliefs. The press are given gag orders all the time, it's not the most fundemental human right.
statstutor 6y ago
I don't agree with Turkey's law in this case, but you're saying that we should impose our laws and values on all other countries, and also that online services should not have to abide by any laws, with the internet as essentially a lawless state. I view those both as bigger problems.
imgabe 6y ago
I agree, but in practice what would happen is Turkey would just block Facebook if they refused to comply. Facebook can't grant freedom of speech to people. They have to take control of their government and demand it for themselves if they want it. Facebook has made it clear they don't care about free speech anyway, as they'll happily ban anyone who jeopardizes their ad revenue.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  The moral thing to do is let the government ban them. The problem lies in the fact that totalitarian governments use social media to manipulate their own citizens and often run campaigns against them. By siding with the government in serious issues they make it even more difficult for citizens to "demand their freedoms", siding with the devil
sdeframond 6y ago
Respectful nitpick: maybe you mean "Freedom of speech/expression should be a right of every individual on this planet" Also, one thing is to wish for universal freedom of speech, another one is for a given community, or country, to impose its views on free speech (and limitations thereof) to another community. Edit: typo
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  It is a Human Right according to the UN declaration. https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ both Turkey and facebooks home, the US , have signed it
  - sdeframond 6y ago
    That's correct. As an anecdote, I was pretty shocked when some foreigner friend told me "universal" human rights can actually be perceived as more of a "western imperialism" thing. While I still think human rights are a thing, I can understand that they have been used hypocritically many times through history. Regarding TFA, I am unsure whether I'd rather FB to impose US's views on freespeech to Turkey or to respect whatever the local government is telling it to do.
    - LegitShady 6y ago
      >Regarding TFA, I am unsure whether I'd rather FB to impose US's views on freespeech to Turkey or to respect whatever the local government is telling it to do. You have it backwards, facebook et al will slowly kill free speech in the US while claiming to be pro free speech. We have before us the greatest setup for fascism in history, and these tech companies should allow themselves to be banned from countries before cooperating with governments to silence speech. Instead expect them to help authoritarians silence dissent.
      - sdeframond 6y ago
        I am very wary of FB. In fact I deleted my account about 10 years ago (God knows I had to jump through hoops for this). Still using Whatsapp but mainly Signal. Truth is one does not need Facebook at all. Don't rely on it for getting news, don't rely on it for giving news. > these tech companies should allow themselves to be banned So you expect Big Corp to have a conscience? How cute :P
jankassens 6y ago
Even with free speech as a right, there’s still the conflict with other rights. E.g in the USA, slander or sexual content is limiting what you can express. In Germany, Holocaust denial and nazi symbols are illegal. The vast majority of people in these countries seem to agree with these limitations. (I don’t know about the Turkish situation) The ranking of rights when they’re in conflict with each other is fascinating to me as it can be pretty different by country.
KDJohnBrown 6y ago
Who exactly bestows these rights upon people? Governments? Türkiye outlaws free speech through arbitary terror laws (see: HDP politicians imprisoned, members of Grupo Yorum who died of hunger protests for not being allowed to sing). Turkiye also has libel laws which basically outlaw free speech. tayipp has successfully sued many thousands of people for speaking afainst him. Religion? Turks are mostly muslim. Blasphemy, apostacy, mocking the prophet or drawing pictures or him are all punishable by death in Islam. The concept of universal or inalienable rights is noble and righteous in theory, but imaginary in practice. Turks have allowed Tayipp to stomp all over the constitution (illegally acting as prime minister when he was president, rewriting the constitution under a state of emergency, violating libel laws by regularly insulting kurds, chp, hdp, christians, jews and zoroastrians, violating the secularity laws and arresting hundreds of thousands of people under allged ties to fetö), and Turks keep allowing it. Even Atatürk banned turbanli women from working in government. Turks have willingly rejected western-style free speech for a relatively improved economy and a sense of national pride.

Freedom of speech/expression is a right of every individual on this planet. Any regime that does not support that should face pushback from its citizens, businesses, and other countries.

anovikov 6y ago

Why? If we are certain that values of free speech are important for national success, then if others suppress them, fine! It only provides us competitive advantage, let them suffer from their mistakes.

throwaway316943 6y ago
Yeah, fuck em. Who cares what other countries do, let them exterminate their minorities too it just means less competition for resources. /s
- anovikov 6y ago
  I'd say, only option for caring about that is if we actually suspect that values of free speech and personal freedoms in general are NOT important for development: rather, those are the luxuries which we simply can afford because we're rich. And it's wise to press values onto poor countries to prevent them from becoming richer and thus a threat to us. The experiment of helping countries to become rich so they become friendly, failed on China and Russia examples: becoming rich they got only more hostile just because they could, so assumption that it's good to separate countries into friendly or hostile regardless of how is their economy going, and simply suppress growth of the latter, seems a wise one.

vbezhenar 6y ago

> Freedom of speech/expression is a right of every individual on this planet I'm not aware of any country with unlimited speech. Definitely not US or EU countries. I'm not observing huge pushback from US citizens, business and other countries when Facebook and Twitter tried to silence Trump and some other conservative leaders. There are topics that are forbidden by law to discuss in EU, for example to deny Holocaust. Those are examples of lack of freedom in so-called "free" countries. So obviously freedom of speech is not universal approach and some limitation of that freedom is an accepted norm.

kristianc 6y ago
This is simply tu quoque - clearly there are limits to free speech in every country but where possible the right to free expression should outweigh the the state’s desire to silence political opposition. Twitter was a pretty good example of this actually - protecting people’s right to hear from the President (despite him saying and doing many things that would have got regular users banned) right up until the point where he led an insurrection on the Capitol. I don’t think you can argue anything other than Twitter taking their responsibility to free speech incredibly seriously - to the point where they were often accused of being complicit to juice user metrics. And perhaps do some research into Joel Kaplan before you claim the same of Facebook. Clearly this is not in the same realm as Holocaust denial (which is incidentally also legal in roughly half of the EU countries).
- wyattpeak 6y ago
  > This is simply tu quoque Not the original poster, but I don't think it is. The problem is that, since all countries acknowledge that there should be limits on speech, it's inappropriate for one country (or company, for that matter) to decide what should be the limit in another country. If it were black and white, there'd be a much stronger case. But this is a company saying "our shade of grey is preferable to yours". I obviously don't agree with what the Turkish government demanded, but I'm unconvinced that this in particular is a strong argument for a foreign company to decide to overrule local law. And I really think that should be a very high bar.
  - kristianc 6y ago
    The issue is that once you go down that road, you preclude discussion of any issues by one country / company if that country also imposes limitations. You need to pick a principle somewhere - and I’m not sure ‘we’ll simply block access to any material the host government finds objectionable’ is going to be one that’s going to lead us toward a better world.
marshmallow_12 6y ago
> Freedom of speech/expression is a right of every individual on this planet I do think that it's slightly more nuanced. On certain issues there is no freedom of speech. This is when it is determined that the opinions expressed are detrimental to the human race and largely false. Nazi beliefs are in this category. They are so harmful to the public that individual freedom is quashed. incitement to murder is another. You certainly don't have freedom to say everything you like. That would lead to anarchy. Edit: the only true freedom is freedom of belief. You are free to believe anything you like. However you may not always be allowed to pass on those beliefs. The press are given gag orders all the time, it's not the most fundemental human right.

statstutor 6y ago

I don't agree with Turkey's law in this case, but you're saying that we should impose our laws and values on all other countries, and also that online services should not have to abide by any laws, with the internet as essentially a lawless state. I view those both as bigger problems.

imgabe 6y ago

I agree, but in practice what would happen is Turkey would just block Facebook if they refused to comply. Facebook can't grant freedom of speech to people. They have to take control of their government and demand it for themselves if they want it. Facebook has made it clear they don't care about free speech anyway, as they'll happily ban anyone who jeopardizes their ad revenue.

cblconfederate 6y ago
The moral thing to do is let the government ban them. The problem lies in the fact that totalitarian governments use social media to manipulate their own citizens and often run campaigns against them. By siding with the government in serious issues they make it even more difficult for citizens to "demand their freedoms", siding with the devil

sdeframond 6y ago

Respectful nitpick: maybe you mean "Freedom of speech/expression should be a right of every individual on this planet" Also, one thing is to wish for universal freedom of speech, another one is for a given community, or country, to impose its views on free speech (and limitations thereof) to another community. Edit: typo

cblconfederate 6y ago
It is a Human Right according to the UN declaration. https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ both Turkey and facebooks home, the US , have signed it
- sdeframond 6y ago
  That's correct. As an anecdote, I was pretty shocked when some foreigner friend told me "universal" human rights can actually be perceived as more of a "western imperialism" thing. While I still think human rights are a thing, I can understand that they have been used hypocritically many times through history. Regarding TFA, I am unsure whether I'd rather FB to impose US's views on freespeech to Turkey or to respect whatever the local government is telling it to do.
  - LegitShady 6y ago
    >Regarding TFA, I am unsure whether I'd rather FB to impose US's views on freespeech to Turkey or to respect whatever the local government is telling it to do. You have it backwards, facebook et al will slowly kill free speech in the US while claiming to be pro free speech. We have before us the greatest setup for fascism in history, and these tech companies should allow themselves to be banned from countries before cooperating with governments to silence speech. Instead expect them to help authoritarians silence dissent.
    - sdeframond 6y ago
      I am very wary of FB. In fact I deleted my account about 10 years ago (God knows I had to jump through hoops for this). Still using Whatsapp but mainly Signal. Truth is one does not need Facebook at all. Don't rely on it for getting news, don't rely on it for giving news. > these tech companies should allow themselves to be banned So you expect Big Corp to have a conscience? How cute :P

jankassens 6y ago

Even with free speech as a right, there’s still the conflict with other rights. E.g in the USA, slander or sexual content is limiting what you can express. In Germany, Holocaust denial and nazi symbols are illegal. The vast majority of people in these countries seem to agree with these limitations. (I don’t know about the Turkish situation) The ranking of rights when they’re in conflict with each other is fascinating to me as it can be pretty different by country.

KDJohnBrown 6y ago

Who exactly bestows these rights upon people? Governments? Türkiye outlaws free speech through arbitary terror laws (see: HDP politicians imprisoned, members of Grupo Yorum who died of hunger protests for not being allowed to sing). Turkiye also has libel laws which basically outlaw free speech. tayipp has successfully sued many thousands of people for speaking afainst him. Religion? Turks are mostly muslim. Blasphemy, apostacy, mocking the prophet or drawing pictures or him are all punishable by death in Islam. The concept of universal or inalienable rights is noble and righteous in theory, but imaginary in practice. Turks have allowed Tayipp to stomp all over the constitution (illegally acting as prime minister when he was president, rewriting the constitution under a state of emergency, violating libel laws by regularly insulting kurds, chp, hdp, christians, jews and zoroastrians, violating the secularity laws and arresting hundreds of thousands of people under allged ties to fetö), and Turks keep allowing it. Even Atatürk banned turbanli women from working in government. Turks have willingly rejected western-style free speech for a relatively improved economy and a sense of national pride.