19 ms·

Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

198 points by DanBC 4y ago

cbsmith 4y ago
No question about the title, but there's an elephant in the room here that's being ignored...
- teucris 4y ago
  There are several elephants in this particular room. Which are you referring to?
  - narag 4y ago
    I find the fact that he doesn't say specially elephantic.
    - ErikCorry 4y ago
      Yes it's very pachydermic.
ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
Free speech is great and all, but what about my feelings? Authoritarians have it so easy nowadays.
- nitrixion 4y ago
  I'm sorry, but my feelings are more important than your feelings, so your free speech matters less than mine. I see this type of attitude often and it is very frustrating, not because I'm an extremist but because I'm a centrist.
colechristensen 4y ago
"I find people who don't think exactly like me to be intolerable" is the bread and butter for controlling a population. People look at the past and think to themselves "those people in the past were wrong, that's why the one acceptable way to think being enforced with power was immoral, on the other hand, my opinions are right, so the ends justify the means". Intolerance is intolerance, regardless of how morally justified you think it is.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
  - causi 4y ago
    The paradox of tolerance is an idea. I'm growing increasingly tired of authoritarians citing it as a fundamental law of the universe.
  - wikitopian 4y ago
    Intolerance must be understood in its academic sense and not in the politically motivated sense it's typically used today. This is a technically correct point that is always used to justify declaring people you dislike "intolerant" to justify being intolerant.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    It's a kind of "have an open mind but not so much that your brain falls out" situation. Too many people think their brain is going to fall out of even the slightest deviation from their moral code is tolerated these days.
    - teamonkey 4y ago
      Too many people think their brain is going to fall out when someone calls them out on their behaviour.
    - armchairhacker 4y ago
      This is roughly what I’m thinking. We can be intolerant of things which are “obviously” wrong, like hate and other intolerance. We shouldn’t be intolerant of the gray area, where something is controversial but still justified. The fundamental truth is that you are intolerant, because speech leads to action. People like to think of themselves as tolerant and not sensitive, and maybe some people are tolerant to speech which doesn’t lead to action and can take insults for days. But when a majority may hold an opinion you don’t like (e.g. cancel your favorite TV show, or food, or just flat-out kill you and harvest your organs), you want to censor this opinion. You may also want to censor speech when it affects those who aren’t so thick-skinned, like your mom or 5-year-old daughter or the other 75% of the population whose mental health is affected by words. If your laws tolerate enough speech, the bad guys may team together, take over your government and change them - hence, the Paradox of Tolerance. But they may not, and they may also manage to take over your government without tolerance or speech or even teaming up. In an ideal world we’d allow all speech but have no “bad” speech, but in practice we have tape and plywood to prevent speech when the alternative would very clearly, very significantly hurt more people than censoring. I also think there are also exceptions to tolerance in the case of an emergency, with the distinction that it has to be an actual emergency universally (agreed on by logical people), and also temporary unless it’s really, really bad (like everyone dies once we stop). e.g. covid in January-May 2020. If we had a super strict, solid covid lockdown when the virus first broke out, we may have actually eradicated covid. Yeah we’d be violating essential freedoms, we’d have to lock up or possibly execute people who go outside, and may even have to curtail anti-science speech. But with said lockdown we may have actually eradicated covid, IMO that is worth being intolerant of dissent for 3 months. However, covid mandates once we realized covid would become endemic, those are debatable, because a) the emergency is no longer universally agreed, and b) some of those mandates could be argued indefinite. But the other fundamental truth is there’s no right answer. There’s no “do policy X and everything will work out”, hindsight 20/20 but we have no idea the “bad” speech (speech which causes real suffering) of the future will be. There’s no “objectively moral” answer. Ultimately it comes down to, well, your opinion or the opinion of those in power.
bradhilton 4y ago
> The level of democracy enjoyed by the average citizen around the world in 2021 has regressed to 1989 levels Sounds ominously like the iron curtain is falling back into place, this time more dispersed, not just concentrated in the Soviet bloc. > 70 percent of the global population lives under dictatorships, according to VDem’s data. That’s a rise of 20 percent over the past decade. That's pretty disconcerting. Without knowing more about their methodology I'm not sure how this compares to the Cold War era, but it is worrisome to say the least.
- Victerius 4y ago
  It lines up with the Corruption Perception Index: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Map_of_countries_by_Corruption_Perceptions_Index_%282021%29.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Map_of_c... Judging from this map alone, one would logically conclude that Homo Sapiens is a pretty corrupt species. The average human being lives in a corrupt dictatorship.
  - vehemenz 4y ago
    I'm not sure it makes sense to judge homo sapiens as corrupt, given that they lived much differently the past 10,000 years than their first 300,000 years. I can easily imagine social groups were more egalitarian and less corrupt for most of human prehistory.
    - leaflets2 4y ago
      The larger the group, the more corrupted power seekers will climb close to the top, and do the more damage (since they affect more people). Maybe we can say that the human brain partly isn't well suited for living in large societies, for these reasons
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    Germany is GREEN on that map?! (Was this map commissioned by Germans?) To be fair I can't tell if large German corporations and politicians are corrupt or instead lack direction, are criminal, or incompetent and are funded by mandatory spending by the government. See Brandenburg, Dieselgate, Gazprom Germania for the tip of the iceberg.
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
I wonder why Mexico was omitted from both the article and map? Hasn't deaths/disappearances of journalists been running rampant there?
- swatcoder 4y ago
  I'm not sure why that graphic excludes it, but they link to the source they're relying on, and they do seem to track it as well. https://www.article19.org/gxr-22/#:~:text=Meet%20our%20teams-,As%20free%20expression%20slides%20and%20authoritarianism,how%20do%20we%20reclaim%20democracy%3F&text=ARTICLE%2019's%20Global%20Expression%20Report,share%20information%20freely%20and%20safely https://www.article19.org/gxr-22/#:~:text=Meet%20our%20teams....
- bena 4y ago
  Also Greenland and a couple of other Central/South American countries. It's probably just areas they don't have good or reliable data for.
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  > ARTICLE 19 Mexico has its own methodology for tracking the freedom of expression situation in the country – they are not included in GxR rankings or any country-level analyses using the metric. Which I think means basically "for historical reasons they are special". Shame though, cross country comparisons are interesting even if they are hard to do properly
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
Criticising actions of governments is all well and good, but no-one is discussing how much it has become acceptable to go after people for some percieved offence. I am not just talking about cancell culture. Like the fact that Elon Musk is demanding that a lawfirm should fire a lawyer that used to work for SEC just for revenge. Or the fact that you can get removed from Youtube just because 100 bots filed reports against your channel, no human has ever been offended and no human has ever reviewed the complaint. How does free speech that offends powerfull people survive in 'law of the jungle' interpretation of free market?
aaroninsf 4y ago
There is a real, and serious, and worsening, conflict between "free expression" of noble and necessary kinds, and weaponized speech, such as disinformation and other tools for sentiment steering. Which is arguably now a significantly worse problem for most societies than mere suppression. Not to mention merely venal "corporate speech" and the deluge of commercial speech (much of it undisclosed).
- wikitopian 4y ago
  Is there a way that adults who are capable of critically thinking for themselves to opt out of your crusade to protect us from ideas you disagree with?
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    Problem is, there’s been an active war against critical thought across multiple fronts for a while now, which includes campaigns in social and traditional media and attacks on the education system. Youth and unwitting adults alike are being trained to stay angry and act on impulse rather than address situations as thoughtful, well-rounded members of society would. I won’t claim to have a solution, but there are clearly severe problems afoot and ceasing all filtering alone isn’t going to result in an outcome any better than systematic censoring will.
    - wikitopian 4y ago
      I understand you believe there's a compelling case for placing your hand over my mouth. I'm sure you earnestly believe your case, and think placing your hand over my mouth is the moral, right, and just thing to do. Time will tell if you're capable of holding it there.
      - kitsunesoba 4y ago
        I guess what I’m getting at is that if we’re to eliminate all traces of censorship, other actions must be taken in parallel to not allow the negative effects of doing that spiral out of control. A starting point might be to restore Fairness Doctrine and other policies that help prevent traditional media from becoming hyper-polarized Nielsen-rating-chasing entertainment rather than legitimate news sources, as well as holding social media directly responsible for the problems brought by bot farms and other types of amplifying manipulation.
dqpb 4y ago
I’ve been very surprised at how quickly the American left has turned its back on free speech. I guess that’s why they’ve stopped calling themselves “liberal”, instead calling themselves “progressive”. Much like how the American right has stopped calling the US a democracy, instead calling it a republic. Or how Google changed their motto from the specific “don’t be evil”, to the ambiguous “do the right thing”. After all, whose to say that being evil isn’t sometimes the right thing… The problem of course, is that if you bootstrap on good principles and then replace them with dubious principles, your past success is no longer predictive of future success. It’s like ripping out your home’s foundation - what good is it now that the house is built? It’s just getting in the way of that sweet basement you want to add. Edit: as I rack up downvotes, I see that complaining about the Left, Right, and Google in a single post on HN is a losing strategy :)
- lucideer 4y ago
  > Edit: as I rack up downvotes... Just for clarity, these are likely because you didn't read the article. Your comment does not relate to the article content in any way - it seems to be based on an interpretation of the title.
  - dqpb 4y ago
    > Freedom of expression and democracy are intimately linked, and both are deteriorating on a global scale. The article isn't talking about the US. But my claim is that US left-wing is attacking free-speech and the US right-wing is attacking democracy. I don't know how much more hand-holding I can provide to indicate that "deteriorating on a global scale" includes the US.
- bena 4y ago
  As to the "Don't be evil" vs "Do the right thing", they're both rather ambiguous, but "Don't be evil" is passive, it's easier to condone inaction. I'm going to try and use an example where we won't have to argue the semantics of whether or not standing by is "evil". You see someone trip and fall on their face. They're a little busted up, bloody nose, a few scrapes, but nothing major. Walking past them and not helping them at all is "not evil". It's not "good" either. It's completely neutral. The right thing to do is to help the person up and see if they need anything. Now, to ramp it up. If I see someone getting stabbed, I can easily justify staying out of it. I'm not the one stabbing. I don't know the situation. My only goal is to "not be evil". And since I'm not stabbing, I'm walking on, because I'm not the one being evil here. I can justify that decision in the framework of "don't be evil", but I can't in the framework of "do the right thing". And of course, they're both slightly disguised trolley problems. "Don't be evil". What is evil? What does it mean to not be it? Where's the line where inaction stops being neutral and starts being evil? And of course, if I believe something to not be evil, there is not end to what I could do. The same issue arises with "Do the right thing". We have to define the right thing. And sometimes doing nothing is the right thing. Sometimes the right thing is letting the bad thing happen because experience is the best teacher.
etchalon 4y ago
The article, and its data, is almost specifically about actual authoritarian regimes and actual restriction of speech by governments against citizens. But I predict this thread will very quickly nose dive into "Twitter banned me for saying COVID is a hoax and something something first amendment."
- ReptileMan 4y ago
  I do think that twitter and the other walled gardens are public fora and people should have some free speech rights there. That are different from whatever Twitter decides at their discretion.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - etchalon 4y ago
    That happened fast.
- seydor 4y ago
- lxe 4y ago
  Your prediction came true! Would be cool if reading the article was a requirement before posting a comment. Maybe use a summarizer AI to create a short quiz that people would need to answer before posting?
  - etchalon 4y ago
    I feel like that would just eliminate 80% of HN comments.
    - ReptileMan 4y ago
      The first line of the article is Internet blackouts. Strategic lawsuits against journalists. Regulations restricting the activities of NGOs. The weaponisation of health and security policies. These are all strategies that governments around the world are increasingly using to curtail the right to dissent, protest, and even just access information. Most of those are made easier by the current structure of the internet. So the power that Twitter yields is important. A lot of the dictators actually rule with wide enough popular support as to be legitimate. And their mission of thought suppression is made easier by the censorship infrastructure already build to deal with the cancel culture demand. You cannot separate both.
ReptileMan 4y ago
Blame Steve Jobs. He was the first one to successfully start locking the internet. The rest just follows. With centralization censorship is easy.
anovikov 4y ago
Why not take a cynical approach? If free expression is useful, then countries cracking down on it are shooting themselves in the foot. If they want to do it, why stop them? They are delisting themselves from the global competition: set up attractive immigration programs to pick out their most talented population and let the rest sink to Russia/N. Korea level.
- dbspin 4y ago
  Because no country exists in isolation. Where norms are established, they spread. Where governments become authoritarian without repercussion, authoritarianism becomes a more favourable option to those in power. Basically it sets up the potential for a really bad local maxima - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
- kbenson 4y ago
  > Why not take a cynical approach? Because things such as local maxima and minima exist, and "local" could be on timescales of decades or centuries. Also, what metrics are we measuring by? GDP? Happiness? Scientific progress? Species expansion? It's entirely possible that reducing free expression results in a more stable but more stagnant society, and while that may have immediate benefits, could leave everyone in that society worse off on average than the alternative in a few decades. To be fair, it's entirely possible that too much free expression could do the same, and the optimal path is in the middle somewhere. I think this is often overlooked, and people think that more freedom of expression is always a good thing, which is odd, because I'm not sure anything taken to an extreme end of a spectrum is necessarily a good thing, and I'm not sure freedom of expression is any different.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  Because I don't want to live in a country that sinks to Russia/N. Korea levels.
hunglee2 4y ago
the article is an example of orientalism, presenting the case as if there is no urgency on the matter in the Western world. Cancel culture, de-platforming, algorithmic dampening, account mislabelling, brigading on-platform, account suspension and deletion - all of these things are happening in the Western world, on US platforms. I used to have sympathy with the the argument that 'private company's can do what they like', especially when they banned people I don't like but I have come to realise that this can be understood as the outsourcing of the suppression of free expression to the private sector. The fight for freedom of expression is here, not Myanmar
- hexator 4y ago
  There's quite a bit of difference between the government banning free expression and a private company deciding that they don't want intolerable people on their platform — which itself is an example of their free expression.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    Step 1 - governments privatises /sells all public squares and large streets in your city Step 2 - private companies that own them hire private security firms Step 3 - if anyone protests, stands with a banner or says anything in convenient anywhere in the city, they get violently removed. Step 4 - folks like you yourself defend it under the guide of 'but it's not a government!' Vioala, no free speech to worry about! You think this is far fetched? It's happening as we speak, thousands of public spaces across Uk were sold and you can;t protest there anymore. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/05/great-british-sell-off-how-desperate-councils-sold-91bn-of-public-assets https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/05/great-british...
    - hexator 4y ago
      This seems like a false comparison
      - drc500free 4y ago
VictorPath 4y ago
> Since he took office in 2000, Putin has been eroding the space for public debate in Russia. He moved from dismantling independent media Right, Russia bans independent media, while those in the free EU can go read https://www.rt.com https://www.rt.com ... oh yaa, the EU blocks that web site.
- tgv 4y ago
  Since you're talking about independent media, your whataboutism doesn't make much sense.
  - Georgelemental 4y ago
    "Independent" of who? Who gets to decide what is "independent" and therefore deserving of the human right to free speech, versus what is "not independent" and therefore subhuman and not deserving of rights?
    - immibis 4y ago
      Reality does. God am I sick of this "who will decide" nonsense. There is no reality where RT is anything but Russian state-sponsored propaganda.
      - Georgelemental 4y ago
        "Reality" doesn't make decisions. Reality just is. Humans need to make the decisions.
    - tgv 4y ago
      Well, ask the parent of my comment, which introduced the term. But it's not as if you don't know. The dictionary provides two useful definitions of the word: * not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence * capable of thinking or acting for oneself which both apply here. So, media that does not depend on some benefactor (such as a state or larger corp) to stay alive, and that is free to form its own opinions. RT fails these criteria. So how about using common sense instead of trying that state indignant, passive-aggressive relativism.
gaze 4y ago
I'm immediately suspicious when I see this map of the world with countries shaded by how "free" they are. What are the units of freedom? What's the color scale? How is freedom measured and who is measuring it? Why does it even make sense to express freedom as a number?
- karaterobot 4y ago
  If the answers exist, they will be in the PDF report linked in the article. https://www.article19.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/A19-GxR-Report-22.pdf https://www.article19.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/A19-GxR...
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  It's just a new index created out of V-Dem data dude, no need to go full Spy vs Spy paranoid. Being an index it naturally doesn't have units, you'll have to give meaning to the scale yourself. Here is a bit of quote from the methodology section if you are curios: """ In producing the Global Expression Report, ARTICLE 19 selected the 25 indicators described below which best matched with our broad and holistic view of freedom of expression. These indicators were included in a Bayesian measurement model for countries with available data from 2000 to 2021 to create our metric: the GxR. V-Dem draws on theoretical and methodological expertise from its worldwide team to produce data in the most objective and reliable way possible. Approximately half of the indicators in the V-Dem data set are based on factual information obtainable from official documents such as constitutions and government records. The remainder consists of more subjective assessments on topics like democratic and governing practices and compliance with de jure rules. On such issues, typically five experts provide ratings for the country, thematic area, and time period for which they have expertise. """ More starting at page 52, but there's really no big mystery here, it's just quantitative sociology.
at_a_remove 4y ago
I find the whole thing perversely enjoyable. If you want to test someone, allow them to succeed. Give them power. When I was young, the left was the underdog, and they sure sounded like a nice bunch of people ... kindness, forgiving, can't we all get along? Free speech, our country was founded on it! The wheel turns and now they are in power. Suddenly it is cancel, no contact, punch Nazis, hang the traitors, and so on. You don't get to speak anymore, then sneering about "freeze peach." Laughing about the misfortunes of others. Give people a little taste of authority and, well, masks off. I am reminded of that Flannery O'Connor story, and I guess some people would be decent were someone there to shoot them every minute of their lives.
- _notathrowaway 4y ago
  I don't find it enjoyable at al, but I would say it is ironic that back then it was liberals preaching for free speech and conservatives wanting to censor all things (television, video-games, porn, etc). Power seems to quickly change one's ideals.
- tailrecursion 4y ago
  It's telling to see this comment suppressed with not even a hint as to why. Feminism has changed drastically over the years. The gay movement has been taken over by toxic individuals. Occupy Wall St was taken over. Antifa shootings, BLM riots, lockdowns, get vaccinated or lose your job, and the redefinition of words, all occurred recently. Biden's rhetoric re Trump voters, 80+ million people, is very interesting. We're going to suppress it all with no discussion.
  - throwawayacc2 4y ago
    > Feminism has changed drastically over the years This is so true. All your comment is true, but, the mention of feminism really caught my eye. So, I’m a man. But once in a blue moon I’ll visit ovarit. It’s a reddit clone but for gender critical feminists. To me, the women there seem perfectly reasonable. I genuinely like seeing what they post there and it makes sense to me. They believe women are adult female humans, they believe men and women should have the same rights and they believe societal roles should not be mandatory. This to me feels intuitively correct and, well, normal. However, these women are considered monsters in many places. Mainstream platforms ban them. They are disparaged as TERFs and called hateful. And I genuinely don’t understand how it got to this point. How did feminism mutate from “equal rights” and “don’t force societal expectations on me” to … whatever the hell we have today?
OrangeMonkey 4y ago
Every time a topic comes up reminding folks that suggesting free speech was once a good thing, every person who wants to silence others starts spamming "The Paradox of Tolerance." You see - we have to silence people because reasons. Lets see - havent tested yet. CTRL-F, PARADOX: ok, we are sitting at 26 times mentioned. I welcome the return of the days when wanting free speech is lauded - but I am afraid at what is going to have to happen to get us to that point.
- Natsu 4y ago
  The Paradox of Tolerance said that people have, based on their right to self-defense, the ability to defend themselves against those who would shut down speech with fists or pistols. In short, it's aimed at protecting people from literal brown shirt tactics of assaulting people for speaking. Those invoking it now are pretty far afield from what it espouses.
  - immibis 4y ago
    The word "would" indicates targets who haven't committed the crime yet, so I'd say it's being used correctly.
    - OrangeMonkey 4y ago
      I'm sorry but no. We cannot silence others who are using their soap boxes by saying 'if they dont get their way they will use the ammo boxes so we should shut them up first.' Based on the paradox of tolerance, they should pre-emptively try to silence us because we are trying to shut down communication. You know this goes both ways right?
    - Natsu 4y ago
      The word "would" is me describing a kind of person willing to do a thing, not a guaranteed future action. Also, it's kinda weird to hang on a word not in the original quote: > But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. If someone is preemptively attacking people because of what they "might" do, then they're turning this completely on its head. Can you tell me more about why you want to live in a world where people are assaulted for pre-crime? Which pre-crime is eligible? If pre-crime is illegal now, would you support yourself getting assaulted for promoting it?
debacle 4y ago
Backsliding on free expression on Hacker News needs to end. The amount of political posts that just turn into light gray on light gray are awful. I don't like much of the political content, but it seems there are many with a clear agenda on HN.
- asdff 4y ago
  One should assume that this platform is as brigaded by vested interests as any other platform on the internet
- lp0_on_fire 4y ago
  I'd prefer to see fewer political posts here, period. It's too easy to get caught up in emotion and nonsense. Anonymous internet forums open to whoever wants to sign up just aren't suited for (productive) political discussion, no matter how hard people try to moderate it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
faxmeyourcode 4y ago
Seeing the UK score an 82 on the freedom scale, whatever that means, next to the United States' score of 84, is enough to discredit whatever wacky measure they've created for "freedom" in this article. https://www.theregister.com/2016/06/02/social_media_arrests_up_37pc_london_section_127_communications_act/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/06/02/social_media_arrests_...
- bondarchuk 4y ago
  You think it's too high or too low?
  - polski-g 4y ago
    Too high... You can be put in a cage, for words, in the UK.
    - rascul 4y ago
      I don't know any specific examples off the top of my head but I'm fairly sure that's true for the US as well. The bar might be higher, though.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        Executed, even: https://daily.jstor.org/sentenced-to-death-and-other-tales-from-the-dark-side-of-language/ https://daily.jstor.org/sentenced-to-death-and-other-tales-f...
        smsm42 4y ago
        Tbh, in this case there was also a small matter of armed robbery and felony murder involved.
- witherk 4y ago
  Wait what? I have seen multiple stories of the police showing up to people's house and fining them for tweets in the UK? https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-60260292 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-60260292 Also it is my understanding that it is much easier to sue someone for libel in the UK. I would think that the UK score should actually be lower.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Why are these kinds of articles always so reluctant to explain issues like this, on Putin/Russia and MBS/Saudi Arabia? Note also, Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen is the more appropriate comparison to Russia's war on Ukraine (and let's not forget the USA's wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, either). Here's an excerpt from the report: > "Russia, for example, has long targeted dissidents outside its borders. But only in the wake of the Ukraine invasion has the international community taken strong measures to hold Putin’s government to account. Meanwhile, the wider lesson seems to have escaped the international community: Even as Western countries slap sanctions on Russia, they have slowly allowed Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman back into the fold, despite his appalling record of suppressing freedom of expression online and evidence that he played a role in the murder of Khashoggi." Is it not obvious that American presidents pander to Saudi princelings because Saudi Arabia recycles petrodollars to Wall Street in the form of bloated arms deals and other investment activities? Dictators and authoritarians who do this always get a pass from 'the democratic Western humanitarian governments'. Does anyone really doubt that if Putin had taken that route, and recycled the majority of Russian oil export money into the Western banking system, that there never would have been US support for regime change in Ukraine in 2014, or in Georgia in 2008, or an effort to block the Nordstream 2 pipeline, and so on? Any military action in eastern Ukraine would have been treated with the same relative indifference that the Saudi/UAE military assault and blockade of Yemen. Hypocrisy is the name of the game for the 'free West' on this issue.
throwAwaxxx666 4y ago
I was banned from LinkedIn for 4 months for saying “Chinese virus” in the context of a post about a UK Telegraph article reporting on evidence on the origin of the virus. I did not mean to say anything more than if I was to say the Spanish Flu or German Measles or Middle Eastern Respiratory Disease. Somehow it’s been a bad thing to use the same naming pattern in case of Covid (based on where it originated) I have back and forth emails with LinkedIn support with them telling me that saying “Chinese Virus” amounts to hate speech.
- devindotcom 4y ago
  This article is about people being jailed or killed for criticising their government
  - john_glick 4y ago
    It's a slippery slope, though. You start by banning certain phrases, then certain thoughts, then certain people (lock them up)
butUhmErm 4y ago
Is free expression under attack or are affluent people who demand an audience under attack? Express yourself all you want. No one is owed an agreeable audience. That’s the exact opposite of allowing freedom of expression. Personally I think it’s the contrary; expression has become so unique and personal and not coupled to an abstract social tentpole; it’s really confusing people whose success is coupled to attention and adherence to past political correctness. A whole lot of people used to a lot of deference are no longer being deferred to and are complaining. That’s all this feels like to me. Memory of when the sky was the limit for them because there was less freedom of expression under past “big top” social frameworks. To back this up; in the US we recently crossed a threshold of <50% of adults believing in “higher powers”, down from ~80% around 2000. It’s hard to see such release of a modal not impacting belief in the “higher power” of a nation state, prior success of celebrities and thinkers; biological state has changed. Everyone is just “one of seven billion” with no special claim to a figurative identity that uniquely empowers them over any one else. That’s freedom of expression and people who rely on deferential attention will hate it.
goatcode 4y ago
I have trouble taking this article seriously when Canada, where a bill is under consideration to regulate posting on social media, is colored more free than the United States (at least if that awful heat diagram is accurate).
- leaflets2 4y ago
  Interesting, anywhere to read about that?
  - goatcode 4y ago
    https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-11/second-reading https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-11/second-...
- disgu 4y ago
  Also having trouble seeing the US as basically a free country when jaywalking exists.
  - goatcode 4y ago
    I'd agree with that. The rules and regulations that are in place in the United States would make the founding fathers weep, by their existence alone and that they're open to use to targeting people in a way that does not speak to equal justice for all.
kepler1 4y ago
Have you especially found that the latest era of increasing freedom of expression has led to better outcomes for countries? I have not come to that conclusion.
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  How did you managed to draw such a firm conclusions out of the morass of confounding effects that is the reality of the social sciences on a global scale? Please share your methodology!
greenthrow 4y ago
This is not talking about bogus "my freedoms" claims of people being kicked off Twitter, it's talking about actual loss of freedom of expression, where the government imprisons people for saying the wrong things. In the US we have loss sight of what real freedom of expression means.
- thfuran 4y ago
  Getting kicked off social media is essentially having your ability to engage in public discourse removed, or at least severely restricted.
  - SiempreViernes 4y ago
    - thfuran 4y ago
      You seem to be replying to a comment that I didn't write. I said nothing whatsoever about what the most extreme sort of punishment for speech is or about the maximal extent to which speech can be restricted. I certainly never suggested that being banned from twitter is either of those things.
      - panarky 4y ago
        Do you think Twitter should be forced to provide a platform for all speech with no exceptions? If not, what exceptions do you think should be allowed?
    - TobyTheDog123 4y ago
      I never understood the sarcastic, smarmy, dismissive tone people take when talking about these kinds of issues. The parent poster obviously was not implying getting banned on Twitter is in any way similar to the government imprisoning you for your speech, yet you straw-man him while being on some kind of unearned intellectual high-horse. He is, however, stating the fact that being banned from the platform is having your ability to participate in discourse removed or limited. While the platform may have the right to do so, it doesn't change the fact that there are varying degrees of censorship, and it's not the black-and-white "prosecution/execution or nothing."
DanBC 4y ago
Well, this backfired. Please, for the love of christ, just read the fucking article before commenting. Also, the New Humanitarian has a lot of interesting articles.
- topynate 4y ago
  You have my sympathies. I skimmed the article but I've read quite a lot of the report, which is considerably more detailed. Viewed from the Right, these guys have a pretty standard left-liberal internationalist agenda. For example, my country Israel gets the yellow alert status more or less because HRW said the word 'apartheid'. Of all the various impositions Israel makes on Palestinians, limiting their freedom of expression is probably close to the bottom of the list. Or the USA remarks are about Trump and the 6th of January, even though FOSTA-SESTA is demonstrably doing far more every day to restrict free speech. (Between MAGA and FOSTA, which is getting Cloudflare to terminate people's accounts?) Or more generally, 'discourse control' as used to describe the strategies both of Putin and of Bukele – come on. I could go on, but I probably shouldn't. To me, the interesting thing is that in despite of the report's slant, it is thorough, specific and quantitative. If I just ignore the blah blah, it's still quite apparent that there's a real trend across all continents towards restricted speech. It's really remarkable when you see the same thing happening on all continents. If the thread had been about which parts of the report are bullshit and which are accurate, maybe some people would have learned something, because I'm pretty sure there'd be wide agreement about maybe 70% of what's in there.
deleted 4y ago
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lkrubner 4y ago
Anyone interested in the wave of democracy that swept the world in the 1960s and 1970s and early 1980s, 4 small books, together regarded as a classic, are "Transitions from Authoritarian Rule" and the 4th volume (a small book that can easily be read in one day) is: Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1421410133/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_image?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1421410133/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... This book has a lot to say about why some transitions to democracy fail, and by implication it says a lot about why some long-standing democracies also fail. Anyone who is currently worried about the survival of democracy in the West might find this book interesting. The most interesting thing I learned from this is how much each elite faction and institution (the military, the church, the business elites, etc) are constantly guessing how the other elite factions are going to react to any change to the status quo, and it is the uncertainty of support that often inhibits an elite faction from engaging in a course of radical change. And likewise, if any one elite faction hopes to establish itself as dominant, it is its own uncertainty about the complacency of other elite factions that has a big effect on inhibiting its own boldness. Likewise, each faction worries about the ability of other elite factions to make an appeal to the general public, as no elite faction wants to be caught out as alone in taking action when there might be a surprising upsurge of activity from the general public. It's the fact that everyone is guessing about the power of everyone else that keeps the situation both dynamic and yet, at times, helps reinforce the status quo.
psyfi 4y ago
The whole free expression thing is irrealistic stupid idea. There is always a limit and as long as limits are not agreed on by everyone, it doesn't make sense Some expression can be considered pitching extreme ideologies or hate speech which is illegal in most "liberal" places Some people would argue that attacking an idea is different from attacking a person, but again this is something that is not agreed upon, some people would prefer to be insulted than for their culture/religion/idol to be insulted, so it is a different limits at the end

198 points by DanBC 4y ago

cbsmith 4y ago

No question about the title, but there's an elephant in the room here that's being ignored...

teucris 4y ago
There are several elephants in this particular room. Which are you referring to?
- narag 4y ago
  I find the fact that he doesn't say specially elephantic.
  - ErikCorry 4y ago
    Yes it's very pachydermic.

ThrowawayTestr 4y ago

Free speech is great and all, but what about my feelings? Authoritarians have it so easy nowadays.

nitrixion 4y ago
I'm sorry, but my feelings are more important than your feelings, so your free speech matters less than mine. I see this type of attitude often and it is very frustrating, not because I'm an extremist but because I'm a centrist.

colechristensen 4y ago

"I find people who don't think exactly like me to be intolerable" is the bread and butter for controlling a population. People look at the past and think to themselves "those people in the past were wrong, that's why the one acceptable way to think being enforced with power was immoral, on the other hand, my opinions are right, so the ends justify the means". Intolerance is intolerance, regardless of how morally justified you think it is.

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
- causi 4y ago
  The paradox of tolerance is an idea. I'm growing increasingly tired of authoritarians citing it as a fundamental law of the universe.
- wikitopian 4y ago
  Intolerance must be understood in its academic sense and not in the politically motivated sense it's typically used today. This is a technically correct point that is always used to justify declaring people you dislike "intolerant" to justify being intolerant.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  It's a kind of "have an open mind but not so much that your brain falls out" situation. Too many people think their brain is going to fall out of even the slightest deviation from their moral code is tolerated these days.
  - teamonkey 4y ago
    Too many people think their brain is going to fall out when someone calls them out on their behaviour.
  - armchairhacker 4y ago
    This is roughly what I’m thinking. We can be intolerant of things which are “obviously” wrong, like hate and other intolerance. We shouldn’t be intolerant of the gray area, where something is controversial but still justified. The fundamental truth is that you are intolerant, because speech leads to action. People like to think of themselves as tolerant and not sensitive, and maybe some people are tolerant to speech which doesn’t lead to action and can take insults for days. But when a majority may hold an opinion you don’t like (e.g. cancel your favorite TV show, or food, or just flat-out kill you and harvest your organs), you want to censor this opinion. You may also want to censor speech when it affects those who aren’t so thick-skinned, like your mom or 5-year-old daughter or the other 75% of the population whose mental health is affected by words. If your laws tolerate enough speech, the bad guys may team together, take over your government and change them - hence, the Paradox of Tolerance. But they may not, and they may also manage to take over your government without tolerance or speech or even teaming up. In an ideal world we’d allow all speech but have no “bad” speech, but in practice we have tape and plywood to prevent speech when the alternative would very clearly, very significantly hurt more people than censoring. I also think there are also exceptions to tolerance in the case of an emergency, with the distinction that it has to be an actual emergency universally (agreed on by logical people), and also temporary unless it’s really, really bad (like everyone dies once we stop). e.g. covid in January-May 2020. If we had a super strict, solid covid lockdown when the virus first broke out, we may have actually eradicated covid. Yeah we’d be violating essential freedoms, we’d have to lock up or possibly execute people who go outside, and may even have to curtail anti-science speech. But with said lockdown we may have actually eradicated covid, IMO that is worth being intolerant of dissent for 3 months. However, covid mandates once we realized covid would become endemic, those are debatable, because a) the emergency is no longer universally agreed, and b) some of those mandates could be argued indefinite. But the other fundamental truth is there’s no right answer. There’s no “do policy X and everything will work out”, hindsight 20/20 but we have no idea the “bad” speech (speech which causes real suffering) of the future will be. There’s no “objectively moral” answer. Ultimately it comes down to, well, your opinion or the opinion of those in power.

bradhilton 4y ago

> The level of democracy enjoyed by the average citizen around the world in 2021 has regressed to 1989 levels Sounds ominously like the iron curtain is falling back into place, this time more dispersed, not just concentrated in the Soviet bloc. > 70 percent of the global population lives under dictatorships, according to VDem’s data. That’s a rise of 20 percent over the past decade. That's pretty disconcerting. Without knowing more about their methodology I'm not sure how this compares to the Cold War era, but it is worrisome to say the least.

Victerius 4y ago
It lines up with the Corruption Perception Index: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Map_of_countries_by_Corruption_Perceptions_Index_%282021%29.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Map_of_c... Judging from this map alone, one would logically conclude that Homo Sapiens is a pretty corrupt species. The average human being lives in a corrupt dictatorship.
- vehemenz 4y ago
  I'm not sure it makes sense to judge homo sapiens as corrupt, given that they lived much differently the past 10,000 years than their first 300,000 years. I can easily imagine social groups were more egalitarian and less corrupt for most of human prehistory.
  - leaflets2 4y ago
    The larger the group, the more corrupted power seekers will climb close to the top, and do the more damage (since they affect more people). Maybe we can say that the human brain partly isn't well suited for living in large societies, for these reasons
- orangepurple 4y ago
  Germany is GREEN on that map?! (Was this map commissioned by Germans?) To be fair I can't tell if large German corporations and politicians are corrupt or instead lack direction, are criminal, or incompetent and are funded by mandatory spending by the government. See Brandenburg, Dieselgate, Gazprom Germania for the tip of the iceberg.

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

I wonder why Mexico was omitted from both the article and map? Hasn't deaths/disappearances of journalists been running rampant there?

swatcoder 4y ago
I'm not sure why that graphic excludes it, but they link to the source they're relying on, and they do seem to track it as well. https://www.article19.org/gxr-22/#:~:text=Meet%20our%20teams-,As%20free%20expression%20slides%20and%20authoritarianism,how%20do%20we%20reclaim%20democracy%3F&text=ARTICLE%2019's%20Global%20Expression%20Report,share%20information%20freely%20and%20safely https://www.article19.org/gxr-22/#:~:text=Meet%20our%20teams....
bena 4y ago
Also Greenland and a couple of other Central/South American countries. It's probably just areas they don't have good or reliable data for.
SiempreViernes 4y ago
> ARTICLE 19 Mexico has its own methodology for tracking the freedom of expression situation in the country – they are not included in GxR rankings or any country-level analyses using the metric. Which I think means basically "for historical reasons they are special". Shame though, cross country comparisons are interesting even if they are hard to do properly

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

Criticising actions of governments is all well and good, but no-one is discussing how much it has become acceptable to go after people for some percieved offence. I am not just talking about cancell culture. Like the fact that Elon Musk is demanding that a lawfirm should fire a lawyer that used to work for SEC just for revenge. Or the fact that you can get removed from Youtube just because 100 bots filed reports against your channel, no human has ever been offended and no human has ever reviewed the complaint. How does free speech that offends powerfull people survive in 'law of the jungle' interpretation of free market?

aaroninsf 4y ago

There is a real, and serious, and worsening, conflict between "free expression" of noble and necessary kinds, and weaponized speech, such as disinformation and other tools for sentiment steering. Which is arguably now a significantly worse problem for most societies than mere suppression. Not to mention merely venal "corporate speech" and the deluge of commercial speech (much of it undisclosed).

wikitopian 4y ago
Is there a way that adults who are capable of critically thinking for themselves to opt out of your crusade to protect us from ideas you disagree with?
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Problem is, there’s been an active war against critical thought across multiple fronts for a while now, which includes campaigns in social and traditional media and attacks on the education system. Youth and unwitting adults alike are being trained to stay angry and act on impulse rather than address situations as thoughtful, well-rounded members of society would. I won’t claim to have a solution, but there are clearly severe problems afoot and ceasing all filtering alone isn’t going to result in an outcome any better than systematic censoring will.
  - wikitopian 4y ago
    I understand you believe there's a compelling case for placing your hand over my mouth. I'm sure you earnestly believe your case, and think placing your hand over my mouth is the moral, right, and just thing to do. Time will tell if you're capable of holding it there.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      I guess what I’m getting at is that if we’re to eliminate all traces of censorship, other actions must be taken in parallel to not allow the negative effects of doing that spiral out of control. A starting point might be to restore Fairness Doctrine and other policies that help prevent traditional media from becoming hyper-polarized Nielsen-rating-chasing entertainment rather than legitimate news sources, as well as holding social media directly responsible for the problems brought by bot farms and other types of amplifying manipulation.

dqpb 4y ago

I’ve been very surprised at how quickly the American left has turned its back on free speech. I guess that’s why they’ve stopped calling themselves “liberal”, instead calling themselves “progressive”. Much like how the American right has stopped calling the US a democracy, instead calling it a republic. Or how Google changed their motto from the specific “don’t be evil”, to the ambiguous “do the right thing”. After all, whose to say that being evil isn’t sometimes the right thing… The problem of course, is that if you bootstrap on good principles and then replace them with dubious principles, your past success is no longer predictive of future success. It’s like ripping out your home’s foundation - what good is it now that the house is built? It’s just getting in the way of that sweet basement you want to add. Edit: as I rack up downvotes, I see that complaining about the Left, Right, and Google in a single post on HN is a losing strategy :)

lucideer 4y ago
> Edit: as I rack up downvotes... Just for clarity, these are likely because you didn't read the article. Your comment does not relate to the article content in any way - it seems to be based on an interpretation of the title.
- dqpb 4y ago
  > Freedom of expression and democracy are intimately linked, and both are deteriorating on a global scale. The article isn't talking about the US. But my claim is that US left-wing is attacking free-speech and the US right-wing is attacking democracy. I don't know how much more hand-holding I can provide to indicate that "deteriorating on a global scale" includes the US.
bena 4y ago
As to the "Don't be evil" vs "Do the right thing", they're both rather ambiguous, but "Don't be evil" is passive, it's easier to condone inaction. I'm going to try and use an example where we won't have to argue the semantics of whether or not standing by is "evil". You see someone trip and fall on their face. They're a little busted up, bloody nose, a few scrapes, but nothing major. Walking past them and not helping them at all is "not evil". It's not "good" either. It's completely neutral. The right thing to do is to help the person up and see if they need anything. Now, to ramp it up. If I see someone getting stabbed, I can easily justify staying out of it. I'm not the one stabbing. I don't know the situation. My only goal is to "not be evil". And since I'm not stabbing, I'm walking on, because I'm not the one being evil here. I can justify that decision in the framework of "don't be evil", but I can't in the framework of "do the right thing". And of course, they're both slightly disguised trolley problems. "Don't be evil". What is evil? What does it mean to not be it? Where's the line where inaction stops being neutral and starts being evil? And of course, if I believe something to not be evil, there is not end to what I could do. The same issue arises with "Do the right thing". We have to define the right thing. And sometimes doing nothing is the right thing. Sometimes the right thing is letting the bad thing happen because experience is the best teacher.

etchalon 4y ago

The article, and its data, is almost specifically about actual authoritarian regimes and actual restriction of speech by governments against citizens. But I predict this thread will very quickly nose dive into "Twitter banned me for saying COVID is a hoax and something something first amendment."

ReptileMan 4y ago
I do think that twitter and the other walled gardens are public fora and people should have some free speech rights there. That are different from whatever Twitter decides at their discretion.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- etchalon 4y ago
  That happened fast.
seydor 4y ago
lxe 4y ago
Your prediction came true! Would be cool if reading the article was a requirement before posting a comment. Maybe use a summarizer AI to create a short quiz that people would need to answer before posting?
- etchalon 4y ago
  I feel like that would just eliminate 80% of HN comments.
  - ReptileMan 4y ago
    The first line of the article is Internet blackouts. Strategic lawsuits against journalists. Regulations restricting the activities of NGOs. The weaponisation of health and security policies. These are all strategies that governments around the world are increasingly using to curtail the right to dissent, protest, and even just access information. Most of those are made easier by the current structure of the internet. So the power that Twitter yields is important. A lot of the dictators actually rule with wide enough popular support as to be legitimate. And their mission of thought suppression is made easier by the censorship infrastructure already build to deal with the cancel culture demand. You cannot separate both.

ReptileMan 4y ago

Blame Steve Jobs. He was the first one to successfully start locking the internet. The rest just follows. With centralization censorship is easy.

anovikov 4y ago

Why not take a cynical approach? If free expression is useful, then countries cracking down on it are shooting themselves in the foot. If they want to do it, why stop them? They are delisting themselves from the global competition: set up attractive immigration programs to pick out their most talented population and let the rest sink to Russia/N. Korea level.

dbspin 4y ago
Because no country exists in isolation. Where norms are established, they spread. Where governments become authoritarian without repercussion, authoritarianism becomes a more favourable option to those in power. Basically it sets up the potential for a really bad local maxima - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
kbenson 4y ago
> Why not take a cynical approach? Because things such as local maxima and minima exist, and "local" could be on timescales of decades or centuries. Also, what metrics are we measuring by? GDP? Happiness? Scientific progress? Species expansion? It's entirely possible that reducing free expression results in a more stable but more stagnant society, and while that may have immediate benefits, could leave everyone in that society worse off on average than the alternative in a few decades. To be fair, it's entirely possible that too much free expression could do the same, and the optimal path is in the middle somewhere. I think this is often overlooked, and people think that more freedom of expression is always a good thing, which is odd, because I'm not sure anything taken to an extreme end of a spectrum is necessarily a good thing, and I'm not sure freedom of expression is any different.
thrown_22 4y ago
Because I don't want to live in a country that sinks to Russia/N. Korea levels.

hunglee2 4y ago

the article is an example of orientalism, presenting the case as if there is no urgency on the matter in the Western world. Cancel culture, de-platforming, algorithmic dampening, account mislabelling, brigading on-platform, account suspension and deletion - all of these things are happening in the Western world, on US platforms. I used to have sympathy with the the argument that 'private company's can do what they like', especially when they banned people I don't like but I have come to realise that this can be understood as the outsourcing of the suppression of free expression to the private sector. The fight for freedom of expression is here, not Myanmar

hexator 4y ago
There's quite a bit of difference between the government banning free expression and a private company deciding that they don't want intolerable people on their platform — which itself is an example of their free expression.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  Step 1 - governments privatises /sells all public squares and large streets in your city Step 2 - private companies that own them hire private security firms Step 3 - if anyone protests, stands with a banner or says anything in convenient anywhere in the city, they get violently removed. Step 4 - folks like you yourself defend it under the guide of 'but it's not a government!' Vioala, no free speech to worry about! You think this is far fetched? It's happening as we speak, thousands of public spaces across Uk were sold and you can;t protest there anymore. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/05/great-british-sell-off-how-desperate-councils-sold-91bn-of-public-assets https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/05/great-british...
  - hexator 4y ago
    This seems like a false comparison
    - drc500free 4y ago

VictorPath 4y ago

> Since he took office in 2000, Putin has been eroding the space for public debate in Russia. He moved from dismantling independent media Right, Russia bans independent media, while those in the free EU can go read https://www.rt.com https://www.rt.com ... oh yaa, the EU blocks that web site.

tgv 4y ago
Since you're talking about independent media, your whataboutism doesn't make much sense.
- Georgelemental 4y ago
  "Independent" of who? Who gets to decide what is "independent" and therefore deserving of the human right to free speech, versus what is "not independent" and therefore subhuman and not deserving of rights?
  - immibis 4y ago
    Reality does. God am I sick of this "who will decide" nonsense. There is no reality where RT is anything but Russian state-sponsored propaganda.
    - Georgelemental 4y ago
      "Reality" doesn't make decisions. Reality just is. Humans need to make the decisions.
  - tgv 4y ago
    Well, ask the parent of my comment, which introduced the term. But it's not as if you don't know. The dictionary provides two useful definitions of the word: * not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence * capable of thinking or acting for oneself which both apply here. So, media that does not depend on some benefactor (such as a state or larger corp) to stay alive, and that is free to form its own opinions. RT fails these criteria. So how about using common sense instead of trying that state indignant, passive-aggressive relativism.

gaze 4y ago

I'm immediately suspicious when I see this map of the world with countries shaded by how "free" they are. What are the units of freedom? What's the color scale? How is freedom measured and who is measuring it? Why does it even make sense to express freedom as a number?

karaterobot 4y ago
If the answers exist, they will be in the PDF report linked in the article. https://www.article19.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/A19-GxR-Report-22.pdf https://www.article19.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/A19-GxR...
SiempreViernes 4y ago
It's just a new index created out of V-Dem data dude, no need to go full Spy vs Spy paranoid. Being an index it naturally doesn't have units, you'll have to give meaning to the scale yourself. Here is a bit of quote from the methodology section if you are curios: """ In producing the Global Expression Report, ARTICLE 19 selected the 25 indicators described below which best matched with our broad and holistic view of freedom of expression. These indicators were included in a Bayesian measurement model for countries with available data from 2000 to 2021 to create our metric: the GxR. V-Dem draws on theoretical and methodological expertise from its worldwide team to produce data in the most objective and reliable way possible. Approximately half of the indicators in the V-Dem data set are based on factual information obtainable from official documents such as constitutions and government records. The remainder consists of more subjective assessments on topics like democratic and governing practices and compliance with de jure rules. On such issues, typically five experts provide ratings for the country, thematic area, and time period for which they have expertise. """ More starting at page 52, but there's really no big mystery here, it's just quantitative sociology.

at_a_remove 4y ago

I find the whole thing perversely enjoyable. If you want to test someone, allow them to succeed. Give them power. When I was young, the left was the underdog, and they sure sounded like a nice bunch of people ... kindness, forgiving, can't we all get along? Free speech, our country was founded on it! The wheel turns and now they are in power. Suddenly it is cancel, no contact, punch Nazis, hang the traitors, and so on. You don't get to speak anymore, then sneering about "freeze peach." Laughing about the misfortunes of others. Give people a little taste of authority and, well, masks off. I am reminded of that Flannery O'Connor story, and I guess some people would be decent were someone there to shoot them every minute of their lives.

_notathrowaway 4y ago
I don't find it enjoyable at al, but I would say it is ironic that back then it was liberals preaching for free speech and conservatives wanting to censor all things (television, video-games, porn, etc). Power seems to quickly change one's ideals.
tailrecursion 4y ago
It's telling to see this comment suppressed with not even a hint as to why. Feminism has changed drastically over the years. The gay movement has been taken over by toxic individuals. Occupy Wall St was taken over. Antifa shootings, BLM riots, lockdowns, get vaccinated or lose your job, and the redefinition of words, all occurred recently. Biden's rhetoric re Trump voters, 80+ million people, is very interesting. We're going to suppress it all with no discussion.
- throwawayacc2 4y ago
  > Feminism has changed drastically over the years This is so true. All your comment is true, but, the mention of feminism really caught my eye. So, I’m a man. But once in a blue moon I’ll visit ovarit. It’s a reddit clone but for gender critical feminists. To me, the women there seem perfectly reasonable. I genuinely like seeing what they post there and it makes sense to me. They believe women are adult female humans, they believe men and women should have the same rights and they believe societal roles should not be mandatory. This to me feels intuitively correct and, well, normal. However, these women are considered monsters in many places. Mainstream platforms ban them. They are disparaged as TERFs and called hateful. And I genuinely don’t understand how it got to this point. How did feminism mutate from “equal rights” and “don’t force societal expectations on me” to … whatever the hell we have today?

OrangeMonkey 4y ago

Every time a topic comes up reminding folks that suggesting free speech was once a good thing, every person who wants to silence others starts spamming "The Paradox of Tolerance." You see - we have to silence people because reasons. Lets see - havent tested yet. CTRL-F, PARADOX: ok, we are sitting at 26 times mentioned. I welcome the return of the days when wanting free speech is lauded - but I am afraid at what is going to have to happen to get us to that point.

Natsu 4y ago
The Paradox of Tolerance said that people have, based on their right to self-defense, the ability to defend themselves against those who would shut down speech with fists or pistols. In short, it's aimed at protecting people from literal brown shirt tactics of assaulting people for speaking. Those invoking it now are pretty far afield from what it espouses.
- immibis 4y ago
  The word "would" indicates targets who haven't committed the crime yet, so I'd say it's being used correctly.
  - OrangeMonkey 4y ago
    I'm sorry but no. We cannot silence others who are using their soap boxes by saying 'if they dont get their way they will use the ammo boxes so we should shut them up first.' Based on the paradox of tolerance, they should pre-emptively try to silence us because we are trying to shut down communication. You know this goes both ways right?
  - Natsu 4y ago
    The word "would" is me describing a kind of person willing to do a thing, not a guaranteed future action. Also, it's kinda weird to hang on a word not in the original quote: > But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. If someone is preemptively attacking people because of what they "might" do, then they're turning this completely on its head. Can you tell me more about why you want to live in a world where people are assaulted for pre-crime? Which pre-crime is eligible? If pre-crime is illegal now, would you support yourself getting assaulted for promoting it?

debacle 4y ago

Backsliding on free expression on Hacker News needs to end. The amount of political posts that just turn into light gray on light gray are awful. I don't like much of the political content, but it seems there are many with a clear agenda on HN.

asdff 4y ago
One should assume that this platform is as brigaded by vested interests as any other platform on the internet
lp0_on_fire 4y ago
I'd prefer to see fewer political posts here, period. It's too easy to get caught up in emotion and nonsense. Anonymous internet forums open to whoever wants to sign up just aren't suited for (productive) political discussion, no matter how hard people try to moderate it.
deleted 4y ago
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faxmeyourcode 4y ago

Seeing the UK score an 82 on the freedom scale, whatever that means, next to the United States' score of 84, is enough to discredit whatever wacky measure they've created for "freedom" in this article. https://www.theregister.com/2016/06/02/social_media_arrests_up_37pc_london_section_127_communications_act/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/06/02/social_media_arrests_...

bondarchuk 4y ago
You think it's too high or too low?
- polski-g 4y ago
  Too high... You can be put in a cage, for words, in the UK.
  - rascul 4y ago
    I don't know any specific examples off the top of my head but I'm fairly sure that's true for the US as well. The bar might be higher, though.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Executed, even: https://daily.jstor.org/sentenced-to-death-and-other-tales-from-the-dark-side-of-language/ https://daily.jstor.org/sentenced-to-death-and-other-tales-f...
      - smsm42 4y ago
        Tbh, in this case there was also a small matter of armed robbery and felony murder involved.
witherk 4y ago
Wait what? I have seen multiple stories of the police showing up to people's house and fining them for tweets in the UK? https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-60260292 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-60260292 Also it is my understanding that it is much easier to sue someone for libel in the UK. I would think that the UK score should actually be lower.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Why are these kinds of articles always so reluctant to explain issues like this, on Putin/Russia and MBS/Saudi Arabia? Note also, Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen is the more appropriate comparison to Russia's war on Ukraine (and let's not forget the USA's wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, either). Here's an excerpt from the report: > "Russia, for example, has long targeted dissidents outside its borders. But only in the wake of the Ukraine invasion has the international community taken strong measures to hold Putin’s government to account. Meanwhile, the wider lesson seems to have escaped the international community: Even as Western countries slap sanctions on Russia, they have slowly allowed Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman back into the fold, despite his appalling record of suppressing freedom of expression online and evidence that he played a role in the murder of Khashoggi." Is it not obvious that American presidents pander to Saudi princelings because Saudi Arabia recycles petrodollars to Wall Street in the form of bloated arms deals and other investment activities? Dictators and authoritarians who do this always get a pass from 'the democratic Western humanitarian governments'. Does anyone really doubt that if Putin had taken that route, and recycled the majority of Russian oil export money into the Western banking system, that there never would have been US support for regime change in Ukraine in 2014, or in Georgia in 2008, or an effort to block the Nordstream 2 pipeline, and so on? Any military action in eastern Ukraine would have been treated with the same relative indifference that the Saudi/UAE military assault and blockade of Yemen. Hypocrisy is the name of the game for the 'free West' on this issue.

throwAwaxxx666 4y ago

I was banned from LinkedIn for 4 months for saying “Chinese virus” in the context of a post about a UK Telegraph article reporting on evidence on the origin of the virus. I did not mean to say anything more than if I was to say the Spanish Flu or German Measles or Middle Eastern Respiratory Disease. Somehow it’s been a bad thing to use the same naming pattern in case of Covid (based on where it originated) I have back and forth emails with LinkedIn support with them telling me that saying “Chinese Virus” amounts to hate speech.

devindotcom 4y ago
This article is about people being jailed or killed for criticising their government
- john_glick 4y ago
  It's a slippery slope, though. You start by banning certain phrases, then certain thoughts, then certain people (lock them up)

butUhmErm 4y ago

Is free expression under attack or are affluent people who demand an audience under attack? Express yourself all you want. No one is owed an agreeable audience. That’s the exact opposite of allowing freedom of expression. Personally I think it’s the contrary; expression has become so unique and personal and not coupled to an abstract social tentpole; it’s really confusing people whose success is coupled to attention and adherence to past political correctness. A whole lot of people used to a lot of deference are no longer being deferred to and are complaining. That’s all this feels like to me. Memory of when the sky was the limit for them because there was less freedom of expression under past “big top” social frameworks. To back this up; in the US we recently crossed a threshold of <50% of adults believing in “higher powers”, down from ~80% around 2000. It’s hard to see such release of a modal not impacting belief in the “higher power” of a nation state, prior success of celebrities and thinkers; biological state has changed. Everyone is just “one of seven billion” with no special claim to a figurative identity that uniquely empowers them over any one else. That’s freedom of expression and people who rely on deferential attention will hate it.

goatcode 4y ago

I have trouble taking this article seriously when Canada, where a bill is under consideration to regulate posting on social media, is colored more free than the United States (at least if that awful heat diagram is accurate).

leaflets2 4y ago
Interesting, anywhere to read about that?
- goatcode 4y ago
  https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-11/second-reading https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-11/second-...
disgu 4y ago
Also having trouble seeing the US as basically a free country when jaywalking exists.
- goatcode 4y ago
  I'd agree with that. The rules and regulations that are in place in the United States would make the founding fathers weep, by their existence alone and that they're open to use to targeting people in a way that does not speak to equal justice for all.

kepler1 4y ago

Have you especially found that the latest era of increasing freedom of expression has led to better outcomes for countries? I have not come to that conclusion.

SiempreViernes 4y ago
How did you managed to draw such a firm conclusions out of the morass of confounding effects that is the reality of the social sciences on a global scale? Please share your methodology!

greenthrow 4y ago

This is not talking about bogus "my freedoms" claims of people being kicked off Twitter, it's talking about actual loss of freedom of expression, where the government imprisons people for saying the wrong things. In the US we have loss sight of what real freedom of expression means.

thfuran 4y ago
Getting kicked off social media is essentially having your ability to engage in public discourse removed, or at least severely restricted.
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  - thfuran 4y ago
    You seem to be replying to a comment that I didn't write. I said nothing whatsoever about what the most extreme sort of punishment for speech is or about the maximal extent to which speech can be restricted. I certainly never suggested that being banned from twitter is either of those things.
    - panarky 4y ago
      Do you think Twitter should be forced to provide a platform for all speech with no exceptions? If not, what exceptions do you think should be allowed?
  - TobyTheDog123 4y ago
    I never understood the sarcastic, smarmy, dismissive tone people take when talking about these kinds of issues. The parent poster obviously was not implying getting banned on Twitter is in any way similar to the government imprisoning you for your speech, yet you straw-man him while being on some kind of unearned intellectual high-horse. He is, however, stating the fact that being banned from the platform is having your ability to participate in discourse removed or limited. While the platform may have the right to do so, it doesn't change the fact that there are varying degrees of censorship, and it's not the black-and-white "prosecution/execution or nothing."

DanBC 4y ago

Well, this backfired. Please, for the love of christ, just read the fucking article before commenting. Also, the New Humanitarian has a lot of interesting articles.

topynate 4y ago
You have my sympathies. I skimmed the article but I've read quite a lot of the report, which is considerably more detailed. Viewed from the Right, these guys have a pretty standard left-liberal internationalist agenda. For example, my country Israel gets the yellow alert status more or less because HRW said the word 'apartheid'. Of all the various impositions Israel makes on Palestinians, limiting their freedom of expression is probably close to the bottom of the list. Or the USA remarks are about Trump and the 6th of January, even though FOSTA-SESTA is demonstrably doing far more every day to restrict free speech. (Between MAGA and FOSTA, which is getting Cloudflare to terminate people's accounts?) Or more generally, 'discourse control' as used to describe the strategies both of Putin and of Bukele – come on. I could go on, but I probably shouldn't. To me, the interesting thing is that in despite of the report's slant, it is thorough, specific and quantitative. If I just ignore the blah blah, it's still quite apparent that there's a real trend across all continents towards restricted speech. It's really remarkable when you see the same thing happening on all continents. If the thread had been about which parts of the report are bullshit and which are accurate, maybe some people would have learned something, because I'm pretty sure there'd be wide agreement about maybe 70% of what's in there.

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lkrubner 4y ago

Anyone interested in the wave of democracy that swept the world in the 1960s and 1970s and early 1980s, 4 small books, together regarded as a classic, are "Transitions from Authoritarian Rule" and the 4th volume (a small book that can easily be read in one day) is: Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1421410133/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_image?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1421410133/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... This book has a lot to say about why some transitions to democracy fail, and by implication it says a lot about why some long-standing democracies also fail. Anyone who is currently worried about the survival of democracy in the West might find this book interesting. The most interesting thing I learned from this is how much each elite faction and institution (the military, the church, the business elites, etc) are constantly guessing how the other elite factions are going to react to any change to the status quo, and it is the uncertainty of support that often inhibits an elite faction from engaging in a course of radical change. And likewise, if any one elite faction hopes to establish itself as dominant, it is its own uncertainty about the complacency of other elite factions that has a big effect on inhibiting its own boldness. Likewise, each faction worries about the ability of other elite factions to make an appeal to the general public, as no elite faction wants to be caught out as alone in taking action when there might be a surprising upsurge of activity from the general public. It's the fact that everyone is guessing about the power of everyone else that keeps the situation both dynamic and yet, at times, helps reinforce the status quo.

psyfi 4y ago

The whole free expression thing is irrealistic stupid idea. There is always a limit and as long as limits are not agreed on by everyone, it doesn't make sense Some expression can be considered pitching extreme ideologies or hate speech which is illegal in most "liberal" places Some people would argue that attacking an idea is different from attacking a person, but again this is something that is not agreed upon, some people would prefer to be insulted than for their culture/religion/idol to be insulted, so it is a different limits at the end