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> “ Rumble is the only company at our scale that holds the line for free speech and American values” This is Brazil. I’m all for freedom of speech, but not all
by darth_avocado 3y ago
> “ Rumble is the only company at our scale that holds the line for free speech and American values”
This is Brazil. I’m all for freedom of speech, but not all cultures are the same and neither are local laws. Sometimes what works for America doesn’t work elsewhere.
I’m glad they shut it down instead of following the government demands because the company has a set of values, but that’s about it.
- timmytokyo 3y agoKen White ("Popehat") wrote a recent essay on what it typically means when a company promotes their support for "free speech". He wrote it about Substack, but I think it applies equally well to Rumble. https://popehat.substack.com/p/substack-has-a-nazi-opportunity https://popehat.substack.com/p/substack-has-a-nazi-opportuni...
- yareal 3y agoIt's absolutely purely a monetary choice. Rumble isn't any more principled than any other free speech platform, they still moderate plenty of stuff that they find disagreeable. It's a very American sense of "free speech" that allows for Nazis and forbids video that contains any topless people. (Which, if you've been to many parts of the world, is not at all obscene.) They also ban this: > You may not post or transmit any messages pertaining to charity requests, petitions for signatures, requesting donations, relating to pyramid schemes, or pertaining to the manipulation of the Rumble Service. "Hey, can you sign my petition" sure seems like a cornerstone of free speech... surprised to see it considered against the rules by a supposed "principled" company.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gorwell 3y ago[flagged]
- logicchains 3y ago>Clever how censors have convinced people that they are the good guys It's not that clever; they control all the information and ideas that a significant fraction of the population are exposed to, it'd be surprising if they didn't manage to paint themselves in a positive light.
- jevoten 3y agoUnless it's censorship [1] they don't like, in which case they call it book-burning. And we all know who burned books, don't we? [1] The bar to be called that can be as low or high as needed. Book publishers, online stores, credit cards, and social media platforms banning a person can be just "freedom of association", but not giving government support to a work by placing it in school libraries is censorship. You can take a guess at how many books that Amazon won't sell are on school library shelves. Yet that's not censorship.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> we all know who burned books, don't we? Everybody. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_book-burning_incidents#Cold_War_era_and_1990s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_book-burning_incidents... There are instances of books being burned for pragmatic, non-ideological reasons. But generally, reactionary ideology seems to top the charts.
- a1369209993 3y ago> And it's not always a reactionary act. It's sometimes for pragmatic reasons - to prevent or curtail a non-ideological issue. Literally all of the examples in #Cold_War_era_and_1990s either were explicitly ideological, or seem plausibly likely to have been ideological, and the latter are all along the lines of "Well, they might have had a personal grudge against the author." or "We don't have any idea why they commited arson against a library.". Do you have any specific examples of attempted curtailment of a non-ideological issue? (No, "but our ideology is RIGHT!" doesn't count; denying people that shortcut is more or less the point of free speech.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- canadiantim 3y ago[flagged]
- datadeft 3y ago> what works for America doesn’t work elsewhere Free speech is the only exception. Bad ideas can be rooted out with good ideas. Banning opinions have never worked ever and it will never work. It is a pure waste of everything.
- yareal 3y ago[dead]
- darth_avocado 3y agoIt is not. You’re used to countries with strong law and order. Countries where this doesn’t exist, free speech often leads to devastating results. > Banning opinions have never worked ever and it will never work. It absolutely works. There’s a reason Nazi propaganda is banned in Germany. Edit: Before everyone just points to communist states as what happens when you have censorship, you also need to acknowledge the extreme violence that happens when speech is unrestricted in every case. For example Rohingya genocide was fueled by unrestricted “opinions” on the internet. https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-sue-facebook-myanmar-genocide-us-uk-legal-action-social-media-violence https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-... Besides, some form of restrictions on speech absolutely exist everywhere in the world. People look at censorship as either complete freedom or Soviet Russia, but in reality middle ground does exist.
- logicchains 3y ago>Countries where this doesn’t exist, free speech often leads to devastating results Never anything as bad as the murder of tens of millions of their own citizens committed in countries with no free speech like Stalin's Russia and Mao's China. >It absolutely works. There’s a reason Nazi propaganda is banned in Germany If that's your metric for success it's absolutely failed, given the "Alternative for Deutschland" is now polling at over 20%.
- darth_avocado 3y agoThe Rohingya would like to disagree https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-sue-facebook-myanmar-genocide-us-uk-legal-action-social-media-violence https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-...
- Zak 3y agoI am curious as to how a court in Brazil can require a company that appears to be based in Canada and the USA to block access. If countries are allowed to assert extraterritorial jurisdiction, anyone running a website might need to know and obey the laws of nearly 200 countries. Some of those laws prohibit criticism of their respective governments, sex education, or pornography (including things most people in the US or EU would not consider pornographic).
- tibbydudeza 3y agoA court order would have forced all Brazilian ISP's or the international peering operators on Brazilian soil to block it - Rumble simply pre-empted it to make drama around free speech.
- claytongulick 3y ago> to make drama around free speech. I remember when free speech was an ideal that was universally recognized as crucial to a functioning democracy. "Making drama" by refusing to participate in a censorship program strikes me as admirable. What a strange world we live in where so many people sneer at the concept of free exchange and the marketplace of ideas, and those that seek to support it.
- midasuni 3y agoI don’t. I remember when every country and society have different views on freedom of speech and where the limits are.
- tibbydudeza 3y agoUS concepts are NOT universal - in South Africa we have strong laws against racist hate speech - call somebody a local slur for black person (k word) here you going to get prosecuted and fined and perhaps even jail never mind being dragged on social media. We call it "crimen injuria" in our laws - right to dignity is defined in our constitution and frankly this has NO place in our society considering our history.
- magicmicah85 3y agoCan’t they just kindly reply “no” to any foreign governments requests? I’m confused why shutting off all access was the answer when they’re not (to my knowledge) operating in Brazil
- darth_avocado 3y agoIf they’re operating in a country, they need to follow local laws.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoDo they have a physical presence in Brazil?
- darth_avocado 3y agoYou don’t need a physical presence.
- netr0ute 3y agoWhat could Brazil do?
- worik 3y ago> What could Brazil do? * Request extradition * Fine local advertisers * Confiscate any payments * Harrass the ISPs who carry the service * Harrass local users I do nor advocate any of the above But the idea a business that trades internationally can say "fuck you" to a nation state is childish There can be terrible consequences
- netr0ute 3y agoI don't know, but the end result of that sounds a whole lot similar to what Rumble's doing right now. Therefore, I'd say that for other websites in similar positions, they could just send Brazil's mad demandz to the junk pile.
- josephcsible 3y ago> I’m all for freedom of speech, but not all cultures are the same and neither are local laws. Sometimes what works for America doesn’t work elsewhere. If free speech doesn't work in some particular culture, then it's that culture that needs to be discarded, not free speech.
- darth_avocado 3y agoOkay that argument makes sense. The culture cannot change overnight when majority of your population is not educated. So what do you propose we do till then? Give free speech to everyone and let it all burn down?
- Georgelemental 3y agoOh no, uneducated people might express unapproved opinions! How improper, I think I might faint /s
- Matheus28 3y agoYou'll be surprised to learn that the way free speech exists in the US doesn't really exist in most other countries. In many western countries, hate speech, racism and nazism are prohibited speeches.
- sakjur 3y agoTo add to this, I’d say as a European that I’m more concerned with the US limiting speech than our own laws. The US is good at excercising its diplomatic, trade and military power to prevent other countries from wielding free speech wrong. Trading with Iran is one example of that. You can be effectively shut out from the financial system of the world if you decide to ignore US sanctions, even when you don’t have entities, customers, suppliers, or employees in the US. Cuba and Panama’s existence are other examples of when countries ignored the US and paid the price. I don’t think the US is particularly evil or anything like that, but true free speech is a whole lot easier to safeguard when you’re not relying on the patronage of a superpower. And today, most countries either are a superpower in their own might or rely on one for participation in the global economy and modern world. …and there’s some cruel irony in suggesting the dismantling of a culture to leave room for free speech. I believe any sort of sustainable freedom of speech will have to grow organically into the culture. And that unfortunately takes time.
- speeder 3y agoI am sad they had to shut down in Brazil, that is one of the few countries that has free speech in the constitution. What is going on is basically the government ignoring the constitution, and the Supreme Court allowing it, because they are corrupt.
- throwbsq 3y ago[flagged]
- teknico 3y ago> This is Brazil. […] Sometimes what works for America doesn’t work elsewhere. Shortening “United States of America” to just “America” is not good. Brazil is part of America. USA is part of America. USA is not America.
- Pat_Murph 3y ago[flagged]