3 ms·

Hard disagree. I think it's the most essential freedom of speech there is: to be allowed to read and speak wrong, dangerous ideas.

RandomLensman 3y ago
Did the USSR have TV channels in the West during the cold war?
- blitzar 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union#Jamming_of_foreign_radio_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union... That was censorship too ...
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    Of course. Or in the US during WWII, etc. Censorship is part of conflicts and confrontations. Maybe better to say there are two different forms of censorship: 1) the government doesn't like something, 2) society reduces it attack surface The two can coincide or not.
- m000 3y ago
  That's a really low bar we're setting for our "liberal" "democracies".
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    Its height notwithstanding, it's a bar that worked before for liberal democracies.
    - m000 3y ago
      Coming up next: "The police may beat us up bad because we marched at a protest, but at least we're not thrown to the dogs as Kim's uncle."
      - RandomLensman 3y ago
        So how would you have fought the propaganda/psy-ops side of the cold war? Why do you think your approach would have worked as well or better?
        m000 3y ago
        How about informing/educating people by promoting instead of undermining real journalism? I aspire to be able to tell apart A from B for myself, and not being told what is what from a nanny state and controlled media. Can't the "free" and purportedly superior western media debunk whatever BS rt.com peddles? But then they would probably be inclined to also call-out the psy-ops and other shenaningans staged by our govenments and targeting us. Ooops!
        RandomLensman 3y ago
        In most cases, you have no way of telling A and B apart unless you are directly involved or an expert. Debunking has limited effectiveness even in factual situations, beyond factual, not even sure what that would mean. There is, of course, also a numbers game, flipping the side of a few people is quite sufficient for a some things, so even being really good at countering adversarial propaganda will leave a lot of gaps. Reducing an attack surface might not always be a bad idea.
- perihelions 3y ago
  To answer the spirit of the question: as an American, you could freely subscribe to Soviet newspapers, printed in the USSR, which the US Post Office would deliver right to your doorstep (via international mail). That has been the case since 1965, when the Supreme Court settled the question in Lamont v. Postmaster General. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamont_v._Postmaster_General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamont_v._Postmaster_General
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    You could also watch some Soviet movies, but I'd say that is very different to access form large scall media outlets (radio, TV) that don't rely on subscription etc.
bootsmann 3y ago
This isn't about "reading/speaking wrong or dangerous ideas". You can stand infront of one of the EU parl today and read whatever manifesto of ideas you think true, in fact some people do, hell you can even do that inside the parliament, in fact some people do. What you cannot be is a foreign state at war with an ally and freely distribute state propaganda aimed at furthering your war goals. This isn't a hard line to draw.
- eastbound 3y ago
  > You can stand infront of one of the EU parl today and read whatever manifesto And you can do that because it has literally no impact. This vision of free speech was a moment of genius from our institutions. However, you can’t talk about the crimes of occupants in France in, say, a newspaper, or any broadcast channel, or anything that has an audience. Governments have literally made it a speechcrime to discover the authors who are killing our children at 23x the pace of the others.
  - sofixa 3y ago
    > However, you can’t talk about the crimes of occupants in France in, say, a newspaper, or any broadcast channel, or anything that has an audience If I'm reading your racist dogwhistles correctly, "occupants of France" would be muslims or brown/black people? Don't you worry, plenty of shit-tier "news" in France make it their life goal to cover every single crime committed by someone who cannot trace their lineage to 15th century France. (cf. Valeurs Actuelles) Hell, there are multiple political parties founded around those ideas, that don't forget to chime in any time anything happens. > Governments have literally made it a speechcrime to discover the authors who are killing our children at 23x the pace of the others. Who are those killing our children at 23x the pace, and what is the speech crime? Sources, please.
    - eastbound 3y ago
      You’re asking for sources, of course, because your horrible side has also made sure to forbid building them. So I dare you make the study on how much crimes the occupying forces are doing in France.
makeitdouble 3y ago
What do you do when the idea are not just "dangerous" but actively causing harm ? Right now the US has the tools to deal with that, if they need a domain down they can do it under their sovereign power. The EU doesn't.
- perihelions 3y ago
  The US government is constitutionally prohibited from taking down web domains which contain "ideas... actively causing harm". You're conflating multiple issues into one. The US has jurisdiction to seize domains being used in furtherance of crimes; sure. But ideas aren't crimes in the US. The US isn't able, legally or practically, to use this power to censor opinion or information on the basis of its content: the US courts do not permit it. ~ Your other question ("What do you do...?") is much more interesting to me, but it's too big for me to be able to give it a respectful treatment. This is my shortest answer: we entrust democracy to decide whether to start a war or to a end a war*; whether to build nuclear weapons or abolish them. It's implicit in our method of government that we trust the civic deliberation process with our lives. The fact that our collective deliberation can make mistakes, and kill a million people with its "whoopsies!", is part and parcel of what it means to function as a republic. (To lay the responsibilities elsewhere is to have a different method of government). Most political ideas are capable of causing immense harm in a democracy (except unimportant, frivolous ones)—there aren't many important, but safe, ideas. *(I think it's remarkable that much of the First Amendment jurisprudence involves censoring opinions about wars, in one direction or another: an acknowledgement that "ideas capable of killing millions" is at the heart of this civic question).
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    > But ideas aren't crimes in the US That's a distinction without a difference. Whether "macrosoft.com" is considered an idea or brand impersonation is in the eye of the beholder . And of course something not being allowed doesn't mean it doesn't happen in plain sight without repercutions. On the practicality of it, getting a take down court order for brand or copyright violation seems straightforward, and civil forfeiture can apply to domains [0] as well, so vaguely sticking a potential associated crime to a domain owner is enough for an agency to take down a domain, whatever it is. I think that's totally US's choice to have these laws and apply them their way. I also sympathize with the rest of the world planning to get out of that influence and their own tradeoffs. > It's implicit in our method of government that we trust the civic deliberation process with our lives. I feel you're looking at from the political lens only. A lot of "ideas" are not political and asking for civil debate everytime one of these gets a wide audience would be an issue. A suicide inducing site could be such. And it doesn't need to be intentional nor straight illegal. If looking at it hundreds of kids took out their lives every single day, you'd shut it down and start asking questions later. [0] https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/ice-domain-name-seizures-threaten-due-process-and https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/ice-domain-name-...

RandomLensman 3y ago

Did the USSR have TV channels in the West during the cold war?

blitzar 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union#Jamming_of_foreign_radio_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union... That was censorship too ...
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Of course. Or in the US during WWII, etc. Censorship is part of conflicts and confrontations. Maybe better to say there are two different forms of censorship: 1) the government doesn't like something, 2) society reduces it attack surface The two can coincide or not.
m000 3y ago
That's a really low bar we're setting for our "liberal" "democracies".
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Its height notwithstanding, it's a bar that worked before for liberal democracies.
  - m000 3y ago
    Coming up next: "The police may beat us up bad because we marched at a protest, but at least we're not thrown to the dogs as Kim's uncle."
    - RandomLensman 3y ago
      So how would you have fought the propaganda/psy-ops side of the cold war? Why do you think your approach would have worked as well or better?
      - m000 3y ago
        How about informing/educating people by promoting instead of undermining real journalism? I aspire to be able to tell apart A from B for myself, and not being told what is what from a nanny state and controlled media. Can't the "free" and purportedly superior western media debunk whatever BS rt.com peddles? But then they would probably be inclined to also call-out the psy-ops and other shenaningans staged by our govenments and targeting us. Ooops!
        RandomLensman 3y ago
        In most cases, you have no way of telling A and B apart unless you are directly involved or an expert. Debunking has limited effectiveness even in factual situations, beyond factual, not even sure what that would mean. There is, of course, also a numbers game, flipping the side of a few people is quite sufficient for a some things, so even being really good at countering adversarial propaganda will leave a lot of gaps. Reducing an attack surface might not always be a bad idea.
perihelions 3y ago
To answer the spirit of the question: as an American, you could freely subscribe to Soviet newspapers, printed in the USSR, which the US Post Office would deliver right to your doorstep (via international mail). That has been the case since 1965, when the Supreme Court settled the question in Lamont v. Postmaster General. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamont_v._Postmaster_General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamont_v._Postmaster_General
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  You could also watch some Soviet movies, but I'd say that is very different to access form large scall media outlets (radio, TV) that don't rely on subscription etc.

bootsmann 3y ago

This isn't about "reading/speaking wrong or dangerous ideas". You can stand infront of one of the EU parl today and read whatever manifesto of ideas you think true, in fact some people do, hell you can even do that inside the parliament, in fact some people do. What you cannot be is a foreign state at war with an ally and freely distribute state propaganda aimed at furthering your war goals. This isn't a hard line to draw.

eastbound 3y ago
> You can stand infront of one of the EU parl today and read whatever manifesto And you can do that because it has literally no impact. This vision of free speech was a moment of genius from our institutions. However, you can’t talk about the crimes of occupants in France in, say, a newspaper, or any broadcast channel, or anything that has an audience. Governments have literally made it a speechcrime to discover the authors who are killing our children at 23x the pace of the others.
- sofixa 3y ago
  > However, you can’t talk about the crimes of occupants in France in, say, a newspaper, or any broadcast channel, or anything that has an audience If I'm reading your racist dogwhistles correctly, "occupants of France" would be muslims or brown/black people? Don't you worry, plenty of shit-tier "news" in France make it their life goal to cover every single crime committed by someone who cannot trace their lineage to 15th century France. (cf. Valeurs Actuelles) Hell, there are multiple political parties founded around those ideas, that don't forget to chime in any time anything happens. > Governments have literally made it a speechcrime to discover the authors who are killing our children at 23x the pace of the others. Who are those killing our children at 23x the pace, and what is the speech crime? Sources, please.
  - eastbound 3y ago
    You’re asking for sources, of course, because your horrible side has also made sure to forbid building them. So I dare you make the study on how much crimes the occupying forces are doing in France.

makeitdouble 3y ago

What do you do when the idea are not just "dangerous" but actively causing harm ? Right now the US has the tools to deal with that, if they need a domain down they can do it under their sovereign power. The EU doesn't.

perihelions 3y ago
The US government is constitutionally prohibited from taking down web domains which contain "ideas... actively causing harm". You're conflating multiple issues into one. The US has jurisdiction to seize domains being used in furtherance of crimes; sure. But ideas aren't crimes in the US. The US isn't able, legally or practically, to use this power to censor opinion or information on the basis of its content: the US courts do not permit it. ~ Your other question ("What do you do...?") is much more interesting to me, but it's too big for me to be able to give it a respectful treatment. This is my shortest answer: we entrust democracy to decide whether to start a war or to a end a war*; whether to build nuclear weapons or abolish them. It's implicit in our method of government that we trust the civic deliberation process with our lives. The fact that our collective deliberation can make mistakes, and kill a million people with its "whoopsies!", is part and parcel of what it means to function as a republic. (To lay the responsibilities elsewhere is to have a different method of government). Most political ideas are capable of causing immense harm in a democracy (except unimportant, frivolous ones)—there aren't many important, but safe, ideas. *(I think it's remarkable that much of the First Amendment jurisprudence involves censoring opinions about wars, in one direction or another: an acknowledgement that "ideas capable of killing millions" is at the heart of this civic question).
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  > But ideas aren't crimes in the US That's a distinction without a difference. Whether "macrosoft.com" is considered an idea or brand impersonation is in the eye of the beholder . And of course something not being allowed doesn't mean it doesn't happen in plain sight without repercutions. On the practicality of it, getting a take down court order for brand or copyright violation seems straightforward, and civil forfeiture can apply to domains [0] as well, so vaguely sticking a potential associated crime to a domain owner is enough for an agency to take down a domain, whatever it is. I think that's totally US's choice to have these laws and apply them their way. I also sympathize with the rest of the world planning to get out of that influence and their own tradeoffs. > It's implicit in our method of government that we trust the civic deliberation process with our lives. I feel you're looking at from the political lens only. A lot of "ideas" are not political and asking for civil debate everytime one of these gets a wide audience would be an issue. A suicide inducing site could be such. And it doesn't need to be intentional nor straight illegal. If looking at it hundreds of kids took out their lives every single day, you'd shut it down and start asking questions later. [0] https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/ice-domain-name-seizures-threaten-due-process-and https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/ice-domain-name-...