7 ms·

There's not a trend against freedom of speech so much as existing laws outlawing certain categories of speech being applied to the internet. If you lie in a com

by yorwba 1y ago

There's not a trend against freedom of speech so much as existing laws outlawing certain categories of speech being applied to the internet. If you lie in a commercial context, that's fraud; if you lie in court, that's perjury; if you tell your buddies to go do crimes together, that's conspiracy to commit; if you tell someone to give you money or else, that's blackmail... If you come from the perspective that there used to be freedom of speech and now there's all those pesky laws restricting what you can say, it looks like a slippery slope. If you realize that people have been required to check ID when selling material unsuitable for minors in physical stores since before the internet existed, it seems a bit more unlikely that ID requirements will expand to cover everything else.

mytailorisrich 1y ago
There is no "freedom of speech" in the US sense in the EU/UK. That's often a cause for misunderstanding between the two sides of the Pond. There are many things that you are not allowed to write or say by law in EU countries simply because the legislator has decided that they are wrong opinions, and it is generally accepted that the State can and should implement such controls. Note that lying is not a crime in general. Your examples are for very specific contexts.
- af78 1y ago
  That's a common misconception. The European Convention on Human Rights guarantees freedom of expression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights#Article_10_%E2%80%93_expression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R... and is legally binding in all member states. Sure, there are exceptions but in the USA too freedom of speech is not absolute either. Moreover, in practice, there is more freedom of speech in most EU countries than in the USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-index https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-ind...: USA: 0.89 France: 0.96 Germany: 0.94 Czechia: 0.96 etc.
  - mytailorisrich 1y ago
    Including things like "media bias" and other dubious criteria in freedom of speech rankings is obviously skewed. Whatever the ECHR might say what I wrote in my previous comment is factual. In Europe "freedom of speech" comes with a long list of small print. In fact, this is so embedded that the article of the ECHR you quote provides for restrictions and even states that they are "necessary": "subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society"." QED
    - NicoJuicy 1y ago
      Yeah, what trump did, spreading lies, hate and falsely accusing wouldn't work in the EU. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of stupidity
      - mytailorisrich 1y ago
        > Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of stupidity Freedom of stupidity has to be the most basic right in a free society. Imagine if stupidity wasn't allowed!
        NicoJuicy 1y ago
        We learned from Nazi Germany in previous century. US seems, from the outside, not. Racism against other groups, deportations, camps, ...
        poszlem 1y ago
        We haven’t learned anything. We’re already caught in a radicalization spiral between the far left and the far right, echoing 1930s Europe. AfD is currently the most popular party in Germany, France is stuck between the National Rally and the openly communist New Popular Front, and if you think they won’t gladly exploit existing restrictions on free speech once they take power, you’re in for a rude awakening. You argue about the EU as if we were still living in 2005.
- blitzar 1y ago
  There is no freedom of speech in the "US sense" in the US either. Just because a bunch of noisy people shout about freedom all day long doesn't mean they are not talking absolute garbage.
defrost 1y ago
> If you realize that people have been required to check ID when selling material unsuitable for minors in physical stores Not a great example. No physical store would bother to check the ID of anyone clearly not {too young or borderline}. Digital ID requirements are such that age verification of some form is required for every single connection .. and to assume that a connection from {X} might well require another ID check an hour later as it might well be a different person at the same computer or another device altogether. That's an expansion from {only check young looking people} to {check and possibly retain records for _everyone_}.
- throwaway290 1y ago
  Check out zero trust proof standards Edit: I'm not saying EU uses it but it could...
  - defrost 1y ago
    Let's assume I'm familiar with the theory, what pragmatic open verification exists for the implementation of this EU app? Edit: the EU asserts the app is "privacy preserving" and "Additionally, work on the integration of zero-knowledge proofs is ongoing." ~ https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-makes-available-age-verification-blueprint https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-mak... It's not the assertions made that trouble me, it's the quality of any actual implementation and the scope for deliberate or accidental side leaking of knowledge that should be zero .. but likely (in a pragmatic view of a political world) is not.
    - throwaway290 1y ago
      If it's coordinated by the browser then it would be possible to see what requests are made and where
      - defrost 1y ago
        Absolutely, security is entire process that needs frequent sanity checks, by nature it's hard to get right in practice no matter how sound some central component is. To be fair my main motivation for comment was the up thread comment about physical ID checks of the past being an indicator that not much would change with digital checks. In the event of a physical store ID check system failure you have one owner at one location having access to just the ID's checked (perhaps blackmailing underage drinkers into dubious acts). In the event of a digital ID check failure there's potential to leak all the ID's and access patterns of all users across the board thanks to the ease of digital storage and communications.
AnthonyMouse 1y ago
The trouble with these analogies is that they ignore the nature of the internet. If there is a law in one jurisdiction that says you have to be 21 to buy some product and a different jurisdiction sets it to 18, or has no age restriction at all, and someone who is underage in the first jurisdiction goes to the second jurisdiction to buy that thing, what happens? The seller sells it to them. This has always been a completely normal thing for people to do in border towns, or when people e.g. visit Amsterdam because of less restrictive drug laws. The internet allows anyone to visit the site of a supplier located outside of their jurisdiction. That's completely normal an expected too. It also makes things like age verification laws for digital content pretty much entirely worthless, because most of the suppliers weren't in your jurisdiction to begin with and the ones outside of it are... outside of your jurisdiction. Governments now want to pretend that it matters where the user is rather than where the site is, but that's a joke because there is no way for the site to even know that. If you try to require it then they'll either ignore you because they're actually entirely outside of your jurisdiction and you can't impose penalties on them for not complying, or treat IP addresses in your jurisdiction differently (possibly by banning them entirely) and then people there will just use a VPN. Neither of these cause the law to be effective and ineffective laws are inefficient and embarrassing.
- yorwba 1y ago
  > Governments now want to pretend that it matters where the user is rather than where the site is This is not a new thing either. Whenever something somehow touches multiple jurisdictions, it's generally safe to assume that laws from all of them apply. Countries can and do make laws that apply entirely extraterritorially. When that makes it difficult to do a thing while complying with all applicable laws, you either have to not do the thing or pick which jurisdictions' laws you want to break and deal with the consequences. I don't think most lawmakers will consider the potential embarrassment from difficult-to-enforce laws much of a deterrent against outlawing what they want to outlaw. They're more likely to put additional requirements on third parties to assist with enforcement (e.g. VPN providers are an obvious candidate.)
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
stereolambda 1y ago
If there's an argument here, it's a mess. You first talk about speech. Commerce is barely speech--it's actually using the public market--and there is a legitimate opinion that applying civil rights to companies is already a corrupt abuse of our society. Perjury is strictly limited to one context existing since the dawn of time (courts), it is also very proceduralized what they can ask you, and even then there's a carveout for not incriminating yourself. Conspiracy and blackmail are only secondarily about speech. There's a criminal intent that you either made clear yourself or they have to prove. The internet is like media (press) or communication by letters. Both extremely established in terms of guaranteeing freedom of speech and in the latter case, also secrecy. And the ID identification (that you then make your argument about) is only loosely related to free speech strictly. It's about being constantly searched and surveilled with a presumption of crime.

by yorwba 1y ago

mytailorisrich 1y ago

There is no "freedom of speech" in the US sense in the EU/UK. That's often a cause for misunderstanding between the two sides of the Pond. There are many things that you are not allowed to write or say by law in EU countries simply because the legislator has decided that they are wrong opinions, and it is generally accepted that the State can and should implement such controls. Note that lying is not a crime in general. Your examples are for very specific contexts.

af78 1y ago
That's a common misconception. The European Convention on Human Rights guarantees freedom of expression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights#Article_10_%E2%80%93_expression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R... and is legally binding in all member states. Sure, there are exceptions but in the USA too freedom of speech is not absolute either. Moreover, in practice, there is more freedom of speech in most EU countries than in the USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-index https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-ind...: USA: 0.89 France: 0.96 Germany: 0.94 Czechia: 0.96 etc.
- mytailorisrich 1y ago
  Including things like "media bias" and other dubious criteria in freedom of speech rankings is obviously skewed. Whatever the ECHR might say what I wrote in my previous comment is factual. In Europe "freedom of speech" comes with a long list of small print. In fact, this is so embedded that the article of the ECHR you quote provides for restrictions and even states that they are "necessary": "subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society"." QED
  - NicoJuicy 1y ago
    Yeah, what trump did, spreading lies, hate and falsely accusing wouldn't work in the EU. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of stupidity
    - mytailorisrich 1y ago
      > Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of stupidity Freedom of stupidity has to be the most basic right in a free society. Imagine if stupidity wasn't allowed!
      - NicoJuicy 1y ago
        We learned from Nazi Germany in previous century. US seems, from the outside, not. Racism against other groups, deportations, camps, ...
        poszlem 1y ago
        We haven’t learned anything. We’re already caught in a radicalization spiral between the far left and the far right, echoing 1930s Europe. AfD is currently the most popular party in Germany, France is stuck between the National Rally and the openly communist New Popular Front, and if you think they won’t gladly exploit existing restrictions on free speech once they take power, you’re in for a rude awakening. You argue about the EU as if we were still living in 2005.
blitzar 1y ago
There is no freedom of speech in the "US sense" in the US either. Just because a bunch of noisy people shout about freedom all day long doesn't mean they are not talking absolute garbage.

defrost 1y ago

> If you realize that people have been required to check ID when selling material unsuitable for minors in physical stores Not a great example. No physical store would bother to check the ID of anyone clearly not {too young or borderline}. Digital ID requirements are such that age verification of some form is required for every single connection .. and to assume that a connection from {X} might well require another ID check an hour later as it might well be a different person at the same computer or another device altogether. That's an expansion from {only check young looking people} to {check and possibly retain records for _everyone_}.

throwaway290 1y ago
Check out zero trust proof standards Edit: I'm not saying EU uses it but it could...
- defrost 1y ago
  Let's assume I'm familiar with the theory, what pragmatic open verification exists for the implementation of this EU app? Edit: the EU asserts the app is "privacy preserving" and "Additionally, work on the integration of zero-knowledge proofs is ongoing." ~ https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-makes-available-age-verification-blueprint https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-mak... It's not the assertions made that trouble me, it's the quality of any actual implementation and the scope for deliberate or accidental side leaking of knowledge that should be zero .. but likely (in a pragmatic view of a political world) is not.
  - throwaway290 1y ago
    If it's coordinated by the browser then it would be possible to see what requests are made and where
    - defrost 1y ago
      Absolutely, security is entire process that needs frequent sanity checks, by nature it's hard to get right in practice no matter how sound some central component is. To be fair my main motivation for comment was the up thread comment about physical ID checks of the past being an indicator that not much would change with digital checks. In the event of a physical store ID check system failure you have one owner at one location having access to just the ID's checked (perhaps blackmailing underage drinkers into dubious acts). In the event of a digital ID check failure there's potential to leak all the ID's and access patterns of all users across the board thanks to the ease of digital storage and communications.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

The trouble with these analogies is that they ignore the nature of the internet. If there is a law in one jurisdiction that says you have to be 21 to buy some product and a different jurisdiction sets it to 18, or has no age restriction at all, and someone who is underage in the first jurisdiction goes to the second jurisdiction to buy that thing, what happens? The seller sells it to them. This has always been a completely normal thing for people to do in border towns, or when people e.g. visit Amsterdam because of less restrictive drug laws. The internet allows anyone to visit the site of a supplier located outside of their jurisdiction. That's completely normal an expected too. It also makes things like age verification laws for digital content pretty much entirely worthless, because most of the suppliers weren't in your jurisdiction to begin with and the ones outside of it are... outside of your jurisdiction. Governments now want to pretend that it matters where the user is rather than where the site is, but that's a joke because there is no way for the site to even know that. If you try to require it then they'll either ignore you because they're actually entirely outside of your jurisdiction and you can't impose penalties on them for not complying, or treat IP addresses in your jurisdiction differently (possibly by banning them entirely) and then people there will just use a VPN. Neither of these cause the law to be effective and ineffective laws are inefficient and embarrassing.

yorwba 1y ago
> Governments now want to pretend that it matters where the user is rather than where the site is This is not a new thing either. Whenever something somehow touches multiple jurisdictions, it's generally safe to assume that laws from all of them apply. Countries can and do make laws that apply entirely extraterritorially. When that makes it difficult to do a thing while complying with all applicable laws, you either have to not do the thing or pick which jurisdictions' laws you want to break and deal with the consequences. I don't think most lawmakers will consider the potential embarrassment from difficult-to-enforce laws much of a deterrent against outlawing what they want to outlaw. They're more likely to put additional requirements on third parties to assist with enforcement (e.g. VPN providers are an obvious candidate.)
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago

stereolambda 1y ago

If there's an argument here, it's a mess. You first talk about speech. Commerce is barely speech--it's actually using the public market--and there is a legitimate opinion that applying civil rights to companies is already a corrupt abuse of our society. Perjury is strictly limited to one context existing since the dawn of time (courts), it is also very proceduralized what they can ask you, and even then there's a carveout for not incriminating yourself. Conspiracy and blackmail are only secondarily about speech. There's a criminal intent that you either made clear yourself or they have to prove. The internet is like media (press) or communication by letters. Both extremely established in terms of guaranteeing freedom of speech and in the latter case, also secrecy. And the ID identification (that you then make your argument about) is only loosely related to free speech strictly. It's about being constantly searched and surveilled with a presumption of crime.