7 ms·

Several European governments have jailed people for social media posts. Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickl

• kode95 1y ago
  > Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickly get out of hand. There are only a few European countries that jail people for wrongspeak, and I can't think of a single one of those countries whose population in general is in favor of such laws.
• gwd 1y ago
  > It doesn't say "if your opinion is correct". Opinions cannot be right or wrong. > It makes no exceptions whatsoever, and that is what we need to strive for. It certainly does. See libel / defamation / perjury / false representation / fraud / false advertising / trademark infringement.
  • xienze 1y ago
    > Opinions cannot be right or wrong. I’d say if you can be jailed for a particular opinion, someone has certainly made a judgement call that your opinion is wrong!
    • gwd 1y ago
      > I’d say if you can be jailed for a particular opinion Can you give an example of someone in a modern democracy jailed for their "opinion"? To wit, are the examples you're thinking of "statement of opinion", "statement of fact", "pejorative insult", or "incitement"? Saying "I think <public figure> is an idiot" is an opinion. "The earth is flat" or "The holocaust never happened" are not opinions; neither is, "Kick out all the <insert pejorative here>." And yeah, in North Korea you'll absolutely be jailed for expressing some opinions. That may make them illegal, but it doesn't make them no longer opinions.
      • xienze 1y ago
        > "The holocaust never happened" are not opinions But would you dare state out loud in Germany that, in your opinion, the official number of Holocaust victims is actually much less than what's been widely reported? Even if you had what you believed was solid evidence supporting your argument? I bet you wouldn't. > neither is, "Kick out all the <insert pejorative here>." How about voicing your opinion that <people from some country> should be barred from emigrating to <European country> because <crime statistics>? Bet you wouldn't try that either, because your opinion is in "hate speech" territory now.
        • freejazz 1y ago
          >Even if you had what you believed was solid evidence supporting your argument? I bet you wouldn't. Ugh, what?
        • 9dev 1y ago
          Solid evidence that generations of historians have somehow overlooked? Great, let’s hear it! I can assure you that Germany would welcome anything that lifts some guilt from our collective shoulders here, so if you as opposed to a lot of smart people know the truth, we will invite you on a beer for sure.
      • femiagbabiaka 1y ago
        https://www.counterterrorism.police.uk/man-from-harlow-jailed-for-posting-support-on-social-media-for-terrorist-groups/ https://www.counterterrorism.police.uk/man-from-harlow-jaile... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yl7p4l11po https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yl7p4l11po https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_R%C3%BCmeysa_%C3%96zt%C3%BCrk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_R%C3%BCmeysa_%C3%... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil
    • croes 1y ago
      I doubt that they are jailed for opinions but for lies or threats or defamation etc.
      • IAmBroom 1y ago
        I guarantee you that, if only they could, there are governments that would jail people for opinions. The US would have likely have done something to homosexuals, with or without sexual activity. Ditto on supporting Communism 'in your heart'. NK and other countries would do the same (OK, not NK for supporters of communism...).
    • IAmBroom 1y ago
      People can make judgment calls. Those are opinions. That still doesn't make yours, nor theirs, wrong. Immoral, unethical, impractical, or contrary to human rights, perhaps.
      • gwd 1y ago
        > People can make judgment calls. Those are opinions. I'm not sure that's a helpful distinction. In some sense, everything we classify as a 'fact' is a judgement call: is the sun a giant ball of fusing hydrogen? I mean, probably, but maybe we're all living in some sort simulation and it doesn't really exist at all; Or maybe you are living in your own personal "Truman Show", being fed lies by everyone who shows you scientific "evidence" about the sun's nature. But "the sun is a giant ball of fusing hydrogen" is a different type of statement than "chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla", or "Mozart is better than Beethoven".
        • collinmcnulty 1y ago
          I think the most useful distinction is between “opinions” and “beliefs” rather than opinions and facts. A belief represents your confidence in the truth or falsehood of a statement. While an opinion has no underlying objective reality. “Apples are better than peaches” is an opinion. “More people ate apples than bananas in 2024” is a belief; it may be a true belief or a false belief but there is an answer.
        • Braxton1980 1y ago
          An opinion can't be falsified. "The sun is a giant ball of fusing hydrogen" has the possibility of being proven false. This means it's either a true or false fact. If I said "NYC is the capital of the United States"* I'm either lying or mistaken What makes it a lie vs mistaken? Whether it's a genuine belief, that I have a reason to have the belief. For example if I made the assumption it's the capital because it's the biggest city then I'm mistaken. It's a lie if I know it's not true, if I ignore information that falsifies the fact. *To avoid semantics I mean the official capital of the country not like "it's important"
          • 1y ago
• yupyupyups 1y ago
  This is all true, with a few exceptions. For example, incitement to violence or false allegations that do serious reputational damage. It's not sustainable to allow exactly all speech. Although I mostly agree, I just wanted to make explicit that nuance.
  • dfxm12 1y ago
    For example, incitement to violence GP brought up people being jailed for social media posts, but didn't reference any specifically. In the handful of cases I found via a web search, the charges were related to inciting violence. GP also brought up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 30 reads: Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein. When one exercising a freedom restricts another's ability to exercise theirs, it is reasonable to expect courts to get involved to sort it out.
• soco 1y ago
  Worth mentioning exactly here the paradox of Popper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance sooo... what should we do about it, here and now? Because we are closing to need a decision. And let me remind you that people do get fined or jailed sometimes for making mistakes or lying.
• pickledoyster 1y ago
  >Several European governments have jailed people for social media posts. Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickly get out of hand. I think quite a few Europeans have lasting and direct experience with totalitarian, oppressive regimes. Which might also explain why they have stricter (or simply more precise) laws governing expression – not as an oppressive tool, but as a safety valve for the society.
  • aydyn 1y ago
    Silencing speech IS the oppressive regime.
    • rose-knuckle17 1y ago
      [flagged]
      • aydyn 1y ago
        Yikes
    • oscaracso 1y ago
      A regime is an organization.
    • jszymborski 1y ago
      Most societies have decided that some speech should be illegal. The classic example is yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theatre in the absence of a fire. I think it is good and healthy to have conversations as to what should and should not be protected speech, but I think that there is this rote reaction that kinda boils down to free speech absolutism. But of course, all the free speech absolutists find at some point or another there is some speech they want made illegal. A great example of this is in the US where Republicans often outwardly took such as stand when they weren't in power, but recently tried to use the FCC to take a comedian who made light criticism of the regime off the air. So, silencing speech might not always be the oppressive regime, but it sometimes is. EDIT: OK, I get the fire/theatre example is a bad one. Instead, consider incitement more broadly. For example incitement to discrimination, as prohibited by Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.
• croes 1y ago
  >"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." You do realize that this includes the freedom of people who get harassed online by others. German journalist Dunja Hayali’s rights where violated by hate comments after social media and nuis sites misquoted her on her reporting on Charly Kirk‘s funeral
• piva00 1y ago
  > It is on each individual to inform themselves, and to decide what to believe and what to disregard. That's where the conundrum lies, requiring individual responsibility for protecting a whole society of potential bad actors using this freedom to break society apart. How is it solved? No one knows, what we know is that relying on individuals to each act on their own to solve it won't work, it never works, we also see the effects on society from the loss of any social cohesion around what "truth" is, even though before the age of Internet and social media there were vehicles to spread lies, and manipulate people, this has been supercharged in every way: speed of spread, number of influential voices, followings, etc. Anything that worked before probably doesn't work now, we don't know how to proceed but using platitudes from before these times is also a way to cover our eyes to what is actually happening: fractures in society becoming larger rifts, supercharged by new technologies, being wielded as a weapon. I don't think government censorship is the answer, nor I think that just letting it be and requiring every single person to be responsible in how they critically analyse the insurmountable amount of information we are exposed to every day is the answer either.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • txrx0000 1y ago
    > How is it solved? It is solved by a democratic system that defines truth as "mutually observable phenomena", defines good as "the wishes of the people", and allows individuals to engage in free dialogue as a replacement for violence. Good outnumbers bad, so the good will win, unless both sides think they're good in a 50/50 split. This can happen even in that ideal society, because 50% of the individuals will eventually decide to have fundamentally different goals as the other 50%. In which case, I don't think we should hold that society together by force, but rather provide a mechanism for it to peacefully split into two, precisely to uphold the democratic principle of respecting the wishes of every individual. Suppose half of those people are mistaken in a collective delusion, and their goals are in actuality aligned with the other half, but the other half have just failed so spectacularly at enlightening them (or perhaps the delusional half are so spectacularly delusional that they're impossible to enlighten). In this rare case of a perfect failure, they will quickly realize after the split and want to get back together, because reality is a harsh judge, and its judgements are ultimate.
• greenavocado 1y ago
  Telegram founder Pavel Durov on Sunday accused France of asking him to remove some Moldovan channels from the social media platform ahead of the country’s presidential election last year. In a statement on the Dubai-headquartered company, Durov claimed that the French intelligence services asked him “through an intermediary” to help the Moldovan government to censor “certain Telegram channels” before the vote on Oct. 20, in which incumbent President Maia Sandu secured a second term in office following a runoff held on Nov. 3. He said a few channels were identified to have violated Telegram’s rules following reviews of the channels concerned and were subsequently removed. “The intermediary then informed me that, in exchange for this cooperation, French intelligence would ‘say good things’ about me to the judge who had ordered my arrest in August last year,” Durov said, describing this as “unacceptable on several levels.” “If the agency did in fact approach the judge — it constituted an attempt to interfere in the judicial process. If it did not, and merely claimed to have done so, then it was exploiting my legal situation in France to influence political developments in Eastern Europe — a pattern we have also observed in Romania,” he further said. Durov also said that Telegram later received a second list of "Moldovan channels," which he noted were “legitimate and fully compliant with our rules,” unlike the initial list. CONTINUED... https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/telegram-head-accuses-france-of-asking-removal-of-some-moldovan-channels-ahead-of-2024-presidential-vote/3701725 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/telegram-head-accuses-france...
• necrobrit 1y ago
  > Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickly get out of hand. This argument can be made for government in general, although granted technology does make it easier for a smaller group to overreach. I'm a European and do hear your concern, but I feel comfortable supporting restrictions on speech _as long as_ there is also a functioning and just legal system that those restrictions operate within. Though there does seem to be a worrying trend towards technology bypassing the legal system and just giving enforcement agencies blanket access of late. We all also have our own cultural biases and blind spots. I offer this not as whataboutism but as a different perspective: I'm _way_ more frightened by the authoritarian police culture (I base this on interactions with the police in a period I lived in the US) in the US than I am of the UK governments internet censorship. The internet censorship could do a lot of harm, but I think not as much potential harm as a large militarised police force willing to bust down doors on command from above.
  • tsss 1y ago
    There has never been a functioning and just legal system in the history of mankind. Not to mention that what is "just" is very much up to debate.
    • necrobrit 1y ago
      Well, sure, it's all relative and no system is perfect. Not every mother is perfect, doesn't mean I escort mine around the house at gunpoint whenever she visits.
• epgui 1y ago
  Are you talking about moderation or prosecution? You do see the difference right?