6 ms·
It's a waste of resources, but please do it! The entire "European Union censors" narrative is a hoax [1], so the portal will achieve nothing, but you've got to
by pms 8mo ago
It's a waste of resources, but please do it! The entire "European Union censors" narrative is a hoax [1], so the portal will achieve nothing, but you've got to do what you've got to do!
[1] First, the EU countries have much higher World Press Freedom Index than the US. Second, once you start reading how little there is of the alleged "censorship" in the EU, you realize it's a no-brainer aiming to protect people.
- piekvorst 8mo ago[flagged]
- dgxyz 8mo agoUS talks about freedom and enforces other things... The constitution is just words on paper.
- piekvorst 8mo agoI don’t deny that the current state of the U.S. is unfortunate, even irrational. It has been this way for a very long time. Freedom is the foundational root, not the current fruit. And it’s a testament to freedom that she could withstand for so long.
- dgxyz 8mo agoIn the last 50 years of observing the US I haven't seen any evidence to support that being the case.
- Argonaut998 8mo agoPress freedom !== entirety of freedom of speech European politicians are calling every day to censor social media. People are arrested regularly for social media posts. Censorship is absolutely an issue in Europe and it’s only getting worse. I welcome such an attitude as this.
- kosinus 8mo agoThere are so so many reasons to get arrested for social media posts that have nothing to do with censorship.
- Argonaut998 8mo agoBe that as it may, people are being arrested for expressing wrong think
- bargainbin 8mo agoNo, people are being arrested for making malicious communications. They would have suffered the same punishment if they had used email, letter, graffiti on a billboard. You cannot go around threatening to harm people without repercussions.
- Argonaut998 8mo agoNope. People are certainly being arrested for speech (e.g. opinions) that would be protected by the first amendment in the US. Guising it under a scary sounding law doesn’t change the nature of it.
- junon 8mo agoExamples please.
- enavantguin 8mo ago[dead]
- Argonaut998 8mo ago[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/14/transgender-tweet-police-acted-unlawfully https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/14/transgender-... [2] https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Scottow-v-CPS-judgment-161220.pdf https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Scottow-... ”Margaret Dodd of one offence of improper use of a public communications network, contrary to section 127(2)(c) of the Communications Act 2003. This provides that a person commits an offence if “for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another [she] … persistently makes use of a public electronic network”.” [3] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/dec/23/uk-police-leaders-non-crime-hate-incidents-scrapped https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/dec/23/uk-police-le... Regarding Graham Linehan who is by far the best example.
- dgxyz 8mo agoIt's not a hoax, it's a straight up lie.
- dirasieb 8mo agohttps://archive.ph/bdEqK https://archive.ph/bdEqK >>Police make 30 arrests a day for offensive online messages >The police are making more than 30 arrests a day over offensive posts on social media and other platforms. >Thousands of people are being detained and questioned for sending messages that cause “annoyance”, “inconvenience” or “anxiety” to others via the internet, telephone or mail. >Custody data obtained by The Times shows that officers are making about 12,000 arrests a year under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988.
- dgxyz 8mo agoIgnore the cherry picking and sensationalism around this. There are a few cases which are thrown out which were overreach. But nearly all of them are direct threats to people, stalking, repetitive abuse, support for terrorism and admissions of actual criminal activity. If you wrote these things on a wall outside your house you'd be arrested. If you said them down the pub you'd get the shit kicked out of you in 30 seconds. Do you expect these to be ignored under "free speech"? No because they wouldn't be even in the US. This increased because people feel safe saying these things on social media because there are other people saying them in their social bubble.
- jbstack 8mo agoAs someone living in an EU state who has to regularly turn my VPN on and off to have full internet access, I can't agree with you that it's a "hoax". It's inconvenient enough for me that I'm looking into having a custom router that will switch between VPN destinations depending on what site I'm accessing. Also "EU countries have higher press freedom than the US" is a strawman argument. We're not talking about press freedom. It's also an example of the fallacy of relative privation ("X isn't bad, because Y is worse than X"). It's like saying "It's a hoax that the US executes some prisoners, because Iran executes even more".
- nolok 8mo agoWhich country ?
- jahller 8mo agoyeah, i'm calling bullshit. unless this person tries to surf the russian web or get behind the great firewall of china.
- jbstack 8mo agoSee my sibling comment to yours. I have no reason to lie.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- jbstack 8mo agoItaly. Examples of sites I can't access without VPN: torrent sites (including legal uses), betfair.com (which I use as a more accurate political predictor than polls), and various non-EU sites which block access because they've decided it's easier than complying with extra-territorial requirements imposed by the EU (this one isn't direct EU censorship, but it amounts to the same thing indirectly. Sometimes I set my VPN destination to the UK (my country of origin) to get around these. Then I find that I have other problems. For example, certain Reddit posts are unavailable to me because someone has posted a comment that some algorithm has decided is NSFW (and therefore triggers age verification under the UK Online Safety Act 2023). The result is that I have to turn my VPN on and off depending on what I'm trying to do.
- Gareth321 8mo agoI am European and I would like to challenge you a little. Both the US and Europe have major issues with press and freedom of expression. To give you some examples from the European side. Specifically, the UK: * Police in England and Wales recorded 12,183 arrests in 2023 for online speech. This number is growing fast, but the government isn't releasing the data anymore. A few years ago this man retweeted a meme (pretty milquetoast by internet standards) and was arrested and asked if he would undergo re-education: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11066477/Veteran-arrested-causing-anxiety-retweeting-meme-swastika-Pride-flags.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11066477/Veteran-ar... * The UK records "non-crime hate incidents," whereby if someone complains about you because they don't like you, and if the officer also doesn't like you, they record your behaviour on your permanent record, even if you haven't committed any crime. This record is accessible and used by many industries such as teaching, firefighters, and police. If you have even one non-crime hate incident on your record, you can be excluded from a job. * The UK Online Safety Act 2023 requires websites with content which "could" harm children to age verify all users. Porn sites. Social media. Etc. This required people sending in their government ID to be permanently retained by a multitude of private companies. There are already many examples of sensitive data being leaked and hacked. Now that kid are using VPNs to access porn sites, the current ruling government is seeking to ban VPNs ("for children", of course). * UK law criminalises “threatening,” “abusive,” or “insulting” words. The legal test is (I am not making this up), whether someone took offense. This has led to outrageous examples such as this man who is facing a longer sentence for burning a Quran than the man who stabbed him (for burning said Quran): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xr12yx5l4o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xr12yx5l4o * In 2023–2024, the government obtained a court injunction preventing publication of details relating to a major data breach involving Afghan relocation applicants (the ARAP scheme). Parts of the reporting were restricted for national security and safety reasons. * The Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice system allows the government to advise editors not to publish information that could harm national security. They have broad authority here. * The Official Secrets Act 1989 criminalizes unauthorized disclosure of classified government information. Journalists themselves can potentially be prosecuted. There is no formal public interest defense written into the Act. * The Contempt of Court Act 1981 restricts what can be published once someone is arrested or charged if publication could prejudice a trial. * Ofcom regulates broadcast media under impartiality rules. News broadcasters must follow “due impartiality” rules. They can have their licenses revoked if they're not following some rather vague rules. If I'm honest, I'm very envious of the First Amendment. It's clear that we do not have the same right to free expression in Europe. No doubt there are supporters of this system who prefer a society in which one may not say offensive or unkind things. But I think there are too many examples where suppression of speech inevitably leads to authoritarianism.
- selfmodruntime 8mo ago[flagged]
- flawn 8mo agoSo you're telling me, the landlord of a burning house starts to put out the (smaller) fire next door in a self-less act of virtue? There is some other incentive here other than supposedly restoring "freedom of speech", don't you agree?
- selfmodruntime 8mo agoNo, I'm telling you that deriving perfect free speech from a higher freedom of press is a logical fallacy.
- blell 8mo agoRussia Today is blocked in the EU. Yes I know you’ll tell me it’s for my own good. Spare me.
- anon291 7mo agoBut don't worry their press freedom index is higher according to themselves!. "We ranked ourselves and found we were number one!"
- joenot443 8mo ago> [1] First, the EU countries have much higher World Press Freedom Index than the US I don't think the placement of the US on the World Press Freedom Index is necessarily informative of whether there's censorship in the EU. I'd expect they both rank higher than North Korea, but that doesn't tell us much either.
- shitlord 7mo agoThe organization that publishes the WPFI also considers online harassment a major threat to press freedom and scores accordingly.
- ActionHank 8mo agoI personally love the idea that they think people are so desperate to logon to facebook or tik tok that they will use some government vpn to access advertising laden slop.