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Competition is good, but Europe has generally less good legal free speech protections than the United States does (because basically everywhere has less good le

Competition is good, but Europe has generally less good legal free speech protections than the United States does (because basically everywhere has less good legal free speech protections than the United States does, the first amendment is a powerful legal framework). Being governed by European law means that there's a whole host of things that the criminal justice system has an interest in preventing you from saying, and eurosky will presumably follow the law.

nixass 8mo ago
Europe is not a single country
- ahoef 8mo ago
  Nobody says it is. I think they mean the EU law frameworks that constituent countries need to implement.
SiempreViernes 8mo ago
Tell that to the people that didn't cry for Charlie Kirk and therefore lost their job.
- ahoef 8mo ago
  Free speech means that the government doesn't go after you. It doesn't shield you from consequences (which you may or may not agree with) from private parties.
  - CorrectHorseBat 8mo ago
    In the USA
  - ben_w 8mo ago
    And what should we do when it's the un-elected corporations, rather than the democratically elected government, whose censorship of us and our views is a consequence we object to? e.g. how Paul Graham got his Twitter account suspended for posting "This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site.": https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-suspends-account-paul-graham-232754736.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-suspends-account-paul... Musk was 100% allowed to do that. Should he have been allowed to do that? It was undone, but should it have been within the set of things he was allowed to do in the first place?
    - krapp 8mo ago
      >And what should we do when it's the un-elected corporations, rather than the democratically elected government, whose censorship of us and our views is a consequence we object to? Find another service. Find another platform. Or make one. You say "un-elected corporations" as if to imply something sinister about the fact that businesses can have terms of service, but every business in existence is un-elected and has terms of service. What is the alternative, to have a grand jury decide everything? >Musk was 100% allowed to do that. Should he have been allowed to do that? Yes, it's obvious Musk should have been allowed to do that. Just as the mods on Hacker News are allowed to do that. It's their shop, they can refuse service to anyone. Should Musk have done it? No. He's an asshole, and that kind of behavior ruins the value of his platform. Should it be legal for Musk to be an asshole and ruin the value of this platform? Yes, because Twitter isn't a monopoly and people can (and have) gone elsewhere. The alternative is direct government control of all online platforms and all means of communication and replacing private censorship with government censorship, which is worse than letting Musk be an asshole, because Musk can't put people in jail or shoot them dead in the street for their speech. I can far more easily leave Twitter than I can my government's sphere of influence.
      - ben_w 8mo ago
        > Find another service. Find another platform. Or make one. 1. Which is the topic of the post, and where the solution is being objected to. 2. Network effects are a thing 3. Efforts to deeply integrate these networks into societies, make them seem irreplaceable, are a thing; in the case of Twitter in particular, it appears to have full-throated support of the US government, despite how this kind of thing is what DOGE itself was objecting to when it was in the form of fairly cheap radio stations in random 3rd world nations. > You say "un-elected corporations" as if to imply something sinister about the fact that businesses can have terms of service, but every business in existence is un-elected and has terms of service. What is the alternative, to have a grand jury decide everything? First: When it's a matter of freedom of speech, that can be encoded into the law, then it is just like the various bans on discrimination against protected groups. Are those done with grand juries? Second, consider the opposite: given Musk's censorship preferences, is it OK for the US government to make heavy use of X.com for direct communication? Or is that use, as per judge ruling from first Trump term saying the POTUS account wasn't allowed to block people, now covered by 1st Amendment constraints despite being theoretically a private corporation? https://web.archive.org/web/20180524014547/https://knightcolumbia.org/sites/default/files/content/Cases/Wikimedia/2018.05.23%20Order%20on%20motions%20for%20summary%20judgment.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20180524014547/https://knightcol... Third, there are rules about what is and isn't allowed in terms of service. Is Apple now banned from banning app developers from linking to non-Apple storefronts? I've lost track of which jurisdiction has placed which restrictions on them and where they're at with appeals. > The alternative is direct government control of all online platforms and all means of communication and replacing private censorship with government censorship Not so. First: there are many laws governing corporations and online platforms and means of communication, none of which are "direct control". All corporate law, in fact. It is a setting of the rules of the game, and no more "direct control" than a referee in a ball game. Second: The US government has the 1st Amendment, the EU has the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (amongst other things), these are meta-rules, rules about which rules may exist, restrictions against other restrictions. > because Musk can't put people in jail or shoot them dead in the street for their speech. There are plenty of people arguing the case that Musk's purchase of Twitter bought him the US government. Were they right? I am uncertain. > I can far more easily leave Twitter than I can my government's sphere of influence. Can you leave Twitter's sphere of influence, just by leaving the site? If you're an advertiser, will they let you leave or sue you for it? Private corporations have tried moving advertising away from Twitter only to be met with legal retaliation from Musk. Speech about Twitter showing what it gets wrong has met with retaliation from Musk that exceeds the budgets of those making that speech, silencing the critics. Nations demanding Twitter does not interfere with trials about domestic attempts at overthrowing elections have been met with Musk trying to circumvent those rules. Nations whose population and government both demand that Twitter does not spread CSAM are now facing threats from the US government itself.
- JuniperMesos 8mo ago
  James Damore was completely right about women in tech and Google should never have fired him.
rational_human 8mo ago
Many europeans feel there are many things that free speech protections allow in the USA that should not be allowed. EU laws attempt at least to restrain some of the most egregious speech online.
- logifail 8mo ago
  > EU laws attempt at least to restrain some of the most egregious speech online. Isn't the difficulty that rules designed to suppress the most harmful speech often create a wide blast radius, affecting legitimate expression in ways that are hard to predict and/or contain?
bojan 8mo ago
It is commonplace in the US that the administration in the White House sues people for saying the wrong thing.
- nxm 8mo ago
  That’s why we have courts
vachina 8mo ago
Selling point isn’t the free speech (free speech don’t apply to private companies in US). More like my data is less likely to be ingested by US intel, and the data used against me.
stratocumulus0 8mo ago
My experience is that on American platforms free speech means that these platforms are free to remove whatever content based on whatever heuristics, with little to no accountability. Right now I see examples of American social norms limiting expression worldwide (see people adopting bl**ping out words and using defused meta-expressions such as 'unalive' worldwide to escape any potential bans). Right now American free speech means that I'm subject to opaque, automated laws of a corporation which I cannot influence as a citizen.
- roenxi 8mo ago
  Yes, exactly. Someone is going to moderate the platform, and in the US that is an entity which owns the space - an entity which at its core wants people on the platform. That dynamic is why we'd expect to see all the major social media platforms operated from the US, as opposed to most places where the moderation is ultimately driven by courts and governments. Can't speak for the EU, but in the English speaking world outside of the States it'd be quite risky to run large social media sites of the scale that the US ones operate at. The laws around what can and cannot be said in public are too limiting. I remember when there was a suppression order out on talking about Cardinal Pell in Australia, it was eye opening to how limited political speech actually was. Good luck to anyone in Aus trying to compete with Facebook, let alone the UK.
- JuniperMesos 8mo ago
  Does eurosky fix this? Serious question. I don't approve of the private moderation of US-based social media, and I think that the ideal social media platform would be completely decentralized in all ways including moderation. But does any European law or social norm prevent eurosky.social from banning people who fail to put *'s in their slurs or use a euphemism for killing yourself?
sublimefire 8mo ago
There is a reason why countries in Europe have such laws. US did not have a major war for quite a while on their own soil which affects your thinking. We do not want to reignite national socialism or communism, we do not like to see news channels lying to us. We do not like Russian bot armies spreading propaganda in chats. What truth is it that you cannot say in Europe? You can say pretty much anything and be critical and nothing will happen to you. And if something happens there are instruments like European court system which you can use to fight your case (there is no need to be rich for that).
- nxm 8mo ago
  Individuals get arrested for posting memes in the U.K. and fined and/or get phones taken away in Germany for the same because an unelected bureaucrat did not like it. 1984
iso1631 8mo ago
> less good legal free speech protections Well that depends on your point of view. America might consider that holocaust denial, nazi flags and westboro bapists are good speech, but having something to watch a legally owned DVD is bad, Europe might consider things the opposite way round Given that some forms of speech can stop other forms of speech, it's not clear cut.
masswerk 8mo ago
Mind that freedom of speech (US) and freedom of opinion (Europe) are different concepts. E.g., while you may harbour a certain opinion in the EU, expressing this in a way generally considered harmful (concept: speech may establish an act) may get you in trouble. On the other hand, crossing the US border may trigger an attempt to infer your opinion from extracted public or semi-public expressions, which may get you in even more serious trouble, you may be even considered a viable target based on such inferences (and there is no clear law for this, there isn't even due process.) Both concepts come with their own freedoms, implications and caveats.

nixass 8mo ago

Europe is not a single country

ahoef 8mo ago
Nobody says it is. I think they mean the EU law frameworks that constituent countries need to implement.

SiempreViernes 8mo ago

Tell that to the people that didn't cry for Charlie Kirk and therefore lost their job.

ahoef 8mo ago
Free speech means that the government doesn't go after you. It doesn't shield you from consequences (which you may or may not agree with) from private parties.
- CorrectHorseBat 8mo ago
  In the USA
- ben_w 8mo ago
  And what should we do when it's the un-elected corporations, rather than the democratically elected government, whose censorship of us and our views is a consequence we object to? e.g. how Paul Graham got his Twitter account suspended for posting "This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site.": https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-suspends-account-paul-graham-232754736.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-suspends-account-paul... Musk was 100% allowed to do that. Should he have been allowed to do that? It was undone, but should it have been within the set of things he was allowed to do in the first place?
  - krapp 8mo ago
    >And what should we do when it's the un-elected corporations, rather than the democratically elected government, whose censorship of us and our views is a consequence we object to? Find another service. Find another platform. Or make one. You say "un-elected corporations" as if to imply something sinister about the fact that businesses can have terms of service, but every business in existence is un-elected and has terms of service. What is the alternative, to have a grand jury decide everything? >Musk was 100% allowed to do that. Should he have been allowed to do that? Yes, it's obvious Musk should have been allowed to do that. Just as the mods on Hacker News are allowed to do that. It's their shop, they can refuse service to anyone. Should Musk have done it? No. He's an asshole, and that kind of behavior ruins the value of his platform. Should it be legal for Musk to be an asshole and ruin the value of this platform? Yes, because Twitter isn't a monopoly and people can (and have) gone elsewhere. The alternative is direct government control of all online platforms and all means of communication and replacing private censorship with government censorship, which is worse than letting Musk be an asshole, because Musk can't put people in jail or shoot them dead in the street for their speech. I can far more easily leave Twitter than I can my government's sphere of influence.
    - ben_w 8mo ago
      > Find another service. Find another platform. Or make one. 1. Which is the topic of the post, and where the solution is being objected to. 2. Network effects are a thing 3. Efforts to deeply integrate these networks into societies, make them seem irreplaceable, are a thing; in the case of Twitter in particular, it appears to have full-throated support of the US government, despite how this kind of thing is what DOGE itself was objecting to when it was in the form of fairly cheap radio stations in random 3rd world nations. > You say "un-elected corporations" as if to imply something sinister about the fact that businesses can have terms of service, but every business in existence is un-elected and has terms of service. What is the alternative, to have a grand jury decide everything? First: When it's a matter of freedom of speech, that can be encoded into the law, then it is just like the various bans on discrimination against protected groups. Are those done with grand juries? Second, consider the opposite: given Musk's censorship preferences, is it OK for the US government to make heavy use of X.com for direct communication? Or is that use, as per judge ruling from first Trump term saying the POTUS account wasn't allowed to block people, now covered by 1st Amendment constraints despite being theoretically a private corporation? https://web.archive.org/web/20180524014547/https://knightcolumbia.org/sites/default/files/content/Cases/Wikimedia/2018.05.23%20Order%20on%20motions%20for%20summary%20judgment.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20180524014547/https://knightcol... Third, there are rules about what is and isn't allowed in terms of service. Is Apple now banned from banning app developers from linking to non-Apple storefronts? I've lost track of which jurisdiction has placed which restrictions on them and where they're at with appeals. > The alternative is direct government control of all online platforms and all means of communication and replacing private censorship with government censorship Not so. First: there are many laws governing corporations and online platforms and means of communication, none of which are "direct control". All corporate law, in fact. It is a setting of the rules of the game, and no more "direct control" than a referee in a ball game. Second: The US government has the 1st Amendment, the EU has the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (amongst other things), these are meta-rules, rules about which rules may exist, restrictions against other restrictions. > because Musk can't put people in jail or shoot them dead in the street for their speech. There are plenty of people arguing the case that Musk's purchase of Twitter bought him the US government. Were they right? I am uncertain. > I can far more easily leave Twitter than I can my government's sphere of influence. Can you leave Twitter's sphere of influence, just by leaving the site? If you're an advertiser, will they let you leave or sue you for it? Private corporations have tried moving advertising away from Twitter only to be met with legal retaliation from Musk. Speech about Twitter showing what it gets wrong has met with retaliation from Musk that exceeds the budgets of those making that speech, silencing the critics. Nations demanding Twitter does not interfere with trials about domestic attempts at overthrowing elections have been met with Musk trying to circumvent those rules. Nations whose population and government both demand that Twitter does not spread CSAM are now facing threats from the US government itself.
JuniperMesos 8mo ago
James Damore was completely right about women in tech and Google should never have fired him.

rational_human 8mo ago

Many europeans feel there are many things that free speech protections allow in the USA that should not be allowed. EU laws attempt at least to restrain some of the most egregious speech online.

logifail 8mo ago
> EU laws attempt at least to restrain some of the most egregious speech online. Isn't the difficulty that rules designed to suppress the most harmful speech often create a wide blast radius, affecting legitimate expression in ways that are hard to predict and/or contain?

bojan 8mo ago

It is commonplace in the US that the administration in the White House sues people for saying the wrong thing.

nxm 8mo ago
That’s why we have courts

vachina 8mo ago

Selling point isn’t the free speech (free speech don’t apply to private companies in US). More like my data is less likely to be ingested by US intel, and the data used against me.

stratocumulus0 8mo ago

My experience is that on American platforms free speech means that these platforms are free to remove whatever content based on whatever heuristics, with little to no accountability. Right now I see examples of American social norms limiting expression worldwide (see people adopting bl**ping out words and using defused meta-expressions such as 'unalive' worldwide to escape any potential bans). Right now American free speech means that I'm subject to opaque, automated laws of a corporation which I cannot influence as a citizen.

roenxi 8mo ago
Yes, exactly. Someone is going to moderate the platform, and in the US that is an entity which owns the space - an entity which at its core wants people on the platform. That dynamic is why we'd expect to see all the major social media platforms operated from the US, as opposed to most places where the moderation is ultimately driven by courts and governments. Can't speak for the EU, but in the English speaking world outside of the States it'd be quite risky to run large social media sites of the scale that the US ones operate at. The laws around what can and cannot be said in public are too limiting. I remember when there was a suppression order out on talking about Cardinal Pell in Australia, it was eye opening to how limited political speech actually was. Good luck to anyone in Aus trying to compete with Facebook, let alone the UK.
JuniperMesos 8mo ago
Does eurosky fix this? Serious question. I don't approve of the private moderation of US-based social media, and I think that the ideal social media platform would be completely decentralized in all ways including moderation. But does any European law or social norm prevent eurosky.social from banning people who fail to put *'s in their slurs or use a euphemism for killing yourself?

sublimefire 8mo ago

There is a reason why countries in Europe have such laws. US did not have a major war for quite a while on their own soil which affects your thinking. We do not want to reignite national socialism or communism, we do not like to see news channels lying to us. We do not like Russian bot armies spreading propaganda in chats. What truth is it that you cannot say in Europe? You can say pretty much anything and be critical and nothing will happen to you. And if something happens there are instruments like European court system which you can use to fight your case (there is no need to be rich for that).

nxm 8mo ago
Individuals get arrested for posting memes in the U.K. and fined and/or get phones taken away in Germany for the same because an unelected bureaucrat did not like it. 1984

iso1631 8mo ago

> less good legal free speech protections Well that depends on your point of view. America might consider that holocaust denial, nazi flags and westboro bapists are good speech, but having something to watch a legally owned DVD is bad, Europe might consider things the opposite way round Given that some forms of speech can stop other forms of speech, it's not clear cut.

masswerk 8mo ago

Mind that freedom of speech (US) and freedom of opinion (Europe) are different concepts. E.g., while you may harbour a certain opinion in the EU, expressing this in a way generally considered harmful (concept: speech may establish an act) may get you in trouble. On the other hand, crossing the US border may trigger an attempt to infer your opinion from extracted public or semi-public expressions, which may get you in even more serious trouble, you may be even considered a viable target based on such inferences (and there is no clear law for this, there isn't even due process.) Both concepts come with their own freedoms, implications and caveats.