7 ms·

From all the large governmental institutions, the EU is the one currently holding up traditional western values. That gives it street cred in this subject.

kortilla 4mo ago
>traditional western values This seems tautological because Europe is pretty weak on the values that people in the US might care about (freedom of speech, limited govt, etc). What values specifically are you optimizing for here?
- p_j_w 4mo ago
  > values that people in the US might care about (freedom of speech, limited govt, etc). The US federal government forced Paramount to take Colbert off the air. Seems that people in the US don’t actually value these things. > What values specifically are you optimizing for here? Probably not being fascist.
  - Gigachad 4mo ago
    They currently have the military circling a pool to intimidate people trying to take photos of the botched paint job.
    - fuck_google 4mo ago
      Intimidation is the sincerest form of flattery.
    - Applejinx 4mo ago
      In fairness, it's our Berlin Wall, and I absolutely would want a piece of the delaminating paint as a souvenir. The difference is we are so early into the collapse that the armed guards are still there. But yeah, it's definitely not just pictures, I'd want a piece of the blue stuff. It'd be a souvenir and also me taking it away from there, so win/win. Of course there's armed guards guarding the swamp now, what else would there be?
  - throwaway27448 4mo ago
    > The US federal government forced Paramount to take Colbert off the air. Not really; the Ellisons are quite close to Trump. Nobody was forced to do anything. Had the FCC actually revoked their license, and had Paramount actually been willing to fight, they could have sued. It's not easy to force anyone that rich to do anything; the state works on behalf of capital. It seems like europe is more aware of the meaningless bluster than the actual crimes being committed There are much better things to point to to illustrate the deterioration of the rule of law, like blatantly illegal deportation of citizens without due process. Or raping children in concentration camps under the guise of cracking down on crime. We may never even know who was seized and what happened to them and there's little incentive for our very pro-corporate media to report on it. But sure, paramount is the real victim here.
    - hvb2 4mo ago
      You might want to read the 3rd paragraph of this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Skydance_Media_and_Paramount_Global https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Skydance_Media_and_P... Read that timeline and then see if you're still convinced that they didn't at least seem to have done a thing or 2 to appease the federal government
      - throwaway27448 4mo ago
        Of course, but that's business. Authoritarianism would imply a conflict unresolvable outside of state violence.
        hvb2 4mo ago
        If you think that's business, wherever you are is a place where I don't want to live. Yes, companies do have to do things in order to appease regulators. But typically that's where a regulator says what they need them to do and then they oblige. Those requests usually involve market power and such, and splitting off part of the company. They don't involve the actual content/product of said company
- solumunus 4mo ago
  The UK can arrest you for hate speech. You can disagree with that policy on free speech terms if you want, and that’s really a maximal free speech position. It’s a very strange position to hold if you’re claiming that the U.S. is better when it comes to free speech. The U.S. administration is engaged in active smear campaigns against anyone who speaks loudly against them, threatened to revoke licenses of media companies, they’re suing people and corporations to silence them and pressure them into conformance, they’re threatening to deport people who are simply expressing anti-Israel views, threatened to remove funding from universities, deployed the military in cities they don’t like for no other reason than intimidation of political rivals. This is just off the top of my head. There’s just no comparison really. You must really be inhaling some nonsense X propaganda if you think government overreach is worse in Western Europe.
  - goodpoint 4mo ago
    > The UK can arrest you for hate speech. And that's a good thing.
  - nxm 4mo ago
    I as a individual won’t get arrested for speaking my mind, and that’s much more important than some legal battle around corporate media. „ deployed the military in cities they don’t like for no other reason than intimidation of political rivals” That’s one perspective on simply trying to enforce laws. Moreover, let’s not forget about how Biden government tried to silence Rogan.
    - vrganj 4mo ago
      You know who else was simply enforcing laws? The Gestapo.
    - solumunus 4mo ago
      > I as a individual won’t get arrested for speaking my mind Assuming you’re not a violent bigot you would also be fine in the UK. > Moreover, let’s not forget about how Biden government tried to silence Rogan. So your response to my claim that the US is worse is to point to other anti free speech practices by previous US governments? Well done!
cpursley 4mo ago
With all the issues in the US and generally wrong direction, I can’t remember them ever arresting people for mean tweets in the way that Germany and the UK have. They all seem to be running full speed towards a surveillance state.
- solumunus 4mo ago
  That’s not the EU.
- lmm 4mo ago
  > With all the issues in the US and generally wrong direction, I can’t remember them ever arresting people for mean tweets in the way that Germany and the UK have. Then you haven't been paying attention. The constitution prevents citizens from being convicted, but that doesn't stop arrests or being turned away at the border (even for permanent residents who've lived in the US for decades), and US citizens don't seem to care, so it's cold comfort for many of us.
  - cpursley 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - lmm 4mo ago
      A 30 second search found me https://www.fire.org/news/he-spent-37-days-jail-facebook-post-now-fire-has-his-back https://www.fire.org/news/he-spent-37-days-jail-facebook-pos... . You can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride. (And you're pretty thoroughly proving my point about US citizens not caring about anyone else)
      - nxm 4mo ago
        Yay you found a single instance, and more over there are legal means of recourse, unlike the the UK when you’re jailed or fined and that’s it
        4mo ago
throwaway27448 4mo ago
I'm honestly not really sure what "traditional western values" have to do with where to store data. What does that even refer to—individualism? Christianity? Representation in court by lawyers? How does this intersect with the topic at hand? Edit: c'mon people, if you're going to use such ambiguous phrases at least have the spine to clue the reader in to what you want them to refer to in this context.
- NonHyloMorph 4mo ago
  Well there have been a lot.. philosopy, polis, democracy, hemlock cup, enlightenment (note the perversion of "the dark enlightenment"), modernity, the resistance (against Nazism), psychoanalysis, postmodernism and critical studies (postmodernism in the genuine sense of the philosophies/theories that you would assign that label to and not in the misguided sense of relativism as arbitrarity; basically continental philosophy, frankfurt school (e.g. adorno horkheimer, habermas) and the french (e.g. foucault, derrida, deleuze (& guattari)) Of course there were also absolutism, colonialism, the jacobines, nazism & facism, to name just a few. Part of western values, from my perspective at least, is an implicit promise, that what happened in the 20th century with facism was the darkest hour, so to speak-> never again
  - throwaway27448 4mo ago
    Philosophy and democracy are hardly unique to western culture. But I see how one would be proud of and want to preserve most of these things. But putting that aside, most of this is modern, i.e. formed after the 17th century. I hardly see how any of this is traditional. Most of the good stuff here was formed in the 20th century—emphatically modern, borderline postmodern. Yes, I'm being facetious. But I really fucking hate conservatives that don't understand what the words they're saying mean.
hdgvhicv 4mo ago
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/feb/17/people-fired-punished-posting-charlie-kirk-death https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/feb/... The age old joke; A Russian and an American are drinking at a bar The Russian says "I'm impressed by american propaganda. It's so subtle but effective." The american responds "What are you talking about, we don't do propaganda."
- t-3 4mo ago
  The version in my fortune file is better: A Russian and an American get on a plane in Moscow and get to talking. The Russian says he works for the Kremlin and he's on his way to go learn American propaganda techniques. "What American propaganda techniques?" asks the American. "Exactly," the Russian replies.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 4mo ago
  I'm of the opinion that there is considerably more wailing about US government propaganda than actual US government propaganda. People who reference supposed US government propaganda rarely provide much in the way of concrete examples. Probably because there are legal restrictions on covert propaganda in the US: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/covert_propaganda https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/covert_propaganda To be clear, I'm happy to grant that: * The Pentagon won't provide jets for your war movie if your war movie portrays the US military in a bad light * The US engages in information operations in foreign countries, e.g. discouraging people in the Philippines from getting the Chinese COVID vaccine * Voice of America and similar US-government sponsored outlets are, in fact, sponsored by the US government But the notion that covert, English-language US government propaganda is ubiquitous and effective seems like a half-baked, un-falsifiable conspiracy theory with little supporting evidence. The internet is full of false or misleading claims about the US which go un-refuted. There's just way too much low-hanging fruit going un-picked here to believe that the USG is running massive English-language covert propaganda ops. A specific example of a false anti-American claim which is extremely widespread: Many Europeans believe that the US promised to protect Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. This is false. We only promised to go to the UN Security Council, which we did. You can verify for yourself with a quick trip to the UN website, the memorandum is not very long: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/Part/volume-3007-I-52241.pdf https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/P... If the American government possessed the propaganda wizardry that people ascribe to it, I expect the entire internet would be well-acquainted with the actual contents of this memorandum. Instead, you have randos like me trying to fight a tsunami of misinformation (likely Ukrainian-origin) related to this memorandum, using only a shovel.
0xDEAFBEAD 4mo ago
"The situation for free speech in Europe is even worse than I thought" https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/the-situation-for-free-speech-in https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/the-situation-for-free-sp...
- NicuCalcea 4mo ago
  Same old tired arguments from Americans about how if you don't let fascists have free speech, it's not really free speech.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 4mo ago
    Who controls the definition of "fascist"? In any case, practically speaking, censorship helped the rise of the Nazis: https://www.fire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/would-censorship-have-stopped-rise-nazis-part-16-answers https://www.fire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/would... You can see far-right parties surging across Europe. Speech restriction isn't just authoritarian, it's also counterproductive. As an American I am actually quite worried about Europe's far right. Those guys are very scary, and it's creepy the way they have been able to influence the right here in the US. The MAGA movement was far more multicultural back in the 2010s, before Europe's far right was able to influence it with their ethnic cleansing and pogrom fantasies. If you're in a hole, maybe stop digging?
    - NicuCalcea 4mo ago
      In spaces and interactions I control, the definition is up to me.
      - 0xDEAFBEAD 4mo ago
        "Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech." Noam Chomsky

kortilla 4mo ago

>traditional western values This seems tautological because Europe is pretty weak on the values that people in the US might care about (freedom of speech, limited govt, etc). What values specifically are you optimizing for here?

p_j_w 4mo ago
> values that people in the US might care about (freedom of speech, limited govt, etc). The US federal government forced Paramount to take Colbert off the air. Seems that people in the US don’t actually value these things. > What values specifically are you optimizing for here? Probably not being fascist.
- Gigachad 4mo ago
  They currently have the military circling a pool to intimidate people trying to take photos of the botched paint job.
  - fuck_google 4mo ago
    Intimidation is the sincerest form of flattery.
  - Applejinx 4mo ago
    In fairness, it's our Berlin Wall, and I absolutely would want a piece of the delaminating paint as a souvenir. The difference is we are so early into the collapse that the armed guards are still there. But yeah, it's definitely not just pictures, I'd want a piece of the blue stuff. It'd be a souvenir and also me taking it away from there, so win/win. Of course there's armed guards guarding the swamp now, what else would there be?
- throwaway27448 4mo ago
  > The US federal government forced Paramount to take Colbert off the air. Not really; the Ellisons are quite close to Trump. Nobody was forced to do anything. Had the FCC actually revoked their license, and had Paramount actually been willing to fight, they could have sued. It's not easy to force anyone that rich to do anything; the state works on behalf of capital. It seems like europe is more aware of the meaningless bluster than the actual crimes being committed There are much better things to point to to illustrate the deterioration of the rule of law, like blatantly illegal deportation of citizens without due process. Or raping children in concentration camps under the guise of cracking down on crime. We may never even know who was seized and what happened to them and there's little incentive for our very pro-corporate media to report on it. But sure, paramount is the real victim here.
  - hvb2 4mo ago
    You might want to read the 3rd paragraph of this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Skydance_Media_and_Paramount_Global https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Skydance_Media_and_P... Read that timeline and then see if you're still convinced that they didn't at least seem to have done a thing or 2 to appease the federal government
    - throwaway27448 4mo ago
      Of course, but that's business. Authoritarianism would imply a conflict unresolvable outside of state violence.
      - hvb2 4mo ago
        If you think that's business, wherever you are is a place where I don't want to live. Yes, companies do have to do things in order to appease regulators. But typically that's where a regulator says what they need them to do and then they oblige. Those requests usually involve market power and such, and splitting off part of the company. They don't involve the actual content/product of said company
solumunus 4mo ago
The UK can arrest you for hate speech. You can disagree with that policy on free speech terms if you want, and that’s really a maximal free speech position. It’s a very strange position to hold if you’re claiming that the U.S. is better when it comes to free speech. The U.S. administration is engaged in active smear campaigns against anyone who speaks loudly against them, threatened to revoke licenses of media companies, they’re suing people and corporations to silence them and pressure them into conformance, they’re threatening to deport people who are simply expressing anti-Israel views, threatened to remove funding from universities, deployed the military in cities they don’t like for no other reason than intimidation of political rivals. This is just off the top of my head. There’s just no comparison really. You must really be inhaling some nonsense X propaganda if you think government overreach is worse in Western Europe.
- goodpoint 4mo ago
  > The UK can arrest you for hate speech. And that's a good thing.
- nxm 4mo ago
  I as a individual won’t get arrested for speaking my mind, and that’s much more important than some legal battle around corporate media. „ deployed the military in cities they don’t like for no other reason than intimidation of political rivals” That’s one perspective on simply trying to enforce laws. Moreover, let’s not forget about how Biden government tried to silence Rogan.
  - vrganj 4mo ago
    You know who else was simply enforcing laws? The Gestapo.
  - solumunus 4mo ago
    > I as a individual won’t get arrested for speaking my mind Assuming you’re not a violent bigot you would also be fine in the UK. > Moreover, let’s not forget about how Biden government tried to silence Rogan. So your response to my claim that the US is worse is to point to other anti free speech practices by previous US governments? Well done!

cpursley 4mo ago

With all the issues in the US and generally wrong direction, I can’t remember them ever arresting people for mean tweets in the way that Germany and the UK have. They all seem to be running full speed towards a surveillance state.

solumunus 4mo ago
That’s not the EU.
lmm 4mo ago
> With all the issues in the US and generally wrong direction, I can’t remember them ever arresting people for mean tweets in the way that Germany and the UK have. Then you haven't been paying attention. The constitution prevents citizens from being convicted, but that doesn't stop arrests or being turned away at the border (even for permanent residents who've lived in the US for decades), and US citizens don't seem to care, so it's cold comfort for many of us.
- cpursley 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - lmm 4mo ago
    A 30 second search found me https://www.fire.org/news/he-spent-37-days-jail-facebook-post-now-fire-has-his-back https://www.fire.org/news/he-spent-37-days-jail-facebook-pos... . You can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride. (And you're pretty thoroughly proving my point about US citizens not caring about anyone else)
    - nxm 4mo ago
      Yay you found a single instance, and more over there are legal means of recourse, unlike the the UK when you’re jailed or fined and that’s it
      - 4mo ago

throwaway27448 4mo ago

I'm honestly not really sure what "traditional western values" have to do with where to store data. What does that even refer to—individualism? Christianity? Representation in court by lawyers? How does this intersect with the topic at hand? Edit: c'mon people, if you're going to use such ambiguous phrases at least have the spine to clue the reader in to what you want them to refer to in this context.

NonHyloMorph 4mo ago
Well there have been a lot.. philosopy, polis, democracy, hemlock cup, enlightenment (note the perversion of "the dark enlightenment"), modernity, the resistance (against Nazism), psychoanalysis, postmodernism and critical studies (postmodernism in the genuine sense of the philosophies/theories that you would assign that label to and not in the misguided sense of relativism as arbitrarity; basically continental philosophy, frankfurt school (e.g. adorno horkheimer, habermas) and the french (e.g. foucault, derrida, deleuze (& guattari)) Of course there were also absolutism, colonialism, the jacobines, nazism & facism, to name just a few. Part of western values, from my perspective at least, is an implicit promise, that what happened in the 20th century with facism was the darkest hour, so to speak-> never again
- throwaway27448 4mo ago
  Philosophy and democracy are hardly unique to western culture. But I see how one would be proud of and want to preserve most of these things. But putting that aside, most of this is modern, i.e. formed after the 17th century. I hardly see how any of this is traditional. Most of the good stuff here was formed in the 20th century—emphatically modern, borderline postmodern. Yes, I'm being facetious. But I really fucking hate conservatives that don't understand what the words they're saying mean.

hdgvhicv 4mo ago

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/feb/17/people-fired-punished-posting-charlie-kirk-death https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/feb/... The age old joke; A Russian and an American are drinking at a bar The Russian says "I'm impressed by american propaganda. It's so subtle but effective." The american responds "What are you talking about, we don't do propaganda."

t-3 4mo ago
The version in my fortune file is better: A Russian and an American get on a plane in Moscow and get to talking. The Russian says he works for the Kremlin and he's on his way to go learn American propaganda techniques. "What American propaganda techniques?" asks the American. "Exactly," the Russian replies.
0xDEAFBEAD 4mo ago
I'm of the opinion that there is considerably more wailing about US government propaganda than actual US government propaganda. People who reference supposed US government propaganda rarely provide much in the way of concrete examples. Probably because there are legal restrictions on covert propaganda in the US: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/covert_propaganda https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/covert_propaganda To be clear, I'm happy to grant that: * The Pentagon won't provide jets for your war movie if your war movie portrays the US military in a bad light * The US engages in information operations in foreign countries, e.g. discouraging people in the Philippines from getting the Chinese COVID vaccine * Voice of America and similar US-government sponsored outlets are, in fact, sponsored by the US government But the notion that covert, English-language US government propaganda is ubiquitous and effective seems like a half-baked, un-falsifiable conspiracy theory with little supporting evidence. The internet is full of false or misleading claims about the US which go un-refuted. There's just way too much low-hanging fruit going un-picked here to believe that the USG is running massive English-language covert propaganda ops. A specific example of a false anti-American claim which is extremely widespread: Many Europeans believe that the US promised to protect Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. This is false. We only promised to go to the UN Security Council, which we did. You can verify for yourself with a quick trip to the UN website, the memorandum is not very long: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/Part/volume-3007-I-52241.pdf https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/P... If the American government possessed the propaganda wizardry that people ascribe to it, I expect the entire internet would be well-acquainted with the actual contents of this memorandum. Instead, you have randos like me trying to fight a tsunami of misinformation (likely Ukrainian-origin) related to this memorandum, using only a shovel.

0xDEAFBEAD 4mo ago

"The situation for free speech in Europe is even worse than I thought" https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/the-situation-for-free-speech-in https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/the-situation-for-free-sp...

NicuCalcea 4mo ago
Same old tired arguments from Americans about how if you don't let fascists have free speech, it's not really free speech.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 4mo ago
  Who controls the definition of "fascist"? In any case, practically speaking, censorship helped the rise of the Nazis: https://www.fire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/would-censorship-have-stopped-rise-nazis-part-16-answers https://www.fire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/would... You can see far-right parties surging across Europe. Speech restriction isn't just authoritarian, it's also counterproductive. As an American I am actually quite worried about Europe's far right. Those guys are very scary, and it's creepy the way they have been able to influence the right here in the US. The MAGA movement was far more multicultural back in the 2010s, before Europe's far right was able to influence it with their ethnic cleansing and pogrom fantasies. If you're in a hole, maybe stop digging?
  - NicuCalcea 4mo ago
    In spaces and interactions I control, the definition is up to me.
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 4mo ago
      "Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech." Noam Chomsky