Comment by quotemstr
1 year ago
The UN declaration of human rights speaks to free expression being fundamental to human flourishing. As an American, I'm not terribly inclined to accept cultural relativism when it comes to censorship. Governments banning political speech they dislike is always and everywhere tyrannical.
I don't think it's comments they dislike. I think it's accounts spreading fake news and feeding a narrative of 'current government bad' to impose what they think is the right way. I mean, there are limits, and they're being imposed by the force of law
It doesn't work that way. Any ability to ban "fake news" immediately becomes a vehicle for banning inconvenient news. It's part of human nature. I don't have to list the dozens recent examples of "fake" news turning out to be true. There's a reason that Orwell's censorship body was called the "ministry of truth".
Governments shouldn't touch censorship for the same reason alcoholics shouldn't touch booze.
Except it already does. Post CSAM or the latest Disney movie and see how long that lasts.
It's a series of bytes, just like your comment. Don't forget, money by corporations qualifies as speech.
There should be a line drawn in the sand. When it is crossed, something should happen to preserve the well-being of everybody
“Free speech” has limits. Spreading lies about people with the purpose of undermining someone’s reputation is defamation, which is a crime in the US.
In Brazil, it happens that lying about the democratic process with the intent of getting people to not vote or to get people to support your fascist coup is also a crime.
The Supreme Court ordered X to ban people who commit these crimes and subpoenaed it to reveal their identities so they can be arrested. Subpoenas happen all the time in the US.
Complying isn’t the problem here though. Twitter complies with similar requests all the time. The problem is that Twitter is failing to comply in time and is being hit with ever-increasing fines for it.
Musk could hire more people to deal with it or pay the fines, but he decided that firing everyone and leaving the country would be cheaper.
Unless of course that speech also incites lawlessness or is actually otherwise unlawful.
Your rights end where my nose begins, etc.
Plenty of Germans are fine with banning public praise of Nazis. You are free to spew the boring old pablum, but most people in the world aren't absolutist like you.
Besides, "political speech" isn't as easy to nail down as you seem to think it is. Child porn is political speech if I want it to be so you're opposed to banning child porn. Good to know.