Comment by syspec
6 days ago
Meanwhile, you can't even go on pornhub in certain states in the US, but yes let's let people go on X and engage in hate speech. In fact I'm sure bad actors will use that site FROM the us, to anonymize their hate speech from Russia/China
Americans is land of the free until someone shows a nipple. Or copies a floppy. Or refuses to partake in flag shagging. Or says something critical of the president.
Basically America is very good at protecting hate speech, not so good at the rest.
Yeah. This effort feels perplexing. US just isn't the free-est country on Earth in terms of free speech protections, and the gap is slowly widening. IIRC there still isn't secrecy of communication baked into laws as principles.
A popular meme, but consider that part of the discourse around the EU censorship is Grok's undressing feature.
> Americans is land of the free until someone shows a nipple. Or copies a floppy. Or refuses to partake in flag shagging. Or says something critical of the president.
Can you give an example of censoring of any of these type of content? AFAIK there is only age gating.
I principled stance would be against government censoring nipples AND speech of any kind, including what you call "hate speech".
My educated guess is that your definition of "hate speech" doesn't include people openly calling for assassinating federal employees (i.e. ICE).
BTW: properly applied 1st amendment is what led to un-banning censorship of nipples (see. Flynt v. United States, Miller v. California) as well as unbanning "obscene" books by Henry Miller and others (Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein)
I'm against censorship of nipples and speech including what you likely consider "hate speech". To me the line is calling to kill or physically harm someone. Which leftists are currently doing in spades and yet BlueSky doesn't ban them for that.
So your line is in a different place to majority of Americans and certainly the majority of the world
Which is fine, and also why crying about “freedom of speech” is disingenuous. Everyone has different views on what’s allowed and what’s not, but everyone agrees there must be restrictions.
I'm confused about your principles.
Do you want censorship (of porn, of "hate speech") or not?
Because it seems you don't want censorship of porn but do want censorship of speech.
"hate speech" is a made up thing that politicians use to jail people who complain about government.
If you're an American you should cherish 1st amendment. You should cherish the fact that founding fathers recognized that the greatest thread to your freedom is not another person with a gun but a thousand people with a gun i.e. government.
And giving government the power to censor speech they don't like is the fastest way to tyranny.
That's why freedom of speech is 1st amendment. Not second, not fifth. It's 1st because it's that important.
Freedom of speech is not absolute anywhere, not even under the 1st amendment in the USA.
Death threats are illegal whether they happen offline or online.
Yelling "I HAVE A BOMB!" in an airport comes with consequences.
I believe we can agree on these two examples.
Yes, we can.
But that's not what "hate speech" is code word for.
At this point in time any opinion to the right of extreme leftist ideology is considered by said leftist to be "hate speech".
Examples of "hate speech": criticism of muslims (but jews are ok), or minorities, or men playing in women's sport or breast amputation of 15yr olds, or immigration.
Nick investigating Somali fraud is racist and hateful.
The "hate speech" box is big enough that you can put a lot in it.
So yeah, we agree that there are limits to free speech. We agree that death threats cross the line.
But you tell me if we agree where that line is.
If you think there's such think as "hate speech" and it crosses the line, then we do not agree.
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> Yelling "I HAVE A BOMB!" in an airport comes with consequences.
It's not the speech itself that's illegal, it's the fact that they made everyone nearby aware they could have the means to mass murder everyone around them. People will obviously react to that by taking down the potential threat.
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> Meanwhile, you can't even go on pornhub in certain states in the US.
Hilarious to think that freedom.gov might be the workaround.
No state blocks access to PornHub. Some states have requirements requiring ID before viewing porn, but the state isn't stopping anybody from viewing it.
Requiring ID to buy alcohol isn't banning alcohol, just like requiring ID to view porn isn't banning porn.
I don't take issue with the idea of something like this (assuming it isn't expensive and is more of an information center than anything else), but yeah it is funny that while they evidently made this in response to the EU, if it ends up being what it sounds like it will, it's going to enable Americans to circumvent their own state's laws as well.
> let people go on X and engage in hate speech
So interesting to see it become a popular opinion that we should "not let" people say certain things. Like, if necessary, we should jail people for speaking.
I remember learning about the ACLU[1] as a teen, 25 years ago, and how they took a lot of flak for defending people who said things we all agreed were gross, which at first glance seems disgusting. But the lesson we were taught was that the Constitutional guarantee of "freedom of expression" wasn't qualified with "as long as the opinions being expressed are cool ones."
Really, "hate speech" is defined as "any ideas counter to beliefs I hold dearly." Right wingers think some or all porn is the "bad" kind of expression and apparently banworthy, and left wingers think saying pretty much anything about trans ideology (other than full-throated endorsement) is hate speech.
I'm aware that many who are of the "don't let people do 'hate speech'" aren't Americans and don't owe any respect for the ideas of our particular Constitution, and that's fine -- but many Americans also now feel that citizens should only be able to speak the subset of ideas that one party endorses, and that any other ideas should be punishable, as they are in the UK.[2]
[1] If I understand it correctly, I think the ACLU is under new management, and no longer defends anyone whose ideas are uncomfortable.
[2] https://factually.co/fact-checks/justice/uk-arrests-for-twee... This fact-check points out that "only" 10% of the 30 arrests per day for online postings end up with convictions, and that it's rare to have "long" prison sentences. Very comforting.
American free speech laws are the exception, not the rule. All European free speech laws have always been balanced and weighed up against other laws. This is hardly anything new. If anything, the internet has brought forth a short time period where everything goes and the status quo is now recovering.
The legal definition of hate speech (or rather, its local equivalents) is not just "any ideas counter to beliefs I hold dearly".
American free speech laws are the superior option. A government that has the power to arrest people for saying "hateful" things is no better than China or North Korea. But at least you won't need to deal with people saying mean things (that you can block) on your computer (that no one is forcing you to use for social media) anymore, right?
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12 thousand people arrested per year for social media posts is "balanced"? https://archive.ph/bdEqK
at this point it's the #1 principle of the UK government, everything else comes second after putting people in jail for saying the wrong things
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complaining about losing the freedom to watch porn without ID while in the same comment pushing for more people to face state action for social media posts
porn is ok, posts that hurt my fee fees and ideological bias bad :'( (both are ok in my opinion btw)
I agree that hate speech must have limits but I have no idea where government trust comes from, especially in the current times. It's like people forget that voting swings and sways and that at some point in time, a government you won't agree with will be able to wield all these shiny new tools for censorship.
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