There are laws against certain kinds of discrimination by companies, but those are not the first amendment.
Just wanted to clarify that so we dont pretend companies are upholding constitutional rights on a regional basis. They are not accountable to it anywhere.
It is only in response to someone mistakenly arguing to assert their 1st amendment rights in a context where it isn't applicable that this rebuttal even makes any sort of sense--which is not the case for the OP, who didn't mention the 1st amendment or even the US at all. Even here, it is a pedantic argument, such a declaration is a mere technical mistake. In liberal democracies we value freedom of expression.
I'm not generally in favor of taking corporate personhood to logical extremes, but I'm kind of OK with companies having values and being able promote those values. Being able to promote some speech over others is part of that.
The First Amendment applies to the government because the government is a privileged party. Its role in society is dislike that of any private citizen or enterprise, and the restrictions we place on it reflect that uniqueness. It only makes sense to extend the First Amendment to other parties that have a unique role.
Which we do, e.g. Common Carrier restrictions on the movement of goods, and a variety of special requirements on telecommunications companies. If we want to say that social media platforms have become a core aspect of modern democracy and need to be regulated as such, there's an argument to be made. But applying it to private businesses in general is overreach in my opinion.
There's another line of reasoning that "First Amendment" is a stand-in for the societal value of freedom of speech. While it doesn't legally apply, we invoke it to mean that freedom of speech is the first-est of amendments, i.e. is the freedom that we rank more highly than any others. This still gets into the same paradox though. A company shouldn't be forced to equally support all viewpoints because then it's not a freedom, but we can certainly express dissatisfaction that a private party is acting in a way counter to the values of our society.
This is not quite right, legally speaking. Currently Youtube and other platforms enjoy the protection of Communication Decency Act Section 230 [1]. In particular, the passage "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider".
This passage has two side effects. One is, those platforms enjoy a liability protection - they cannot be sued for the content published on them, as they are not 'speaker/publisher' of the content (the original poster is). The other is, those platforms should not enjoy the freedom of speech protection - as they are not, legally speaking, the 'speaker/publisher' of the content.
The 'freedom of speech of Youtube' argument runs counter to Youtube's best interest - immunity from civil liability, as granted through the Section 230.
--
"any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected"
Any Internet platform can moderate to their heart's content, even if it goes beyond the extent demanded by the law. There are no constitutional free speech protections on the Internet. The "publisher/platform" thing is pure horseshit spread by people who cry about "online censorship". Unfortunately that tactic seems to be working.
The effect of the law is that sites have less civil liability for user generated content, even if they make some decisions about what content is acceptable.
Those decisions can't get limited under the first amendment, and the content still has 3rd party speech protection.
So the government asking YouTube to remove a video would be a 1a violation, by controlling it's moderation decisions.
If YT is just some form of medium, not the "speaker"/provider and by that not allowed to remove content under its own freedom of speech, why is it then allowed (even forced) to block my content under copyright laws if it infringes someone's copyright.
Why not just route the DMCA request to me and I would need to react. Isn't YT treated as provider/publisher, when forced to react to DMCA requests on my behalf, if I infringe on some copyright?
Putting aside whether or not this is nonsense to begin with, it certainly doesn't apply to China, which is a government. A law requiring companies serving the US market to not comply with censorship by China is restricting what China can do, not what those companies can do. The companies then have a problem if they exist in two jurisdictions which now have conflicting laws, but they can solve it by moving out of whichever jurisdiction they please.
The fact that they would have no choice if they were subject to China's jurisdiction. You can't choose to do something you're being forced to do, therefore if you do it, it wasn't your choice.
Wouldn't the reverse be true in the US? Assume that actually supported China's radical opinions, while being subject to US jurisdiction - wouldn't they be forced out of business? Isn't that what's going on now?
> You can't choose to do something you're being forced to do, therefore if you do it, it wasn't your choice.
(In practice the way this is done is with data location rules, that EU data must be stored in the EU, which is clearly a restriction on the way the company operates)
As long as those values don't conflict with things like freedom of speech, I agree. But the second they do, there needs to be repercussions.
For example.
I as a consumer want to use Amazon because I've never had a bad experience with them. But I really really really don't want to be complicit in forced child labor because somewhere in their supply line is a company using it.
Think of it like the Overton window. Everything inside the window is fair game, but the second you step outside of that window you pretty much get destroyed or very nearly. Basically put the fear of god in them the same way the IRS puts the fear of god in citizens for not paying taxes.
I'm ok with you valuing your religion or women's rights. I'm not ok with you banning accounts of activists who are critical of the chinese government (zoom).
This is not correct as a blanket statement. The constitution defines the powers of all three branches of government, not just congress. It also puts some restrictions on states and has some general prohibitions that don't just apply to government (for example, it defines treason). No other amendment in the Bill of Rights has "congress shall make no law" in it; they all just say certain things are prohibited or required, period. And subsequent amendments, such as the Fourteenth, place restrictions on States. Parts of the constitution are specifications for congress specifically. But not all of it.
The reason individuals and businesses can refuse to allow speech they don't like in their homes or places of business, or on their websites, is that that is part of their right to free speech--the right to control speech on their own property.
Try walking into a restaurant and wailing on about Trump.
In 'Western Democracies' we also value private spaces and the ability for private groups to make their own rules.
Freedom of expression does not apply to YouTube in the 'Liberal Democratic' sense.
1) Private businesses can make rules for the content they want to have up.
2) In public you can do mostly as you please. Nobody can take down your website unless you're doing something specifically illegal.
3) If we want to ban other countries stuff because they are totalitarians, we can do that.
It does, just in that YouTube is the possessor of the right, not the restricted governing party.
I don't think YouTube would, for example, cite 'their 1st Amendment Rights' as legitimacy for censoring content on their site.
So what if the government partners with all the large tech companies to have them voluntarily enforce restrictions on speech? Oh, you're free to say whatever you want, just not online. Or on the airwaves. Or in public parks, which were recently put in control of a private management company too. You are free to stand in your bedroom and talk to the wall. Just don't talk loud enough that your corporate landlord kicks you out for a noise violation.
There is over 2 centuries of legal jurisprudence on that question. It's not a novel issue.
1. Religious institutions should have the same rights to funds as any other school.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/us/supreme-court-religiou...
2. Job Bias laws don’t protect teachers in religious schools.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/us/job-bias-catholic-scho...
In affect, government funds are used to support schools that are allowed to discriminate.
It’s not just LGBTQ rights. Some religious schools think that interracial dating/marriage is a “sin”.
Or say you live in a small town with one grocery store, and they don't like your BLM tshirt so one day they ban you. Private company, they can do that. But now where do you buy food?
Or your Brand X car breaks down, but Brand X decides they don't want you in any Brand X dealerships anymore, but the problem is your car needs a specific diagnostic tool only available to Brand X dealers.
The examples are endless
And I agree, the internet monopoly is a huge issue. The internet should become widely available to all. I would say as a utility, but that then points out the fact that I have one giant power company that could also, censor me and cut me off from my only main source of power... hmmm...
I must be missing something because I cannot imagine why everyone is so tolerant of companies having nation-state level ability to ruin lives, and to routinely face no consequences when they do so.
I am not sure if I am attacking a straw man here, but it sure sounds like you claim that buying one way flight ticket is very difficult compared to getting rid of FAAMG in your life?
I understand there are other complications involved in moving abroad that just the flight ticket, but I still think that the big global corps are much more difficult to get rid of than my government. Including the fact that they very much keep communication with my friends at least as much hostage as my government if I decide to move away.
Sure you can fly there, but your tourist visa will run out in a few weeks and they will kick you out if they can find you. So now you're on the run, and good luck finding a job, renting an apartment, or getting health care with an expired tourist visa.
Oh and if you're an American, you won't be able to open an account in a local bank because American banking laws control all banks everywhere.
The above are generalizations and some countries are easier to move to than others. And all of them IMO are much more difficult than deleting Facebook.
I'd be on the next flight out if there was some sort of undocumented American community somewhere in Western Europe or something. But that simply doesn't exist.
Is there actually something in the Federalist Papers talking about free market competition? I'm not aware they considered this at all.
A Twitter mob doesn't have any objective power to prevent anyone from finding employment. They do, however, have free speech rights which include the right to communicate with someone's potential employer and argue that they should not be hired. If literally every employer decides not to hire someone based solely on what that mob says, then (notwithstanding how ridiculous that scenario would be in real life) that's possibly a labor rights issue more than a free speech issue.
It would remove a lot of leverage of the twitter mobs if they know ahead of time the target is protected.
[0] To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the person or entity who is the subject of the statement.
Now what you need to do is show damages. Lost your job? Deplatformed or demonetized? Vendors, partners, or clients cut ties? Victim of harassment (online or otherwise)?
Keep in mind, making an accusation not totally supported by evidence is not defamation. In the US, it falls on the defamed to both prove that the accusation is false and prove that the accuser knew it was false. Not that they had doubts or uncertainty, but that they knowingly lied. Making an ultimately incorrect acusation based on incomplete evidence isn't legally negligent.
Essentially, it comes down to what a reasonable person would do.
A reasonable person would probably not invent claims without evidence. Let's take the Kyle Rittenhouse case as the example since it's so recent and visible. The Twitter mob openly calls this individual a murderer, white supremacist, and terrorist, among other things. They also invent and distribute "facts" which are material to the case such as where the individual got the AR-15 used during the event, and the circumstances surrounding its use. [1]Significant effort is undertaken to obfuscate the truth through the editing of video footage and censoring of contrary opinions.
> Elon musk called someone a "pedo guy" because he moved to Thailand, and was found to be fine because a reasonable person wouldn't take the statement seriously.
This is clearly not the case when dealing with situations like the above, and many others which lead to individuals being deplatformed, harassed, or physically threatened, or even attacked. There can be no doubt that claims of racism, sexism, homophobia, or other bigotry are taken seriously by all the major platforms and society as a whole. It is common knowledge that such claims cause harm.
A reasonable person would not make damaging claims without any supporting evidence, manufacture fake evidence, or aid in the distribution of either.
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/negligence
[1] https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/09/02/facebook-declares-...
Furthermore, repeating a rumor is not negligent. So if I make a claim without evidence, but you repeat it and cite me, only I have done something wrong.
To get concrete, there is evidence that Kyle Rittenhouse murdered someone. He's been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, this is Wisconsin's equivalent of Murder.
There is evidence that Kyle Rittenhouse is a white supremacist. He travelled across state lines to disrupt and intimidate people at a protest for racial justice. While he may not be a card carrying neo-nazi, that's evidence.
There is evidence that Kyle Rittenhouse is a terrorist. He (presumably) unlawfully used violence and intimidation against civilians for political purposes. He's listed on wikipedia's list of right-wing terrorists in the US[0].
So now you have to show that not only are the above statements false, but that they are so blatantly false, that it is unreasonable for a person to believe them, and that to reach those conclusions would require negligence. But of course, you can't really do that. Wikipedia agreeing with me pretty much proves that my claims aren't unreasonable. They may be wrong, but they aren't negligently so.
> They also invent and distribute "facts" which are material to the case such as where the individual got the AR-15 used during the event, and the circumstances surrounding its use.
Coming to incorrect conclusions after good faith investigation isn't negligent. At the moment, as far as I know, Rittenhouse got his rifle within the state of Wisconsin, from a friend. But not knowing that information, it is not unreasonable and negligent to state "He must have acquired the gun illegally, since he is underage and can't transport it across state lines." That's a reasonable conclusion. It's wrong, yes, but it's reasonable.
> This is clearly not the case when dealing with situations like the above,
Just to be clear, you are saying that it is reasonable for a person to call someone else a pedophile without any evidence, but calling someone who shot and killed someone else, on video, a murderer, is negligent? Am I getting that right?
Previously I said that you misunderstand negligence. I'll repeat what I said and add that it appears that you, personally, have an extraordinary level of prudence. Which is totally acceptable, and perhaps even an admirable trait. But it is not ordinary. Legally speaking, you appear to be "unreasonable".
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_terrorism#United_St...
> To get concrete, there is evidence that Kyle Rittenhouse murdered someone. He's been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, this is Wisconsin's equivalent of Murder.
These claims were coming out prior to him being charged and prior to any credible sources reporting details of the story. There was an organized attempt to get ahead of the narrative and paint a particular picture of the events. The fact that it's actually rather difficult to find the details of the 'victims' and their criminal histories is one indicator of that. The below cited debate on the wiki entry is another. And that is without diving into the twitter discourse where it's possible to find every level of bad faith "debate"
> There is evidence that Kyle Rittenhouse is a white supremacist. He travelled across state lines to disrupt and intimidate people at a protest for racial justice. While he may not be a card carrying neo-nazi, that's evidence.
He worked in Kenosha as a lifeguard, and was there cleaning up the neighborhood [0]unarmed earlier in the day. Saying his presence there is evidence is like saying that my fingerprints inside my own home are evidence of whatever crime may have happened there.
> There is evidence that Kyle Rittenhouse is a terrorist. He (presumably) unlawfully used violence and intimidation against civilians for political purposes. He's listed on wikipedia's list of right-wing terrorists in the US[0].
This "evidence" came into existence after the claims were already circulating. [1]The original entry was Kenosha Riots, and there is ongoing organized action to alter the title and information to change the narrative. None of the sources listed existed at the time that the defamatory claims were made.
> Coming to incorrect conclusions after good faith investigation isn't negligent.
There was no investigation, so there cannot have been good faith in the investigation. The individuals claiming he 'crossed state lines with an illegal AR-15' are making multiple false claims at once. He didn't cross state lines to participate, he was already there. He didn't cross with the AR-15, it was given to him by a WI state resident. Even the possession of the weapon itself may not have been illegal as the state statutes leave wiggle room that has yet to be explored.
The ultimate point is that the people who initiated many of these claims are journalists and news publications who should have made a good faith effort to produce accurate reports. They failed miserably to do so, and their reports still carry significant inaccuracies. Some of these reports featured video clips that were edited to better support the narrative. None of these reports, at least that I've been able to find, show all of the video evidence that is public thus far.
> Just to be clear, you are saying that it is reasonable for a person to call someone else a pedophile without any evidence, but calling someone who shot and killed someone else, on video, a murderer, is negligent? Am I getting that right?
Not exactly. I'm saying that Elon Musk is one individual who has no following because of his 'investigative journalism' credentials. He's just a dude who is rather well known for being 'out there'. On the other hand, people absolutely do follow CNN & & & as a 'credible' source for such reporting.
[0] https://nypost.com/2020/08/26/suspected-kenosha-gunman-kyle-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kenosha_protests#Requeste...
It isn't unreasonable to call someone who shot someone else a murderer. It just is not.
It is not unreasonable to conclude that someone who travelled to another state and then shot someone was doing so for nefarious reasons. It may be wrong, but it isn't unresonable.
> This "evidence" came into existence after the claims were already circulating
I'm not saying that using the Wikipedia article is evidence for the claim. I'm saying that the claim cannot be unreasonable if wikipedia ultimately reached the same conclusion.
Again, you don't need to cite someone else to be not defamatory. As long as the statement, standing alone, isn't unreasonable, you're good.
> None of these reports, at least that I've been able to find, show all of the video evidence that is public thus far.
That doesn't make them defamatory.
> Not exactly. I'm saying that Elon Musk is one individual who has no following because of his 'investigative journalism' credentials.
Your original complaint was about random individuals in twitter mobs making defamatory statements. They also have no credentials. So are you now saying that actually all the random people on Twitter are fine, but it's CNN and NBC and the news organizations that are making defamatory claims?
Because that's a reach. You really think you know defamation better than the lawyers who work for those companies and specialize in defamation?
How about KKK member, white supremacist, racist, etc?
> It is not unreasonable to conclude that someone who travelled to another state and then shot someone was doing so for nefarious reasons. It may be wrong, but it isn't unreasonable.
This isn't what happened and there is substantial evidence that demonstrates this. He didn't travel there for that reason, he was there when it started because he works there. He traveled a shorter distance 'into another state' than from me to my local mall.
> Because that's a reach. You really think you know defamation better than the lawyers who work for those companies and specialize in defamation?
[0]Lin Wood, (Kyle's lawyer) recently won multiple defamation cases, one of which was against CNN for their poor coverage of the Nick Sandmann case. He's quite literally an expert in the field. I'm happy to let him sort things out.
> Your original complaint was about random individuals in twitter mobs making defamatory statements. They also have no credentials. So are you now saying that actually all the random people on Twitter are fine, but it's CNN and NBC and the news organizations that are making defamatory claims?
They aren't "fine" but they are not the originators of the harm. The so-called journalists intentionally editing video to alter narratives, and large organizations that are trying to alter the publicly available information are absolutely not fine.
And my original point was that I've not seen Twitter mobs (as a collective) avoid crossing the line. However, you can't go after a mob, you can only go after the most important individuals fanning the flames.
[0] https://lawandcrime.com/media/lawyer-for-covington-catholics...
You can't use CNN because a twitter user called someone a white supremacist after CNN correctly reported on events and someone else says something inflammatory. Either you can go after CNN for the reporting it does, or you can go after random twitter users for inflammatory stuff, but understand that you already said that that was okay when you claimed musk was "different".
And just a note, Lin Wood did not win a case against CNN. The Sandmann case was settled out of court. Please don't defame CNN like that.
They are saying that people outside of China should take a stand against China’s lack of respect for speech rights, rather than playing along with it for profit.
All of the western world has a significantly better respect for speech rights than the CCP does.
The issue isn’t so much that TikTok is censoring content. It’s that they’re censoring content at the request of a foreign government.
I’m not a legal scholar by any means so I cannot really comment about the application of the constitution or other applicable law. However, it feels like it’s probably wrong to let another country censor the speech of US citizens, in the US.
To the extent that banning pro-Tibet messages is expressive editorial conduct, the government's banning of such companies for engaging in such conduct would violate the 1st amendment protections against viewpoint discrimination.
Put another way, by preventing the government from regulating private companies in such a fashion, the 1st amendment can actually weaken free speech (though I would argue that the actual problem is fact that the big tech companies are so dominant that few viable alternative venues, with different editorial practices, exist).
The result is that when the government tries to reform the editorial practices of the tech companies, it has to do so through awkward means (like saying that they are not enforcing their own rules or threatening to strip them of their protection against libel and other causes of action). Anyway I'm pretty sure that if they condition civil liability protection on their following editorial "best practices", like what current bipartisan bills to reform section 230 do, the courts will not play along.
We 'divest from Oil' for god's sake we can at least 'divest from the CCP'.
The CCP has a team in most (about 85%) of Chinese companies to ensure they tow the party line. They don't care about day-to-day operations, but when it comes to sensitive things, they report back to the CCP.
Thanks to technology ... it's the most systematically totalitarian state ever devised.
When writing 20th century dystopian novels, we never even conceived of the level of personal control.
Imagine if the US president ordered a CIA or GOP organ inside every US company, directed the Fed to put money in certain banks, and directed the banks to make loans to specific companies on specific terms. And then read everyone's email, browser history, chat to make sure they 'complied' and flagged anyone who ever hinted anything other than the accepted truth.
That's just scratching the surface.
We should ban it.
If a company is deemed to be considered the equivalent of a town square, it can be given the same restrictions as the 1st amendment. For example Malls cannot ban protected speech in their premises.
If a company is not deemed this by courts, they have the full right to ban you for non-protected reasons (excluding racism/sexism and so on)
Maybe free speech actually SHOULD be free everywhere, private interests be damned?
It is true that private entities can kick out individuals for utterances found disagreeable. But what if those private entities are practically extensions of those in government positions, working closely with them? During the Framers' time, the proto-US did not have the equivalent of the Dutch East India Company, considered the most valuable company of all time [2].
At what point does a private entity grow so powerful that its private views applied in its selection of who to engage with turn into persecution of the kind that informed the separation of church and state principle [3]? I'd like to get a specialist historian's (specializing in the Framers' discussions) take on this, because I find it interesting that they were all very likely well aware of the Dutch East India Company, yet they did not find it a compelling enough entity to elevate to the level of the separation principle. So I have to wonder: what did they believe was the countervailing force against such a behemoth private entity's selection pressure turning into outright persecution?
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-1/g...
[2] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-valuable-companies-all...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state...
It's unclear to me what you're suggesting.
What's happening is people conflate "not suppressing speech" with "supporting hate speech." They don't support anything. They're nothing more at this point than a public space maintained by a private entity. Private entities I'll add that are essentially subsidized by taxpayers due to not meeting their obligations of paying their taxes, and no I'm not talking about minimizing tax obligations[0].
[0] - https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/19/21144291/facebook-irs-law...
And nobody ever said "no matter how objectionable." We still have limits on obscenity.
Primarily, you are arguing for compelling corporation to expend effort and expense to carry content deemed objectionable by officers of that company, and I'm not sure you've thought that through. You might think politically-[whatever] voices are being silenced--absent evidence--but if the US government decides to violate hundreds of years of established norms and force websites to cease censoring content, it won't be just content you favor that explodes. And if the US government can force Facebook and Twitter to carry content they don't like, then what legal standard separates them from Hacker News, for example?
If a company wants to editorialize their content and provide moderation when they deem fit then they specifically should lose their protections under section 230.
If a company loses Section 230 protections, the safest move is to disable user content completely. No comments anywhere. The next-safest move is to be extremely heavy-handed editorially, since any comment left alone could be the basis for a company-ending lawsuit. Whatever views you believe are being censored now, I guarantee you they would be actually censored completely without Section 230.
Read Section 230[0]. It's the foundation of the modern internet and says almost exactly the opposite of what you're suggesting. Read 230(c)(2)(A) twice.
Not sure how legislation would define the requirements for something like this. What would metrics would signal that a platform to have to comply with the regulation? (MAUs?, revenue?, surely having moderation, but should certain kinds of moderation like removing botspam count?) Should a provider be able to silently set-up default lists for new users or should they be prompted? Should the company be required to break down blocklists among different topics (spam/pornography/depictions of violence/a goose with a campfire in the background) and how should the boundaries of topics be defined if so? What kind of functionality should be considered the bare minimum for a framework to build community-curated blocklists?
Mind you, I still am not sure regulation is the way to go. But the truth is that these platforms wield a scary amount of power over the psyche of people to extents that would've made the Stasi drool all over the place, and it does have the ability of corrupting democracy far more than biased TV channels and newspapers since it's no longer Fox News or CNN presenting you something, it's your own acquaintances that get some of their voices artificially boosted while some others are silenced; literally distorting a huge amount of voters' own grasp on reality.
People who dislike the limits of these platforms have a variety of other venues on the internet to choose from, but what they are not at all entitled to is the automatic amplification of their voice by these large but private platforms.
The remedy is to break up the big forums, not to take away the rights of their owners.
Why not? We have granted ourselves the right to limit the rights of corporations.
The individual owners can keep their individual rights.
You have to remember that "corporation" can mean any group organized for a purpose. It can be Exxon, but it can also be Planned Parenthood or AARP.
People who can't speak loudly enough by themselves have a right to organize into a corporation, pool their money, and speak loudly together.
You can argue that a business should not be both a commercial enterprise and a holder of 1st Amendment rights, but that's not what the law says. And anyway, it would be an impossible line to draw.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't forbidding them from censoring user content orthogonal to this?
Turns out tax status is enforced by laws. Weird, I know.
"well akshually...". just don't.
Human rights, however, are natural rights.
I was responding narrowly about the idea that "free speech" demands that the US govt can force companies to choose what to publish.
Forcing a company to stop operating here is an entirely different concept.
Expel Spain from the EU. Economic blockade. Whatever it takes. At least the UK held a referendum on Scotland. Fake promises and all but we can't jail dissidents just because they try to form a separate country in today's world.
Also the European Court of Justice (ECJ) agrees that separatist politicians should not be jailed for their opinions as elected officials: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50808766
More info: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/14/spain-...
That's not at all what they said. According to the ECJ, they should have had temporary immunity just for the purpose of taking up their seats as MEPs even though they were on trial for a generic crime. That ruling doesn't have any judgement regarding the legality of separatism, and also wouldn't free them of prison time if found guilty by the Spanish court.
> "being put in jail because you say publicly that tibet should be free"
and if merely pointing that fact out is getting me downvoted, that's the problem of the people who are doing that.
These are collectives of politicians, who have a huge number of difficult problems to solve and limited means of solving them. They have conflicting, national, local and, yes, some personal demands. A mass of conflicting ideology, with varying levels of diligence, ethics and greed.
Expecting absolute morals is expecting the impossible.
Compared to virtually any government in history, and most governments today, the EU is far, far from corrupt. Yes there is corruption. But no government has no corruption.
And it's certainly not helpful, or thruthful, to use silly rhetoric like 'The ship sailed long ago on the EU being anything but corrupt'.
That is a lie, and I can only hope you are adult enough to admit it is one.
"I think the 'free' world should ban software and/or content". Condemn maybe, but it is scary to see such non-free actions encouraged against digital content.
blocking those who block is freeing those who are blocked is not becoming like them.Same goes for Huawei or any company/product. You are allowed if you don't break the law. I don't care the origin, I care about the rule of [contestable] law over unilateral action. I may disagree with many laws, but I respect the process much more.
A Freudian typo to be sure, and sadly too representative of those pushing government software/content restrictions.
You may feel those actions are just, but being just does not make them legal.
We are under no duty to allow the CCP to act within our borders.
Every country enforces their laws. If a US company violated gdpr, I would expect them to be fined and banned from the EU.
To bad there's far less money in federation---it's "moatlessness" ruins the business proposition---so I don't know who will pay for this lobbying.
Here is a sampling attempts (though I'm sure the graveyard has hundreds if not thousands of members): Friendster, DailyBooth, FriendFeed, Google Buzz, Meerkat, Yik Yak, Vine, Google Plus, MySpace, Path, Orkut, ConnectU, ...
The US had a phone company at the national level until regulatory bodies made a market.
not gonna happen because of this tiiiiiiiiny thing called money. china has over a billion people. if you want to be in that market, you play by their rules. it's not surprising how people can change their morals with the right dollar amount.
What we are in is a sort of techno-mercantilism where governments enlist large companies to deliver geopolitical influence in exchange for protection.
These two things could not exist simultaneously without an explicit guarantee of legal protection from the government for online publishers of user content. Without that guarantee of protection it's doubtful that any platform could have grown as large as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or Google without taking a completely hands-off approach to user content (i.e. as a "common carrier"). The threat of litigation would have forced them to pre-emptively moderate all content just like print media and television.
In the 1990s Congress decided that it's okay for the internet to operate on different legal rules from the rest of society. They decided that internet companies can make editorial choices about their content freely without being legally held responsible for those choices, and the Supreme Court upheld that decision. Online speech is now the domain of Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. and they have free reign over their virtual kingdoms without regard for any other legal system.
As it is there is a sense of unfairness I think. TikTok seems to be singled out with ambiguous and hard to pin down "national security" issues.
People point to FB and google being blocked in China, but at least the CCP can point to laws they're not complying with. And presumably if FB and google complied with Chinese laws (like Bing), they'd be able to operate there. With TikTok there aren't any laws anyone can point to that they're breaking. For example if there is a law that says social media platforms cannot censor users' content. As it is, this is just giving ammunition to the CCP to point to how unfair the US is being and how the west just wants to keep China and Chinese companies down.
At least as right and wrong are not the same for most people at least. And even if in some countries right and wrong are reversed, don't believe that even those who live there don't realize it.
But just the other day, there was a huge post with lots of uproar about how Google was flagging apps like mastodon for having no content standards regarding hate speech.
Which I very strongly disagree with. It was perhaps in poor taste, but hurt no one.
Especially after he was already on probation for earlier transgressions against these laws.
He did not go to jail because he "only" teached his dog (it was actually his dog) a poor taste trick.
I was initially wrong in assuming there would have been only one knucklehead on this planet doing something so obviously stupid.
Sorry for that.
[1]: https://www.welt.de/print-welt/article266388/Angeklagt-Herrc...
[2]: https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.gerichtsurteil-in-...
Sorry for the sources being in German only.
As an aside, I remember watching 'The Wave' years ago (I think there's a new version on netflix?) and being fascinated by it. It gave a brief glimpse into the cultural fear of what happened in Germany happening again.
puns are fun but lead nowhere if you want to talk seriously
When someone calls on the "free world", it has mostly become a US patriotism dog whistle to me without any deeper meaning.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country
People here in the comments are already pointing out Spain and the USA, which most people would probably assign to the "free world".
Of course it's a spectrum, but at what difference between countries is such a boycott realistic and doesn't quickly turn into hypocrisy if not enacted against countries uniformly? Shouldn't the USA boycott Iran or Turkey in the same manner if they boycott China? Should Norway start to do the same to US companies?
Or, you know, just practicing a certain religion or being from a specific ethnic group[0].
So please don't be so small minded bringing this "free world" propaganda terms here...
Peace
If you feel that strongly about it, why not an invasion theater where America makes a big show of mobilizing and preparing to send its $3 trillion military to invade and overthrow China unless China liberates their NAZI-style concentration camps (1 million uighers) and end their censorship. China's censorship just cost the world about $10 trillion in lockdowns and lost economic activity, specifically when China applied pressure on the WHO to hide news about what was going on in China as China was battling what at that time was an epidemic rather than pandemic.
I only ask because your position is a very strong one...
>I think that free world should ban every company that comply with china censorship,
this type of free speech should be guaranteed to anyone and reinforced with the non-violent marginalization of those who struggle to take away fundamental human rights, the ban of a society under the control of this regime is the least I expect from a state that wants to enact these rights. talk about what you want (here you can do it) talk about rights in the west etc ... (here you can do it) there (in china) you are just on another level, compare them if you want .. here you can do it .. but try to go there ..