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[QUOTE=yzb25;902828]You're also leaving out that free speech in the US has also historically been negotiable - like everywhere else it's a constant ongoing battle. During times of war or crisis or great fear, free speech has been tightly controlled in the USA, as it has everywhere else. I presume you've heard of Mccarthyism - when 1000s of people in academia, the media and politics were prosecuted in Kangaroo Courts or silently sternly warned for ALLEGED ties to socialism. That can hardly be regarded as the behaviour of a thriving bastion of free speech. I believe some limits on free speech were placed during the Patriot Act, but I may be confusing them with limits on the right to privacy.

Furthermore, members of BDS, a Palestinian rights organization, are literally banned from entry to the US. They are not particularly violent, but I believe they are banned with the excuse of racism or anti-semitism. They've suppressed BDS activism in other ways I believe, but I don't want to say smth wrong. I can get back to you on that if you care.

[url]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/12/omar-barghouti-bds-movement-denied-entry-us[/url][/QUOTE]

I will agree on this point. Freedom of speech has at times been endangered in the United States. Before McCarthyism, you had the Alien and Sedition acts passed by the Federalists and supported by John Adams, the Comstock Laws, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Palmer Raids, etc.

But these are the exceptions that prove the rule. And while you might argue that due to these exceptions free speech is a useless ideal to strive towards, I would argue the opposite. America needs a firm commitment to free speech more than ever. We are currently living through a second McCarthyism, only this time it is coming from the left. Right wing ideals are stifled and censored, or blamed on "Russian bots." Democrats in congress like AOC openly discuss creating blacklists of former Trump "collaborators and apologists." Tech giants and the legacy media blatantly tried to burry news stories about Hunter and Joe Biden's dealings in Ukraine. Now they are hiding all evidence of possible voter fraud without even doing their journalistic due diligence and investigating the claims themselves. The trends are not looking good for the last bastion of free speech on this earth.

Originally Posted by yzb25

You're also leaving out that free speech in the US has also historically been negotiable - like everywhere else it's a constant ongoing battle. During times of war or crisis or great fear, free speech has been tightly controlled in the USA, as it has everywhere else. I presume you've heard of Mccarthyism - when 1000s of people in academia, the media and politics were prosecuted in Kangaroo Courts or silently sternly warned for ALLEGED ties to socialism. That can hardly be regarded as the behaviour of a thriving bastion of free speech. I believe some limits on free speech were placed during the Patriot Act, but I may be confusing them with limits on the right to privacy.

Furthermore, members of BDS, a Palestinian rights organization, are literally banned from entry to the US. They are not particularly violent, but I believe they are banned with the excuse of racism or anti-semitism. They've suppressed BDS activism in other ways I believe, but I don't want to say smth wrong. I can get back to you on that if you care.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...enied-entry-us

I will agree on this point. Freedom of speech has at times been endangered in the United States. Before McCarthyism, you had the Alien and Sedition acts passed by the Federalists and supported by John Adams, the Comstock Laws, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Palmer Raids, etc.

But these are the exceptions that prove the rule. And while you might argue that due to these exceptions free speech is a useless ideal to strive towards, I would argue the opposite. America needs a firm commitment to free speech more than ever. We are currently living through a second McCarthyism, only this time it is coming from the left. Right wing ideals are stifled and censored, or blamed on "Russian bots." Democrats in congress like AOC openly discuss creating blacklists of former Trump "collaborators and apologists." Tech giants and the legacy media blatantly tried to burry news stories about Hunter and Joe Biden's dealings in Ukraine. Now they are hiding all evidence of possible voter fraud without even doing their journalistic due diligence and investigating the claims themselves. The trends are not looking good for the last bastion of free speech on this earth.

[QUOTE=yzb25;902827]Viewing free speech as a binary is profoundly insane. You lump together Germany which has banned the drawing of swastika due to historical sensitivities with Iran which imprisons people for legitimately protesting a theocratic state and then you lump both of these with North Korea - the apex of authoritarian censorship, where every microscopic piece of information is tightly controlled.

I urge you to reconsider such a black and white view of the world. Imagine you're a developing democracy in North Africa or the Middle East and you're told you have absolutely no freedom of speech if you maintain some speech barriers due to religious baggage? You're telling them to throw any effort out the window and be like North Korea. You're telling the world stage to treat them as equivalent to North Korea, and destabilize their attempts at serious government as we would with North Korea, because their free speech is indistinguishable. On the other end of the spectrum, you're simultaneously undermining criticism of these same countries for their their free speech limits because, hey, not even Germany or the UK [I]truly[/I] has freedom of speech, right? Criticizing them for not attaining such a lofty principal seems hardly fair.

I fear you only take such a hardline stance to justify to yourself why you care so much about anti-trans laws in Canada that noone has actually been imprisoned for. If they're anything like the hate speech laws here in the UK, I know they're all bark and have absolutely no serious bite.[/QUOTE]

You're damn right I would lump all of those countries in together, at least when it comes to free speeh. The UK and Canada may not have the same human rights abuses and oppressive regimes that prevail in Iran or North Korea. But when it comes to free speech we are not much better.

The United States is just about the only country on earth with functionally absolute freedom of speech and expression. The president may not like it when Collin Kaepernick kneels during the national anthem. It is somewhat idiotic that someone would use the right to free speech guaranteed by their nation in order to disparage said nation. But ultimately neither the president nor anyone else in government can do jack shit about it, because the 1A very clearly protects free speech. Once you start adding too many politically motivated ifs ands or buts to your "free speech" protections in the way Canada, Germany, the UK, etc. do then you no longer have free speech. You have quasi-"""free""" speech with multiple asterisks and addendums.

As to your second point, are you seriously arguing that hate speech laws are okay just because they are rarely enforced? That just seems like a "worst of both worlds" solution. People who want free speech will feel they are being oppressed just because the laws are in place, whereas totalitarians who want to limit what we can say will get mad because the thought police won't arrest that guy who said we need less immigrants.

Originally Posted by yzb25

Viewing free speech as a binary is profoundly insane. You lump together Germany which has banned the drawing of swastika due to historical sensitivities with Iran which imprisons people for legitimately protesting a theocratic state and then you lump both of these with North Korea - the apex of authoritarian censorship, where every microscopic piece of information is tightly controlled.

I urge you to reconsider such a black and white view of the world. Imagine you're a developing democracy in North Africa or the Middle East and you're told you have absolutely no freedom of speech if you maintain some speech barriers due to religious baggage? You're telling them to throw any effort out the window and be like North Korea. You're telling the world stage to treat them as equivalent to North Korea, and destabilize their attempts at serious government as we would with North Korea, because their free speech is indistinguishable. On the other end of the spectrum, you're simultaneously undermining criticism of these same countries for their their free speech limits because, hey, not even Germany or the UK truly has freedom of speech, right? Criticizing them for not attaining such a lofty principal seems hardly fair.

I fear you only take such a hardline stance to justify to yourself why you care so much about anti-trans laws in Canada that noone has actually been imprisoned for. If they're anything like the hate speech laws here in the UK, I know they're all bark and have absolutely no serious bite.

You're damn right I would lump all of those countries in together, at least when it comes to free speeh. The UK and Canada may not have the same human rights abuses and oppressive regimes that prevail in Iran or North Korea. But when it comes to free speech we are not much better.

The United States is just about the only country on earth with functionally absolute freedom of speech and expression. The president may not like it when Collin Kaepernick kneels during the national anthem. It is somewhat idiotic that someone would use the right to free speech guaranteed by their nation in order to disparage said nation. But ultimately neither the president nor anyone else in government can do jack shit about it, because the 1A very clearly protects free speech. Once you start adding too many politically motivated ifs ands or buts to your "free speech" protections in the way Canada, Germany, the UK, etc. do then you no longer have free speech. You have quasi-"""free""" speech with multiple asterisks and addendums.

As to your second point, are you seriously arguing that hate speech laws are okay just because they are rarely enforced? That just seems like a "worst of both worlds" solution. People who want free speech will feel they are being oppressed just because the laws are in place, whereas totalitarians who want to limit what we can say will get mad because the thought police won't arrest that guy who said we need less immigrants.

[QUOTE=oops_ur_dead;902807]Of course you can, you can say whatever you want. That's what free speech is.

I'm fully free to tell you you're a fucking dumbass and that your views are straight up retarded. I could even ban you from the site if I wanted to, just for being a Trump supporter.

Then you and others are free to respond however you want to me doing that, including calling me a libtard snowflake and leaving the site in mass.

That's what freedom is. Not your pussified hugbox elementary school "everyone's opinions matter :)" bullshit.[/QUOTE]

Based and redpilled.

Seriously though, I agree with most of what Oberon has said. And if a backwater little internet forum like this with at most a few thousand users bans or censors someone that the administrators don't like, then it isn't that big a deal. The problems arise when forums which have become the de facto "digital commons" like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. start banning speech that the administrators don't like, all the while pretending that they aren't acting as publishers under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. When enough of these big players adopt woke ideologies and speech codes, you can't just pack up and exercise your right to free speech elsewhere. There is no elsewhere. Those sites represent a giant chunk of the internet.

If Facebook, Twitter, etc. don't want to be seen as publishers, then they should be forced to act as dumb pipes for the free speech of others, just as they wanted ISPs to act as "dumb pipes" for the transmission of data under net neutrality. Exceptions can be made for blatantly illegal content like CP and death threats, but as a general rule if speech would be permitted under the first amendment, then that speech should be permitted on most web platforms.

Originally Posted by oops_ur_dead

Of course you can, you can say whatever you want. That's what free speech is.

I'm fully free to tell you you're a fucking dumbass and that your views are straight up retarded. I could even ban you from the site if I wanted to, just for being a Trump supporter.

Then you and others are free to respond however you want to me doing that, including calling me a libtard snowflake and leaving the site in mass.

That's what freedom is. Not your pussified hugbox elementary school "everyone's opinions matter " bullshit.

Based and redpilled.

Seriously though, I agree with most of what Oberon has said. And if a backwater little internet forum like this with at most a few thousand users bans or censors someone that the administrators don't like, then it isn't that big a deal. The problems arise when forums which have become the de facto "digital commons" like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. start banning speech that the administrators don't like, all the while pretending that they aren't acting as publishers under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. When enough of these big players adopt woke ideologies and speech codes, you can't just pack up and exercise your right to free speech elsewhere. There is no elsewhere. Those sites represent a giant chunk of the internet.

If Facebook, Twitter, etc. don't want to be seen as publishers, then they should be forced to act as dumb pipes for the free speech of others, just as they wanted ISPs to act as "dumb pipes" for the transmission of data under net neutrality. Exceptions can be made for blatantly illegal content like CP and death threats, but as a general rule if speech would be permitted under the first amendment, then that speech should be permitted on most web platforms.

Totally misread your comment and took it to mean that people are fired for NOT supporting Trump. My bad lol.

And if you view free speech as a gradient then I guess you could say Europe (as well as the rest of the Anglosphere) has "less" free speech than the U.S. Personally, I view free speech as a binary. It either exists or it doesn't. As a Canadian if I, say, argue that gender dysphoria is a mental illness and that trans women are not real women (just a hypothetical, not saying that is my real view), then I could be put in jail. Saying something which was the common view of most of the population just a decade ago could now land you in jail. The laws aren't often enforced because they are ridiculous, but the fact that they exist at all is enough to stifle most people from saying what they really think and unwittingly committing a thoughtcrime.

As for elections in the U.S., they are a complete joke. Aside from all of the ballots submitted by dead people, there were so many [URL="https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/video/4833512-duplicates-and-dead-people-hundreds-of-thousands-of-questionable-ballots-sent-out-to-la-county-voters/"]duplicate ballots[/URL] sent out, [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAhTVMikqgU&feature=emb_logo"]ballot harvesting[/URL] by campaign organizers, voting machine "glitches," etc. The fact that mandatory voter ID laws have been politicized by the democrats as "voter suppression" is ridiculous, as is the fact that recounts and ballot audits are being challenged. Both sides should have a vested interest in making sure that only valid votes are counted. It makes you wonder why the Democrats are so afraid of losing votes from dead people and non-citizen voters. They've been preaching for so long that voter fraud is a complete myth, right? Shouldn't they have nothing to fear from an audit of the ballots?

Totally misread your comment and took it to mean that people are fired for NOT supporting Trump. My bad lol.

And if you view free speech as a gradient then I guess you could say Europe (as well as the rest of the Anglosphere) has "less" free speech than the U.S. Personally, I view free speech as a binary. It either exists or it doesn't. As a Canadian if I, say, argue that gender dysphoria is a mental illness and that trans women are not real women (just a hypothetical, not saying that is my real view), then I could be put in jail. Saying something which was the common view of most of the population just a decade ago could now land you in jail. The laws aren't often enforced because they are ridiculous, but the fact that they exist at all is enough to stifle most people from saying what they really think and unwittingly committing a thoughtcrime.

As for elections in the U.S., they are a complete joke. Aside from all of the ballots submitted by dead people, there were so many duplicate ballots sent out, ballot harvesting by campaign organizers, voting machine "glitches," etc. The fact that mandatory voter ID laws have been politicized by the democrats as "voter suppression" is ridiculous, as is the fact that recounts and ballot audits are being challenged. Both sides should have a vested interest in making sure that only valid votes are counted. It makes you wonder why the Democrats are so afraid of losing votes from dead people and non-citizen voters. They've been preaching for so long that voter fraud is a complete myth, right? Shouldn't they have nothing to fear from an audit of the ballots?

[QUOTE=FrostByte;902767]There's a difference between "I don't like this, make it stop" and "This is a demonstrable lie, here's the proof it's a lie, now make it stop"[/QUOTE]

As if Democrats never lie. Remember how Trump only won in 2016 because of Russian collusion? Heck I'm sure there are STILL democrats who are convinced that a few shitty Russian memes on facebook made all of the boomers vote for Trump. Couldn't possibly be because Hillary was an odious and blatantly two-faced candidate. What you're advocating for is selective censorship against only one side, which is extremely dangerous in a democracy. Censorship could be wielded against your political opponents today, and then against causes you support tomorrow. If you restrict someone's right to peaceably voice their opposition and enact change at the ballot box, then you make violence their only possible recourse.

[QUOTE=Oberon;902787]I’m European and we do have free speech. The only difference between the US and various European countries is quantitative, not qualitative. Europe most certainly does have free speech, just not quite as much as the US.
The difference is of historical interest though seeing as in the US people have gotten fired for supporting Donald Trump. I have never heard of something like that happening here.[/QUOTE]

Lel Europe does NOT have free speech. You have the same bullshit hate speech laws we have here in Canada, where you can go to jail just for "misgendering" someone. Just look at this recent story out of Scotland, where even speech in the home is now being prosecuted: [url]https://www.nationalreview.com/news/scottish-bill-would-criminalize-hate-speech-in-private-homes/[/url] I have also heard of far more people losing jobs and being harassed for being Trump supporters than for being Biden/Hillary supporters. There's a reason far less people told the pollsters they were voting for Trump than actually did on election day. Look up social desirability bias. Everyone knows woke fortune 500 companies hate Trump supporters, so they deny it to pollsters, employers, oftentimes even from their own family and friends.

Originally Posted by FrostByte

There's a difference between "I don't like this, make it stop" and "This is a demonstrable lie, here's the proof it's a lie, now make it stop"

As if Democrats never lie. Remember how Trump only won in 2016 because of Russian collusion? Heck I'm sure there are STILL democrats who are convinced that a few shitty Russian memes on facebook made all of the boomers vote for Trump. Couldn't possibly be because Hillary was an odious and blatantly two-faced candidate. What you're advocating for is selective censorship against only one side, which is extremely dangerous in a democracy. Censorship could be wielded against your political opponents today, and then against causes you support tomorrow. If you restrict someone's right to peaceably voice their opposition and enact change at the ballot box, then you make violence their only possible recourse.

Originally Posted by Oberon

I’m European and we do have free speech. The only difference between the US and various European countries is quantitative, not qualitative. Europe most certainly does have free speech, just not quite as much as the US.
The difference is of historical interest though seeing as in the US people have gotten fired for supporting Donald Trump. I have never heard of something like that happening here.

Lel Europe does NOT have free speech. You have the same bullshit hate speech laws we have here in Canada, where you can go to jail just for "misgendering" someone. Just look at this recent story out of Scotland, where even speech in the home is now being prosecuted: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/...private-homes/ I have also heard of far more people losing jobs and being harassed for being Trump supporters than for being Biden/Hillary supporters. There's a reason far less people told the pollsters they were voting for Trump than actually did on election day. Look up social desirability bias. Everyone knows woke fortune 500 companies hate Trump supporters, so they deny it to pollsters, employers, oftentimes even from their own family and friends.

If you're European though, I can see why your first instinct is toward censorship of speech you don't like. Europeans have never really had free speech. Hate speech laws, anti-sedition laws, etc. have always been the norm over there.

If you're European though, I can see why your first instinct is toward censorship of speech you don't like. Europeans have never really had free speech. Hate speech laws, anti-sedition laws, etc. have always been the norm over there.

[QUOTE=Exeter350;902722]News companies that publishes sensationalised, misleading or unrest-inciting news? Slap them with hefty fines or completely shut them down.[/QUOTE]

I absolutely hate how support of totalitarian censorship is being normalized in 2020. The answer to free speech you don't like is never censorship. The answer is more free speech. If your idea has more merit than theirs, then it will win out if it is sufficiently backed up by facts and logic. The Streisand Effect is a thing, and whenever Big Brother Twitter, Google and Facebook try to hide a story, they just end up fanning the flames of conspiracy.

Originally Posted by Exeter350

News companies that publishes sensationalised, misleading or unrest-inciting news? Slap them with hefty fines or completely shut them down.

I absolutely hate how support of totalitarian censorship is being normalized in 2020. The answer to free speech you don't like is never censorship. The answer is more free speech. If your idea has more merit than theirs, then it will win out if it is sufficiently backed up by facts and logic. The Streisand Effect is a thing, and whenever Big Brother Twitter, Google and Facebook try to hide a story, they just end up fanning the flames of conspiracy.