Very careful with this option, as it's based in the EU which means free speech is not considered; that makes it a very dangerous option for podcast and youtube creators, opinion bloggers, etc.
This was touched on in the Congressional hearing with Mr. Zuckerberg, where he avoided the answer:
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TEX): Thank you Mr. Chairman. Mr. Zuckerberg, welcome. Thank you for being here.
Mr. Zuckerberg, does Facebook consider itself a neutral public forum?
ZUCKERBERG: Senator, we consider ourselves to be a platform for all ideas.
CRUZ: Let me ask the question again. Does Facebook consider itself to be a neutral public forum, and representatives of your company are giving conflicting answers on this? Are you a ...
ZUCKERBERG: Well ...
CRUZ: ... First Amendment speaker expressing your views, or are you a neutral public forum allowing everyone to speak?
ZUCKERBERG: Senator, here's how we think about this: I don't believe that — there are certain content that clearly we do not allow, right? Hate speech, terrorist content, nudity, anything that makes people feel unsafe in the community. From that perspective, that's why we generally try to refer to what we do as platform for all ideas ...
CRUZ: Let me try this, because the time is constrained. It's just a simple question. The predicate for Section 230 immunity under the CDA is that you're a neutral public forum. Do you consider yourself a neutral public forum, or are you engaged in political speech, which is your right under the First Amendment.
ZUCKERBERG: Well, senator, our goal is certainly not to engage in political speech. I am not that familiar with the specific legal language of the — the law that you — that you speak to. So I would need to follow up with you on that. I'm just trying to lay out how broadly I think about this.
Twitter sends legal warning for blasphemy. They couldn't find better timing for illustrating the point.
I was literally arguing, that the nice theoretical point of guaranteed free speech is null and void by the current implementation of communication/publishing/payment processing. Where do you find 'America! Fuck yea!' in that? If anything, it is a critique of the current status, which hides ugly reality behind nice theory.
> or Muslim hatred?
Oh boy, another huge can of worms. Muslims still have no idea, what is a hatred in the West. They interchange criticism with hatred, and then they react somewhere between rioting to violence, fueling the vicious circle. They have no idea how Christians were/are pushed around in the West (you can start with the Covington issue recently: they were automatically guilty for being white and Catholics); or don't even consider how they behaved/are behaving towards Christians in the Middle East. Food for thought: ever seen Christian no-go zone in Saudi Arabia? Thought so.
It’s stunning to read this. Are you really claiming you haven’t seen hatred towards Muslims?
> hey have no idea how Christians were/are pushed around in the West
And there’s where it goes from stunning to laughable. Yes, Christians, truly the most oppressed people in the West.
It is a fraction compared to the hatred from Muslims.
> Yes, Christians, truly the most oppressed people in the West.
Not only in the West; try being a Christian in the Middle East. You know, the countries controlled by Muslims today. Are you going to claim with a straight face, that they are not opressed?
> Not only in the West
How?
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-fr...
If someone criticised Jesus Christ in their podcast (for example), they would be putting Liberapay at risk. I don't believe Liberapay would allow that, so they'd just ban the user. That's what makes Liberapay a risky option.
In th EU:
> The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union has been legally binding since December 1, 2009 when the Treaty of Lisbon became fully ratified and effective. Article 11 of the Charter, in part mirroring the language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, provides that
> 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
> 2. The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected. The European Court of Justice takes into account both the Charter and the Convention when making its rulings. According to the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Union accedes to the European Convention as an entity in its own right, making the Convention binding not only on the governments of the member states but also on the supranational institutions of the EU.
So, is speech in USA "freer" than in the EU? Yes. But in both cases free speech is recognized as a right.
True, but also trivial. Everyone pays lip service to free speech, even the most serious violators of it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_North_Korea
Article 67 states: "Citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, demonstration and association. The State shall guarantee conditions for the free activity of democratic political parties and social organizations."
That case the parent linked is about defamation (calling Muhammed a paedophile), not blasphemy (for example saying Muhammed was not a prophet).
EDIT: so I was wrong. See the comments below.
With Ireland's recent repeal, it seems there are now only 17 European countries with blasphemy laws, including Austria, where this case happened:
> Andorra, Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Liechtenstein, Poland, Portugal, the Russian Federation, San Marino, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland and Scotland) and the Vatican City. This list excluded countries like Belgium and Luxembourg, which provide narrower provisions for insulting the objects of a religion in places of worship or public ceremonies.
https://ipi.media/despite-danish-repeal-blasphemy-laws-still...
I stand corrected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law
Specifically, it covers disparagement and mockery of religions and traditions if it is likely to cause justified anger. That leaves a lot open to interpretation (when is anger justified?) but it seems clearly aimed at blasphemy.
The parent likely knows this, and yet chooses to deliberately misinform in their comment.
What's the point of having free speech protected by the government if in practice no company will allow you to practice your free speech?
The "Facebook © 2019" notice on each Facebook page tells users that they are on someone else's website. Next to the notice is a link to Facebook's terms of service, which discloses their "Community Standards". Facebook has been dishonest in many situations, but they don't hide their ability to moderate content in any way.
It's certainly within one's right to be upset with Facebook's policies. If you feel strongly enough about this, you have the option to stop using Facebook, and you can switch to a different platform with policies that align more closely with your views. You can also publish your own website, where you can establish your own rules.
But Facebook's website is not your property, so you can't graft your preferred rules onto Facebook. You can ask them nicely and you can apply social pressure, but Facebook makes the final decision on how they run themselves because the site is not yours.
You know how you can say whatever you want on the street, but I can make you leave my house for whatever reason I want? Same idea. Free speech is only a coherent concept in public spaces. Otherwise my right to private property would be impaired by your right to say whatever you want in my dojo.
As for your last question...I mean, really? "What's the point?" Are you actually asking this in good faith? Go take a look at any country which doesn't have freedom of speech or freedom of the press. How about being able to say what I want without being disappeared in the middle of the night? If Twitter bans someone for hate speech you honestly believe that's comparable to something like Khashoggi's assassination?
You're quoting Voltaire like the stakes for private and public censorship are the same but that's utterly ridiculous.
This is an opinion, and one many people disagree with. The idea of freedom of speech existed before the first amendment. They're not the same thing, it's just convenient for authoritarians to conflate them because it creates a narrower scope. It's intentional equivocation and a pretty flimsy argument tactic.
> You know how you can say whatever you want on the street, but I can make you leave my house for whatever reason I want? Same idea. Free speech is only a coherent concept in public spaces. Otherwise my right to private property would be impaired by your right to say whatever you want in my dojo.
Again, not the same thing, but what you're getting at is freedom of association. A company can choose whom they do business with, as an individual can choose whom they allow in their home. The interesting thing lately is that many people only believe in freedom of association when it means that they get to pick who is excluded, and very rarely believe in the actual principal. You can see this in the whole "gay wedding cake" situation that played out in the last couple of years. Much of the same political group that loves to trot out the idea that you can censor people out of existence on the internet was horrified when a private business chose not to create a specific message on their product.
> You're quoting Voltaire like the stakes for private and public censorship are the same but that's utterly ridiculous.
Not really, it's actually pretty dead on. John Stewart Mill wrote at length about censorship in On Liberty and specifically wrote about censorship via social pressure and how dangerous it was. It's not some imagined idea, it's just one inconvenient to a particular political group's goals right now.
The person you are rightly critiquing seems similar to the careless but widespread view that says, "sure, go ahead and X, that's fine, it's your [legal] right, but I think blah blah" with this thing few ever catch which is: it's often totally NOT fine to do something that is nonetheless legal.
You have the right to X, but I can still say STOP IT. And I could reasonably argue in various cases that X is anti-social or bad for any range of reasons. Please people do NOT just accept or do whatever as long as it's legal. That whole idea is craziness.
In many US jurisdictions they can do the first (and so can essentially everyone else.) They also do the last, often without legal consequences, though not as the outcome of a judicial process (but in civilized countries, government can't do that as the outcome of a judicial process, either.)
So no, it's not "utterly nonsensical." Everything you're bringing up is completely orthogonal to the political theory of freedom of speech.
It’s your right to talk, but that doesn’t compel anyone else to broadcast it. Freedom of speech doesn’t require that anyone he made to listen.
TARP wound up making a small profit in the end, incidentally.
So they are enjoying all the perks of being government backed (protected monopoly + full bailout privileges), yet must endure none of the restrictions of a government agency. Best of both worlds.
It's pretty ironic that the solution for being "too big to fail" was to make the banks even bigger while also placing restrictions of many types of trading.
What should have been done is just remove the FDIC insurance and let banks do whatever the fuck they want. The only way to learn that risk management is important is if you see some of your competitors as road kill on the side of the road.
https://fee.org/articles/how-the-federal-government-created-...
Me, I love seeing these guys deplatformed.
But it's good to stay vigilent.
And CH kept publishing on the same theme AFTER the murders, showing that they do, indeed, have freedom of speech, and are willing to use it.
2. If the country considers freedom of speech a right, shouldn’t the country make serious attempts to protect it? It does so for other human rights.
You have the right to not be raped as well, doesn't mean we can prevent all of them.
What right do you know that can be guaranteed all the time, under any circonstance ?
Care to enlighten us?