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Comment by CobrastanJorji | Hacker News Reader

In some ways, you're right, but Americans feel most strongly about the freedom of speech when it comes to specifically political speech, and I think the biggest difference is that I, as an American, can choose to say "I think our President of the United States is a fascist and a criminal and he should be arrested for his crimes" and I am in no way worried that the government will track me down and punish me in any manner, nor will they pressure Hacker News to strike my post. Meanwhile, the Chinese government will literally disappear a billionaire celebrity for saying something mildly critical of the government. That's a prospect that's pretty much anathema to an American way of thinking about freedom.

That's not to say that America doesn't have LOTS of problems with censorship. We do. Oodles. Some of it's secret and some if it's blatant and in the open. But China is orders of magnitude worse for political speech.

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A Russian meets up with an American. "We have freedom of speech," the Russian says. "I can post that Russian elections are falsified on social media."

"What's the big deal?" asks the American. "I too can write that Russian elections are falsified on social media."

Original: https://youtu.be/gNXpa0M-UdY

Since when was it not possible or legal to write that American elections were falsified on social media? This joke itself seems to be based on the recent wave of loud & public accusations that the American elections are falsified. I guess Twitter/Facebook independently banned some of it, are those companies now considered to be the whole of social media?

That’s like asking if the Republican and Democratic parties now considered to be the whole of US government? The answer is in practice yes, and neither of those two private organizations operate democratically (they operate based on seniority, and can create arbitrary rules like super delegate voting).

Well no, in practice Facebook/Twitter constitute a majority of the social media market (~75% IIRC) but it isn't a mutually exclusive share like the two parties that occupy fixed seats in the US government. Speech on non-majority social media is still effectively free speech; Unlike the governments in China & Russia, Facebook & Twitter can't do anything to stop your speech from reaching even their users if their users choose to listen to your speech because users aren't locked into using one social media platform.

Aside about the two parties: yes the two parties don't operate democratically, but they don't need to for the system to be democratic. Ultimately the voters choose and parties are held accountable for whatever actions they take. If a party subverts the will of voters, it will lose votes, or worse case scenario the parties die (eg. the Whig party, which was a major party).

> Speech on non-majority social media is still effectively free speech

You talking about Parlor or something else? I mean, when people can't use their non-majority social media of choice (whatever the reason stopping them may be), are they really free?

Yes they are really free, freedom is not entitlement to your social media of choice. Americans are free to speak whatever they want on platforms that are available to them. They are also free to invent their own social media that doesn't have the same restrictions as the popular ones. The government doesn't interfere with this choice, but platform operators also have the freedom to not associate with certain customers.

Parlor is one option, there's also Reddit, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, the *chans, etc. There are decentralized networks like Mastodon. Neither the government or social media companies can stop you from choosing any number of social media platforms (or other communication platforms) to speak on. That is simply not the case in China.

> Americans are free to speak whatever they want on platforms that are available to them

You can swap out "Americans" with "Chinese" and you end up with the exact same thing.

"Chinese are free to speak whatever they want on platforms that are available to them." So are they now free too?

No, that statement would simply be false. China's social media & communication services are monitored and the government forces all platforms to apply censorship or identify dissent, they are certainly not free to say whatever they want. Services that don't adhere to these restrictions are not permitted in the country (like Google).

China also pursues dissent beyond its borders. Zoom, a company primarily develops their product in China, actually shutdown meetings with foreign participants because they were related to the Tiananmen massacre. The US FBI has revealed a covert CCP program called Operation Fox Hunt to coerce foreign dissidents into either committing suicide or returning to China's jurisdiction by threatening their family in China.

Frankly the difference between the US & China in degree of freedom of speech, both practical and theoretical, is astronomical. The two could not be further apart and even the most glib comparisons don't track.

If you speak freely, and it is not powerful enough to cause any consequences, then are you freely speaking at all?

Sounds like a great way to make us feel like we have political power and that our speech has power, when in reality the moment our speech can disrupt the establishment it gets clamped down. One big difference here vs China is that the establishment is a bit more distributed.

The people in power here are just as eager to censor as the people in power in China. The only difference is the people in power in China are mostly the people in control of the government. But the one bigger difference is that we only seem to think the government is capable of censorship, when really it's a matter of the people in power.

yes, that’s speaking freely without convincing anyone of anything.

As someone who has lived in dictatorships and now lives in the US, I don’t see the point to your (rhetorical?) question at all. I’ve seen firsthand how much more relaxed people become when they don’t need to constantly worry about government informants (I’m from Tunisia).

Of course, for the vast majority of people, living in a poor democracy is objectively worse than living in a rich dictatorship.

I can't speak for Tunisia but people in China generally don't have such worries. I'm really trying to compare two relatively stable governments, with one employing centralized censorship and power preservation and one employing decentralized censorship and power preservation.

If you throw say a less well off and also oppressive government then it's a different matter.

Well, your statement was quite general :)

My point is that free speech without impact is vastly better than no free speech at all, which is why I don’t see how it even makes sense to ask that question.

I think the key point is that free speech is the basic mechanism the public has to make societal or political changes. If speaking or protesting against the government is a crime, it means the public is lacking the basic mechanism to even propose such changes, let alone make them.

Yes? Freedom is speech is not equivalent to complete political equity. Those are separate ideas. You can be in a free, open society and still feel or even be powerless. You can be in a free society and be destitute.

In western countries, speech is free, but the microphones are controlled tightly by a privileged few. Not saying china is better, but just different ways the political elites are controlling the masses

Speech in the US is powerful enough to cause consequences, not really sure what you're talking about.

The US just changed administrations & congressional leadership twice in 4 years based on nothing more than ballot speech, which involved the humiliating defeat of one of the most well funded "establishment" politicians in favor of a non-politician that made a mockery of establishment practices for 4 years. Congress has representatives reviled by practically all of their colleagues and party management, yet they consistently get re-elected through ballot speech.

A series of news reports took down an entire presidency and the whole government couldn't do anything about it.

Allegations of sexual misconduct alone have sunk the careers of some of the most respected and powerful figures in multiple industries.

Protests & news reporting have directly led to historic civil rights legislation, and more recently: local council votes on police spending measures.

Sure, US politicians can be eager to censor but there are political & legal mechanisms that restrict and stop them. There is no such thing for the CCP. I've yet to see any checks on its power or speech about the CCP's atrocities & coverups affect the CCP's permanent leadership.

I'm not as sure if China or US is worse about political speech anymore.

In US, the government may not come for you like China.

But in US, there are multi-national corporations, NGOs, think tanks, activist groups, social media mob who can just as effectively and "humanely" strip your power, influence and livelihood just as well as Chinese government can.

Also at least with China, rules are pretty black and white. Don't mess with the Chinese government's received view. However in US, it's ever-changing goal post, where opinions, jokes, scientific studies which were mainstream just a couple of years ago can potentially get you fired, bank account closed, socially shunned and be labeled with all kinds of things.

Is US actually better about freedom of speech than China in practice culturally?

Yes, the US is actually better about freedom of speech than China in practice.

To give you a negative example, a significant number of people organized a literal coup attempt, largely in the open, via social media, and nothing happened to them until they actually stormed the US Capitol building, after which some of them were arrested.

Large media companies with massive audiences broadcast divisive lies accusing the current President of being illegitimate due a fraudulent election. It is completely legal, and the government has taken no action to stop them.

Meanwhile, Jack Ma issued mild criticism of the Chinese government's financial regulation policies and promptly disappeared. And you're comparing that to "cancel culture?"

Yes, the US is actually better about freedom of speech than China.

That coup attempted happened because the powers at hand missed it. In the aftermath Parlor is shut down, and the powers at hand would never allow such a thing to happen again. So at best you can say the censorship apparatus in the US is less effective, but still present.

And yes, the US government didn't do the censorship, but rather the private platforms that wield the power did so.

But why did they miss it? I believe they did so because this kind of speech is not unusual. So even though it was out in the open, likely reported many times as people do on social platforms - it was missed because it was regarded as people saying extreme thngs but not going to act on them. In other words, there's a lot of this kind of speech in modern times, but it doesn't get censored and so actually dangerous speech gets missed.

And then they actually went through with it - so many private organizations took action. And yet, the government did not force their hand.

Well the guy in charge of monitoring security and being ahead of this stuff was fired. So I’d assume if we had been tolerant before we won’t be so tolerant of this speech in the future.

It seems rather naive to believe that Jack Ma disappeared due to mild criticism of the Chinese government's financial regulation policies.

ANT group has financial network power that can challenge the Chinese government's control over the country. In the future, if the power is unchecked now, it definitely can challenge the Chinese government. I am not casting a judgement whether that's right or wrong that a company has power like that. I'm just denying that Jack Ma's insignificant comment is what got him in trouble. What got Jack Ma in trouble is truly existential threat ANT group may pose down the future when a single entity fully controls financial activities of the entire Chinese population.

Compare to that, a bunch of idiots storming the capital building, is just that. A bunch of idiots storming the physical building. It's no threat. American regime barely was tickled by such an incident. It's embarrassing, but nothing significant will come out of it other than amazing leverage for the left to use. So props to that.

In comparison, Jack Ma and the ANT group's current and future influence in China is actually significant, lasting and potent, that can even rival Chinese government.

I am seeing this all the time. America is doing this too, why just blame China.

Yes, governments around the world have one thing in common, they are full of ASSHOLES. Actually, in general people are assholes. Bad things tend to happen.

You can have CNN and Fox broadcast different views somethings extreme, and many other media outlets expressing views somewhere between them. Try that in China, you would think twice if you are not even trying to PRAISE the government.

You cannot compare a demacracy to a authoritarian/dictatorship. They certainly always have something in common, the difference is level of oppression. The authoritarian are always on the extreme side, that's why they are called authoritarians.

Comparing demaracies to authoritarian is giving execuses to keep the oppressions going.

It's nice and necessary that you can criticize your government even in public. Don't give dictators execuses when your government pisses you off.

You should worry about your own oppression too, not just the imagined ones of others.

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