There's a valid third option: recognize that freedom of speech is an essential human right. Some may choose to abuse it, but history has a way of sorting those things out.
There's a valid third option: recognize that freedom of speech is an essential human right. Some may choose to abuse it, but history has a way of sorting those things out.
Europe is not the US, which I'm guessing you're from. We have a different culture around free speech, here. And tell you what, it's actually worked out really nicely for us, and most of Europe as a whole is higher than the USA on a variety of freedom indices.
We're not perfect, but the absolute free speech stuff you folks have over there is only good on paper. In practice, it's not absolute, and it has led to more issues there than here.
Reporters without Borders ranks the US behind quite a lot of European countries: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangliste_der_Pressefreiheit (German Wikipedia because the English article ironically doesn't include data)
I give the site a score of 7/10.
And I think the US free speech model is vastly superior.
Your opinion is not universally held by europeans, i just wanted to make that clear.
And no I don't support the war, nor do I like putin in the slightest, just to make that also clear.
BTW. If RT weren't DNS censored, all you would get is a 403. RT is now excluding most countries all on its own.
I can't speak for all of europe. I do get these vibes from germany.
I switzerland I feel like most are somewhere between the US and germany, where they'd agree with a nazi flag ban but not an RT ban.
So no, it depends on the definition of "here".
And again, I dislike having to define these things; eventually someone will ad-hominum me saying I support a cause I clearly do not.
For example, US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship
History sorted these things, alright, but outcomes weren't as harmless as some people tend to believe.
In other words, how much value do you put in freedom of speech when human lives are in the line? E.g. shouldn't facebook have done something about the Rohingya genocide?
I mentioned Facebook because it enabled the government of Myanmar during the persecution and genocide of the Rohingya people. They could have done something, but chose to ignore it and do nothing. This is not a unique occurrence either.
Freedom of speech without observing any moral or ethical consequences doesn't make you free, it makes you a libertine, and those who choose to enable these behaviours aren't innocent either.
On top of it, in this scenario, Russia is waging an information war against the West, so why should we grant them the freedom to do so?