always funny how the same people who support working towards open communications in e.g. iran and china by ignoring their laws get mad when somebody suggests this.
American's version of free speech*, as much as Americans want it to be true you can't apply US laws in foreign countries
and yes it can, because the internet reaches pretty much everywhere. as long as there is no server or physical office what can brussels do but scream into the wind about it?
aren't we doing the same thing with iran, belarus, china, other places where we support "American's version" of free speech despite local laws?
(If they are tiny they might fly under the radar but since FAANG and friends aren't charities that won't work)
It's really "unfortunate" that they managed to piss if their own government so that Washington doesn't feel like helping them out much.
Am I supposed to want that ?
Also, no. You have libel/defamation/slander laws in a lot of US states, "b-bu-but muh 1st amendment"
> as long as there is no server or physical office what can brussels do but scream into the wind about it?
Hm, ban these websites out of europe lol ?
> where we support "American's version" of free speech despite local laws?
I know the US think they're the center of the universe and the world's police but what "we" defend there is called "human rights"
ofc defamation law exists. the difference is that is decided in court not by some eurocrat apparatchik. and there has to be some harm demonstrated. and there are special protections for e.g. journalists (see times v. sullivan) that make it even harder in those cases.
how is brussels going to "ban those websites out of europe lol"? license the great firewall from china? hmm yes definitely sounds like a free and open society to me.
> what "we" defend there is called "human rights"
ok cool y'all think that. we think that y'all's vision of "free" speech is authoritarian and necessarily prevents civil disagreement on some important issues, it's already obvious we don't agree on that. but that's not the problem, it's how to reconcile 2 different legal concepts on the same platform. tbh there's no reason why an American would care. if anything it's the euros expecting the rest of the world to police their speech to euro standards that think they're the center of the universe.
Is "civil disagreement" what's feeding the current US political system ?
I see a whole lot of disagreement and hate, not a lot of civil or constructive talks
As a European (well, in the UK - can I still consider myself European?), I do not find my right to speak, or speak truth to power to be restricted unncessarily. I see what is happening in the US with the rise of genuinely authoritarian politics fueled by misinformation and hate speech and find it genuinely disturbing.
I guess a lot depends on the cultural context you grow up in.
Again, this is not an axis with good on one end and bad on the other. It's an axis between fewer limits and more limits.
I was questioning why you see it as authoritarian. Are you saying that any law is authoritarian?
In Europe, after the horrors of the second world war (and our entire history really) we aren't so keen to let people stir up hatred among us. So restricting things like that is not being imposed on the majority of us;we want those restrictions for the most part. So doesn't feel authoritarian at all.
now apply this problem of "potentially hateful depending on context" to more important stuff. some racists have abused studies on demographic differences to give hateful rhetoric some "scientific" backing, ignoring that you can't generalize from a population to an individual. this has led to mention of demographic differences being very sensitive subjects and sometimes labeled as "hateful". but i don't think we want to stop all research involved with this.
i do not trust the government to make these determinations about when context is hateful and not. since Americans are much less trusting of government than most europeans maybe you can see why we come down on a much higher bar for the government restricting speech and even higher for prior restraint.
let's take a counterexample from your country, where a man was sentenced to community service for a "grossly offensive tweet": the only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella buuuuurn
he faced possible jail time. now i think this is more easy to identify as "hateful" than prior examples i've listed. i don't know if this was the person's intent, but in this case hate can serve a legitimate political purpose (anti-imperialism/anti-military industrial complex). similar to how "all cops are bastards" is "hateful" towards cops but again serves a legitimate political purpose (protesting police brutality, racial profiling, etc.)
so again, should anyone really trust a government to be the entity to determine what is "too hateful"?
> Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting.
Now if you think sharing nazi ideas on twitter is actually beneficial for society it's your call, Europeans made a choice a while ago about what they want to tolerate or not