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posted by martyb on Wednesday July 10 2019, @06:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the Free-speech-is-priceless dept.

[Ed. Note: Behind the invective and political slant in this story is a subject that I think could lead to a fruitful discussion. "The price of liberty is constant vigilance." SoylentNews is a little corner of the 'net that tries to provide a venue for open discussion. Are our days numbered or threatened? What can be done? Just keep doing what we are doing?]

France has turned into one of the worldwide threats to free speech

Just over one year ago, French President Emmanuel Macron came to the United States to import two potentially invasive species to Washington. One was a tree and the other was a crackdown on free speech. Ironically, soon after the tree was planted, officials dug it up to send it to quarantine. However, the more dangerous species was his acorn of speech controls, a proposal that resulted in rapturous applause from our clueless politicians.

While our politicians in the United States may applaud Macron like village idiots, most Americans are hardcore believers in free speech. It runs in our blood. Undeterred, however, Macron and others in Europe are moving to unilaterally impose speech controls on the internet with new legislation in France and Germany. If you believe this is a European issue, think again.

Macron and his government are attempting to unilaterally scrub out the internet of hateful thoughts. The French Parliament has moved toward a new law that would give internet companies like Facebook and Google just 24 hours to remove hateful speech from their sites or face fines of $1.4 million per violation. A final vote is expected next week. Germany passed a similar measure last year and imposed fines of $56 million.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Wednesday July 10 2019, @11:59PM (1 child)

    by driverless (4770) on Wednesday July 10 2019, @11:59PM (#865570)

    It's a very US-centric view of things. (Some) people in the US believe that it's perfectly acceptable to promote anti-semitism, racism, homophobia, nazism ("there were good people on both sides"), and so on. A lot of people outside the US believe that this should be limited in some way. I've seen a number of posts here taking the US-centric view, typically taking rather extremist views of the rest of the world (one example being someone claiming that the police in Australia? were throwing people in jail for watching the Christchurch shooting video). It'd be just as easy for me, as a non-US observer, to post a similar story about the US, perhaps "In the US it's acceptable to promote nazism and genocide". I don't mind debates over free speech, but claiming the other side has a ridiculous, extreme position just so you can attack them... well, actually, that's US politics isn't it?

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  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:09AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:09AM (#865668)

    Fuck you. There were good people on both sides of the statue issue and to state otherwise shows just how biased you are. It's impossible to be here on soylent and not be intelligent enough to know the truth. At the Charlottesville March there were neo-nazis and KKK in attendance, there were also people who don't believe statues should be removed for other reasons. Promoting the retention of statues of our leaders is not racist, it is a backstop against the insane practice of demanding that Jefferson and Washington also be removed from everything in the states. Fuck you and fuck your lies. The constitution will always stand even if it was written by shareholders, you can't change our history so you can steal our freedom.