... have you no sense of decency, sir?
(Attorney Joseph Welch, 1954 Army‑McCarthy hearings)
"The European Commission, in a comprehensive decade-long effort, has successfully pressured social media platforms to change their global content moderation rules, thereby directly infringing on Americans' online speech in the United States. Though often framed as combating so-called "hate speech" or "disinformation," the European Commission worked to censor true information and political speech about some of the most important policy debates in recent history—including the COVID-19 pandemic, mass migration, and transgender issues. After ten years, the European Commission has established sufficient control of global online speech to comprehensively suppress narratives that threaten the European Commission's power."
Thus opens a February 3 report [PDF] of the Committee on the Judiciary of the US House of Representatives.
The report is a long, long through-the-looking-glass argument against the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA), specifically its Code of Practice on Disinformation.
That DSA, goes the argument -- with a long list of screenshots of heavily redacted e-mails, and the occasional Fox News article as source -- has been used to gang-pressure a whole bunch of election campaigns in European countries: France (2024), the Netherlands (2023 & 2025), Slovakia (2023), Moldova (2024), Germany, Ireland (2024 & 2025), and Romania. Romania's 2024 presidential election is a particularly nasty example, with the EU and France pressuring Telegram and TikTok to block content associated with conservative candidate Călin Georgescu, despite the absence of evidence supporting allegations of Russian interference used to justify those actions (says the report). [Paywalled]
What the report also -- inadvertently -- highlights is how the European Union (and Australia, Japan, South-Korea and Canada) and the United States are diverging on the treatment of social media.
Out of the EU's 27 member states, 15 of them have a partial or complete ban on smartphone usage in schools in place. Nine EU countries -- Spain, Greece, France, Italy, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Austria and Portugal -- are currently discussing a ban on social media usage under a certain age (mostly around 15, 16): a debate driven by concerns about addiction, mental health impact, and the spread of harmful content.
South Korea has implemented a school‑wide phone‑ban since 2024 and is actively discussing, but has not yet legislated, a social‑media age limit for minors. Japan is considering age‑restriction policies and has a government‑led working group, but there is currently no legal ban on smartphones in schools nor a statutory social‑media age limit. In Canada, most provinces have mandatory school-wide bans, but there is no age limit being discussed (yet), while Australia has no ban on smartphone usage, but is the first to have a federal law barring under-16s of having accounts on major social media platforms.
Get 'em while they're young, I guess.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday February 12, @04:21AM (26 children)
US tech oligarchs are funding political parties and organizations in Europe. So I don't want to hear their whining.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Funny) by RamiK on Thursday February 12, @11:53AM (25 children)
It's not hypocrisy for the US to expect the EU to follow its practice of allowing foreign money into its own political campaigns through 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations without restricting free speech. It's blatantly corrupt... But it's not hypocritical.
Anyhow, the problem with restricting campaign contributions is that it just means hostile state actors will find creative ways to bribe your politicians and operate influence campaigns while your allies who play by your rules won't. And, a few decades later, you find your alliance falling apart since your allies' security analysts and diplomats are telling the decisions makers you've been hostile and you won't reciprocate when they need you.
There's solutions to this that don't necessitate structural corruption of course like digital currencies and restrictions on foreign holdings. But that's the problem: They prevent bribes to politicians so your own politicians won't adopt them so the only countries that can pull them off is totalitarian nations like China.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12, @05:13PM (12 children)
Yes, there is, but nobody wants to talk about the basics. It's quite trivial:
Stop reelecting politicians that take bribes. The problem is us, not them. Their power comes from our vote, not their money.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Thursday February 12, @05:30PM (7 children)
Stop reelecting politicians that take bribes.
You'll first have to overturn citizens united [brennancenter.org] and then roll out proper campaign finance reform on top of that.
That was the topic which team Hillary and her insiders within the DNC blocked Bernie Sanders and Lawrence Lessig over. Lawrence Lessig ran for the sole purpose of getting the discussion of campaign finance reform into the debate. They kept him out by changing the rules on him several times and eventually he ran out of money for that project and had to drop out:
Now with the mess the broligarchs can make of the elections via social control media and its grip on younger minds, elections are looking more like formalities than decisions. Yes, social control media has long since been used to flip elections in the Americas, European countries, and the middle east. No, there are not any politicians or even any press digging into that matter. He who controls Bytedance's Tiktok controls the world. That fight has pivoted from whether a psyops weapon should be even aimed at the minds of our youth into a squabble of who gets to point it and pull the trigger.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12, @10:43PM (5 children)
Why does everybody skip the step where you have to elect politicians that will overturn CU? Politics is pure "buyer beware". "Proper campaign finance reform" can only come from the people we elect. There is no other recourse than fixing it ourselves with our votes. If you know other way, do tell. I'm leaning towards conscripting law makers, like jury duty, and one term only. A high turn over would reduce the corruption a bit. But otherwise, it's up to us to vote out the bad apples.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Friday February 13, @05:06PM (4 children)
How about the step where overturning CU is unconstitutional? A lot of people just don't get the point of the First Amendment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 13, @10:49PM (3 children)
Yes, I agree, the CU ruling was correct. I just didn't feel like arguing that when my main point is that the government's service to the constitution is still entirely dependent on our vote, not the lobbyist's money.
A lot of people would rather repeal the First Amendment, and if enough vote for it, it would happen. There are no (peaceful) protections against a rogue majority
(Score: 4, Interesting) by canopic jug on Saturday February 14, @03:02AM (2 children)
Corporate money is not free speech. It is bribery and turns what could have been proper elections into basically auctions. Now if you were to talk about individual citizens' money then that is a rather different matter. However, that still leans towards being able to buy seats in office. I've seen that happen lately in various local elections. Spending caps and limits to campaign seasons may be options there.
One of the best protections against a rogue majority, say a large cohort whose minds are rotted by the CCP via Bytedance's Tiktok or KSA's Xitter, is proportional representation. That's starting to happen a little at the state level, but as it threatens the grip of the uniparty (and by extension that of the malevolent interests backing it) there is quite a challenge remaining before even beginning to get it discussed at the federal level. There are ranked-choice voting and single-transferable vote [ivn.us] as well as Condorcet completion methods like the schulze method [wikipedia.org]. The largest barrier there is whether enough of the general population has the fundamental arithmetic skills prerequisite to understanding any of those processes. The population at large seems to lack even an understanding of the current first-past-the-post method. Because the soon five decades of cuts to basic education eliminated enough civics knowledge from the population, most appear fine with governance being about cosplaying, picking favorites, and shouting rather than process, diplomacy, and law.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Saturday February 14, @04:01AM
The First Amendment says otherwise in two ways:
Corporate speech and lobbying are thus covered.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15, @12:01AM
Seats aren't bought, votes are sold. Corporate money is the same as everybody else's. They just have more. The value of money in politics is determined by the voters. They vote for the guy that raises the most money. The news doesn't talk about policy, the headlines are about the campaign coffers. When they reelect politicians that take bribes, obviously the value goes up.
Whatever, if you want to change the law, you still have to break the circle and elect different people. There is no other way. I shouldn't have to repeat that over and over, but I keep hearing the same old complaints, and the reminder is needed, for what it's worth. I don't expect any kind of meaningful turnover in congress this year. We are doing this to ourselves. The government is in our image and mirrors (and amplifies) our own dysfunctions. CU is a dumb distraction, so is this socio-media "brainrot" shtick. The problem is individual choice to follow, always has been. Let's direct our energy into correcting that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 13, @09:19PM
>eventually he ran out of money for that project and had to drop out
This is why I've never played political games. I have no appetite for the fundraising necessary to get real traction beyond the local school board level, and even the school board is an exhausting pile of frustration where you're lucky to make even a tiny bit of difference as a single board member in a sea of "don't spend my tax money" ninnies.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Thursday February 12, @10:42PM (3 children)
People vote for corrupt politicians because they correctly perceive politics as the dirty game that it is and they want the best cheaters on their side.
The TL;DR here is that you need to either accept corruption as part of the system like how the US does and sell yourself to the highest bidder or you need to do it like Singapore/China and go semi/full-totalitarian by cracking down on personal finances but also paying huge salaries to your politicians so they won't have a reason to create loopholes and risk bribes. You're not forced to choose when there aren't any existential threats and the economy is growing... But that's no longer the case.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 13, @09:24PM (2 children)
>accept corruption as part of the system like how the US does
Like how the US is doing openly at the presidential level this cycle.
There is an ongoing corrupt - not corrupt - debate, and felons convicted of fraud have won many elections at lower levels in the past, but that's usually an uphill battle if anyone with any traditional appeal is running against them.
Of course, some of the biggest "CORRUPTION IS INEXCUSABLE" flag wavers are, themselves, quite corrupt - there are quite a few laws on the books against it and quite a few examples of actions taken against corrupt politicians, even those on "the same side" as the then current executive administration.
But, of course, we have experienced a sort of revolution recently - time will tell where this all leads.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday February 14, @11:51AM (1 child)
The corruption in the US isn't from allowing felons to run for office. Whether a person was caught or not doesn't change the fact that at that level of the game they're all crooks. What's corrupt about the US is how campaign contributions turn the elections into a bidding war between different industries. But that's only corrupt in the same sense that capitalism is corrupt: Forcing billionaires in times of slowing growth to fight each other for votes was proven time and time again to out-perform authoritarian systems in both financial performance, quality of life and civic rights. The outliers are the EU which been spared the financial and social costs of securing its borders and interests abroad and China which been handed western innovation for plastic toys for decade for the sake of a peace that has now proven itself to be economically and geopolitically unsustainable for all parties involved.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 14, @04:56PM
>at that level of the game they're all crooks
Since Citizens United I'm afraid it has become a virtual necessity to be corrupt just to compete at the top levels, sort of Jesus' camel passing through the eye of the needle (a small night gate in the wall of Jerusalem...) it can be done, but rarely happens.
>how campaign contributions turn the elections into a bidding war between different industries
And that's the sick thing about human nature - you don't have to vote how the advertisements tell you to, but enough people do that it basically puts elections up for sale. I did a few social experiments in High School that totally reinforced that point: people vote based on who is in their face influencing them - and in-your-face time is up for auction.
>The outliers are the EU which been spared the financial and social costs of securing its borders and interests abroad
Just as a spot check: Finland spends 2-3% of GDP on their military (as opposed to the US at 3-3.5) and I'd say they do quite a bit to secure their borders and handle their interests domestically and globally quite well...
>a peace that has now proven itself to be economically and geopolitically unsustainable for all parties involved.
Doomerism is bad for your health. Just sayin'.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 13, @09:16PM (11 children)
>the problem with restricting campaign contributions is that it just means hostile state actors will find creative ways to bribe your politicians and operate influence campaigns while your allies who play by your rules won't.
That's the old "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" argument - which has ... limited merit, in my opinion.
Sure, the bad guys break the rules, they always do, but that's not a reason to make it easy for the bad guys to do bad things openly.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by RamiK on Saturday February 14, @01:48PM (10 children)
Yet you're fine with "when encryption is outlawed, only criminals will have privacy".
This is just a strawman argument making a false equivalency on the wrong points when the reverse is easily qualify-able as a legitimate concern: The US is huge and can barely defend its borders much less handle criminals being loaned $30-50k from foreign actors to buy CNC machines and cover the costs within 2-3 month of churning out auto-kitted AR-15s and ammo at street value. And that's disregarding the many adversaries willing to flood US streets with guns and gang members at a loss like the Russians are already doing with drugs and criminality in Europe: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/02/09/to-build-a-fire [newyorker.com]
So, the US made the choice to make small arms available so the financial incentive for manufacturing more serious weapons won't increase.
What little keeping a politician from receiving a bribe from a foreign diplomat sealed in a brown diplomatic envelop will need to expand to a full mass surveillance police state operation to catch crypto currencies... offshore accounts... coordinated stock market pumping and dumping of shell companies... investments in one's hotel chain... seating one's son in the boardroom of a public company... all-expense paid vacations on a weekly basis, all the cocaine and whores you want included... an interest-free loan to your brother... an airplane donated to your personal charity for your personal use...
Corruption is everywhere. But at least it's more visible in the US.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 14, @04:58PM (9 children)
>Yet you're fine with "when encryption is outlawed, only criminals will have privacy".
Without contorted arguments about conspiracy to do heinous things, when has encryption hurt anyone? Guns, on the other hand...
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by RamiK on Sunday February 15, @03:31PM (8 children)
Every dark net human trafficking, child pornography, animal torture ring, weapons sale and terrorist act / hybrid warfare operation was enabled by encryption.
The reason both right and left parties in the UK have supported the law to compel companies to backdoor their software and have used those powers when in office is precisely because encryption is a persistent national security threat for the UK.
France have similar laws regulating WiFi. The US (Democrats and Republicans though mostly Democrats since Republicans don't' want to get caught for tax evasion) retains military contractors to operate multiple mass surveillance programs using everything backdoors to bugs and malware...
Gun right advocate prioritize the second amendment over safety. Privacy advocates prioritize the 4th over safety. It's all simply a matter of deescalating the security arms race: Small arms are offered to the populace so there won't have incentives for heavy arms manufacturing while power users are allowed to build and use encryption so long as it's technically inaccessible to the masses so there won't be economic incentives to develop genuinely secure software stacks.
Alcohol, tobacco, drugs, prostitution, gambling, speeding, guns, encryption... Policies and measures of all kinds are always passed in proportion to public safety concerns. Everything is a trade off in life.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Sunday February 15, @04:29PM (6 children)
So you are saying that encryption is bad because some people use it for bad purposes?
On that basis let us also ban cars - they are often used by criminals too. Let's also ban gasoline - some people make Molotov cocktails using gasoline. Of course, in the US lets also ban guns. Numerous people, including children, are killed by guns every year. Good luck with that.
Are you sure? Can you point me towards a reputable source for that statement please? I live there and I am not aware of any specific law which restricts my use of WiFi that doesn't exist almost everywhere else too. We can only use the channels that are open in France but that is to prevent interference to emergency services which use adjacent channels. However, if there is any other restriction I would love to know about it please.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday February 15, @08:40PM
No. I was establishing the equivalent of "guns are bad because some people use them for bad purposes" using encryption by developing the argument.
Read my final sentence and go back and read the thread. You're doing the same thing with the "On that basis let us also ban cars..." bit.
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(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday February 15, @08:44PM (4 children)
Sure:
( https://clfr.globalnetworkinitiative.org/country/france/ [globalnetworkinitiative.org] )
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(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday February 15, @08:46PM (2 children)
This spells it out regarding wifi: https://logcentral.io/en/blog/public-wifi-logging-obligations-in-france [logcentral.io]
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(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday February 15, @09:24PM (1 child)
The link you have supplied is relevant, but only applies to public WiFi.
Thanks anyway. I was getting a bit concerned for a moment that a new law had been introduced that I was unaware of.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday February 16, @03:18PM
The same dynamics is at play in France as well (paywall): https://www.intelligenceonline.com/europe-russia/2026/01/27/french-parliamentary-intelligence-oversight-body-to-look-at-encrypted-messaging,110612085-art [intelligenceonline.com] https://www.intelligenceonline.com/europe-russia/2026/02/16/debate-over-phone-hacking-by-dgsi-raised-as-results-disappoint,110628374-bre [intelligenceonline.com]
Basically, they had an amendment to a narco trafficking bill that required backdoors from the likes of whatsapp and signal rejected last year on the premise that letting the police hack into people's phones will be sufficient. It's now a year later and drug trafficking gotten way worse AND it's also brought up in the context of national security and foreign intelligence since there's evidence the Russians are behind it...
So, now that the intelligence people are saying it's affecting national security, it's really only a matter of time before some major preventable incident blows up in the politicians faces and they're forced to pass it just like the UK did.
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(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday February 15, @09:18PM
OK. You specifically stated "WiFi". I don't use WiFi. The law you are quoting is relevant to all electronic (including internet) communication. It is equally applicable to ADSL, telephones including 3G, 4G and 5G, and fibre connectivity. It cannot be enforced in France against satellite links.
Incidentally, it has nothing to do with encryption, just simple ISP or telco data. I can still encrypt my data and, once connected to a VPN outside of French jurisdiction, use the web as I wish. I could, if I wished, encrypt my telephone text messages.
Incidentally, there are similar laws throughout the Western world, including the USA (ask NSA :) ). France is no different in this respect.
Thank you for replying and clarifying the law you were referring to.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 15, @06:49PM
>Every dark net human trafficking, child pornography, animal torture ring, weapons sale and terrorist act / hybrid warfare operation was enabled by encryption
The net wouldn't be very dark if it weren't encrypted, would it? Similarly: every bioweapons attack used bioweapons, every firebombing used fire.
Also, every darknet example fits my exclusion of contorted examples of conspiracy, conspiracy will find more secure forms of encrypted communication when they can't use legal apps.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday February 12, @04:37AM
Though, eh? People are living in different places with different rules from US.
The US problem seems to be not with the difference in rules as such, their problem is that some people with money don't want to pay more (or act as the merchandise) to the max for the only thing US has a virtual monopoly, the social media. Like, I don't hear US protesting about the child online protection laws in Africa [cipesa.org] (PDF Warning)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Samantha Wright on Thursday February 12, @05:29AM (14 children)
As every single person who has ever suffered under a fascist regime will tell you, a pluralistic society can never abet hatred or dishonesty. Excluding toxic voices is a necessary part of societal homeostasis, no matter how much radical nutjobs and soulless lobbyists take freedom of speech out of context. This report is basically 160 pages of "so much for the tolerant left."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Undefined on Thursday February 12, @12:37PM (9 children)
No, sorry. This is wrong. It's absolutely correct, appropriate, and pro-society to hate evil people, organizations, and systems. Slavers, corrupt legislative, judicial, political and business actors, disinformation purveyors, etc.
This is a form of the paradox of intolerance. It is 100% right and good to be maximally and emotionally invested in intolerance of evil. While some evil is subtle and arguments may be presented thereby and therefore in order to ferret it out, some evil is obvious on its face. Slavery is one example of this. Rape is another. Politicians outright lying is another.
I'm all for rehabilitation and reintegration, and not at all a fan of retribution, however active evil purveyors get zero slack/tolerance or any form of "pass" from me. Neither do their various forms of apologists. I'll enthusiastically hate them until/unless those leopards change their spots.
I use a dedicated preprocessor to elaborate abbreviations.
Hover to reveal elaborations.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday February 12, @01:05PM (4 children)
There's also a huge difference between "You aren't in prison and are allowed to make your living doing some lousy job to make ends meet" and "you are allowed to run a country's government". For most known crooks, the first thing is the best they can hope for. Why is it that the people guilty of really big crimes think they should be allowed to be in charge of the government?
As for the "paradox of intolerance" argument: The people who like to make it the most are those that incorrectly treat hating somebody for their individual choices and actions as exactly equivalent to hating somebody for their identities. As in, "I hate people for being $MINORITY, you hate me for hating $MINORITY people, why can't we all just stop hating, hating is bad M'kay?" As if you couldn't at any time start thinking and acting on "You know what, $MINORITY people as a whole haven't done jack squat to me. Also, if $MINORITY person A did something bad, that doesn't mean $MINORITY person B had anything to do with it, and I am wrong for thinking they do." Meanwhile, $MINORITY people for the most part can't stop being $MINORITY even if they want to.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Undefined on Thursday February 12, @07:16PM (3 children)
That's not rehabilitation. That's retribution: imposition of institutionalized, hardened low ceilings, which in turn engender lifelong hopelessness. It creates poverty, resentment and quite often reactive recidivism — which can be worse than the original problem. It also deprives society of the benefits of rehabilitated persons. Classic foot-shooting.
As for politicians, the issue is little different. It's not what they have done in the past that is the actual problem: it's what they're doing now. Active corruption is (should be) a lot bigger concern than past action; and it's important that we be able to vote for whoever we think best represents our interests, especially knowing that the
justicelegal system (I include legislators and legislation in that) is so badly flawed.Just look at the McCarthy-esque attempt by the regressives to legally blacken those who, absolutely correctly, pointed out there is no obligation to follow illegal orders, as specifically per the UCMJ. That's active corruption right there.
In both cases, "vanilla" criminals and political malefactors, the public's confusion between past action and current action creates quite a few of the problems we have, especially in combination with the broken
justicelegal system. There are other very serious problems as well, and I'm not attempting to minimize them. Just sticking to your point.I use a dedicated preprocessor to elaborate abbreviations.
Hover to reveal elaborations.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday February 12, @07:47PM (2 children)
Just so we're clear: "You aren't in prison and are allowed to do some lousy job to make ends meet" is literally what the vast majority of the population of the world is doing, regardless of any kind of criminal history.
In rich countries, if you live long enough, you get to: "You aren't in prison and are living off of some kind of old-age retirement benefit which is hopefully enough to manage".
If you're in the "You aren't in prison and you are earning enough to have significant disposable income and/or savings" category, you're already in a minority both globally and probably in a minority within your own country.
I'm not saying that ex-cons should be unemployable, far from it. What I'm saying is that they on average make lousy presidents, CEOs, archbishops, etc, and if they're going to get into positions of authority and power in a smartly organized society they are going to have to start again from the bottom rung. and work their way up.
As for how to reduce crime: Being the average person doing some lousy job to make ends meet shouldn't suck as much as it does. That will make crime less tempting both for new crooks and experienced crooks.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Undefined on Thursday February 12, @09:38PM (1 child)
You're skating over the fundamental difference:
"I don't have the skills / aptitudes" and "society won't let me use my skills / aptitudes" are completely different problems.
Your observation, while correct in and of itself, is not to the point.
I use a dedicated preprocessor to elaborate abbreviations.
Hover to reveal elaborations.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday February 13, @01:28PM
Most people with the skills / aptitudes to be in charge of things never get to use them. It's a near certainty that there have been brilliant people who have lived and died doing some crappy job to make ends meet because their circumstances made it the best possible choice for them to make.
I don't subscribe to the idea that people who are in charge of things or famous in some way are in any way uniquely smart or capable. They're on average eminently replaceable, and indeed sometimes the replacement can do a lot better than the entrenched leader at helping the organization do what it was supposed to do. More often, the person at least nominally in charge is a figurehead with delusions of grandeur than they are someone with really unusual talents.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Informative) by Samantha Wright on Friday February 13, @01:53AM
(Honestly, I originally had "can never tolerate intolerance" but changed it so my post wouldn't sound too repetitive. So, "hatred" in the "hate speech" sense.)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 13, @09:29PM (2 children)
>Slavers
That's a matter of historical perspective. Put yourself 200 years back in time and Slavers were perfectly respectable, honored members of society. All you have to do is tell yourself: slaves aren't people, they don't have any more rights than a farm animal. It's amazing the atrocities people will look past once they get that in their heads.
Just as so many people today see no problem with the slaughter of wild dolphin, the capture and imprisonment of wild animals for all sorts of zoo displays and worse... they're not like me, society would NEVER let that happen to me...
Don't get me started on contemporary practices for housing and care of adult intellectually disabled people.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Undefined on Sunday February 15, @01:27PM (1 child)
No. It isn't. Chattel slavery is inherently evil. As are some social conventions, widely accepted or not.
"They thought it was fine" does not change the nature of the act in any way.
Same for rape, etc. When the Christian crusaders were busily raping "for God" they were doing evil, no matter what they thought they were doing.
Same for the Nazi's "purification" of their "race." What went on in the concentration camps was straight-up evil. It was from the first atrocity and ever after. No matter what the responsible Nazis thought.
"They thought it was fine" explicitly serves to condemn the thinking of the times — in no way does it justify the action itself.
What we're talking about here is how societies institutionalize, and institutionalized, evil. Not how "it was fine at the time." Moral relativism only goes so far. These are cases it could never cover because there are inherent forced harms imposed without the victims' consent or compensating behavior(s) such as crime(s.) And no, "being black" and "being female" and "being gay" and "being conquered" are not, and never were, crimes, regardless of how stupid a society was, or is, being about them. The crime is in the law(s) and/or social acceptance of such things.
Imagine if today's society — somehow — decided chattel slavery and rape and outright murder of Jews and gays and etc. were fine. In your relativistic outlook, that would make them fine now and in the future's historical looks back. That's what's wrong with your thinking here. They can never be fine. The evil is inherent. The unjustifiable harms are inherent. Attempts at justifications were, are, and always will be entirely without merit.
Turn your attention to the current mistreatment of folks "for being brown" in the USA. Regardless of immigration status or even citizenship. Clearly some at and near the top of the political leadership, many of the nation's and the states' legislators, numerous of their minions, and quite a few of the nation's citizens all think this is fine. Can you honestly say that makes it fine? Or would make it fine, looking back as a historical perspective?
Or can you conclude that some things are just inherently wrong?
I use a dedicated preprocessor to elaborate abbreviations.
Hover to reveal elaborations.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 15, @03:55PM
> Chattel slavery is inherently evil. As are some social conventions, widely accepted or not.
I would agree, but then I find the imprisonment and abuse of intelligent animals equally inherently evil. There's nothing inherently special about our 23 pair of chromosomes that makes mistreatment of us any worse than mistreatment of others. Case in point: humans born with chromosomal anomalies are still "human" under our widely accepted social conventions.
The basic definition I would give is: if you wouldn't want others to do it to you, then doing it to others is just as evil as others doing it to you.
Now, there comes a problem: carnivores gotta eat, and omnivores don't like to starve, and we really should convey respect for our plant cohabitants of this ecosystem as well. And therein you might look to global comparative sociology which finds cannibalism to be nearly universally abhorred in "polite society" along with incest, because both of those have real world manifestations of physical problems when practiced too long. So: shortening the life of others, of other species, so that you may eat - or not be eaten or capriciously killed by them - gets a pass from the evil category. The "other species" category should be sufficiently different to distance yourself from most diseases; in other words: monkey bushmeat should really fall into the cannibalism category.
>Same for rape, etc.
Rape is an interesting one. You may or may not remember the 1970s and early 80s - I didn't like the social norms around rape in the US/Europe back then, but there was highly visible acceptance up to the point of seeking rape among many women of the day; along with various theories about how it was biologically based, evolved into them to enjoy the thrill of being dominated... Here, if you look to global comparative sociology again, you'll find what we call rape to have a very fluid threshold of acceptability, including female dominated societies who "take men whenever they want," though the physical mechanics involved means that doesn't work as easily as the other way around - some societies in the Amazon made it work for centuries - and it shows evolutionarily: the smaller more easily physically dominated men had more children with the larger more physically dominating women... Getting back to the point of: if you don't want others to do it to you, I'd say procreation is next in line after termination and certainly the rule by physical dominance thing isn't a great feel either. If we are to have a society wherein all men and women are treated as equals, all that behavior absolutely should be phased out, but again: if you have paid attention to any social stories from 60+ years ago: children were largely socially trained by physical dominanace, threat of pain / possible injury if they did not "respect their elders and betters." And even today, on the global stage, we haven't given up war completely - and as long as we're enlisting 1% of our people to fight wars, that rule by force / might makes right aspect of society is going to be hard to get rid of. Does that mean that rape is an inevitable part of life? It certainly doesn't have to be, but unless/until we establish a global norm of acceptable societal behavior including increased transparency / truthfulness in what goes on in peoples' "private lives" it's going to be sticking around.
>Same for the Nazi's "purification" of their "race."
Yeah, it's too bad we only have one planet. In a bigger galactic society I am convinced that the disadvantages of "racial purity" would quickly (over the course of 10s of millenia) demonstrate themselves clearly, though pockets of the disadvantageous practice would no doubt carry on as long as they weren't forced into conformity by the rest of society.
>Imagine if today's society — somehow — decided chattel slavery and rape and outright murder of Jews and gays and etc. were fine.
I'm not sure we have to imagine - it seems some 20-30% of society is starting to openly express their repressed feelings about those topics and trying, with some success, to bring their minority views back into practice today.
>how societies institutionalize, and institutionalized, evil.
What I'm saying is: when you live in a closed society that institutionalizes something you're calling evil as everyday practice, when you and everyone you know are raised in it your whole life without exposure to other concepts, it's no longer recognized as evil. Evil is a societally defined concept. You may say that evil is that which we no longer accept, but in the long view there's going to be a lot of cyclical definitions of what was and what is evil.
> "being black" and "being female" and "being gay" and "being conquered" are not, and never were, crimes
Oh, wow - now you are deep in fantasy territory. Being gay, performing any act identifying yourself as gay, was absolutely a crime until very very recently. Being female did not even confer the right to vote until a century ago in most of the world - not exactly a crime to exist as female, but certainly a subset of "human rights" - and being black in the US South similarly put you in a societally defined lower tier with all kinds of crimes and punishments applied to blacks that were perfectly acceptable for whites. What is and isn't a crime (possession and use of certain plants, even those which grow like weeds?) evolves over time, and is clearly cyclical. A crime is whatever society's legislatures determine them to be in writing, and then there's the subset practice of what written laws do and do not get punished when broken, compensated when injured, frowned upon when practiced openly.
>Clearly some at and near the top of the political leadership, many of the nation's and the states' legislators, numerous of their minions, and quite a few of the nation's citizens all think this is fine. Can you honestly say that makes it fine? Or would make it fine, looking back as a historical perspective?
Depends on who you ask, if you ask the 20-30% (in my estimation) who are still cheering for them, I'd say that they'd say that it's not only fine, but it's about damn time we got some sense back into our system, this namby-pamby weak bullshit will be the ruination of us all. And if they manage to kill enough of the rest of us, they'll become a majority. In their world, those things will be normal, again.
>Or can you conclude that some things are just inherently wrong?
Only from my own perspective, and I then have to question: is my perspective worth dying for? Is my perspective worth spending all my wealth and energy and time to try to convince others to adopt my perspective? There are limits, and some concepts are worth more of a fight than others, but no matter how heinously evil certain practices are today, are you willing to die on that hill trying to change them?
From a personal perspective: I challenge you to seek out an adult day program and group home for the intellectually disabled in your community. Find a group home (typically 5-6 clients around here) filled with non-verbal young men / women, and actually get to know what goes on there for a month in their lives. In our "metro area" of maybe 1.5m population there are dozens of these homes. Don't just go for a happy happy inspection visit where they make potroast and go on a fishing field trip, I'm talking about the other 99/100 days, where dinner is boiled cabbage, where they only even get to the day program about half as often as they are required to by law, where they spend their days locked in tiny bedrooms laying in bed because the staff "needs the common room" for no particular reason whatsoever; where they day program consists of really crappy movies on bad AV equipment but none of this matters because 90%+ of the "clients" are so heavily medicated (aka chemically restrained) that all they do all day and night is sit around slack jawed drooling and shitting their diapers, where all the clients are unconscious asleep by 6pm after "their evening meds." The clients don't have to live like that, but the caregivers are so underskilled, with such a lack of caring, that all they do is get permission to give whatever medication will make the clients "most easily managed" then they administer it on a regular schedule, and "as needed" off the books. Our experience was that they didn't keep accurate or even remotely close to true records of what medications were really administered. In that setting, life expectancy is down by decades, but that's a mercy in my opinion because the life itself is horrible. Even with all the meds, clients occasionally act out - I know I would act out if I were locked into that existence - and the solution then: physical and stronger chemical restraints. Is this evil, in your view? We're all worked up over the "abuses" on TV, but over 400,000 of our own family members are "clients" of that evil (in my view) system in the US. Statistics say only 1/6 are "in the system" and the rest stay with family, as ours do today - but I can tell you that is unsustainable, and after we die or become incapable that's right back where our son is going - maybe both of them. Norway is supposed to be better, but I'm not sure a move to Norway is really going to give our children a better life.
If you wouldn't want others to do it to you, then doing it to others is just as evil as others doing it to you.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 13, @05:13PM (3 children)
As I've said before, tolerate the speech not murder in the streets. As democratic societies we have to accept that some people will abuse their freedom. And we have plenty of ways to address hatred and dishonesty that moves beyond speech to harmful action.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 13, @09:34PM
>As I've said before, tolerate the speech not murder in the streets.
Words never hurt anyone, words alone should never be a crime - no matter how you string them together or where you say them. (Possible exceptions for "deliberately shocking / offensive" similar to many nudity statutes.) Words that translate into organization, conspiracy and violent actions... they can and should be used to establish probable cause - increase subjection to search and surveillance, and when proof is established: arrest, conviction and punishment for actual crimes committed.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Samantha Wright on Saturday February 14, @02:01AM (1 child)
Tell me, do they not have stochastic terrorism in your world?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 14, @03:57AM
Show that it's somehow relevant to this discussion first. Then show that it's something you wouldn't actually want in your society. Given that we're discussing this in terms of the "intolerance of intolerance" argument from Popper, I don't have much hope that this is a concept worth bothering with. For example, is your question above an example of stochastic terrorism?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Thursday February 12, @05:43AM (2 children)
The EU doesn't care what US companies do in the US. They can have whatever rules they want. But if they wish to operate in the EU then they have to do so while complying with EU rules.
If they are the best sources that can be found then this argument is already lost.
So the argument is suggesting that the US is the only country that is right? That is similar to the military joke where a parent, watching a parade, says "Look, everyone is out of step except for our Fred". Perhaps the US ought to consider why other nations are viewing social media differently.
The truth behind this story is that US Tech Bros cannot buy many of the EU politicians - but we know that some of our elected representatives are not as honest as we might like.
The US seems to have forgotten the meaning of the word 'sovereignty', and are intent on forcing its views on other countries - notably Canada, Greenland/Denmark, the EU, South America, etc. Somebody thought that every other country would just roll over but that isn't what is happening, is it?
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12, @06:37AM
A number of European countries used to just roll over though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident [wikipedia.org]
But when you suddenly tariff all of them, that's as stupid as the school bully suddenly making enemies with the entire school including his own henchmen, all at the same time. Tariff a few countries and you hurt them, tariff the world and you just hurt yourself.
Lastly regarding freedom of speech, sure US citizens can insult Trump, but seems there can be significant difficulties for other topics (e.g. alleged Israeli human rights violations etc[1]). So it starts to look similar to people in China being able to insult Trump but not able to say certain stuff...
[1] https://theintercept.com/2025/11/04/youtube-google-israel-palestine-human-rights-censorship/ [theintercept.com]
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-federal-funding-will-stop-colleges-schools-allowing-illegal-protests-2025-03-04/ [reuters.com]
https://www.aaup.org/academe/issues/winter-2025/free-speech-movement-sixty-and-todays-unfree-universities [aaup.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by weirsbaski on Friday February 13, @07:32PM
That's a slightly ambiguous way to put it. Sometimes "complying" means applying local laws to a company's world-wide business activity, if they want to continue doing business in the EU:
https://cdt.org/insights/global-application-of-french-right-to-be-forgotten-law-would-pose-threat-to-free-expression/ [cdt.org]
Though the EU is hardly alone here:
https://www.gadgets360.com/internet/features/google-search-results-delisting-canada-supreme-court-free-speech-implications-1718800 [gadgets360.com]
Not that the U.S. is innocent here, thre's plenty of examples where we pushed our rules onto everyone else. It's a mad, mad world.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12, @09:19AM (2 children)
you mean the ones that are demonstrably bullshit?
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Thursday February 12, @02:24PM
No.
"the European Commission worked to censor true information"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by canopic jug on Thursday February 12, @02:26PM
Or, over in the middle east, these same broligarchs in reality suppress just the center-left ones [bbc.com] which are in opposition [politico.eu] to the far-right / fascists. That happens all the while, making noise with false accusations about the reverse.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by turgid on Thursday February 12, @10:33AM (1 child)
Resist And Unsubscribe [resistandunsubscribe.com]
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Thursday February 12, @12:59PM
That, too. However, more can be done at the state level. SN recently had two relevant posts about how:
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Thursday February 12, @10:40AM
The big picture is that censorship happens everywhere, in the EU as well as in the US. No bickering allowed.
On the specifics the DSA certainly has its problematic parts. One very problematic piece are so-called trusted flaggers, which vets "trusted" individuals who can, without review, have content removed. It's the DCMA of social media. It has been demonstrated that trusted flaggers have misused their powers to further an unbalanced view, something that the DSA was designed to prevent. Nobody should be surprised. Democracy has to be resilient but also has to reflect on itself. There have to be mechanisms to prevent extreme views from influencing the weak but "trusted flaggers" is no such mechanism.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by DadaDoofy on Thursday February 12, @02:30PM
Your county is ruled by a fascist authoritarian!! Oh wait, what have we here?