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>"...the desire to have someone force these companies to remove hate speech or misinformation can backfire. To see how, we need look no further than Singapore’s new “fake news” law, which has already been used to force an opposition politician to modify a Facebook post to include the government’s position on the topic he mentioned in his post, along with a large banner across the original saying “False.”

This is so obvious, it's disheartening to me that people are trying to give the US government power to do this.

It's the goal.

Those seeking it would be advised to consider whether it's a power they really want Trump to have, or his successor, but there's a lot of people who seem to operate on the presumption that in the long term, their side is going to have complete control of the government indefinitely and the fact that some people they disagree with has some control at the moment is a momentary aberration. I would suggest history does not favor this viewpoint.

> there's a lot of people who seem to operate on the presumption that in the long term, their side is going to have complete control of the government indefinitely

... and who are willing to alter the rules to make sure that, once they get power, it will be easier for them to continue to have complete control indefinitely. And why? Because they are certain of the rightness of their ideas, and therefore if the people vote against them, it can only be because the people have been lead astray by lies and propaganda.

Such people deserve, at a minimum, our profound suspicion.

> there's a lot of people who seem to operate on the presumption that in the long term, their side is going to have complete control of the government indefinitely

I think you are confusing outcome for mechanism. The idea is that once their side wins, they'll clamp down so hard on wrong-think that the other side effective ceases to exist. It will be like elections under a dictator: sure there's another party, but if you vote for them you get a free trip to the re-education camp and get erased from all databases.

Constitutional rights don't matter for people if parties with vast economic power can render the exercise of those rights pointless. Most people absolutely will trade freedom for security, because most people aren't late 1700's frontiersman that hunt for food, defend land from intruders, huddle together in a rickety log cabin built with their own two hands, and die before they're 40. Most people that aren't the elite-very-rich depend on things like stores, roads, cars, jobs, and paychecks to survive comfortably, which is always going to be supported by some balance of corporatism and government.
It won’t happen. It is incompatible with the first amendment. Thank god we baked that shit in instead of just passing a law to that effect.
When we're considering regulation, it's important to consider the activity we're regulating in context. Here's one extreme: it's legal to light a match. It's not legal to light a match and toss it into a gas pump.

We shouldn't regulate speech, but you should own the consequences of your actions -- speech included. If you're spreading anti-vax propaganda, you're complicit in killing kids. It's certainly not as bad as pulling the trigger; you're one component of a much greater whole, and any restrictions or punishment should reflect that.

There has been a lot of mixing of concepts in this space lately. There is the legal question of government interference with speech, protected by the First Amendment in the US. Then there is the moral issue of deplatforming by corporations. Then there is the moral issue of groups of people bullying a dissenting viewpoint. These are different issues with different levels of severity and different solutions.

Anyone who has only been deplatformed and is complaining that the world is becoming authoritarian needs to realize that this has always been the way of the world. Forever. There has never been a time in history when someone could voice an unpopular view or be seen as an unpopular identity and not receive public ridicule, shame, or retribution of some kind, and where companies censored no content whatsoever.

What America, and other nations who value freedom, have is a protection against government interference. Let's keep it that way and accept that people are jerks to each other and not everyone wants to hear what you have to say.

I think there's a real difference in magnitude though. I have no data to back this up, but, it seems that the asymmetric impact of falsehood, trolling, and bullying is far greater than it has been in the past. I think we may have gone centuries with it being "worth the pain" and it's slowly turning into a much harder question.

Ultimately I think the answer is to have tools to make it easier and faster to identify and validate misinformation. Self-appointed "fact checking" organizations seems like an old-fashioned solution.

>These are different issues with different levels of severity and different solutions.

All of these issues are rooted in the same principle, namely: allowing people to freely express themselves in the face of authority is a net good for human society.

> What America, and other nations who value freedom, have is a protection against government interference.

This argument is super common, but also not correct.

Yes, the first amendment is about protecting speech from government censorship.

But freedom of speech is much broader, and predates the US Constitution by two millennia. If you look at the full history of the concept, it's not just about protection from government, but also protection from undue reprisal.

For example, in the larger view of the ideal of freedom of speech, it is indeed a violation to be fired from your job for holding an unrelated, unpopular political view.

> Anyone who has only been deplatformed and is complaining that the world is becoming authoritarian needs to realize that this has always been the way of the world. Forever. There has never been a time in history when someone could voice an unpopular view or be seen as an unpopular identity and not receive public ridicule, shame, or retribution of some kind, and where companies censored no content whatsoever.

I generally agree that historically we haven't had totally free speech; however, we've been on an upward trend, and some of us are sad to see organizations at the helm of huge channels of speech using their power to prop up certain worldviews, especially somewhat extreme, fringe worldviews with questionable moral credentials (to put it charitably). We should keep the trend going; not reverse it to regress back to "the way things always have been".

> There has never been a time in history when someone could voice an unpopular view or be seen as an unpopular identity and not receive public ridicule, shame, or retribution of some kind, and where companies censored no content whatsoever.

No serious person is asking for the ability to express views without criticism, and regarding corporate censorship, utilities aren't allowed to censor speech--I support regulating social media companies as utilities. This doesn't mean social media has to be a dumb channel either; those companies could curate content so long as it's not on an explicitly ideological basis. For example, it would be fine for Twitter to promote content that is popular, so long as "popular" is determined purely by their users and not dependent upon Twitter's ideology.

> What America, and other nations who value freedom, have is a protection against government interference. Let's keep it that way and accept that people are jerks to each other and not everyone wants to hear what you have to say.

I think social media in its current state is represents a kind of threat to free speech that formerly could only be mustered by governments. Notably, there is a significant concern on both sides of the aisle that social media companies can be used to steer governments, including as an attack vector by foreign governments. These companies have unprecedented control over speech at this volume that it must be dealt with, in my humble opinion.

>accept that people are jerks to each other and not everyone wants to hear what you have to say

That's exactly the sort of common sense observation that's been missing from public debate on this issue. Why is it so difficult for people to accept that, really very simple, reality?

Everyone has freedoms. That includes the freedom to ignore you or me. Or, indeed, the freedom to speak ill of you or me.

Why do people want to shut that down? Just seems weird, like they're saying, "In the name of Freedom of Speech, we have to take away your Freedom of Speech. Because you talked bad about me and told people to ignore me. When I had done nothing more than exercise my freedom of speech by talking bad about someone else."

In what bizzarro world does that make sense to people?

Even when governments don’t limit freedom of expression we do it to ourselves as can be seen with all the Twitter mobs.
It's such an important distinction though. When people do it, it's just dissenting voices. When a platform removes someone, they can just find another platform. Twitter doesn't owe anyone a voice on it.

But when the government says you can't talk about a thing, they can make you take it down everywhere. Only this is protected, and this line needs to not be crossed.

I little sympathy for people getting upset at being deplatformed - they can go elsewhere, and their cries of freedom of expression cry wolf to the constitutional issue of those in power doing actual oppression.

I keep hearing this kind of sentiment a lot recently. Not that I have any sympathy for the Twitter mobs, but there is a huge difference between government-sanctioned "legal" censorship, and some unorganized group of trolls harassing someone on Twitter.
Those "mobs" are only ordinary people exercising their own freedom of expression online.

I think a more correct sentiment would be that even when there are governments that don't want to limit freedom of expression, multinational corporations will still oblige those governments and influential citizens that do.

> Governments in a number of countries have been increasing online surveillance and cracking down on content and behavior that indicates dissent, the report says.

This is a really sad state of affairs. Because of whatever reasons (monetary, fear of dissent and terrorism, etc.) we've seen governments implement more and more laws and policies that take away the "freedom" that we're supposed to have in a democracy.

People seem to forget that democracies are supposed to be for the people. Not for corporations. Not for those in power. Not for the wealthy.

More and more "the people" want corporations to do the policing. Everyone cheers when someone controversial is booted from Twitter, but suddenly it'ss a problem when the NBA and Blizzard censored people, albeit for less defensible reasons.
“democracies are supposed to be for the people”

I notice this tends to get forgotten quite a bit. When you listen to a lot of public discussion you get the impression that only a few people and organizations really count and the rest of people have to adapt to them.

It’s not just governments, it is corporations also. Look at Google and their rampant censorship of disagreeable content on YouTube. Material support of the Chinese apparatus. Everything trickles down and spreads around.
> People seem to forget that democracies are supposed to be for the people. Not for corporations. Not for those in power. Not for the wealthy.

That's what we are told. But if you look at actual history of democracy and how it came about ( ancient greek or american democracy ), you know that simply isn't true.

The ancient greek democracy was created by the slave owning master class to protect and preserve their property and rights. In the US, our democracy was created by the wealthy white landowners to protect their property and rights.

The two quintessential democracies in the world were created by the wealthy for the wealthy, not by the people for the people. But it's great advertising.

Hate speech must be protected speech. Keep in mind that all groups suffer from hate speech attacks. Majority groups in Western countries ("white people") are some of the most publicly demonized people of the last few years, so saying that toleration of hate speech - which affects us all - is an opinion that can only be held from the secure position of being in the majority is nonsense.
>Hate speech must be protected speech

Hate speech, is protected speech.

If the government has, in any manner, infringed on your Freedom of Expression, Speech, and/or Association, get in touch with your local ACLU affiliate.

https://www.aclu.org/about/affiliates?redirect=affiliates

There are people there who can help you not only with "next steps", but throughout the entire process.

But please realize, they can't help you get your twitter account back, because Twitter has rights too.

> Majority groups in Western countries ("white people") are some of the most publicly demonized people of the last few years

I find this extremely hard to believe.

No. There is a crucial distinction here. Hate speech that is only mean is one thing and should be protected. Hate speech that incites violence against a particular individual or group is not protected speech. This includes a few things said by the current POTUS, such as (approximate quote from memory), "maybe the guy should be roughed up", said of a guy who was currently being roughly physically removed from his rally. Speech to incite violence is not protected by the first amendment and should not be.
Remember that the journalist who exposed the panama papers was killed in a car bomb.
Source?
The report seems to deal mainly with freedom of expression by journalists, members of NGOs, activists, widely read bloggers and other members of the gadfly class.

I wonder whether freedom of expression by the average citizen is decreasing or increasing. They certainly have more opportunity to express their views.

But I think there is more fear in expressing opinions. More opportunities to express and more people to attack unpopular views.
I wonder if we'll see China open up in our lifetimes. Would it even be possible with protests, or would that government need to fail in order to see that magnitude of change?

And to be fair, China isn't North Korea by any means. so in some ways, it seems like the most likely to start demeaning more freedom.

Countries have gone from authoritarian dictatorships to liberal democracies with no major revolution, so I don't see why it should be impossible. For example: South Korea in the 80s.
> the government in Hungary has “systematically dismantled media independence, freedom and pluralism, distorted the media market and divided the journalistic community in the country, achieving a degree of media control unprecedented in an EU member state.”

News to me. Can anyone comment on this?

Apologies for not writing a summary of these, but I fear I'll gut out important stuff. However, here are some links that certainly can do a good job at telling what's been happening in Hungary:

- https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/13/17823488/h...

- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/world/europe/hungary-demo...

- https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/hungary/2019-08-15/h...

- https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/08/29/how-viktor-orb...

I wish more people who value freedom of expression would say and do more to support Julian Assange.
10 years is a very short period of time for these kind of things. How does it rate on a 50 or 100 year timescale? I'd wager we're still miles ahead of, say, the 1950s, when you could be arrested for being too "communist", or prosecuted for blasphemy or indecency for things that are very normal today.
In addition to government interference in free speech, all actions/words that offend have potentially life devastating consequences in this age of the digital permanent record. Suppose you slap someone in a moment of uncontrolled anger. If someone records that, posts it on the internet, and it goes viral, you then become the mad slapper in the eyes of the world. If someone googles your name, they will see you slapping someone. Even a single slap can potentially destroy your life. Not only do we have draconian laws, but also draconian self-regulation fueled by a vicious mob that demands political correctness.

People are angry. Everyone that steps out of line is now a target for that anger. It's a sad and scary state of affairs.

The behavior isn't new, just the reach and visibility.

Conformist social pressure has always been intense. Previously, it was just very local and not visible outside the social context in which it happened. People didn't notice it (or if they did, would tend to approve of it) unless it was focused on them.

We do have laws to limit free speech in good and specific ways. You can't slander a person who isn't famous, for example, or incite violence against specific people or groups. And most of the cries of free speech being violated aren't really about the first amendment. Most are just people being deplatformed, which is a reminder that YouTube is just Google. It's a company, not a public space.
Well, let's suppose it's 1900, and you live in a small town somewhere in the US. You slap someone in a moment of uncontrolled anger. How long would that follow you? The rest of your life, unless you leave town. That single slap could destroy your life.

So I think that the "digital permanent record" removes the anonymity of the big city, and returns us to small town rules.

We need to declare all speech religious speech. Politics is religion. One religion currently has the upper hand, and it's dividing people.
Maybe you shouldn't assault people if you don't want to be known for assault? Slap or not, hitting someone in a fit of anger is assault, full stop.

Even people which have been 'cancelled' for things that aren't assault still end up going on to have their career mostly unaffected unless they did something really henious.

I have nothing to say about this.
Even when saying nothing I get downvoted :)
There's nothing happening in the world.

At least nothing near the scale of what was going on in prior times, nothing to important to say.

We're living so comfortably, so safely, we're so industrialized and digitalized, we get bored. We turn focus to the small trivial things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...

If you're focused on mere syntax of how someone says a word, or has an opinion, maybe it's time to reflect and show gratitude that's your schtick. Not that you're starving, looking for a safe place to live, stability, but merely some stranger with zero connection to you broadcasts an idea.

I love 2019 and thank God for it. I'm grateful we're discussing mere information etiquette on social media rather than being in a world war, a famine, a global disease pandemic, an asteroid hitting us.

This article discusses annoyances mostly about internet speech, then it goes:

> In 2018, 99 journalists were killed—21 more than in 2017. At the end of 2018, more than 250 journalists were in prison (also up from the year before) and more than 10 percent of those were being held on “false news” charges.

That's a huge leap. I don't think it's helpful to lump them together! Wow! Very dramatic though. Caught my attention!

Has anyone here ever tried meditation? I've been pondering mindfulness. Thinking deeply of what I'm grateful for.

We should close our eyes and breath. Think of how far we've come as a society. We're better than we've ever been. We should be celebrating and having parades and deeply introspecting ourselves for can we can cooperate better with each other.

Maybe we just need to give each other a big hug!

Maybe we're just one step away from peace on Earth, forever? The proof is in the pudding - we're focused on squabbles over social media. We're comfortable, organized, educated, and highly developed - just bored. I look forward to us building a space elevator.