Freedom of speech // Is the West falling behind?

[The Sovereign Realist State]

Poland targets big tech with anti-censorship law

Social media companies that remove posts they deem offensive could face fines, Poland’s justice minister said on Friday, as a government that allied itself with U.S. President Donald Trump enacts a move it says will guarantee free speech.
https://www.reuters.com/article/poland- ... NL8N2JQ2QJ

With the rise in progressive censorship, 'deplatforming' and overall hypersensitive triggering restrictions by politicians, private companies and western governmental legislation, how reliable are the usual free-speech indexes? Are western countries still the most free in matters of speech?

Or can one live more freely in more corrupt and less individualistic but more conservative countries in Eastern Europe such as Poland or Russia?

The political system may not be as democratic but then old ladies are not visited or fined by the police for offensive facebook posts concerning trans people either... The private sector does not appear to be forced to exhibit rainbow flags or add political slogans to its advertising.

Are standards changing?

[Albrenia]

No. Eastern Europe and Russia are not 'more free' than the West. The West has problems, sure, but you'd have to be a bit boneheaded to look at Russia right now and think people are happy with their ability to express themselves.

As for the usual moaning from Trump-aligned folks about him being banned from Twitter, nobody forced him to use Twitter as his main method of communication, and he agreed to the Terms of Service like anybody else did. Had he not been such an enormous toddler he could have used the platform of the President to communicate to the people regardless of what Twitter or anyone else did.

[Gravlen]

Poland, this u?

Elżbieta, Anna and Joanna – whose last names have not been released – were arrested in 2019 and charged the next year after they stuck up posters of the Virgin Mary adorned with a rainbow halo, symbolic of the popular flag used to represent the LGBT+ community.

[Loeje]

Russia isn't exactly a good example of freedom of speech. America is a lot better than Russia in that regard.

[Albrenia]

Poland, this u?

Elżbieta, Anna and Joanna – whose last names have not been released – were arrested in 2019 and charged the next year after they stuck up posters of the Virgin Mary adorned with a rainbow halo, symbolic of the popular flag used to represent the LGBT+ community.

So much for being such a bastion of free speech.

[Bombadil]

I'm already bored of the emerging mantra from the right about 'freedom of speech' just because their totem had his Twitter rights removed, we're very sorry your far right racist speech is being oppressed.

[Kexholm Karelia]

I'm already bored of the emerging mantra from the right about 'freedom of speech' just because their totem had his Twitter rights removed, we're very sorry your far right racist speech is being oppressed.

Racist speech is being suppressed by twitter, that’s why the CCP accounts are ban-

Oh wait

[Romextly]

I'm already bored of the emerging mantra from the right about 'freedom of speech' just because their totem had his Twitter rights removed, we're very sorry your far right racist speech is being oppressed.

Racist speech is being suppressed by twitter, that’s why the CCP accounts are ban-

Oh wait

Wow. Twitter is so smart and non-hypocritical

[Bombadil]

I'm already bored of the emerging mantra from the right about 'freedom of speech' just because their totem had his Twitter rights removed, we're very sorry your far right racist speech is being oppressed.

Racist speech is being suppressed by twitter, that’s why the CCP accounts are ban-

Oh wait

I'm more than happy for them to be shut down, however if they were there'd be not a peep from the right. It's simply a straw to cling to because there's nothing else to justify about Trump's reign.

Meanwhile they're censuring people for voting to impeach Trump.. oh the irony..

[Rusozak]

Trump got silenced by privately owned media after staging a coup and is still walking around as a free man. I don't think "not enough freedom" is a problem in the only country where you can fail in a coup attempt and not get immediately arrested.

[Albrenia]

I'm already bored of the emerging mantra from the right about 'freedom of speech' just because their totem had his Twitter rights removed, we're very sorry your far right racist speech is being oppressed.

Racist speech is being suppressed by twitter, that’s why the CCP accounts are ban-

Oh wait

Well the obvious answer to that is to ban the CCP, not unban Trump. Sadly Twitter wants that sweet Chinese market, so they get a pass just like Trump did when he held the keys of power.

Pretty ballsy of them to ban him in the final days rather than the day after Biden got sworn in, tbh.

[Velosia]

I'm already bored of the emerging mantra from the right about 'freedom of speech' just because their totem had his Twitter rights removed, we're very sorry your far right racist speech is being oppressed.

It’s reactions like this that make me think most people just assume ’free speech’ is merely another way of saying ’speech I agree with’. If you truly want a free society, you have to be prepared to tolerate the intolerant. Anything else would be censorship which is, by definition, incompatible with the concept of free speech.

[Bombadil]

I'm already bored of the emerging mantra from the right about 'freedom of speech' just because their totem had his Twitter rights removed, we're very sorry your far right racist speech is being oppressed.

It’s reactions like this that make me think most people just assume ’free speech’ is merely another way of saying ’speech I agree with’. If you truly want a free society, you have to be prepared to tolerate the intolerant. Anything else would be censorship which is, by definition, incompatible with the concept of free speech.

If a truly free society leads to a bunch of idiots storming the Capitol to overturn a democratic election then I'm fine with a degree of stopping nasty, vindictive and inciteful speech.

[Velosia]

If a truly free society leads to a bunch of idiots storming the Capitol to overturn a democratic election then I'm fine with a degree of stopping nasty, vindictive and inciteful speech.

I do agree that, if there were to be any exceptions, it would be speech that seeks to incite violence. Such a thing is never justifiable in a democratic, civilised society.

Though I would apply such a rule to everyone, not just those on the right. After all, I doubt many communist regimes seized power by asking nicely.

[Bombadil]

If a truly free society leads to a bunch of idiots storming the Capitol to overturn a democratic election then I'm fine with a degree of stopping nasty, vindictive and inciteful speech.

I do agree that, if there were to be any exceptions, it would be speech that seeks to incite violence. Such a thing is never justifiable in a democratic, civilised society.

Though I would apply such a rule to everyone, not just those on the right. After all, I doubt many communist regimes seized power by asking nicely.

Well perhaps, but this whole mantra right now is just an attempt to avoid castigation for the events of the last 4 years. Smartmatic sues FOX and various commentators for basically lying about a fraudulent election and apparently it's just an attempt to shut down free speech.

Soon after the reports started, the company was “inundated” with emails and voicemails, some claiming that “you all will be hunted” or that the only way to restore election integrity was to “shoot dead your company executives.” One caller allegedly harassed an executive’s 14-year-old son, and despite increased security, the threats have “left Smartmatic’s personnel shaken and scared.”

There are real consequences, Smartmatic employees have faced real threats.

And frankly it's ironic that the party that seeks to suppress the one fundamental act of free speech in a democracy, the right to vote, is clamouring over free speech because a few of them are shut down for continuing to repeat baseless lies that caused actual damage.

It's certainly a thorny issue, and not one to take lightly, but crying wolf leads to the actual wolf being ignored when it does come to town.

[TURTLESHROOM II]

Trump got silenced by privately owned media after staging a coup and is still walking around as a free man. I don't think "not enough freedom" is a problem in the only country where you can fail in a coup attempt and not get immediately arrested.

The attack was planned a few days before January 6th. The statement you made is a sheep's statement, a statement reflecting the mind of someone who believes everything the media tells them and has critical-level Trump Derangement.
Use your mind.

[Bombadil]

Trump got silenced by privately owned media after staging a coup and is still walking around as a free man. I don't think "not enough freedom" is a problem in the only country where you can fail in a coup attempt and not get immediately arrested.

The attack was planned a few days before January 6th. The statement you made is a sheep's statement, a statement reflecting the mind of someone who believes everything the media tells them and has critical-level Trump Derangement.
Use your mind.

Sure it was, Trump invited everyone over for the 6th long in advance having fuelled hysteria over a stolen election for two months.. it didn't just occur out of context.

[TURTLESHROOM II]

No. Eastern Europe and Russia are not 'more free' than the West. The West has problems, sure, but you'd have to be a bit boneheaded to look at Russia right now and think people are happy with their ability to express themselves.

In terms of free speech, there is no country that even comes close to the United States of America. Human rights like the free press, free speech, jury trials, and so on are guaranteed as negative liberties and, unlike the "enlightened" Europeans, they cover """"""""hate speech"""""""" and unpopular opinions and beliefs. On steroids.

Russia is not more free than the West. You can get arrested for criticizing the government in Russia. If that can happen, you are a slave, not a freeman.

Putin is a thief and the whole government is oppressive. There is no justice in the courts, no fair investigations, no nothing. Russia is inherently corrupt and miserable, as both my Russian friends and my American grandfather, having lived through the entire Cold War, can attest.

What Russia is free from is the West's foremost issue: decadence, degeneracy, and cultural decay.

There are no humiliation rituals where one group is taught to hate themselves, there aren't next-to-literal commissars in every Russian HR department, there isn't a drive to out-worship the latest fad demographic, and when a man says he's a woman in Russia, no one else is forced to play make believe with him*.

Russian men are encouraged to be men, and Russian women are encouraged to be women. The concept of marriage and childbearing, and healthy familial relationships are expected. Masculinity is celebrated and weak effemenite men are looked down upon.

So is Russia a better place than the west? Far from it! I would rather die a freeman with a lone voice in a world of degeneracy, than a slave to a world where societal and mental expectations are correct but I can't even criticize the President when he plundered my pension fund to buy his sixteenth mansion.

Unless the EU mythology of a NEW HITLER AND NO PRESS FREEDOM IN POLAND is true, I consider Poland a better place than the rest of Europe. In Poland, I can criticize the government and talk smack about the courts all day and not go to jail. I also don't have to deal with all of society being reoriented to worship at the altar of sodomy, and I won't have to put up with my countrymen murdering their children.

Societal rot and degeneracy are worse problems overall, but getting those back, to me, is not worth laying down my human rights. That's why I would rather be an American than a Russian any day of the week.

---

As for the Twitter, I agreed with the "private company private rules" spiel until I watched the Parler get purged by Amazon and read about the Times Magazine confessing there was indeed a massive conspiracy and cabal to destroy Trump. (You can read the original confession here.)

Trust-busting and opposition to monopolization are not anti-capitalist. Only a natural monopoly (such as Google) can exist without government intervention, and even then, the natural monopoly uses Regulatory Capture to secure itself. Adam Smith himself believed that breaking monopolies was true to the spirit of competition, which is the bedrock of capitalism.

A telephone cannot disconnect you from using their service just because you happened to say the N-word over their lines. Public utilities are such because their existence is so universal, and so vital to the public discourse, that failing to prevent them from denying service to everyone and everything would cause such great isolation and harm that it is just that, literally an utility.

There are nine companies that own almost all communications in America, a whopping ninety percent.

Of these, eight are leftist: General Electric (Comcast/NBC/MSNBC/Universal Studios), Disney (ABC/ESPN), Viacom, Time Warner (CNN/HBO/Time Magazine/Warner Brothers), CBS, Amazon, Google, and the Facebook.

Only one is rightist: little (by comparison) News Corporation, the master of Fox and Wall Street Journal, as well as irrelevant radio firms. Who listens to Rush Limbaugh anyway?

The Facebook, the Twitter, and Google, combined, own all widespread social media and mass media platforms on the Internet, including everything from Youtube to Instagram, and the flagship services themselves.
Bit Chute and AOL? LOL, who?

One hundred percent of the major Internet social media platforms are extremely left-leaning and have consistently, and demonstrably, suppressed right-wing thought of all stripes.

This means that one political idelogy controls nearly all institutional power in corporate America. This ideology has confessed to its total control over American communications and culture and its successful attempt to organize and destroy the American right, manifested the most in Donald Trump.

Google and friends have used their power to manipulate elections. A poll asking about this stated that a whopping five percent of Biden voters would have not voted Biden (but not necessarily Trump) if they knew about Biden's various scandals. Up to a third of those surveyed hadn't even heard them mentioned.

Five percent may not sound like much, but if those five percent all voted Trump, he would have won in an Electoral College landslide. Again, those five percent said they would not vote Biden if given that information, as opposed to voting Trump, so Trump could still have lost.

This trend needs to stop,a nd every leftist that says it's okay would never say the same if it was in reverse.

Like telephone lines, social media are public utilities and should be regulated as such.

* = Sadly, this also leads to situations where Russians will commit acts of violence against innocent people afflicted with mental illnesses, such as Gender Identity Disorder, or deviant sexual behaviors. Physical violence against such people is both a sin and an abomination.

[The Liberated Territories]

People don't understand freedom of speech, news at 11...

Freedom of Speech doesn't extend to the private sector, only the public sector (ahem, in theory). As Twitter is a private platform, owned by Twitter, they have control over their domain, and can censor what these please. This does not (or at least should not) extend to public platforms, like a political rally at a public park, where free speech must be enforced.

The fact that the *Right* can't understand this is amazing, as it is usually the Left that has trouble with this concept. These times are strange indeed.

[Bombadil]

Google and friends have used their power to manipulate elections. A poll asking about this stated that a whopping five percent of Biden voters would have not voted Biden (but not necessarily Trump) if they knew about Biden's various scandals. Up to a third of those surveyed hadn't even heard them mentioned.

Five percent may not sound like much, but if those five percent all voted Trump, he would have won in an Electoral College landslide. Again, those five percent said they would not vote Biden if given that information, as opposed to voting Trump, so Trump could still have lost.

This trend needs to stop,a nd every leftist that says it's okay would never say the same if it was in reverse.

Yeah well.. don't worry..

“Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News … rather the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all,”

FOX viewers are more ignorant on news issues than people who don't watch any news, and millions of Americans are watching God TV and hear nothing of Trump's lies and scandals.

So it all balances out.

[Maluhiaa]

I'm already bored of the emerging mantra from the right about 'freedom of speech' just because their totem had his Twitter rights removed, we're very sorry your far right racist speech is being oppressed.

It’s reactions like this that make me think most people just assume ’free speech’ is merely another way of saying ’speech I agree with’. If you truly want a free society, you have to be prepared to tolerate the intolerant. Anything else would be censorship which is, by definition, incompatible with the concept of free speech.

Are you familiar with the paradox of intolerance? Perhaps not a truly "free" society... but a truly tolerant one.

[TURTLESHROOM II]

Sure it was, Trump invited everyone over for the 6th long in advance having fuelled hysteria over a stolen election for two months.. it didn't just occur out of context.

Donald Trump is accused of intentionally commanding them to attack the Capitol or having caused the attack indirectly on that day. The unconstitutional Bill of Attainder trial (NOT EVEN PRESIDED OVER BY THE CHIEF JUSTICE) in the Senate is accusing him of exactly that.

If the attack was planned- and it was -then Trump cannot possibly have ordered it to happen. The bombs were placed the day before.

As for the electoral fraud: the governors of several states magically waved away state laws to allow for a flood of ballots without security checks. They did this without the consent of the state legislatures (either because the law allowed them to or the law never said they couldn't), which is unconstitutional.

Furthermore, Dominion and Smartmatic in particular were recipients of a letter by ELIZABETH WARREN[B] (found here) that accused them of cutting corners in terms of the securing of the voting machine tabulation software from vulnerabilities, like hacking and incorrect registring of votes.

Smartmatic assisted the Chavez regime in its voting tabulation, where mass fraud was conducted.

Lastly, in my home state of Georgia, people pretended that a water main break occurred in the Forsyth ballot counting centers in the Falcons Stadium, but it was actually a cracked pipe that didn't even need a plumber's invoice.

During that period, we have [b]time-stamped video evidence of ballot counting continuing in the building. Poll workers, during the period the water main was supposedly stopping the counting, continued counting ballots the entire time.

Couple that with the literal stoppage of ballot counts in Pennsylvania and several other states around 1:00 AM on Election Day, which I personally witnessed for two hours before hitting the sack in sadness, and you have reasonable doubt that the ballots were counted without issue.

Does that mean Trump was cheated out of an election? I can't prove that. -but I can show that Biden's win was not beyond a reasonable doubt.

Even if there wasn't enough fraud to flip it, the governors changing state law with a flip of the wrist is a terminal threat to our democratic republic and eliminates the necessary safeguards designed to prevent these issues from happening to begin with.

[Nejii]

I mean... Parler being taken down was a bit of a cheap shot. Granted JM painted a target on his platform’s back for not enacting stricter moderation. They all hated Twitter so they jumped on Parler, Parler then got took offline. I can understand that the moderate right might feel like their first amendment rights are being spit on. I mean you already had Facebook deleting peoples accounts and their posts and labeling them as “misinformation” when some of it was as simple as sharing other’s posts or in other cases it wasn’t false information.

That said, the US and the west overall is still going strong on first amendment rights.

[TURTLESHROOM II]

Are you familiar with the paradox of intolerance? Perhaps not a truly "free" society... but a truly tolerant one.

A truly tolerant society of slaves is inferior to a society of bigoted freemen.

The government has no right to stop me from saying what I want to say or thinking what I want to think, and I don't care how many precious little feelings I have to stamp on to speak my mind.

Screw the greater good. My rights are more important.

[Bombadil]

*list of fraud claims*

All of these have been thoroughly debunked. The fact you continue to spout them kind of reduces your credibility to speak on the subject.

Are you familiar with the paradox of intolerance? Perhaps not a truly "free" society... but a truly tolerant one.

A truly tolerant society of slaves is inferior to a society of bigoted freemen.

The government has no right to stop me from saying what I want to say or thinking what I want to think, and I don't care how many precious little feelings I have to stamp on to speak my mind.

Screw the greater good. My rights are more important.

..and these are the words of a teenage temper tantrum that comes shortly before slamming the bedroom door closed shouting 'you can't tell me what to do!'