Not saying you personally do this, but it seems every time Europe prosecutes someone for threats of violence on twitter there are the usual fools here shouting "it's just free speech!"
There is a tendency for some US commentators to totally ignore the European attitude around freedom of speech and to talk about the slippery slope to totalitarian states.
Sometimes those people will mix up "first ammendment" rights with what a website owner is allowed to do; or they appear to be unaware of the very many cases of people in America who lose their jobs or are arrested because they wear the wrong t-shirt or have an innocent poster on their door.
We often hear these people when there's coverage of twitter trolls going to court. They'll say that it's ridiculous to prosecute people for being mean on twitter. This is intensely frustrating because -and this should be fucking obvious- no-one is arrested for being a bit mean on social media. People are arrested for making credible repeated threats of violence. But that happens in the US.
In Croatia, people have been fined for writing ACAB (on Twitter or Facebook), as well as "1312". One journalist has been arrested for publishing satirical song deemed to "insult the nation".
Many judges favorite pastime is extorting money from newspapers and journalists through the lawsuits on account of causing them "mental distress" with their articles.
And police will readily punch the phone out of your hands if you try to record them, citing GDPR.
Often times people on HN will proudly proclaim how Europe has a "different view on free speech" - really, you don't have to remind us.
Just as freedom of speech, there's no freedom of speech in Europe as it is in the US. You can get arrested in Europe for writing unpopular opinions on Twitter or Facebook ("hate speech").
The fact that Europeans are standing up for free speech while the United States is not speaks volumes to how things have changed in the US over the last few decades.
Have our politics really gone so far down the "Win at all costs! Censor all other opinions!" rabbit hole that speech here is now less free than Europe?
Before you parrot the "but.. but... inciting violence" talking point in reply, try to find an actual source of President Trump calling for violence on Twitter. Don't believe everything you read.
There is no absolute right of free speech in the EU (and probably most countries); foreign companies operating there are subject to local laws when doing so.
(In my non-EU country that tweet could be interpreted as a hate crime too, quite uncontroversially)
Well, someone "higher in the power structure" has to decides what your saying is insulting _and_ put in place the means to actually punish you for that.
Speech, like pretty much every other freedom, is restricted by laws. And, we do have a pretty decent level of separation of powers as far as "putting people in jail" is concerned; so, to put you in jail for a long time, the "insult" has to be recognized by lawmaker, judges and governement.
(The situation is more troublesome for "putting you in jail for a few hours after a demonstration". But the forerunner for "repression" on this front at the moment in Europe, is, ironically enough... the UK [1]. So, good for them that they're not under "EU tyranny" anymore, I guess ?)
Europe has a troubled history on this front (we had certain issues for letting certain people "freely" explain why certain religious minorities had to be "dealt" with). So some countries passed some laws barring some discourse about race, slaverly, discrimination, etc... that would be protected by free speech laws in other countries.
(And, contrary to one pervasive piece of "free speech", there is not yet a "global goverment" enacting the same laws everywhere. Go figure.)
As for free speech on social media platform, that's a different topic. But my very personnal opinion to think that "insulting people while protected by putting the blame on twitter" is not a fundamental right.
Open a blog, become a "publisher" under "freedom of the press" laws dating back to the late 1800s. Then, bear the consequences of your speech.
(Neither is twitter's right to earn money from publishing insults while claiming they're not a publisher.) But, just my 2c, and I agree to disagree.
Europe has become pretty bad on free speech recently, and I don't think it can be explained that way. If anything, it gets justified by the fight against nationalism.
It isn't pertinent to the conversation re: europe. Also, it's false, you can be imprisoned for inciting violence (or taking other unlawful action) in the United States. Finally, there isn't a categorical distinction between having speech restricted by a suit brought in civil court vs in criminal court: in both cases my speech is curtailed by law.
I drew the obvious contrast with most of the rest of the world in the parent comment, I have nothing more to say there.
The same is not true in countries without free speech protections.
I'm not convinced. I've seen plenty of (presumably) US citizens complain here that Europe doesn't have free speech, because we have laws to curb hate speech.
Still, we are very much free to discuss and organize against our government.
eu does not have freedom of speech, the have freedom if acceptable speech as defined by the government. go swear at a cop, claim the holocaust wasn't real, say a religious slur, etc. you'll be arrested. source: i've been to every eu country, and lived in several.
your protest examples have nothing to do with free speech.
It's funny, hate speech laws are unconstitutional and could not be passed in the US but such laws are commonplace in Europe. Yet people like to mock the US for saying it's the land of the free.
Freedom of speech is not the same in the rest of the world outside of America. Lots of European countries have hate speech laws in place where you can be convicted of crimes for speaking your mind if it's hateful. The EU has been pressuring large tech companies into self complying https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/28/16380526/eu-hate-speech-l...
But just the other day, there was a huge post with lots of uproar about how Google was flagging apps like mastodon for having no content standards regarding hate speech.
|Don't frame this as a free speech issue. Freedom of speech is as protected in the EU as it is in the US, possibly more.
Short of making a call to violence, I will never hear from an authority about anything I say or post online. The same can't be said for much of Europe. In fact, didn't the EU courts just rule that criticism of Mohamed should be banned?
The tone of your post indicates you have no idea what you are talking about. In Europe hate speech laws are a thing, essentially it is considered a form of libel and/or intimidation. It exists across most of Europe, and has existed for decades.
You may agree or disagree with that kind of (again, fairly common) legal framework, but this has nothing to do specifically with Germany or with 2017. The only news in this article is that until now typically they would act on social media only following complaint, whereas now they are acting as if it were traditional media (i.e. acting once it is published).
Everyone who claims the EU has free speech does not get it. Free speech does not exist in Europe! And for those fools who claim its the same as in the US and argue with hate Speech let me quote Wikipedia for you:
"The United States does not have hate speech laws, since American courts have repeatedly ruled that laws criminalizing hate speech violate the guarantee to freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution."
And this is why the US has the best laws for freedom of expression because hate speech is just a pathetic excuse to ban speech the people in power do not like. Its way to bread and gets abused all the time. That is why the EU has not free speech. You can not claim there is free speech when you at the same time ban everything that is deemed "hate speech" punishable by law!
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