[bigiain]

I partly agree.

It'd also be nice if individuals were held responsible for death threats and rape threats they post on-line.

Facebook are morally corrupt because they aid and abet morally corrupt individuals. Both Facebook and those individuals should be held to account for that.

[jackvalentine]

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!"

[bigiain]

Yeah. Most people shouting "free speech" are fully aware that shouting "Fire! Fire!" in a cinema might be "free speech" but is certainly not free of consequences.

I'm pretty sure "the usual fools" turn out to be complete hypocrites when it's their girlfriend/sister/mother getting rape threats too...

And there's no "1st Amendment to the US constitution" right to "free speech" in most of the world. If your Nazi hate speech ends up in Germany, both you and Facebook will be held to account for that no matter how many Ayn Rand books you've read or how dedicated to ethics in video game journalism you are.

[jackvalentine]

As much as the mainstream on here/reddit is afraid of Europe 'breaking' the internet I'm kinda excited. The interesting stuff will remain underground/out of the mainstream and these 'scale monsters' in US social media might not be able to operate in the way they have been pushing all the negative externalities on to society even if we don't use them.

For those of us outside the U.S. that don't subscribe to their view on free speech... it's not a negative.