[coldtea]

The planet were "critiques of western political leaders" are increasingly stiffled, and governments and "independent" third parties and "fact checkers" (funded and working with said governments) dictate what's allowed to say and what's "disinformation".

[lm28469]

Yet here you are, criticising them with absolutely 0 fear of any kind of repercussion, and you could be 100 times harsher and still expect nothing wrong happening

[coldtea]

>Yet here you are, criticising them with absolutely 0 fear of any kind of repercussion, and you could be 100 times harsher and still expect nothing wrong happening

How benevolent! Zero fear as a person with insignificant reach and following, commenting on a tech forum (and under a nickname). What a feat!

Try having 0 fear as a journalist doing your job. Or as a whistleblower. Or as a content creator.

Even mere regular people expressing counter to the party line views in major issues on social media are fired, censored, harassed by the police, "fact checked" into social media bans, increasingly the target of new related laws (recent examples from UK, France), and so on.

Heck, just a couple of weeks ago students supporting Palestine in US universities were doxxed, threatened, and had a coordinated effort to render them "unhireable".

[andsoitis]

> Try having 0 fear as a journalist doing your job. Or as a whistleblower. Or as a content creator.

Journalists, whistleblowers, and content creators in the west are living in fear of governments targeting them for saying things the government doesn't like?

[raxxorraxor]

Yes, they do and Thierry Breton is on the frontline in this fight. He proposed legislation that would have endangered free journalism and protection of their sources aside from the fight for editorial control of social media. And he did that multiple times, every time to protect particular interests that fool people that have diffuse fears about social media.

[lm28469]

I think you don't understand how china operates. You conflate so many things at once, most of these aren't governmental censorship. Companies firing people, advertiser dropping influencers, being fact checked, &c. has nothing to do with the government

Do you know what censorship is ? Do you know how china enforce censorship ? and at what scale ? If so you can't say in good faith that EU = China.

[coldtea]

>I think you don't understand how china operates. You conflate so many things at once, most of these aren't governmental censorship.

A lot of these is outsourced governmental censorship.

And all of these support a single narrative, in lock-step about all kinds of issues.

>Companies firing people, advertiser dropping influencers, being fact checked, &c. has nothing to do with the government

Yeah, just happens to coincide with domestic and foreign policy agendas and narratives the government pushes, and government affiliated/sponsored overt or covert "fact checkers" and "independent bodies", all the way to direct orders from the government. Read on "The Twitter Files: The Censorship Industrial Complex".

The private sector companie don't have to be told what to do: they just see where the wind goes and act accordingly. Nobody was fired for being pro-narrative or for firing anti-narrative people. But increasingly they are also told what to do, threatened with related ("disinformation") or unrelated (taxes and such) violations, and such.

>Do you know what censorship is ? Do you know how china enforce censorship ? and at what scale ? If so you can't say in good faith that EU = China.

No, but I can say that I give very few fucks in what China does, but as a person in the EU I give many fucks what the EU does, and how the public discourse is getting increasingly less open than in past decades.

(I wouldn't give much fucks about what the US does internally either, but unfortunately, unlike China, they also export it)

[lm28469]

You're free to think whatever you want, just don't expect people to swallow the "EU = literal China" without commenting, especially if you admit of not knowing much about half of your statement. I have yet to see an argument being strengthened by the "it's literally china", "it's literally hitler", &c. techniques

[coldtea]

>You're free to think whatever you want, just don't expect people to swallow the "EU = literal China"

Note how nowhere in this thread I said "EU = literal China" or anything to that effect.

[ethanbond]

Matt Taibbi on the Twitter Files:

“There's no evidence — that I've seen — of any government involvement in the laptop story."

[coldtea]

Matt Taibbi also on the Twitter Files: thousands of lines, citations, and evidence about goverment directly and covertly asking Big Tech to censor content and people on all kinds of issues, keeping tabs on how that goes, threatening, and so on.

Which is actually pertinent to the discussion, as opposed to Biden's son laptop.

[nindalf]

> Read on "The Twitter Files: The Censorship Industrial Complex".

lol

[coldtea]

Yeah, "lol". It's not like "reputable sources" confirmed it. Like, you know, Saddam's WMDs, or the Steele Dossier, or Biden's laptop being fake news.

[hef19898]

Oh, so we are back to litterally tens of thousands of people at non-approved demonstrations sayong they cannot voice opposition anymore as we had during Covid...

[nindalf]

I would not expect that level of self awareness from Tankies. Such people always existed, and always will. They claim living here is intolerable, and yet they never seem to go and live elsewhere.

[ethanbond]

Yes that’s “no different from China or Russia.” Notorious for putting out public statements in contradiction to other people’s statements!

[coldtea]

Did I say "no different from China or Russia"? (1)

Or are you notorious for making it ad-hominem, and of putting statements in other people's mouths they didn't make?

Yes, I frequently hold opinions "in contradiction to other people’s statements" and state them. I wouldn't do it if I knew that such blatant individuality isn't approved!

Though surely "putting out public statements in contradiction to other people’s statements" is true for any non trivial statement one can make about a subject that has at least two sides: it would be in contradiction with some people's statements, and in agreement with other people's statements.

So, isn't your accusation basically boiling down to: "putting out public statements in contradiction to [your preferred people’s] statements"?

(1) And isn't that a pretty low bar to be happy about?

[ethanbond]

GP, who I replied to, did indeed say exactly that. I asked which planet they’re from and you hopped in to explain.

[coldtea]

Yes, and I explained that we're in a planet were western free speech is increasingly stiffled by the governments and cooperating private sector.

If find it abhorrent, even if it passes the low bar of "not equal to China" (which I find irrelevant). Do you disagree with that?

[ethanbond]

In general I’d like stronger speech protections but I find your approach to be hysterical and counterproductive. For example, I don’t think it’s right to say the government cannot possibly request content moderation action, nor do I think it’s right to say that a private company can’t voluntarily cooperate with such a request.

So your whole hysterical “private companies can’t stand up to this!” is actually adding to the problem by giving the impression they cannot. In reality, they can, they should, and they very often do.

[coldtea]

>For example, I don’t think it’s right to say the government cannot possibly request content moderation action, nor do I think it’s right to say that a private company can’t voluntarily cooperate with such a request.

So much for "stronger free speech protections".

If someone who says they agree with free speech says talking against this is "hysterical", I'd like to see what those against free speech say.