[dependsontheq]

Let's be a bit more honest here, I think the Italian law is badly defined, but I also think the american perspective is wrong.

We (all tech people everywhere me included) argued for a lot of time for free speech on the internet, but the result currently is that we built a system that is free speech for Russian and Chinese bots and actors. In Europe we are under daily attack from Russian accounts that spread massive amounts of desinformation, deep fakes, just emotional appeals with the goal of destroying liberal democracy. The US government is actively trying to support them by fighting against any kind of European rules and spreading their part of desinformation.

This is not about normal politics, Europe is under siege.

[Nextgrid]

> we are under daily attack from Russian accounts

We would go a long way if our communication platforms weren't intentionally amplifying the most controversial voices for the sake of maximizing ad revenue.

Back in the day the Russians needed to spend money to buy influence. Now they can just make their propaganda engaging enough and Western companies will happily host it and promote it for free.

[throw__away7391]

This is the entire problem. This is possibly the single problem in the modern world. When social media first appeared, "feeds" were based on explicit subscription by the users and ordered chronologically. Later "likes" were added, but this was still based on deliberate user behavior and simple deterministic sorting while the ability to "repost" greatly expanded the reach of individual posts, later algorithms were introduced then the number of signals expanded beyond explicit user input to implicit engagement measures. Each step along this path has taken agency away from individuals.

I read articles and comments about people who were fired or suffered other consequences for something they said online, and the responses are righteous indignation--they ought to have known better than to post these things online! How did we get into this fucked up state of affairs? Social media started off as a way to talk to your friends, and over time your friends have been replaced with strangers, what they can say and who gets to say what controlled by centralized authorities, while individuals have been taught to self-censor.

It is not only the US companies or Russian bots, every government in the world is itching to get their thumb on the scale here to have a say in what the people are allowed to see, to hear, and to say.

[xilaraux]

> Now they can just make their propaganda engaging enough and Western companies will happily host it and promote it for free.

Important to distinguish here that all of these companies are not just Western but American.

[ndsipa_pomu]

I'm sure there's examples of non-US media companies pushing ragebait and similar. e.g. from the UK, there's BBC, Telegraph, Daily Mail, local news sites etc.

It's a perverse incentive that in chasing engagement, the ragebait is selected for.

[RuslanL]

Do we have comparable European companies though?

[woooooo]

Isn't that just "culture"? Let the best content win? It used to be that the USA was comfortable competing and winning along these lines.

[furyofantares]

If you tautologically define "best" as "that which wins", sure.

There's many ways for something to be better than another thing, though, and a lot of stuff is winning because it's best at "engagement" even if it's really bad in many other ways.

[JumpCrisscross]

> If you tautologically define "best" as "that which wins", sure

Spot on. By OP’s metric, we should shift all agricultural and pharmaceutical production to heroin.

[woooooo]

I've seen some straw-men in my day but "OP wants to shift all agricultural production to heroin" might be an all-timer.

[Imustaskforhelp]

Yes (sort of), but the definition of best has changed so drastically built on completely different benchmarks (engagement)

As an example, watch a really good documentary on something, I would consider it best

But it might have less views than some AI slop video perhaps even generated in a minute

Another aspect relevant to the propaganda discussion is that I think modern algorithms have decided that ragebait is the best form of engagement and this is why propaganda might spread fast and how social media might actually actively help the foreign nation

I would argue that this is one of the reasons social media actively harms but its that profit over all for social media seems genuinely harmful. We need more focus on bluesky and mastodon and other alternatives as well to establish a network effect there but also that I would argue that prosecuting social media / large tech companies should have such a case where something can be prosecuted criminally for a class law suit case so that these social medias can stay better in shape than being deranged

But the issue to me feels like I am already protesting Italian even fining because in this case to me it feels like abusing the vagueness of the law and other factors so I am sure that if we give govts more power they might have the ability to abuse it as well for some lobbying powers (in this case it seems to be football)

Everything boils down to what the genuine incentives of the govts are I guess. I mean some are trying to do somethings but I guess all of this is just really tricky and the answer is in a series of changes and not a single one. There is nuance to this like every other discussion

[woooooo]

Ok, but are we losers who cannot compete culturally? Where's the faith and confidence? We can't compete with AI slop?

[saubeidl]

Can broccoli compete with heroin? Why don't we offer people both and see what they like better? Let them compete! Give people choice!

[CWuestefeld]

Who gets to decide where to draw the line?

[woooooo]

Setting aside the bad analogy, real people are much more likely to eat broccoli than to do heroin.

[CrzyLngPwd]

Well, we cry "freedom of speech" when Russia/China/adversary shuts our propaganda-pushing media or tools out.

Freedom of speech for me, not for thee, eh?

I don't want my politicians deciding what is good or bad on the internet. I'm an adult, and I can decide for myself.

[pheggs]

Free speech for the individuals is needed, in terms of people should not be punished for what they say. But social media platforms owned by foreign countries is a danger for any democracy. There's a reason the US wants to capture Tiktok, Iran is shutting down the internet, and China has The Great Firewall.

Since the US is turning away from Europe's interests, it's just logical that American platforms will be restricted in one way or another. I don't see any way around it.

[Imustaskforhelp]

There is a big difference between danger for democracy because of these addiction farming Social media platforms with propaganda and something like piracy as well though.

[vouwfietsman]

> I'm an adult, and I can decide for myself.

No you can't, all of this stuff is designed to influence you without you knowing it, or you would not be influenced. This is like thinking advertisements have no effect on you.

People pay good money because they know it is effective, it is influencing you, you cannot decide for yourself.

[lucianbr]

So who gets to decide? Someone who is above influence? Who is that?

There has to be a lot more nuance. I clearly see that both Putin and the CCP do a lot of things predicated on the exact claim that their respective populations can not be left to decide for themselves. "People left free would make bad decisions, we the rulers are morally obligated to force them into a good path". I think this is the ostensible meaning of "freedom is slavery".

[Barrin92]

There has to be nuance yes. But the nuanced position starts with accepting the reality that a ton of people are indeed having their brain turned to goo. Just go outside of the bubble of somewhat tech literate highly educated young people and look at what 60+ year olds consume on Facebook.

There's AI generated content with tens of millions of views that is as fake as ancient aliens on the history channel but nobody seems to realize it. If you comment here there is a high chance you did not grow up among people with 8 years of basic education who haven't read a book in 20 years and believe quite literally everything they see. That is what a decent chunk of any population is like. The biggest blind spot of well-educated internet libertarians who taught themselves how to code at 15 is that they in all likelihood have no concept of how the average citizen navigates the world.

The problem with Putin isn't that he thinks a country needs intelligent and wise leaders, Plato would have told you the same thing. It's where he's steering it that's the issue and that the country's leadership is no more capable at the top than it is at the bottom.

[GoblinSlayer]

Doubtful.

[scrollaway]

> I don't want my politicians deciding what is good or bad on the internet. I'm an adult, and I can decide for myself.

The issue isn't whether politicians are deciding what's good or bad.

The issue is that, in Europe, foreign actors with explicit ill intent are deciding a ton of the content your neighbours are watching/reading, day in day out, on the internet. AI has made this easier and even more scalable than before. This content is being used to influence or outright decide elections. Elections of more politicians that are "deciding what's good or bad", eh. Such as politicians deciding that Russia is good.

What the actual fuck do we do to defend ourselves, pray tell? The whole "let them have critical thinking" doesn't work, we are under active war and citizens who don't know better are specifically targeted. And besides, we are not gonna take lessons from the country that yelled high and mighty for years they're the land of the free, and let itself fall into complete autocracy & dictatorship. In the US, those same citizens are the useful tools repeating state propaganda, two steps removed from "Just Following Orders".

And full context: I agree with Matt and support Cloudflare's stance here. But people can quit it with cheap retorts like "Freedom of speech for me, not for thee". It's not that simple.

[nxm]

into complete autocracy & dictatorship....ummm you mean a democratically elected president & government? Plus these hyperboles don't really resonate anymore as they've been used for every little thing people don't like. It's still a democracy even if you don't like the outcome.

[GoblinSlayer]

>What the actual fuck do we do to defend ourselves, pray tell?

Delete smartphone, logout from abusive SaaS.

[scrollaway]

So, putting your head in the sand and pretending the world doesn't keep turning?

Deleting X (which I've done) doesn't stop Russia from influencing the voterbase of my neighbouring countries. Now what?

[intended]

The current methods of subverting speech involve the opposite of control.

They involve overwhelming the channels.

The play is to influence at m scale, millions of individual choices, just like yours.

Your position is no longer the entirety of the defense we need for free speech online.

[tootie]

What about spam? Spam is absolutely protected free speech. Nobody bats an eye at aggressive censorship of spam. We've had the US Congress pass bills restricting spam. Should we overturn all of that and let the spammers have absolute freedom?

[sambuccid]

But let's be honest, right now it's big tech with their algorithm that's deciding for you. Of course you are still free to find the content you want (unlike what would happen with banning) but most people minds can be influenced by the political view of who owns the platform if they wish to do so.

Maybe a bit of this is already happening (obvious suspect being X) or maybe not, I guess we'll never know for sure, but there is clearly an huge issue here that needs fixing as soon as possible.

[saubeidl]

Because freedom of speech was always a misguided creed at best.

The speech of the manipulator is not the same as the speech of the expert and they shouldn't be given the same treatment, lest you want psychological warfare waged on your nation.

American free speech extremists like these tech CEOs are either willing patsies or useful idiots in the hybrid warfare against Europe.

[lucianbr]

What rules can you possibly have that distinguish the expert and the manipulator in all cases, without abuse?

I think free speech comes from the same base as universal vote: any selection mechanism would be corrupted and in the end cause more harm than good. That is why the solution is to let everyone speak / vote. If you have some uncorruptible people or mechanism for selection, just use that to make policy decisions directly.

I think the solution is to elevate critical thinking in the populations, so people can be less vulnerable to psychological warfare. Otherwise you're just picking a different manipulator - whoever writes or enforces the speech limits.

[saubeidl]

I think the solution is to elect a commission of experts to be deciding this. Term limits. Separate independent institution from the government - no meddling.

Critical thinking even in those capable of it is a limited resource. I can't spend all day every day critically examining every single statement the internet flings at me - it's mentally exhausting and wears one down.

Let's elect proxies to do it for us.

[lucianbr]

Elect by the people at large? People who voted for Trump and such? What's the point in an elected institution separated from the government - the government is already elected, and people will mostly vote for candidates from the same parties in all elections.

Besides, "elect a comission of experts" is a contradiction. Experts are not elected. Expertise is not determined by voting. You want to appoint or select a comission of experts, or elect a comission of politicians. These are the choices. Appointment or selection will be done by someone else, likely politicians too.

You just hope some incorruptible competent people will get there by magic. They will not.

If you could do this, just elect a comission of experts to run the country, instead of this "truth comission" that makes sure people are well informed to vote correctly in elections for the real government, which will in turn run the country. Why do the indirection? There is no reason, if you could "elect" good people, but you can't.

[TylerLives]

And who will watch the watchdogs?

[saubeidl]

The electorate.

[mrec]

> The speech of the manipulator is not the same as the speech of the expert

I don't think that's contentious. The point of free speech is not that all speech is equally valuable or positive. It's that I don't trust you to decide which speech shouldn't be allowed, because that power will 100% be abused, until it's just as pernicious as the "manipulators" it's claiming to defend against.

[duskdozer]

>American free speech extremists like these tech CEOs

well, claim to be free speech extremists at least

[saubeidl]

Indeed. I think with some of the more government-aligned oligarchs it's more of a pretense to enable said information warfare.

[joebe89]

These tech CEOs just want to have to spend as little as possible to maintain their platforms. They don't actually care about freedom of speech beyond that.

[flohofwoe]

> Well, we cry "freedom of speech" when Russia/China/adversary shuts our propaganda-pushing media or tools out.

That "cyring" must have been awfully quiet, I didn't hear anything at least.

[azangru]

I don't know if any of the links below will count as crying; but here are some, from the British media reporting on Russia:

    - BBC, 2018: Russia: Google removes Putin critic's ads from YouTube https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45471519
    - BBC, 2021: How Russia tries to censor Western social media https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-59687496
    - BBC, 2021: Russia slows down Twitter over 'banned content'  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56344304
    - BBC, 2021: Russia threatens YouTube ban for deleting RT channels https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58737433
    - BBC, 2021: Russia threatens to slow down Google over banned content https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57241779
    - Reuters, 2022: Russia blocks access to BBC and Voice of America websites  https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/russia-restricts-access-bbc-russian-service-radio-liberty-ria-2022-03-04/
    - The Guardian, 2022: Russia blocks access to Facebook and Twitter https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/russia-completely-blocks-access-to-facebook-and-twitter
    - BBC, 2022: Russia restricts social media access https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-60533083
    - BBC, 2022: Russia confirms Meta's designation as extremist https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63218095
    - BBC, 2024: Data shows YouTube 'practically blocked' in Russia - https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/b0003111
    - BBC, 2024: Russia's 2024 digital crackdown reshapes social media landscape - https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/b0003arza

[drysine]

"The EU condemns the totally unfounded decision by the Russian authorities to block access to over eighty European media in Russia.

This decision further restricts access to free and independent information and expands the already severe media censorship in Russia. The banned European media work according to journalistic principles and standards. They give factual information, also to Russian audiences, including on Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.

In contrast, the Russian disinformation and propaganda outlets, against which the EU has introduced restrictive measures, do not represent a free and independent media. Their broadcasting activities in the EU have been suspended because these outlets are under the control of the Russian authorities and they are instrumental in supporting the war of aggression against Ukraine.

Respect for the freedom of expression and media is a core value for the EU. It will continue supporting availability of factual information also to audiences in Russia."[0]

Funny, eh?

[0] https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/russia-statement-high-repres...

[bambax]

> I don't want my politicians deciding

The whole concept of democracy is based on this: you elect politicians, they decide. If you don't like that, you don't like democracy. Which is fine, but then you don't get to defend it either as the best system under the sun, etc.

[bmelton]

A lot of people naively interject "But we're not a democracy, we're a Republic!" at arguments where it has no real bearing, but _here_ it does.

We (America) are not a democracy, we're a constitutionally limited republic. Republic is a subset of democracy, but the 'constitutionally limited republic' part is important. We cannot elect politicians to censor the things that we want censored because our republic has not authorized the government to do censorship, and the bill of rights expressly forbids it. They are constitutionally limited from doing so until and unless the constitution is amended.

Until and unless we change the constitution, any efforts to do that are illicit. Popular democracy would allow a majority to vote to bring back slavery, and if you don't like that, you don't like democracy.

[GoblinSlayer]

It's not obvious that democracy implies autocracy.

[kamma4434]

That would be a political perspective. But what we are discussing now is some very rich football clubs who have a right to filter anything on the internet because they say so.

[user____name]

This kind of "epistemic collapse" via propaganda is an established method of subverting nation states, Russia has been doing it for decades.

Democracy relies on having a reasobaly well informed population. The problem today is that it takes ten times more effort to refute bullshit than to spread it. Information hygiene is becoming a very big problem in this anything-goes social media environment.

Traditional mass media had journalistic norms and standards, nowadays anyone can claim anything with no quality control.

It's the same age old story: there simply is no substitute for good governance, Italy doesn't have it and hasn't had it for decades, and "freedom of speech absolutists" wouldn't know what it looks like in the first place.

[babarock]

I think this is moving the goal post. Cloudflare isn't challenging the need to restrict access to some websites, it is challenging who has the right to decide. Quoting the tweet:

> We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders. But they must do so following the Rule of Law and principles of Due Process.

I live in Italy, I'm a citizen. I don't feel any safer having the internet regulated by a bunch of bureaucrats than I do state actors and bots.

[bambax]

Bureaucrats are a problem, but they're eventually accountable to the people. Companies are accountable to shareholders located in another country, who don't give a damn about whatever so long as the money keeps coming. I choose bureaucrats against businessmen anytime.

[Imustaskforhelp]

I am not on any social media so I don't even know what the propaganda is that you are talking about but there are ways to really filter out youtube in such a way (by following unbiased media houses) and I haven't seen much propaganda on youtube (I think)

> This is not about normal politics, Europe is under siege.

I am not European but this seems such an dangerous precedent to set upon. You mention destroying liberal democracy but also the fact that Europe is under siege makes people think of providing war time resolutions to Countries even for small details (and Mind you this ban itself has nothing to do with russia that much, its just the amount of influence football has in italy)

To me it feels as if by saying Europe's under siege, it gives more war time resolutions or justificiations for unmoral behaviour. In fact that's what happened right now. This also actively undermines democracy and one can clearly see how.

I understand your comment's in good faith and I appreciate it but I am just not even sure how this move of fining Cloudflare for not being in line for their censorship is related to this other instance.

[Saline9515]

Russian bots and subversive propaganda in general take hold when the quality and diversity of the media decreases, which leads citizens to listen to alternative narratives.

The tipping point happened during covid - the authorities were so synced up with the media, and the online censorship became so prevalent that the official narrative felt deeply off, coordinated, and often contradictory. There was no debate in the EU, we had to lock down all of the countries, with no alternative (for instance, protect old people but let younger ones live their lives) possible.

Given how Orwellian and borderline crazy average media discourse had become, especially after the vaccine was out, I saw many people start looking elsewhere. My mother was one of them. She had consumed mostly state media her whole life. As she realized how stupid the narrative had become (state media was discussing if it was ok to sell socks in shops, or if doctors should examine unvaccinated customers), she and others like her turned to online media promoting fringe and radical theories.

Now, the European bureaucrats, having not learnt their lesson, want to double down and further restrict freedom of speech. The problem is that as long as the local media just repeats the official party line, which often strays away from reality, russian content farms will get new eyeballs.

[fc417fc802]

How is Cloudflare refusing to comply with DNS censorship even remotely related to propaganda campaigns conducted by the geopolitical opponent of your personal choosing?

Not only does it seem like you've gone off topic to push a personal agenda, you're presenting a false dichotomy. We could (if we wanted to) wall our networks off along national boundaries while still preserving freedom of speech within our enclave. I don't think that would be a good idea nor do I think the execution of such an initiative would be likely to go smoothly but the example serves to illustrate that there's a huge potential solution space.

Personally what I don't understand is why Cloudflare didn't stop offering access to 1.1.1.1 from Italian addresses. At the end of the day picking a direct fight with the government of a jurisdiction you operate in seems extremely unwise. I fail to see the upside for them here.

Actually assuming they don't intentionally operate 1.1.1.1 from within Italy how is it CF's problem if Italians access it? Shouldn't this be on the Italian telecoms to filter traffic to this dastardly "illegal" foreign resolver?

[Karuhanga]

I think the upside is drawing a line in the sand now before they tighten requests any further and (maybe) not losing the revenue from some genuinely illegal pirating services that use them.

[mattmaroon]

The problem with this argument, and why free speech absolutism is the only stance that makes sense, is that someone always has a good reason why you need to throw the bathwater out right now, baby be dammed.

The end result is worse than the disinformation.

[tootie]

Free speech absolutism is not necessary at all. We can be thoughtful about it. Think about the American criminal justice system and the criminal culpability standard of "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt". We have the concept of being "reasonable" at the core of our justice system for centuries and it works far more often than it fails. And certainly no one has come up with anything better.

I'm also reminded of the last time Matthew Prince was locked in the horns of a free speech issue when there was outcry for Cloudflare to stop platforming Daily Stormer and Kiwi Farms. Sites that were claiming their free speech rights to not only spread hate, but to doxx and threaten and, by extension, chill the speech of people they disliked. Hence, free speech is not unlimited. Some speech restricts the speech of others. And then it is very much the responsibility of regulators to step in and make a judgment.

[ako]

How do you know the end result is worse than disinformation? If the Russian disinformation allow Russia to destroy the freedom and democracy in Europe, and allow Russia to take over, that seems to me to much worse than limiting the publication of lies and slander.

[mattmaroon]

Because whoever gets to determine what lies and slander are become your new dictators.

If the problem is Russian bots, there’s a much easier way to solve it: make Facebook and the platforms that allow them to spread financially liable.

You’re unironically arguing that giving up your freedom is a protection against losing your freedom.

[saubeidl]

Hear me out, but: You can elect a commission of experts to be deciding this. Term limits. Separate independent institution from the government.

That's not a dictator. You're just grasping for hyperbole to prop up an ideological point.

[mattmaroon]

It’s called a jury. We have those. They’re the commission that determines if something is slander.

[saubeidl]

Something doesn't need to be slander to be information warfare. We need something much larger scale and more powerful to fight back the hybrid warfare from Russia and increasingly also the US.

[ako]

Freedom is a scale, not binary. I'm willing to move a bit on that scale to avoid going completely to one of the opposites. I completely disagree with your suggestion that if you don't have complete freedom, you're at the complete opposite end, I.e. zero freedom.

[ThinkBeat]

The west have had various forms for this since before the internet, and certainly have huge efforts similar to what you list above, but have in general been far more productive than bots from the other side.

[abc123abc123]

WTF? How are you attacked by russian accounts? This childish notion of thinking that only "true" thoughts are allowed under free speech, and the rest must be eradicated needs to die.

If you don't like the risk of russian accounts, don't follow them, and follow accounts that you like. It's as easy as that.

You have news, government news sites, journalists, newspapers, it's never been easier to find sources to trust and compare them against each other.

Screaming murder because Sergei6778 says that Ukraine is evil is just stupid. Take responsibility for your own reading and mind, and stop using the law as a hamfisted tool to stop free speech. Take the bad with the good, or else there won't be any good left in the future.

[vladvasiliu]

While I agree with your sentiment, it's more and more clear to me that reality doesn't reflect it. Many people are extremely easily influenced by easy to digest soundbites.

I'm often baffled by the level of superficial and binary thinking even in "intellectuals" (as in people who hold degrees and you'd expect to have at least a modicum of critical thinking). More often than not it seems based on emotions.

Now have these people spend most of their waking hours doomscrolling some echo chamber on tiktok, and I can see why some may be worried about the influence of some "bad actor".

Given this, and the highly polarized political scene (and I'm in Europe!), I have to say I'm quite worried as to how things will unfold. Hell, there's no need for Sergei and his friends! Just the local politicians' popularity contest is enough.

[robinkek]

We don't have freedom of speech for its own sake because of some inherent good. We have it because it's a useful tool to get other peoples perspectives and allows us come to more realistic conclusions where most feel included. People paid by the chinese or russian government are in complete opposition to that spirit.

[bluescrn]

Note that it's always a claim of Russian (or maybe Chinese) propaganda. Never middle-eastern propaganda.

The level of radicalisation over Israel/Gaza really doesn't look organic, when compared to the reaction to other conflicts.

[saubeidl]

I don't like the risk of the mouth-breather next door reading Russian propaganda, it's not myself I'm concerned about.

In a democracy, most people are unfortunately stupid and easily manipulable. We can't let the Russians (or the Americans!) use them as their proxy.

[drysine]

So you want to censor what other people read? I don't think your neighbor would appreciate such patronizing attitude.

[saubeidl]

I don't appreciate my neighbors letting themselves be manipulated to do me harm. I think it's time we do something about it.

[drysine]

How are they doing you harm?

[saubeidl]

Mostly by voting in extremists that destroy the institutions that we built and offer us as a prize to their foreign masters.

[Sabinus]

I don't want them unknowingly consuming foreign propaganda campaign content and maximally politically divisive conversation. Having spaces where identities are confirmed is really important for honest and open debate. Screaming at each other in Reddit and Facebook comments amongst society-fracturing influence campaigns isn't free speech. And if someone wants to leave the identity confirmed space and go yell in the anonymous sea of voices they can but we need other options.

[drysine]

>I don't want them unknowingly consuming foreign propaganda campaign content and maximally politically divisive conversation.

Good point.

That's what Putin's "foreign agents" law addresses.

The law is much criticized by Western media and "NGOs" for some reason.

As a matter of fact, it marginalizes any recipient of foreign money even if they do something genuinely good for Russian people, but I doubt it is why the West doesn't like this law.

[rayiner]

Europeans have compromised “democracy” in an effort to protect “liberal.” And that will unravel the whole thing.

[torpid]

If you cannot tolerate “Russian bots” or “Chinese bots,” then you do not truly stand for free speech. It really is that simple. Free speech, by definition, exists to protect speech that someone finds offensive or objectionable. If everyone only said things that others agreed with, there would be no need for free speech protections at all. In a genuine marketplace of ideas, it is astonishing that anyone would claim the right to censor others, or to strip them of their humanity by dismissing them as mere robots or agents rather than people with sincere views.

Yet we are increasingly binding ourselves (and even “authorized” bots) in chains of verified identity, deliberately suppressing anonymity. Imposing a “zero-trust” architecture on society inevitably leads to totalitarianism.

The right to express ideas without personal attribution has always been a cornerstone of free speech and a free society. It is now being redefined and demonized as mere “bot activity.” While real bots certainly exist (as they have since the days of spam) many accounts labeled as bots are simply human beings who choose anonymity because they hold controversial opinions they do not wish to have traced back to them.

Companies like Cloudflare are among the leaders in this shift by building frameworks ostensibly to monetize AI bot traffic. The consequence, however, is the effective end of online anonymity. When anonymity is forbidden, freedom itself disappears.

[kevin061]

I see lots of disagreements here, but I must say I also soured on free speech. I used to think that free speech was necessary and overall a positive for society. Then I saw the Capitol attack in US. The disinformation spread in England about kids stabbed that led to riots. I see disinformation every day, especially from USA, saying Europe has no freedom, that it's overrun with criminals, and people not only believe it, but vote accordingly. This has to stop. Humans weren't trained to use rationality and reasoning every second of their life. Reason costs a lot of cognitive power so the brain implements a hundred shortcuts. For example: if you see something appear frequently, you assume it to be true. This is good for avoiding poisonous plants, but it's terrible when you go in Twitter and you're spammed with the same lies day and night. It's messing with us. Enough is enough. Free speech with guardrails.

You should be able to insult and criticise the Prime Minister.

You should not be able to gain a position of power and then go on a crowded stage to claim that vaccines cause autism. This is intolerable. We are attacking the foundations of society. People are not rational actors. Not you, and not me. We are very simple animals.

[vladvasiliu]

I agree that people clearly don't use critical thinking 100% of the time and are easily influenced.

But you're basically arguing for not criticizing the status quo.

Many social improvements have been attained by "attacking the foundations of society". How would you like living under some absolute monarchy? How do you think gay people would like to live in a church-run society like 500 years ago?

[tankenmate]

"But you're basically arguing for not criticizing the status quo.", but that wasn't what was argued ("You should be able to insult and criticise the Prime Minister."), but more your interpretation of what was said. You're making a strawman argument.

[vladvasiliu]

Well, the PM isn't exactly the status quo, I wasn't replying to that. Rather, I was responding to this specific bit, emphasis mine:

> You should not be able to gain a position of power and then go on a crowded stage to claim that vaccines cause autism. This is intolerable. We are attacking the foundations of society.

Not sure when the strawman is. "The foundations of society", for me, means "the way things are". Which can be vaccines, sure, or any kind of general policy which has been showed to have a positive effect on society, but it can also be all kinds of things taken for granted which aren't necessarily rooted in reason.

[Imustaskforhelp]

To be really honest, I share a similar stance to you overall but I would still admit that there is some partial truth to it

I would like to expand this not only to foreign state actors that people mention but also companies inside which are actively trying to do nefarious stuff

As an example, Tobacco industry knew that the damages were there but they still tried to spur up medical confusion around it all so that people would still think that medical discussion is going on when it was 100% clear that tobacco harms. Who knows how many people died

The man who discovered that washing hands saved lives was so ridiculed and I think met with hostility because doctors couldn't comprehend the idea that it was they would could spread diseases. This is decades before germ theory was invented

His name is Ignaz Semmelweis and the world was unjust to him. Doctors ridiculed and threatend him and he was labelled obsessive and doctors called it mere coincidence. His career crumbled as he was forced out of vienna/his hospital and his mental health deteriorated as his warnings were ignored

in 1865 Semmelwise was commited to an asylum where he died just two weeks later at age 47

Only after pasteur developed germ theory and lester pioneered antisceptic surgery, semmelwise was finally vindicated.

This simple practise of handwashing is now considered the most basic medical standard worldwide saving countless millions of lives in the process.

(I had to write it by hand here basically transcribing this really amazing video that I watched about such a topic, I would highly suggest watching it)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBCOh1SYQYA (crazy people who were proven right)

Semmelwise's stories can brings chills to spine.

[techblueberry]

Yeah, I want to be more supportive of free speech, but I don’t think anyone is doing a great job of representing how to do it in the social media age. FIRE does a terrible job of it with mostly platitudes with no nuance.

But one maybe counterintuitive reason I don’t like free speech absolutism in the social media era — one of the platitude’s of FIRE is like, “the answer to hate speech is more speech” and “I want to know who the racist are so I can avoid them.”

1. The answer to nothin in this firehouse of speech in modern society is “more speech”.

2. Part of the peace we used to have in society is I didn’t have to know about everyone’s political opinions. Loosely speaking maybe I thought small-town folk were close minded, but there weren’t tens of thousands of examples of it across feeds on the internet all day.

[ricardobeat]

Those are not matters of freedom of speech, but the unhealthy amount of power social media platforms have come to possess. The problem is how they amplify and distribute disinformation because engagement = advertising money. Free speech does not (and should not) mean you get worldwide reach.

Any platform distributing 'content' over a certain audience size should be treated as a media company and subject to much stricter rules and some kind of ethical oversight - like newspapers used to.

[kevin061]

I can agree with that.

Unlimited free speech could have been positive maybe 100 years ago. Strikes, protest, writing angry letters to your Mayor demanding change are all great forms of speech.

Posting some unhinged xenophobic conspiracy theory on Twitter for everyone to see and to get retweeted by the President of the US or the most powerful CEOs are toxic and corrosive forms of speech.

[Ikatza]

Freedom of speech is binary, there aren't any acceptable degrees of it: either you have it, or you don't.

If there is disinformation, the solution is to counter it with actual information, to give the people better tools to identify it (like X's community notes), and to educate the general population so they will have better critical thinking.

Restricting freedom of speech is never a solution. How long until dissenting opinions are censored because somebody labels them "disinformation"? Who watches the watchmen? etc.

I'd rather live in a society with full freedom of speech and disinformation from State actors than have only 100% accurately vetted news.

[lostlogin]

> Freedom of speech is binary, there aren't any acceptable degrees of it: either you have it, or you don't.

That seems to be the American definition.

We don’t all have binary systems for our views and politics, and some of our democracies are doing better than than US despite our apparent lack of free speech.

[jnovek]

It’s not even the American definition. We have many exceptions, particularly using speech to cause violence or physical harm in various ways. I’m also confused by American free speech absolutists because that’s not a thing here and essentially never has been.

Of course this is all hypothetical at the moment, as the current administration doesn’t seem to care much for the law.

[Karuhanga]

Community notes typically kicks in after the tweet has already gone insanely viral. It’s not useless, but I wonder about its effectiveness.

I see your point about free speech but I think it has to be more nuanced. For example, where has continuing stupid anti vaxer debate left the Americans?

[pfdietz]

So, how do you feel about libel and slander laws? Don't they torpedo your binary framing there?

[thefounder]

>> If there is disinformation, the solution is to counter it with actual information

So what you argue is that we should build good bots to counter the bad bots right? and all this in a "secret" to avoid suspension by the tech companies. This looks like playing stupid games.

The disinformation in this era can basically shadow any kind of legitimate "counter-disinformation". To make the game fair we would first need lockdown the internet content on citizen ID authorization so that we can identify if the free speach spread is actually published by a real person or some chinese bot pretending to be a single European mom with 3 kids.

This is not something anyone wants so I think the current trade off of court orders to take down content is legitimate and the best approach. Cloudflare, the tech companies and US government likes the absolute free speech like everything else (i.e. free market) as long as it serves their interests. I wouldn't be surprised to see Cloudflare proudly repelling some "chinese propaganda attacks" and frame it like a cyber security win instead of anti-free speech action.

[budududuroiu]

> In Europe we are under daily attack from Russian accounts that spread massive amounts of desinformation, deep fakes, just emotional appeals with the goal of destroying liberal democracy.

The disinformation campaigns have always been there, the reason they're growing roots in the mind of the average European is because the EU is spending it's razor thon political capital on things Chat Control, Digital Omnibus which are wildly unpopular.

Isn't it a bit ironic that in order to protect "liberal democracy" you need to reach out for authoritarian suppression?

[dependsontheq]

Yes we need to restrict the freedom of non citizens to influence our debates. And we need to have rules how digital platforms can influence our internal debates, we had this rules for TV and newspapers. That's not suppression thats's defense.

[budududuroiu]

How do you restrict the freedom of non-citizens without restricting the freedom of citizens too?

My parents and grandparents didn't fight against the Romanian authoritarian regime for reading of confidential communications to come back under a EU banner instead.

The EU is more of a threat to itself than Russia is, the only reason the "Russian propaganda" has teeth is because the current bureaucrat class in the EU Council have outlived their Mandate of Heaven

[whilenot-dev]

For me, it's a matter of authenticity at scale...

Let's assume I want every citizen to navigate the web freely while fighting propaganda machines as much as possible, so that means I want an automated system that creates the set difference between these two in real-time, as reliable as possible. To create such a system, and since there shouldn't be any overlap in these two sets, I can effectively put my efforts in half if I put my work in the detection of one such set.

The scaling problem, as I see it here, arises from the following: While the set of individual citizens (kind of) has an upper limit, represented by the number of internet users worldwide, the botnet nodes in propaganda machines do not. I can limit the set further, for example if I want to focus on the citizens that are part of my government only, whereas propaganda machines can come from anywhere on the globe. Internet users already need to provide a proof on authentication for quite a lot of services, while botnets generally want to avoid being identified as such.

While I'm far from in favor of Chat Control, I can somewhat understand why these initiatives are in motion at all.

> The EU is more of a threat to itself than Russia is

To put it mildly, this conclusion is non-sequitur at best.

[tankenmate]

"The EU is more of a threat to itself than Russia is"; it can be easily argued that this is only the case if democracy has little value because in Russia democracy does indeed have little value (let alone life, etc).

"Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time"

So the EU and the EC are big lumbering organisation that make poor decisions; but then people make poor decisions day in day out. But just because you *feel* disaffected doesn't mean the system is inherently wrong (unless of course you believe that politics' primary, if not only, purpose is to make you "feel good(tm)").

It's probably far more accurate to say that wealth inequality is the EU's biggest threat and that "the elites" (which is more than just senior politicians and bureaucrats) don't feel the pain of inequality and so aren't internally motivated to do much about it (culture eats strategy for breakfast, etc etc).

[StrauXX]

The average person in Europe does neither care about chat control, nor have they heared more about tgan one or two surface-level news articles. Russian propaganda being more and more effective and these actions are not related.

[budududuroiu]

Russian propaganda is effective because the EU leadership has dropped the ball so hard that the Kremlin looks attractive. People aren't as stupid as you think

[762236]

That isn't a Russian. It is me, an American. It is convenient for you to dismiss my arguments as Russian so that you can ignore their validity. The same thing happens in the US: people dismiss arguments by saying they are right wing (i.e., from Republicans)

[raxxorraxor]

To be honest, I think this argument is FUD as well. There are some Russian accounts and there is disinformation, but this isn't the core of polarization in western democracies and Europe in particualr. And reigning in free speech is even poison in this situation, which is more complex than pointing your finger at bots.

In Europe freedom of speech is under threat from its own population, which is more and more driven by fear. This fear might not be unreasonable and has multiple sources, but it remains a bad basis for decision or policy making.

[arrosenberg]

The fear is being heavily stoked by agitprop on social media.

[bambax]

Not just Russia and China. Musk does Nazi salutes and Grok promotes pedophilia. Trump invades countries and talks about taking over Greenland, which is part of Europe. The US are no less of a threat than Russia.

Contrary to widespread belief, Europe has the means to fight those threats. It just chooses not to, for reasons I don't understand.

[randomNumber7]

Most europeans are completely delusional.

Look at germany for example (where I'm from). Shutting down nuclear power plants and coal at the same time.

More than 50% of people here still tell you this is necessary to save the planet - even though what we save is so little globally, that it does nothing relevant to stop global warming.

[qcnguy]

Interesting how now the list has expanded to include Chinese "bots" and "actors". Calling anyone who disagrees with your political beliefs a foreigner is an old and extremely paranoid, nasty rhetorical trick. Very similar to the people who call everything they dislike racism.

The polls don't lie and they show that there are hundreds of millions of people all over the west who just flatly disagree with your whole ideology. The unity you imagine would exist if not for shadow accounts doesn't exist, and it's delusional to believe it does.

No no. Just accept that you're a totalitarian dictator at heart, embrace the warmth of just being evil publicly, without pretense or obfuscation. "Silence the opposition!" you cry.