[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.