[pms]

It's a waste of resources, but please do it! The entire "European Union censors" narrative is a hoax [1], so the portal will achieve nothing, but you've got to do what you've got to do!

[1] First, the EU countries have much higher World Press Freedom Index than the US. Second, once you start reading how little there is of the alleged "censorship" in the EU, you realize it's a no-brainer aiming to protect people.

[jbstack]

As someone living in an EU state who has to regularly turn my VPN on and off to have full internet access, I can't agree with you that it's a "hoax". It's inconvenient enough for me that I'm looking into having a custom router that will switch between VPN destinations depending on what site I'm accessing.

Also "EU countries have higher press freedom than the US" is a strawman argument. We're not talking about press freedom. It's also an example of the fallacy of relative privation ("X isn't bad, because Y is worse than X"). It's like saying "It's a hoax that the US executes some prisoners, because Iran executes even more".

[pms]

I really hope they go ahead and create the portal. I mean it.

[flohofwoe]

> who has to regularly turn my VPN on and off to have full internet access,

Is this because the EU or your country has blocked access, or some news site from the US blocking access from the EU because they don't want to deal with GDPR?

[notrealyme123]

DCMA. United states censoring all around the world. So please host a VPN to get around that.

[ronsor]

I don't think high seas sites hosted in off-shore jurisdictions particularly care about the DMCA...

[878654Tom]

Most access blocking is through ISP DNS servers. Just set your DNS to an open one, no need for a VPN.

[nolok]

Which country ?

[jbstack]

Italy. Examples of sites I can't access without VPN: torrent sites (including legal uses), betfair.com (which I use as a more accurate political predictor than polls), and various non-EU sites which block access because they've decided it's easier than complying with extra-territorial requirements imposed by the EU (this one isn't direct EU censorship, but it amounts to the same thing indirectly.

Sometimes I set my VPN destination to the UK (my country of origin) to get around these. Then I find that I have other problems. For example, certain Reddit posts are unavailable to me because someone has posted a comment that some algorithm has decided is NSFW (and therefore triggers age verification under the UK Online Safety Act 2023).

The result is that I have to turn my VPN on and off depending on what I'm trying to do.

[amarcheschi]

Italian here. I can access most of the torrent sites and betfair.it (which I guess is the localized version) without vpn

I might have changed my dns in the past

[asgerhb]

I'm unfamiliar with Italian piracy laws and surveillance but I can tell you that accessing torrent sites for me was a simple matter of choosing a proper DNS provider.

[intended]

This is a definition of censorship that seems to equate restrictions to any website or data stream as freedom, not whether the content of the site breaks local laws. This is a bit extreme, since most countries have laws against gambling, and if you could get around it by just setting up servers abroad, what value are local laws?

[jbstack]

I'm not sure I see any practical difference between a government saying "we will block website X because we don't like it" and "we will block website X because we say that website X is illegal". For example if Iran blocks a website which is critical of the regime, do you consider it important whether such criticisms are against the law or not in Iran? I think most people would consider it censorship either way.

If you want to make gambling illegal, then make gambling illegal and then enforce that law. You don't need to resort to indirect measures that go beyond the law (e.g. by preventing me from merely viewing the odds on a gambling website).

[intended]

Gambling of a certain type is illegal in India but the workaround has been to place ads from sites based outside of India.

How would you solve this.

[kybernetyk]

>what value are local laws

local laws are local and not global. otherwise we could start obeying Iran's or North Korea's laws just to be safe of not breaching any local laws.

[eunos]

"Your law enforcement is censorship, while my censorship is law enforcement "

Got it

[esterna]

I also live in the EU. betfair.com is not blocked by my ISP here. Rather, they are blocking my ISP ("[...] you may be accessing the Betfair website from a country that Betfair does not accept bets from [...]"). That the website not only prevents betting but also does not show any odds is a technical decision on their part. Gambling regulation is also usually domestic, and not EU law.

Websites deciding EU users are not valuable enough to comply with GDPR is, as you say, also not censorship. It is again the technical decision of some website owners to provide their content only in conjunction with illegal processing of your data.

I have not had issues accessing torrent indices from the EU. This too is usually handled domestically and has little to do with the EU.

There is legitimately dangerous (current and upcoming) EU legislation (Chat Control, eIDAS, age verification, previously the Data Retention Directive), so I don't think it necessary to weaken your argument by listing non-examples.

[jahller]

yeah, i'm calling bullshit. unless this person tries to surf the russian web or get behind the great firewall of china.

[jbstack]

See my sibling comment to yours. I have no reason to lie.

[RealityVoid]

What content are you missing? Off the top of my head, the type of content most likely to ve missing in Europe would be:

- geofenced media

- commercial sites intentionally removing eu access because of gdpr.

That's it. Those are the only cases where I could not access sites from tbe EU. At least the ones I encountered.

And do notice, both of them are not filtered by the EU or anything like this. They are enforced at the publishing website. Would you call this censorship? It kind of feels like a stretch. If not a deliberate contortion of truth.

[aarroyoc]

In Spain many parts of the Internet are shut down when there's a LaLiga match to "prevent piracy". They usually block Cloudflare as a whole but also Vercel, GitHub,... had issues. For example last Sunday I couldn't access some of the stories submitted here. I could also not access the documentation of hledger, a FOSS contability tool.

[intended]

Piracy would be IP protection, not censorship / stopping dissidents/ controlling ideas. Plus this wouldn’t be an EU wide policy.

[_heimdall]

Blocking huge swaths of the internet skips right past IP protection in my opinion.

[roenxi]

No, it is censorship. IP protection would be punishing the pirates after they do something illegal. I think what you're sensing is that it is censorship in support of intellectual property rather than censorship aiming at political repression.

There's something similar in RealityVoid's comment where it is identified that EU law promotes censorship, but that is discounted because the understanding is it in aid of privacy rather than politically motivated. Although given Europe's rich history of sliding into authoritarianism that does seem like an optimistic take on where the European elite are heading. A part of political censorship is making it hard for people to realise that popular political viewpoints are being censored and providing cover by claiming the censorship is for some good cause would be pretty routine.

[addandsubtract]

Germany has an "Index" of banned media. Mostly nazi content, so if you're looking for that, freedom.org will be _right_ place for that.

[kybernetyk]

Ah yes, the nazis. So yeah, censorship is great then because nazis. Is HN becoming reddit?

[jbstack]

See my reply on the other sub-comment. There's no need to accuse me of deliberately contorting the truth. We can keep the discussion civilised. And yes, I would call at least the second point (GDPR) indirect censorship, because it's a consequence of the fact that the EU has imposed the requirements extra-territorially ("your website must comply with our rules even though you aren't within our jurisdiction, and your website is fully legal within your jurisdiction").

[latexr]

The GDPR does not dictate what websites can say, it dictates rules for handling collected personal information. Those are not the same thing, it’s not censorship.

[selfmodruntime]

Notice how you went from "censorship is a hoax" to "not having access to these things is not important", while also implicitely assuming control of deciding the matter.

[littlestymaar]

> EU state who has to regularly turn my VPN on and off to have full internet access

Because you really think this “portal” is going to let you access websites diffusing copyrighted content?

That's by far the most prevalent kind of blocking and I don't think the current admin is against that at all, they just want to to promote Nazi speech (which is barely blocked in the first place).

I wonder what they'll do about pedophile stuff though.

[Argonaut998]

Press freedom !== entirety of freedom of speech

European politicians are calling every day to censor social media. People are arrested regularly for social media posts.

Censorship is absolutely an issue in Europe and it’s only getting worse. I welcome such an attitude as this.

[danlitt]

The US's low press freedom index is precisely because people are being legally intimidated for wrongthink. It is not limited to the press, either. Mahmoud Khalil (the Palestinian activist detained by ICE on fake immigration charges for his political speech) is a famous example, but there are many.

The US's "commitment to free speech" is nowadays not very much more noble than Russia's principled stand against economic sanctions.

[suddenlybananas]

Plenty of people in the UK are arrested for wrongthink. You might think that's justified (e.g. because it is hateful) but it is still arresting someone for speech.

[danlitt]

I didn't say that they weren't. Hundreds of people were arrested for opposing the proscription of Palestine Action. The UK's defence of free expression is not great.

What I did say is that the US's position is not as a defender of free speech either (and as Russia is not a defender of free trade). They have particular speech they like to promote (the KKK, stormfront) and particular speech they like to suppress (criticism of war crimes, books about being trans). Draw whatever conclusions you like from that.

[youngtaff]

Arrested for incitement not wrong think… if they had done the same thing in the street and there was evidence they would have been arrested too

[suddenlybananas]

Well, there was a labour councillor who said people should have their throats slit on camera in the street, and he was let off.

[MiiMe19]

If this is a real take you need to rethink your view on the world.

[danlitt]

Got anything substantive to say?

[k3vinw]

False equivalency. As a green card holder he does not share the same freedom of speech rights as that of a US citizen.

[danlitt]

Do I need to point out that the OP describes a US commitment to the free speech of Europeans?

[21asdffdsa12]

The worst part is that its "outsourced" to private organizations and NGOs - and thus the state claims its "not state driven" censorship. They want social stability- but have no grasp of the concept of that stability being only a leaky abstraction for situational stability. You can not claim the world is peaceful and utopia is at hand, sitting in a ski chalet in the alps- while the whole mountain slowly comes down with that house on it. Reality cant be reasoned away, the rain will fall, no matter how much laws there are against it.

[kosinus]

There are so so many reasons to get arrested for social media posts that have nothing to do with censorship.

[Argonaut998]

Be that as it may, people are being arrested for expressing wrong think

[bargainbin]

No, people are being arrested for making malicious communications. They would have suffered the same punishment if they had used email, letter, graffiti on a billboard.

You cannot go around threatening to harm people without repercussions.

[Gareth321]

"Malicious communications" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. This veteran was arrested for retweeting this meme (https://abuwjaawap.cloudimg.io/v7/_lgbtqnation-assets_/asset...).

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11066477/Veteran-ar...

He was offered to undergo "re-education." You might not like this meme. You might find it offensive. But should he be arrested by several officers for it? Of course not. This is just one example of many people being being arrested and imprisoned for offending people. It is against the law to offend people in the UK.

[marbletiles]

He was arrested for refusing to allow officers to enter his home on a pre-agreed return visit to discuss the complaints:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/arrest_of_mr_darren_b...

This is why the Daily Mail causes rolled eyes (along with Spiked and the rest of the right-wing agitprop).

[talideon]

Oh yes, the bastion of truth that is the Daily Mail.

Sorry, my eyes just rolled out if my head.

[Argonaut998]

Nope. People are certainly being arrested for speech (e.g. opinions) that would be protected by the first amendment in the US.

Guising it under a scary sounding law doesn’t change the nature of it.

[ben_w]

People are certainly being arrested *in the USA* for speech (e.g. opinions) that are theoretically protected by the first amendment.

Unfortunately, last I tried to look this up, I found that there simply do not exist useful and easy to find stats for "malicious communications" in the UK such that stalkers and people making death threats can be separated from mere political correctness.

And even with actual death threats, there's stuff like this, where I don't myself have a single sustained state of my own mind about how I would respond to such a tweet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_joke_trial

[arrrg]

The people in Europe have a different view of freedom of speech and that’s fine. Not everything that’s a slightly different perspective on freedom of speech and what that entails and includes is tyranny.

[junon]

Examples please.

[matips]

Considering all forms of sharing information as freedom, USA have huge problem with copyrights. Copyright limits people right to speech to protect interest of corporations, same as ban of stalking or slanders limits freedom of speech to protect victims.

[mcv]

I think people getting arrested for social media posts is specifically a UK thing. That and Russia are the only European countries where I've heard of that happening.

In most European countries, you'd have to go pretty far to get in legal trouble for social media posts. It's not impossible, but that's also true in the US. There are and have always been limits to speech. Everywhere. Also in the US (and not just under Trump, although he'd definitely increasing government censorship).

* Threats

* Blackmail

* Libel/slander

These are all restricted by law, because they hurt, silence or coerce people. Hate speech does the exact same thing. It's ridiculous to call hate speech protected free speech, while threats and blackmail are not.

A far worse attack on free speech is banning or restricting criticism of the government. That is the primary reason for free speech protections, and yet that's the very thing that the current US government is attacking on an unprecedented scale. See for example recent attacks on Jimmy Kimmel and Steven Colbert. That's something that would be unimaginable in many European countries.

[intended]

I think nations should add content moderation as part of mandatory volunteer duties.

The online commons and tasks are too complex and absurd, and we have many people who value speech, who would be the ideal people to take on these tasks. Putting their values into action so to speak.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, so the moment people volunteer for this, they will themselves see whether the claims of misinformation and disinformation are overblown, and then vote accordingly.

Obviously speech is a super important part of our online lives, and should be treated as such.

[FatCat1979]

The last thing the world needs is a state mandated hoarde of european reddit moderators plaguing the internet. no thanks.

[intended]

Come now - why should it just be self selected volunteers or outsourced workers.

Even now on HN we are lucky with who moderates it but this should be more commmon.

And Mandatory service for your own nation. How else will you have a citizenry who can be plugged into their information economy.

[boudin]

This portal will just contain propaganda to serve the fascist agenda of the current US government.

Not saying that things are perfect in Europe but the US talking about freedom and freedom of speech sounds like a joke.

[joenot443]

> [1] First, the EU countries have much higher World Press Freedom Index than the US

I don't think the placement of the US on the World Press Freedom Index is necessarily informative of whether there's censorship in the EU. I'd expect they both rank higher than North Korea, but that doesn't tell us much either.

[shitlord]

The organization that publishes the WPFI also considers online harassment a major threat to press freedom and scores accordingly.

[Gareth321]

I am European and I would like to challenge you a little. Both the US and Europe have major issues with press and freedom of expression. To give you some examples from the European side. Specifically, the UK:

* Police in England and Wales recorded 12,183 arrests in 2023 for online speech. This number is growing fast, but the government isn't releasing the data anymore. A few years ago this man retweeted a meme (pretty milquetoast by internet standards) and was arrested and asked if he would undergo re-education: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11066477/Veteran-ar...

* The UK records "non-crime hate incidents," whereby if someone complains about you because they don't like you, and if the officer also doesn't like you, they record your behaviour on your permanent record, even if you haven't committed any crime. This record is accessible and used by many industries such as teaching, firefighters, and police. If you have even one non-crime hate incident on your record, you can be excluded from a job.

* The UK Online Safety Act 2023 requires websites with content which "could" harm children to age verify all users. Porn sites. Social media. Etc. This required people sending in their government ID to be permanently retained by a multitude of private companies. There are already many examples of sensitive data being leaked and hacked. Now that kid are using VPNs to access porn sites, the current ruling government is seeking to ban VPNs ("for children", of course).

* UK law criminalises “threatening,” “abusive,” or “insulting” words. The legal test is (I am not making this up), whether someone took offense. This has led to outrageous examples such as this man who is facing a longer sentence for burning a Quran than the man who stabbed him (for burning said Quran): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xr12yx5l4o

* In 2023–2024, the government obtained a court injunction preventing publication of details relating to a major data breach involving Afghan relocation applicants (the ARAP scheme). Parts of the reporting were restricted for national security and safety reasons.

* The Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice system allows the government to advise editors not to publish information that could harm national security. They have broad authority here.

* The Official Secrets Act 1989 criminalizes unauthorized disclosure of classified government information. Journalists themselves can potentially be prosecuted. There is no formal public interest defense written into the Act.

* The Contempt of Court Act 1981 restricts what can be published once someone is arrested or charged if publication could prejudice a trial.

* Ofcom regulates broadcast media under impartiality rules. News broadcasters must follow “due impartiality” rules. They can have their licenses revoked if they're not following some rather vague rules.

If I'm honest, I'm very envious of the First Amendment. It's clear that we do not have the same right to free expression in Europe. No doubt there are supporters of this system who prefer a society in which one may not say offensive or unkind things. But I think there are too many examples where suppression of speech inevitably leads to authoritarianism.

[joe463369]

> This has led to outrageous examples such as this man who is facing a longer sentence for burning a Quran than the man who stabbed him (for burning said Quran): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xr12yx5l4o

This is a more than a bit misleading. The Quran-burner received a £240 fine, his assailant got 20 weeks suspended. Also, though he went for him with a knife, he wasn't successful - nobody was stabbed.

[Gareth321]

> This is a more than a bit misleading. The Quran-burner received a £240 fine, his assailant got 20 weeks suspended. Also, though he went for him with a knife, he wasn't successful - nobody was stabbed.

You haven't kept up with the news. The Crown Prosecution Service has lodged an appeal: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3v7w1yw771o

You are correct on one count: Hamit Coskun was not stabbed. He was "knocked down, spat at, and kicked." I'm not sure that's the gotcha you were hoping it would be.

[phatfish]

Thanks for your input on UK society. FWIW, despite the coordinated attacks we are doing just fine. If you live your life through social media it might look like we are one step from North Korea though.

[selfmodruntime]

> FWIW, despite the coordinated attacks we are doing just fine.

What a sad handwaive of the current state of affairs

[iso1631]

All sorts of issues. Personally I would put housing as the number one issue the country faces, and has done for years, but I can see arguments about inability to deliver projects, planning rules in general, a concentration of wealth into fewer hands

What problems are you thinking about

[phatfish]

Is there something specific you would like to discuss? Preferably not a copy and paste "info" dump like the parent that is designed to be difficult to respond to unless someone is unemployed or an LLM.

[dirasieb]

how about the ~12k arrests per year for social media posts? are you able to discuss a bit of that with your busy work schedule?

[gadders]

...as long as your views wouldn't be offensive to the average Guardian reader, you're OK.

[blell]

Russia Today is blocked in the EU.

Yes I know you’ll tell me it’s for my own good. Spare me.

[anon291]

But don't worry their press freedom index is higher according to themselves!.

"We ranked ourselves and found we were number one!"

[ActionHank]

I personally love the idea that they think people are so desperate to logon to facebook or tik tok that they will use some government vpn to access advertising laden slop.

[dgxyz]

It's not a hoax, it's a straight up lie.

[dirasieb]

https://archive.ph/bdEqK

>>Police make 30 arrests a day for offensive online messages

>The police are making more than 30 arrests a day over offensive posts on social media and other platforms.

>Thousands of people are being detained and questioned for sending messages that cause “annoyance”, “inconvenience” or “anxiety” to others via the internet, telephone or mail.

>Custody data obtained by The Times shows that officers are making about 12,000 arrests a year under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988.

[dgxyz]

Ignore the cherry picking and sensationalism around this. There are a few cases which are thrown out which were overreach.

But nearly all of them are direct threats to people, stalking, repetitive abuse, support for terrorism and admissions of actual criminal activity.

If you wrote these things on a wall outside your house you'd be arrested. If you said them down the pub you'd get the shit kicked out of you in 30 seconds. Do you expect these to be ignored under "free speech"? No because they wouldn't be even in the US.

This increased because people feel safe saying these things on social media because there are other people saying them in their social bubble.

[selfmodruntime]

> It's not a hoax, it's a straight up lie

> There are a few cases which are thrown out which were overreach <-- You are here

> Well overreach and sentencing is happening, but it's not common enough to care

> Yeah sentencing to prison is common now, but as long as you stay within the confines of the law you won't be affected

[larholm]

"What is illegal offline should be illegal online: Council agrees position on the Digital Services Act"

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021...

I believe you are referring to UK examples, which are not representative for Europe or covered under the DSA.

The overall message still applies; harassment and death threats are no less legal and no more legal because they happen online.

[dirasieb]

the UK is located in europe, this US plan is about pushing for more free speech in europe

whether or not 30 arrests per day for social media posts is exclusive to the UK it is relevant to the OP link

>harassment and death threats

we both know that this is not what's being discussed here