Several European governments have jailed people for social media posts. Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickly get out of hand.
As for falsehoods: some people will be mistaken, some people will lie, and sometimes sarcasm will be misunderstood. Why should anyone be liable? It is on each individual to inform themselves, and to decide what to believe and what to disregard.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
It doesn't say "if your opinion is approved by the government". It doesn't say "if your opinion is correct". It makes no exceptions whatsoever, and that is what we need to strive for.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov on Sunday accused France of asking him to remove some Moldovan channels from the social media platform ahead of the country’s presidential election last year.
In a statement on the Dubai-headquartered company, Durov claimed that the French intelligence services asked him “through an intermediary” to help the Moldovan government to censor “certain Telegram channels” before the vote on Oct. 20, in which incumbent President Maia Sandu secured a second term in office following a runoff held on Nov. 3.
He said a few channels were identified to have violated Telegram’s rules following reviews of the channels concerned and were subsequently removed.
“The intermediary then informed me that, in exchange for this cooperation, French intelligence would ‘say good things’ about me to the judge who had ordered my arrest in August last year,” Durov said, describing this as “unacceptable on several levels.”
“If the agency did in fact approach the judge — it constituted an attempt to interfere in the judicial process. If it did not, and merely claimed to have done so, then it was exploiting my legal situation in France to influence political developments in Eastern Europe — a pattern we have also observed in Romania,” he further said.
Durov also said that Telegram later received a second list of "Moldovan channels," which he noted were “legitimate and fully compliant with our rules,” unlike the initial list.
>Several European governments have jailed people for social media posts. Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickly get out of hand.
I think quite a few Europeans have lasting and direct experience with totalitarian, oppressive regimes. Which might also explain why they have stricter (or simply more precise) laws governing expression – not as an oppressive tool, but as a safety valve for the society.
A regime attempting to kill a large group of people is also oppressive and much worse. If the regime is able to do this because of speech then people are choosing the least worst option.
Most people in the western world are more frequently harmed by words than by physical violence. Way more frequently.
You're fired is just words, your health insurance is denied is just words, we don't accept your type here is words, you're being sued by someone with effectively infinite means is just words. But those words that will drastically change the course of your life.
While I abhor physical violence, I do also realize some words are also a type of violence in and of themselves.
The examples you're listing aren't just words. They're actions.
I could say I'm going to deny your health insurance, or deny entry of your type to my group, or sue you for something. But notice how me saying any of these things don't actually have any immediate effect on you, because I don't control your health insurance or moderate a group you want to be in, or know who you are to sue you.
I can use words to convince people who do control those things to do things to you, but you can convince them not to, and convince others to do the same thing to me. The value of free speech is in replacing these conflicts that would otherwise be physical violence with words. Human nature didn't change. We still fight all the time, but with words.
They're words with consequences, backed by law and the freedom of companies doing all they're permitted to do; but fundamentally just words. Contracts are just words, but words with meaning and power, because we all agree to play by those rules.
>You're fired is just words, your health insurance is denied is just words, we don't accept your type here is words, you're being sued by someone with effectively infinite means is just words. But those words that will drastically change the course of your life.
None of these is "just words" lol. The words just convey something that will or won't be done. All of these examples are overly dramatic too. I too wish I lived in a world where nobody could tell me "no" but that'll never happen. If someone has lots of money and you don't, they probably won't sue you. Especially for a petty reason. There's not enough to gain from that.
>While I abhor physical violence, I do also realize some words are also a type of violence in and of themselves.
Violence is physical. People are only trying to claim a connection because they want to censor their enemies using one of the exceptions to free speech, which is when there is threat of imminent violence. As nasty or unpleasant as words may be, they bear no resemblence to actual violence. And no, you don't get to censor people because they say stuff that you feel bad about. The whole point of free speech is to allow the expression of unpopular and unpleasant words. Please get your language right and stop trying to gaslight the rest of us into a censorship program. Thank you for your attention to this matter lol
>If you erase the horrible parts of ourselves we worked hard to banish onto paper, they will eventually remanifest themselves in reality.
What does this mean? That if people aren't able to express or relieve themselves of some horrible act then some people will be more likely to do something bad?
Like if a person can't be racist against Muslims on Facebook (due to it being illegal) they will be more likely to harm Muslims physically?
> But one should realize that thorny words are precisely what replaces physical violence.
No this is bullshit. The Nazis didn't kill the jews because they couldn't say mean things about them. The Nazis didn't purposely target trans people and gay people and mentally challenged people and political opponents because they couldn't slag them publicly.
Germany did not become Nazis because of any lack of free speech. People were talking about how horrifying the Nazis were right up until they were put in camps.
Christ.
The Civil War didn't happen because people weren't able to say black people are lesser (which they were always able to say and still are)
This take is detached from history.
How much violence did Native Americans avoid by getting to say how awful they were being treated? They were never muzzled, so why did they still end up basically ethnically cleansed?
These are examples of minorities being oppressed through physical violence. Minorities are still oppressed in democratic societies today because a democratic society by definition prioritizes the majority's interests.
The difference is oppression used to be physical and involved a lot of killing, now it is done through non-violent means through words. That's what I meant by words replacing violence.
No, that oppression definitely involved plenty of words before. The natives were "savages" and "in the way" and "weren't using the land" we said.
Southern preachers insisted that being enslaved was the black man's rightful place, as god intended, because they were naturally less intelligent and "savage" and needed good guidance from the white man.
I'm tired, after hundreds of years, of people still insisting "no no no, just a little more information freedom and humans will magically fix all their natural biases and magically stop acting like humans and magically stop believing what is comfortable instead of what is provably correct"
It's absolutely good to be much closer to the "Freer" side of that spectrum than the "government enforced muzzle" side, but I'm so tired of people insisting that we can't possibly wiggle around a little bit on the spectrum to find maybe a better place.
Oppression does not come from what laws you have. Oppression comes from how power works. It doesn't matter what laws you have on the books if you put people in charge who do not give a shit about them. It doesn't matter if you have the first amendment if you elect enough people to just disregard it and even change it if you want.
Rules aren't real. Rules don't matter unless you can enforce them. If you allow oppressive people into power, it doesn't matter how many times you write "don't oppress people"
What oppression has free speech demonstrably stopped?
> I'm tired, after hundreds of years, of people still insisting "no no no, just a little more information freedom and humans will magically fix all their natural biases and magically stop acting like humans and magically stop believing what is comfortable instead of what is provably correct"
But we are fixing our natural biases over time to get to the technological civilization we have today. Our beliefs align better with reality today than 500 years ago. That's why we can build computers which we're using to talk right now, but couldn't 500 years ago. Everybody is better off compared to 500 years ago. Information sharing accelerates this process.
> What oppression has free speech demonstrably stopped?
Free speech doesn't stop oppression, it replaces violence. Oppression is in human nature, or rather, in nature in general. When two individuals that share a local region of reality have misaligned wishes, they interfere with eachother. But how they interfere matters. Free speech changes the method of interaction, but not the essence of competition.
Two perfectly rational people can agree on a shared model of reality yet not agree on what actions to take next. People, although more similar than different, have different preferences. A modern democratic society simply places the majority's wishes first and oppresses minorities non-violently. It allows open negotiation to balance these wishes without resorting to violence.
Attacking one of the essential pillars of this society doesn't stop oppression, it just risks bringing back a worse form of it.
> If the regime is able to do this because of speech
Okay but that's a big "IF". I suspect a regime attempting to do that might be promulgating a significant amount of propaganda, but I doubt that they're able to be oppressive "because of speech".
What about loss of upward mobility for the middle class, or loss of living wages, mismanaged public institutions, corruption, bribery, collapse of democratic process?
All of this enables or sustains oppressive regimes and doesn't require any kind of speech from citizens. And without these kinds of serious problems, citizens barking nonsense won't result in much. Hindering free speech only makes it easier for a regime to continue to exacerbate these serious problems and continue oppression without being called out.
It can be. But there can be speech where most reasonable people would agree that it should be regulated. E.g. if some dude walks up to your 5 year old child and starts to tell them in intricate detail about his violent sexual fantasy, pretty much everybody notices that the kids right not to have to hear this outweighs the adults edgy itch to do this to a child.
And a lot of speech is like this, nearly no speech is consequence free. I am not saying we should ban any speech that has negative consequences. What I am saying is that with other rights we also have to way the active freedoms of one person ("the freedom to do a thing") against the passive freedoms of all the others ("the freedom to not have a thing done to you").
With other rights it is the same, you may have a right to carry a firearm and even shoot it. But if you shoot it for example in church, other peoples right not to have to deal with you shooting that gun in that church outweighs your right to do that.
In the German speaking part of the EU we decided that the right of literal Nazis to carry their insignia doesn't outweigh the right of the others to not have to see the insignia that have brought so much pain and suffering in these lands. To some degree this is symbolic, because it only bans symbols and not ideologies, but hey, I like my government to protect my state from a fascist takeover, because they are kind of hard to reverse without violence.
Most societies have decided that some speech should be illegal. The classic example is yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theatre in the absence of a fire.
I think it is good and healthy to have conversations as to what should and should not be protected speech, but I think that there is this rote reaction that kinda boils down to free speech absolutism. But of course, all the free speech absolutists find at some point or another there is some speech they want made illegal.
A great example of this is in the US where Republicans often outwardly took such as stand when they weren't in power, but recently tried to use the FCC to take a comedian who made light criticism of the regime off the air.
So, silencing speech might not always be the oppressive regime, but it sometimes is.
EDIT: OK, I get the fire/theatre example is a bad one. Instead, consider incitement more broadly. For example incitement to discrimination, as prohibited by Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.
Imagine a situation where a person reasonably believes there was a fire (they saw smoke, but it turned out to be a vape or some sort of smoke machine part of the show). They're arrested for the false claim. Others know that it's too risky. Now, when there's a fire, people are reluctant to speak up just in case. It's the chilling effect that can affect speech. We have whistleblowers who are afraid to speak up. And when the means of speaking out or alerting others (ie via email or social media or smartphone) is controlled by a large corporation that may feel threatened...
> The classic example is yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theatre in the absence of a fire.
This is from an overturned US Supreme Court opinion, has no basis in anyone's jurisprudence, yet keeps coming up as an example of speech that's permissible to suppress for some reason.
Oliver Wendell Holmes created that example to support jailing a socialist for speaking out against the World War I draft.
> This is from a dissenting opinion of a US Supreme Court justice
No, its dicta which neither was part of the substantive ruling nor an accurate description of pre-existing law from the Court’s opinion (which was unanimous, so there was no “dissenting opinion”) in a case that has since been overruled and is notorious for having allowed an egregious restriction on core political speech.
> yet keeps coming up as an example of speech that's permissible to suppress for some reason
Because they don't actually have an example of not imminently violence causing non-fraudulent speech that SCOTUS has upheld a ban of. And then when you call them out they'll say "but wait, it's metaphorical". If they had a better example they'd be using it.
Regardless, incitement remains an exception to free speech the world over to some degree. Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights holds that incitement to discrimination is prohibited, for example [0].
My point stands, people of most societies globally believe certain speech should not be protected.
Nope, that's giving them too much credit. Censorship is oppressive except in very narrow circumstances. Free speech is actually the safety valve in society. Censorship is one of the hallmarks of a tyrannical regime, and is incompatible with democracy.
> not as an oppressive tool, but as a safety valve for the society.
This strikes me as just incorrect. What example from history shows totalitarianism being successfully avoided because of controls on speech?
The first item in the totalitarian playbook is controlling speech, and there are historical examples of that in every single totalitarian regime that I'm aware of.
Well I can tell you from day-to-day experience in Germany that the fact it’s illegal to say „Heil Hitler“ and similar nazi slogans draws a very clear line between ordinary citizens and right extremists. It’s a good thing nobody can walk around and loudly proclaim their veneration for the darkest period in our history, for doing so makes them an enemy of our democracy and everything it stands for. A society has to have limits to the tolerable, and defend them.
This has worked well for more than half a century here, and I assure you that Germany hasn’t succumbed to a totalitarian regime yet. Quite the opposite to some, erm, land of the free that seems to struggle a lot with freedom lately.
I think Germany has not succumbed less because of the laws around speech, and more because of other reasons. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_German_coup_d'%C3%A9tat... was a very recent example of a direct attempt to upend democracy there, calling this working well may be overstated
> People can make judgment calls. Those are opinions.
I'm not sure that's a helpful distinction. In some sense, everything we classify as a 'fact' is a judgement call: is the sun a giant ball of fusing hydrogen? I mean, probably, but maybe we're all living in some sort simulation and it doesn't really exist at all; Or maybe you are living in your own personal "Truman Show", being fed lies by everyone who shows you scientific "evidence" about the sun's nature.
But "the sun is a giant ball of fusing hydrogen" is a different type of statement than "chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla", or "Mozart is better than Beethoven".
"The sun is a giant ball of fusing hydrogen" has the possibility of being proven false. This means it's either a true or false fact.
If I said "NYC is the capital of the United States"* I'm either lying or mistaken
What makes it a lie vs mistaken? Whether it's a genuine belief, that I have a reason to have the belief. For example if I made the assumption it's the capital because it's the biggest city then I'm mistaken.
It's a lie if I know it's not true, if I ignore information that falsifies the fact.
*To avoid semantics I mean the official capital of the country not like "it's important"
Right; and there are things which fall into the "true or false" category that are difficult to get clear answers for; economic policy is something that there are just too many confounding factors to prove to the same degree you can prove the laws of physics, for example.
And even for claims which are in the realm of "fact", which are false, but which are truly believed, we need to be careful about suppressing truth. There was a time when "the sun goes around the earth" was accepted "scientific fact". Lots of flat-earthers genuinely believe the falsehoods they're spreading. Where do we draw the line between "healthy skepticism" and "dangerous falsehood"?
I don't have a clear answer, but I do think there needs to be a line.
>Where do we draw the line between "healthy skepticism" and "dangerous falsehood"
The line is whether the person is genuine in belief and the potential harm. There's no direct harm if someone believes the sun revolves around the earth.
> There's no direct harm if someone believes the sun revolves around the earth.
No direct harm; but it may be comorbid with other things that cause harm, like vaccine skepticism.
There is a question about what the best response is. Just censoring disinformation like this may cause people who notice / experience the censorship to give more credence to the disinformation. But as is apparent from the whole "flat earth" fiasco, there are a large number of people who seem simply incapable of understanding basic math or scientific principles. The earth can be proven round by personal observations made by anyone. If people still cannot be convinced the earth is round, how are they to be convinced about things that they cannot collect personal observations, like vaccines, or the holocaust, or January 6th?
At any rate, I'm glad I'm not running a platform like YouTube; it's not an easy problem.
I think the most useful distinction is between “opinions” and “beliefs” rather than opinions and facts. A belief represents your confidence in the truth or falsehood of a statement. While an opinion has no underlying objective reality. “Apples are better than peaches” is an opinion. “More people ate apples than bananas in 2024” is a belief; it may be a true belief or a false belief but there is an answer.
@gwd: absolutely true; all the "facts" I know are either a long series of supporting ideas ("this is a chair and I can sit on it") or something I was told by an authority I trust ("Africa exists").
I still say there is a difference between "Africa exists" and "gwd's statement about the lack of 'facts' is heretical and they should be imprisoned".
I guarantee you that, if only they could, there are governments that would jail people for opinions. The US would have likely have done something to homosexuals, with or without sexual activity. Ditto on supporting Communism 'in your heart'. NK and other countries would do the same (OK, not NK for supporters of communism...).
> I’d say if you can be jailed for a particular opinion
Can you give an example of someone in a modern democracy jailed for their "opinion"?
To wit, are the examples you're thinking of "statement of opinion", "statement of fact", "pejorative insult", or "incitement"?
Saying "I think <public figure> is an idiot" is an opinion. "The earth is flat" or "The holocaust never happened" are not opinions; neither is, "Kick out all the <insert pejorative here>."
And yeah, in North Korea you'll absolutely be jailed for expressing some opinions. That may make them illegal, but it doesn't make them no longer opinions.
How is "the earth is flat" not an opinion?
People form opinions based on the information they have (or are willing to accept). For their worldview, their opinion is valid. If they don't accept certain voices of reason, they have that right. We saw people not allowed to ask about the origins of the covid19 virus because it went against a public narrative. At the beginning of the pandemic, people who expressed that masks should be worn were rejected by even government officials.
People might not have gone to jail, but they did have voices and access to society limited or removed because of their opinions.
Not really an opinion but it can be a belief. I'm not sure why we are okay with people believing that Earth is ~6000 years old, but not with someone believing that we are in a simulation and everything before e.g. year 1999 is just a collective memory fabrication.
But would you dare state out loud in Germany that, in your opinion, the official number of Holocaust victims is actually much less than what's been widely reported? Even if you had what you believed was solid evidence supporting your argument? I bet you wouldn't.
> neither is, "Kick out all the <insert pejorative here>."
How about voicing your opinion that <people from some country> should be barred from emigrating to <European country> because <crime statistics>? Bet you wouldn't try that either, because your opinion is in "hate speech" territory now.
Solid evidence that generations of historians have somehow overlooked? Great, let’s hear it! I can assure you that Germany would welcome anything that lifts some guilt from our collective shoulders here, so if you as opposed to a lot of smart people know the truth, we will invite you on a beer for sure.
This is all true, with a few exceptions. For example, incitement to violence or false allegations that do serious reputational damage. It's not sustainable to allow exactly all speech.
Although I mostly agree, I just wanted to make explicit that nuance.
GP brought up people being jailed for social media posts, but didn't reference any specifically. In the handful of cases I found via a web search, the charges were related to inciting violence.
GP also brought up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 30 reads:
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
When one exercising a freedom restricts another's ability to exercise theirs, it is reasonable to expect courts to get involved to sort it out.
> Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickly get out of hand.
There are only a few European countries that jail people for wrongspeak, and I can't think of a single one of those countries whose population in general is in favor of such laws.
> It is on each individual to inform themselves, and to decide what to believe and what to disregard.
That's where the conundrum lies, requiring individual responsibility for protecting a whole society of potential bad actors using this freedom to break society apart.
How is it solved? No one knows, what we know is that relying on individuals to each act on their own to solve it won't work, it never works, we also see the effects on society from the loss of any social cohesion around what "truth" is, even though before the age of Internet and social media there were vehicles to spread lies, and manipulate people, this has been supercharged in every way: speed of spread, number of influential voices, followings, etc.
Anything that worked before probably doesn't work now, we don't know how to proceed but using platitudes from before these times is also a way to cover our eyes to what is actually happening: fractures in society becoming larger rifts, supercharged by new technologies, being wielded as a weapon.
I don't think government censorship is the answer, nor I think that just letting it be and requiring every single person to be responsible in how they critically analyse the insurmountable amount of information we are exposed to every day is the answer either.
It is solved by a democratic system that defines truth as "mutually observable phenomena", defines good as "the wishes of the people", and allows individuals to engage in free dialogue as a replacement for violence.
Good outnumbers bad, so the good will win, unless both sides think they're good in a 50/50 split.
This can happen even in that ideal society, because 50% of the individuals will eventually decide to have fundamentally different goals as the other 50%. In which case, I don't think we should hold that society together by force, but rather provide a mechanism for it to peacefully split into two, precisely to uphold the democratic principle of respecting the wishes of every individual.
Suppose half of those people are mistaken in a collective delusion, and their goals are in actuality aligned with the other half, but the other half have just failed so spectacularly at enlightening them (or perhaps the delusional half are so spectacularly delusional that they're impossible to enlighten). In this rare case of a perfect failure, they will quickly realize after the split and want to get back together, because reality is a harsh judge, and its judgements are ultimate.
>"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
You do realize that this includes the freedom of people who get harassed online by others.
German journalist Dunja Hayali’s rights where violated by hate comments after social media and nuis sites misquoted her on her reporting on Charly Kirk‘s funeral
> Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickly get out of hand.
This argument can be made for government in general, although granted technology does make it easier for a smaller group to overreach. I'm a European and do hear your concern, but I feel comfortable supporting restrictions on speech _as long as_ there is also a functioning and just legal system that those restrictions operate within. Though there does seem to be a worrying trend towards technology bypassing the legal system and just giving enforcement agencies blanket access of late.
We all also have our own cultural biases and blind spots. I offer this not as whataboutism but as a different perspective: I'm _way_ more frightened by the authoritarian police culture (I base this on interactions with the police in a period I lived in the US) in the US than I am of the UK governments internet censorship. The internet censorship could do a lot of harm, but I think not as much potential harm as a large militarised police force willing to bust down doors on command from above.
Well, sure, it's all relative and no system is perfect. Not every mother is perfect, doesn't mean I escort mine around the house at gunpoint whenever she visits.
Worth mentioning exactly here the paradox of Popper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance sooo... what should we do about it, here and now? Because we are closing to need a decision. And let me remind you that people do get fined or jailed sometimes for making mistakes or lying.
As for falsehoods: some people will be mistaken, some people will lie, and sometimes sarcasm will be misunderstood. Why should anyone be liable? It is on each individual to inform themselves, and to decide what to believe and what to disregard.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
It doesn't say "if your opinion is approved by the government". It doesn't say "if your opinion is correct". It makes no exceptions whatsoever, and that is what we need to strive for.