[HN Gopher] Rumble turns off access in Brazil because of governm...
___________________________________________________________________
Rumble turns off access in Brazil because of government's
censorship demands
Author : bratao
Score : 113 points
Date : 2023-12-23 18:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (reclaimthenet.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (reclaimthenet.org)
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > " Rumble is the only company at our scale that holds the line
| for free speech and American values"
|
| This is Brazil. I'm all for freedom of speech, but not all
| cultures are the same and neither are local laws. Sometimes what
| works for America doesn't work elsewhere.
|
| I'm glad they shut it down instead of following the government
| demands because the company has a set of values, but that's about
| it.
| timmytokyo wrote:
| Ken White ("Popehat") wrote a recent essay on what it typically
| means when a company promotes their support for "free speech".
| He wrote it about Substack, but I think it applies equally well
| to Rumble.
|
| https://popehat.substack.com/p/substack-has-a-nazi-opportuni...
| yareal wrote:
| It's absolutely purely a monetary choice. Rumble isn't any
| more principled than any other free speech platform, they
| still moderate plenty of stuff that they find disagreeable.
|
| It's a very American sense of "free speech" that allows for
| Nazis and forbids video that contains any topless people.
| (Which, if you've been to many parts of the world, is not at
| all obscene.)
|
| They also ban this:
|
| > You may not post or transmit any messages pertaining to
| charity requests, petitions for signatures, requesting
| donations, relating to pyramid schemes, or pertaining to the
| manipulation of the Rumble Service.
|
| "Hey, can you sign my petition" sure seems like a cornerstone
| of free speech... surprised to see it considered against the
| rules by a supposed "principled" company.
| datadeft wrote:
| > what works for America doesn't work elsewhere
|
| Free speech is the only exception. Bad ideas can be rooted out
| with good ideas. Banning opinions have never worked ever and it
| will never work. It is a pure waste of everything.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| It is not. You're used to countries with strong law and
| order. Countries where this doesn't exist, free speech often
| leads to devastating results.
|
| > Banning opinions have never worked ever and it will never
| work.
|
| It absolutely works. There's a reason Nazi propaganda is
| banned in Germany.
|
| Edit: Before everyone just points to communist states as what
| happens when you have censorship, you also need to
| acknowledge the extreme violence that happens when speech is
| unrestricted in every case. For example Rohingya genocide was
| fueled by unrestricted "opinions" on the internet. https://am
| p.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-...
|
| Besides, some form of restrictions on speech absolutely exist
| everywhere in the world. People look at censorship as either
| complete freedom or Soviet Russia, but in reality middle
| ground does exist.
| logicchains wrote:
| >Countries where this doesn't exist, free speech often
| leads to devastating results
|
| Never anything as bad as the murder of tens of millions of
| their own citizens committed in countries with no free
| speech like Stalin's Russia and Mao's China.
|
| >It absolutely works. There's a reason Nazi propaganda is
| banned in Germany
|
| If that's your metric for success it's absolutely failed,
| given the "Alternative for Deutschland" is now polling at
| over 20%.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| The Rohingya would like to disagree
|
| https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohing
| ya-...
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| If you have a government unwilling or unable to even
| enforce the laws against violence, they will be similarly
| unwilling or unable to enforce the laws against
| thoughtcrime, or will enforce them _against_ the victims
| of the atrocity.
|
| Or you've got a case of someone in country A filing suit
| over something happening in country A under the laws of
| country B. Now what is the company supposed to do if the
| laws in country A and country B conflict? Was following
| the laws in the country where they're operating (i.e. the
| country committing the atrocity) the outcome you wanted?
| What about leaving that country, so that people there
| have to use a service which is in that country?
|
| "Everybody has free speech" doesn't solve every problem,
| but censorship doesn't solve any of those problems
| either, it just creates wicked new problems.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| The constitution of United States, in the first Amendment
| prohibits certain speech, speech inciting violence is one
| of those prohibited speech. The argument that censorship
| creates new problems is true, however there are absolute
| cases when censorship is needed. In this case, it was the
| country's Supreme Court requesting removal of users and
| it was related to speech causing violence. The same
| request would have been completely legal in US as well.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > The constitution of United States, in the first
| Amendment prohibits certain speech, speech inciting
| violence is one of those prohibited speech.
|
| It does? Here's the full text of the First Amendment:
|
| > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
| of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
| abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
| right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
| petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
|
| Which part of it says that? I don't see it anywhere.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech
| _ex...
|
| The Supreme Court has ruled again and again that
| incitement is an exception to speech covered under first
| amendment.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Even if the First Amendment doesn't protect it, it most
| certainly does not prohibit it.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The constitution of United States, in the first
| Amendment prohibits certain speech, speech inciting
| violence is one of those prohibited speech.
|
| No it doesn't. The First Amendment constrains the
| government from prohibiting most speech. It doesn't
| require any speech to be prohibited. If the US Congress
| wanted to be free speech absolutists, they wouldn't have
| to change the constitution.
|
| > there are absolute cases when censorship is needed.
|
| There are cases where most countries sanction it. That
| doesn't prove that it's needed.
|
| Can you even name a case where it would be necessary as
| opposed to being possible to solve through e.g. vigorous
| enforcement of the laws against violence?
|
| You're also avoiding the question. Sure, sometimes the
| same thing is illegal in both the US and China, but
| that's not the common case for free speech questions.
|
| And putting aside the absolutist position, that's not
| even what you're arguing for here. The government can
| punish a direct speaker for imminent incitement of
| violence without imposing a prior restraint or putting
| intermediary liability on a third party who is merely a
| common carrier.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > No it doesn't
|
| It does because I learned this in the law class I took in
| undergrad. A quick google search would've told you that
| there are limitations to first amendment.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech
| _ex...
| qwerasdf5 wrote:
| He's talking about the Constitution. You're talking about
| the Supreme Court's interpretation of it, which is
| different (and could change.)
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| No, the claim was:
|
| > The constitution of United States, in the first
| Amendment prohibits certain speech
|
| It does no such thing. It prohibits Congress from making
| laws that abridge the freedom of speech. Congress is not
| _required_ to make any laws constraining speech, even if
| it is allowed to, and the First Amendment itself does not
| prohibit any speech.
| 15457345234 wrote:
| This is literally 100% misinformation.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech
| _ex...
|
| Please tell me how?
| whstl wrote:
| As much as I personally dislike the AfD, claiming they're
| breaking the law by doing Nazi propaganda is going a bit
| too far.
|
| They definitely straddle the line, but no court has
| judged them as Nazi yet. There were however other
| parties, like ANS, NO and FAP (amazing name) that were
| banned in Germany because of that. Perhaps that's why AfD
| has wised up.
| gorwell wrote:
| Free speech doesn't lead to devasating results. Just the
| opposite.
|
| Censorship does. Every time. Nazis, communists, every
| authoritarian or totaliatarian government, rely on
| censorship and restrict free speech heavily.
|
| Bad ideas require censorship to survive the light of day.
| findingFounders wrote:
| you're 100% correct. seeing comments like yours downvoted
| and greyed out makes me very worried for the state of the
| internet, i can't tell if it's bots or people have really
| begun to believe that free speech isn't a fundamental
| pillar of democracy.
| 15457345234 wrote:
| The battle against free speech (I am in favour of free
| speech) has been being furiously waged pretty much since
| the concept was enshrined in law. The fact that the US
| 1st amendment still stands and appears to be broadly
| respected is very much the exception, not the rule.
| Kiro wrote:
| It's unbelievable and shocking. I really want to hear the
| reasoning from people downvoting these comments.
| malermeister wrote:
| "When our opponents say: Well, we used to grant you the
| [...] freedom of opinion - yes, you to us, but that is no
| reason that we should do the same to you! [...] That you
| gave it to us - well that is proof of how stupid you
| are!"
|
| - Joseph Goebbels
|
| You can listen to this part at around 15:05 at this
| speech (if you speak German, of course): https://www.sr-
| mediathek.de/index.php?seite=7&id=37143
|
| The take above is a classic well-meaning, but ill-
| informed opinion from an American with a lack of
| understanding of how the Nazis actually operated and how
| they could've been stopped.
| rospaya wrote:
| Let's not act as if free speech doesn't have various
| definitions and limitations even in the land of the free.
| You can't get two Americans to agree to the same
| definition.
| malermeister wrote:
| When our opponents say: Well, we used to grant you the
| [...] freedom of opinion - yes, you to us, but that is no
| reason that we should do the same to you! [...] That you
| gave it to us - well that is proof of how stupid you are!
|
| - Joseph Goebbels
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| In the Soviet Union "worked". For making an absolute
| catastrophe "worked" remarkably well.
| ImJamal wrote:
| >It absolutely works. There's a reason Nazi propaganda is
| banned in Germany.
|
| You can't know that for sure. If Nazi propaganda was not
| banned and the Nazi never took over again then free speech
| would work as well. We just don't know if banning speech
| has made less people pro Nazi.
| Zak wrote:
| I am curious as to how a court in Brazil can require a company
| that appears to be based in Canada and the USA to block access.
| If countries are allowed to assert extraterritorial
| jurisdiction, anyone running a website might need to know and
| obey the laws of nearly 200 countries.
|
| Some of those laws prohibit criticism of their respective
| governments, sex education, or pornography (including things
| most people in the US or EU would not consider pornographic).
| derefr wrote:
| > If countries are allowed to assert extraterritorial
| jurisdiction, anyone running a website might need to know and
| obey the laws of nearly 200 countries.
|
| Yes, that's how it works. Specifically, the common argument
| that applies to most companies (incl. Rumble), is that you're
| _trading_ within that country if anyone from that country is
| either paying for your product /service, or making money from
| your product/service; and therefore you essentially need to
| function as (if not actually legally have) a per-country
| corporate subsidiary amenable to the laws of that country, if
| you want to continue doing that.
|
| And sometimes it's even worse; for at least the US and
| Canada, companies trading with people living in these
| countries have to know and follow the laws of the _state or
| province_ their customers live in, when serving those
| customers.
|
| These are _mostly_ simple things like tax codes, yes; but
| sometimes it 's things that are far more arcane -- for
| example, Quebec prohibits promotional first-period pricing
| that automatically transitions into regular pricing (they
| consider this a predatory practice.) Companies that advertise
| promitions in Canada often have fine print that says "offer
| not valid in Quebec" because of this.
|
| This tangled mess of required region-specific logic is, by
| and large, the moat of e-commerce platforms and payment
| processors. It's why even large e-commerce services like
| Steam, that build all this logic internally for _most_
| countries, will still integrate with payment processors like
| Stripe or PayPal -- those services are made options to cover
| the long-tail of countries they don 't want to learn and
| maintain regional rules for.
|
| It's also why many companies don't bother to actually sell
| into every market; and instead allow companies that
| specialize in "partnering with foreign companies to sell
| their products into our own domestic market that we
| understand well" -- a.k.a. _importers_ -- to do that for them
| (and skim off some of their margin in the process.)
| piotrkaminski wrote:
| > Yes, that's how it works. Specifically, the common
| argument that applies to most companies (incl. Rumble), is
| that you're trading within that country if anyone from that
| country is either paying for your product/service, or
| making money from your product/service; and therefore you
| essentially need to function as (if not actually legally
| have) a per-country corporate subsidiary amenable to the
| laws of that country, if you want to continue doing that.
|
| I think an equally valid (and frankly more reasonable)
| interpretation is that if anyone from another country is
| paying for your product/service, then they're trading
| within _your_ country. If in doing so they contravene laws
| of _their_ country (e.g., forbidden speech, taxes, etc.)
| then that's their problem, not yours. This interpretation
| has the advantage of actually being enforceable, unlike the
| alternative.
|
| And if a country doesn't like that then they're free to
| "protect" their citizens by building a Great Firewall,
| which is _totally and only_ for their people's benefit.
| derefr wrote:
| That's the interpretation that would apply if you were
| trading in e.g. equities. The stock exchange doesn't come
| to you; you come to it. (And therefore, you need to have
| a legal presence in the country where the exchange is
| located, with bank+investment accounts registered there,
| holding deposits denominated in that country's currency.
| You can't buy stocks from the NYSE using a European bank
| account, let alone one holding Euros -- you have to first
| fund an American bank account with USD; then transfer
| that into a special American [government-]registered
| investment account; and _then_ use _that_ account to buy
| the stocks.)
|
| In this scenario, the foreign investor is in a sense
| creating a legal "proxy person" -- a virtual citizen of
| the country where the exchange exists. The foreign
| investor is then telling the proxy person to do the
| trades for them. If the pretend proxy person breaks the
| law, the real investor gets in trouble... but in ways
| that are more similar to the ways corporations get in
| trouble, than the ways citizens of the country get in
| trouble.
|
| (And some countries don't even allow the creation of
| these pretend proxy persons; instead requiring you to
| employ, and hand your money over to, a _real_ proxy
| person, who will face the domestic legal consequences for
| executing your trades! This is how e.g. Bahamian shell
| corporations work; it 's also how foreign real-estate
| investments work in the Philippines. It's never a good
| time.)
|
| "The purchaser representing themselves legally in the
| country they're buying from" is also how the
| aforementioned import arrangements work. The importer
| registers an export company in the source country --
| essentially a proxy-person, though in the shape of a
| corporation -- and the export company is what buys the
| goods and sends them to the import company.
|
| Most trade isn't like this, though, because most trade
| isn't between legal peers (like an exchange and an
| investor -- both basically "typed as" corporations for
| the sake of the trade, even if one is a sole proprietor);
| but instead is between one large company and a
| _potentially-huge number_ of individually-legally-naive
| individual consumers.
|
| It is impractical to ask all the people who want to buy a
| product, to create a foreign trading presence for
| themselves in the country of origin of that product, as
| if they were a professional importer. Governments don't
| want to maintain -- or especially to _validate and audit_
| -- huge databases of hundreds of millions of foreign
| individuals trading locally. Banks don 't want to have to
| open and maintain hundreds of millions of tiny,
| individual, unprofitable(!) foreign-deposit accounts for
| those individuals to use to operate legally in the
| country.
|
| So instead, governments and banks choose the far simpler
| route: making the foreign corporations register
| themselves in the markets they operate in. There are far
| fewer corporations to keep on the books for both the
| governments and the banks; and it's far easier to manage
| their accounts (because corporations are on average more
| competent at that kind of thing; because unlike
| individuals, corporations can afford to pay ~hundreds-of-
| dollar levies to maintain the systems tracking them and
| keep the bank-accounts revenue-positive for the banks;
| and because corporations will coalesce bank transfers,
| turning billions of little daily transactions to
| individuals' foreign-deposit accounts, into just a few
| daily transactions to each corporate foreign-deposit
| account.)
|
| Ignoring the pragmatics, though, there's also a key
| distinction even in theory: when a company X from country
| A, trades with consumers in country B, company X is
| seeking to pull money _out of_ (or put money into) a
| credit card or bank account that exists in country B (and
| which is denominated in the currency of country B), and
| move that money to /from country A, where it will _then_
| get exchanged for the currency of country A and drop into
| the company 's country-A bank account.
|
| The manipulation of the country-B bank account, can only
| legally be done (for most values of country-B) by a
| company legally registered in country-B to operate on the
| payment networks _of_ country-B. There has to be a
| payment server sitting there physically in country-B,
| connected by dedicated line to the inter-bank network the
| banks of country-B use; and that payment server has to
| have signing certs installed to emit messages on the line
| that will be accepted by the network -- signing certs
| which required a bunch of legal and contractual and
| trust-handshake hoops to be jumped _with the banks of
| country-B_ before they 'd be issued.
|
| So these are the only options for getting access to such
| a payment server. Either:
|
| - company X forms a country-B subsidiary XB, that goes
| through the process of applying for the certs and setting
| up the payment server; or
|
| - company X pays existing country-B-local payments
| company Y to use _their_ payments server to do the money-
| moving-around for them; or
|
| - company X pays multinational payments company Z to
| provide them a country-agnostic interface for moving
| money around; when requested by X to perform a country-B
| transaction, Z will then either signal the servers of
| _their_ existing country-B-local subsidiary ZB -- or will
| pass the message to their country-B-transaction-partner Y
| -- to do the real money-moving around.
|
| Anything that seemingly doesn't have one of these three
| fundamental shapes -- but which still results in a
| company in country-A moving around money in a country-B
| bank account -- is just window-dressing on top of
| underlying infrastructure that _does_ have one of these
| shapes.
| piotrkaminski wrote:
| Thanks for writing this up -- that's a really interesting
| perspective on the problem, and definitely worth
| pondering. I'm not familiar with the underpinnings of
| cross-country payments so I'll just take your description
| as valid.
|
| I think it's not completely incompatible with my view,
| though: if you don't have a country B subsidiary (the
| assumption underlying this entire discussion!) then the
| most country B can do is tell the payment processing
| company you're contracting with to stop doing business
| with you. That's completely fair and I see it as a kind
| of "financial firewall" for country B.
|
| Even this power is subject to some checks and balances,
| though: 1. If your service/site is popular, country B's
| population may object to no longer being able to do
| business with you and put pressure on country B's
| government. 2. You could bypass the financial system with
| crypto payments. (Yeah, not terribly practical for most
| use cases, but could become more popular in case of
| government overreach.) 3. Ad-supported businesses -- like
| the one in the original article, apparently -- are immune
| to this kind of intervention!
|
| Ultimately, a country can only control entities with a
| physical presence inside its borders, and while some
| common commercial architectures necessitate this (to some
| degree) not all do. Countries that make laws that pretend
| otherwise just end up looking silly.
| patrakov wrote:
| > it's also how foreign real-estate investments work in
| the Philippines
|
| Strange - here in Lapu-Lapu, a too-nasty salesperson has
| convinced me (a foreigner) to enter a contract to buy a
| not-yet-built condo unit. I just pay a certain amount
| every month using my bank account, they get the money,
| and on an agreed-upon date, the unit will be mine. I can
| go at any time and watch how the construction work
| proceeds. So far, their proposed date looks like a
| reasonable expectation of when the unit will be ready.
|
| In other words, it's the same process as in my former
| home country.
| derefr wrote:
| Extremely fine point of distinction that's important
| here: a condo is treated as real-estate, but it isn't.
| (Condo ownership is really more of a transferrable,
| indefinite exclusive use-right.) Real-estate is
| fundamentally about buying and selling plots of land, and
| is only coincidentally about what's sitting on those
| plots. Buying a condo doesn't put you in top-level
| possession of a plot of land; even if the building is a
| residential co-op, what you'd get would be equity in a
| corporation that holds the plot of land. For non co-op
| buildings, you don't even get that.
|
| For legal and tax purposes, most countries do abstract
| over the separate low-level concepts of plot-of-land
| ownership and condo ownership, resulting in a legal ADT
| called a "lot"; where each "lot" has its own title that
| can only be transferred through a notarized process; has
| yearly property taxes levied against it in proportion to
| its market value; etc. This isn't a natural abstraction,
| though -- just a common legal "interface" used by the
| government to manage instances of the two separate
| underlying contractual implementations. Those
| implementations still each have their own separate laws
| that apply to them.
|
| Which brings me to the point: foreigners are forbidden
| from owning _plots of land_ in the Philippines.
|
| That doesn't stop you from owning a condo -- because
| buying a condo doesn't translate to buying any land.
|
| But you can't legally buy a _house_ in the Philippines --
| since that purchase would come with land. (Or rather,
| _is_ a purchase of land, where that land happens to at
| this moment have a house on it.)
|
| Instead, to do something _equivalent_ to buying a house,
| you 'd need
|
| 1. a Philippines citizen (a real proxy person) to buy the
| house for you, and then assign you
|
| 2. a 99-year transferrable
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leasehold_estate on the
| land, explicitly written to come with
|
| 3. possession of the "materials that make up all current
| structures built on the land" (so you can tear the house
| down, if you like), and
|
| 4. the right to build whatever other new structures you
| like on the land, and use them for whatever purposes you
| see fit, including subletting.
|
| (I'm actually not sure whether there's any legal
| instrument the proxy-person can grant you that would
| allow you to apply to re-zone "your" land. They might
| have to apply for that in your stead!)
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Yes that is how it works. If you want your website to be
| available in a country, you need to follow local laws.
| Otherwise, they can shut you down.
|
| It is different in terms of enforcement for someone running a
| server in their apartment and a corporation. And it depends
| on the law broken. If you're running a piracy server in
| Haiti, the US government can decide they want to shut you
| down. But if it's something minor, the government will just
| ignore you. Companies are different because they're easier to
| target when it comes to enforcement.
| Zak wrote:
| > _If you want your website to be available in a country_
|
| Well sure, if Brazil wants to build the Great Firewall of
| Brazil, they can do so.
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| False dichotomy. The choices aren't "100% open" or "great
| firewall of $country".
|
| This happens all the time in every country.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Reminder, that this was in response to the Supreme Court
| of Brazil ordering this platform to remove certain users.
| They don't need to build a firewall, this can be dealt
| with using international treaties and laws. US government
| often cracks down on websites that break US law without
| building a firewall. There are other levers to doing it.
|
| Also, they don't need a firewall, ISPs can block domain
| names (which the courts can force them to since they
| operate in the country) very easily and is used across
| the world.
| Zak wrote:
| I would include ordering blocking by local ISPs in "build
| a firewall". It seems what has happened here is Rumble is
| doing the blocking. A mechanism existing by which Brazil
| can force a company with no presence in Brazil to block
| access to web content strikes me as problematic.
|
| Of course when a company is trying to _do business_ in a
| country, it needs relationships with local companies,
| access to banking and payment infrastructure, etc... and
| governments can certainly prevent those from doing
| business with it. It doesn 't sound like that's the issue
| here though.
|
| If there is a mechanism by which the government of Brazil
| can force a company based in the USA or Canada to block
| visitors to its website, I would like to know the details
| so I can advocate that the USA withdraw from the relevant
| treaty. I'd apply the same logic to the USA trying to
| force foreign websites to shut down or block visitors
| from the USA.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| Yep, I miss the days where websites said "you want to keep
| your citizens from accessing our site, get fucked, do it
| yourself, build a great firewall because we don't have to
| enforce your laws for you" but those days are long gone since
| Facebook and Google created a precedent of doing it to keep
| foreign markets. It's unfortunate but this is the new status
| quo.
| philwelch wrote:
| The problem is that these sites are supported by
| advertising and if you can't collect ad revenue in a
| country, you might as well not even let them access the
| site.
| figassis wrote:
| Why not do it the way Binance/Coinbase did it? Block the
| country and subtly hint at customers to use a VPN.
| benf76 wrote:
| Gab.com takes this approach today
| smegsicle wrote:
| wasn't that the place that protested themselves off aws,
| mastadon, twitter, and even fdroid?
|
| sounds scarier than 4chan
| whatwhaaaaat wrote:
| I've never been to gab so I can't say exactly what their
| content is but I do have a memory longer than a goldfish
| and I can firmly say that you are not being truthful.
|
| Gab was kicked off those platforms for not touting the
| "party" line on the covid shot, trans stuff, and other
| social hot button issues.
| loceng wrote:
| I've begun contemplating if these companies are complicit
| in whatever crimes against humanity these countries may be
| partaking in, wanting censored-suppressed - in the name of
| profit, party to industrial complexes working with
| authoritarian governments, being fascism.
| TylerE wrote:
| Yet people here routinely make that argument to say that US
| companies should be bound by whatever parts of GDPR that
| poster finds convenient...
|
| I've asked essentially this same question several times of
| those people and never gotten more than vague handwaving in
| response.
| midasuni wrote:
| If a US company wants to do business in the EU it must
| follow EU laws. If a Brazilian country wants to do business
| in the US it must follow US laws.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| A court order would have forced all Brazilian ISP's or the
| international peering operators on Brazilian soil to block it
| - Rumble simply pre-empted it to make drama around free
| speech.
| claytongulick wrote:
| > to make drama around free speech.
|
| I remember when free speech was an ideal that was
| universally recognized as crucial to a functioning
| democracy.
|
| "Making drama" by refusing to participate in a censorship
| program strikes me as admirable.
|
| What a strange world we live in where so many people sneer
| at the concept of free exchange and the marketplace of
| ideas, and those that seek to support it.
| midasuni wrote:
| I don't. I remember when every country and society have
| different views on freedom of speech and where the limits
| are.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| US concepts are NOT universal - in South Africa we have
| strong laws against racist hate speech - call somebody a
| local slur for black person (k word) here you going to
| get prosecuted and fined and perhaps even jail never mind
| being dragged on social media.
|
| We call it "crimen injuria" in our laws - right to
| dignity is defined in our constitution and frankly this
| has NO place in our society considering our history.
| midasuni wrote:
| Sam's pizzas in Albany don't have to do anything with
| Brazilian law. However if it wants to do business in Brazil
| it has to follow those laws.
|
| I don't do business in North Korea so I'm not interested in
| upholding their law. I do do business in France so I have to
| obey their laws.
|
| There tends to just be one country which holds its domestic
| laws as relevant to people not doing business in their
| country.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| Can't they just kindly reply "no" to any foreign governments
| requests? I'm confused why shutting off all access was the
| answer when they're not (to my knowledge) operating in Brazil
| darth_avocado wrote:
| If they're operating in a country, they need to follow local
| laws.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Do they have a physical presence in Brazil?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| You don't need a physical presence.
| netr0ute wrote:
| What could Brazil do?
| worik wrote:
| > What could Brazil do?
|
| * Request extradition
|
| * Fine local advertisers
|
| * Confiscate any payments
|
| * Harrass the ISPs who carry the service
|
| * Harrass local users
|
| I do nor advocate any of the above
|
| But the idea a business that trades internationally can
| say "fuck you" to a nation state is childish
|
| There can be terrible consequences
| netr0ute wrote:
| I don't know, but the end result of that sounds a whole
| lot similar to what Rumble's doing right now. Therefore,
| I'd say that for other websites in similar positions,
| they could just send Brazil's mad demandz to the junk
| pile.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Ultimately, the only thing Brazil can do is take action
| on entities inside of Brazil. So yes, Rumble could just
| say on and put the ball back in Brazil's court for them
| to block Rumble or go after Brazilian advertisers.
| whstl wrote:
| What generally happens when an international service
| refuses to comply with a court order in Brazil is a
| temporary blocking that must be enforced by ISPs. Often
| it is DNS blocking, trivial to circumvent. Sometimes IP-
| level blocking, often also easy (via VPNs).
|
| This often works and rarely lasted more than a day. I
| don't think I was ever personally affected by one of
| those blockings when I was in the country.
|
| I don't really remember any case where a large server
| failed to comply and remained blocked.
|
| EDIT: There are things that were blocked and remained
| blocked forever, but they're often things like piracy,
| CSAM sites... which are things that often get blocked
| even in the USA. Sometimes this is a harsher block
| directly at the host of the website, either via court
| order when it's a Brazilian host, or because
| international laws were broken, or because the host
| simply complied.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| This state of affairs is unacceptable.
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| To whom?
| wand3r wrote:
| a free and open internet.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Okay. But you do need a legal/gov-recognized presence
| there. Without that, there isn't a way to be subject to
| their laws.
| ajross wrote:
| That isn't generally the standard. The question is
| whether they are "doing business" in Brazil. Which
| clearly they were, since they just stopped.
| jevoten wrote:
| "Not actively blocking IPs from an area" is a pretty low
| bar for "doing business".
| ajross wrote:
| They're a website. "Not actively blocking IPs" is
| literally the business they're in. If you think it's a
| low bar, then why bother to argue about it on the
| internet? Clearly you think they were doing something
| impactful, why is that not "business"?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > The question is whether they are "doing business" in
| Brazil. Which clearly they were, since they just stopped.
|
| Business implies commerce, monetary transactions. It
| doesn't imply access however.
| ajross wrote:
| Rumble is an ad-supported video hosting platform. Clearly
| serving ad-supported videos to people is "commerce",
| don't be silly.
| whstl wrote:
| Selling Ads to Brazilian companies and paying streamers
| revenue-share is commerce.
| patch_cable wrote:
| It's really frustrating reading this thread looking for an
| actual answer to the question of "how would Brazil enforce
| any of its demands?"
| whstl wrote:
| To answer: Brazil can't specifically enforce what it asked
| for. Brazil isn't demanding the entire website to be
| blocked, it is demanding certain users to be blocked. This
| can only be done at the website level (nobody is gonna
| build a "Great Firewall" just for this).
|
| What a court in Brazil can do in case of a "no", is then
| block the whole website, often done in simple ways (DNS) at
| local ISPs. It can also put the burden on local
| representatives of Rumble in Brazil, as it did with
| Facebook in the past (this means jail time for not
| complying with a court order).
|
| In theory some people below mentioned that it can also
| forbid local Brazilian entities from performing commerce
| with the entity (like eg: fining advertisers paying for
| ads, or the advertise), but I'm not sure how that would
| work, since I'm not a lawyer.
| wand3r wrote:
| Ok, thanks, I too was looking for this answer. What is
| the logic in voluntarily shutting down? Simply to preempt
| a ruling that would bar them from operating?
| Additionally, it would help stop the potential for action
| against Brazilian individuals and businesses who I guess
| could use a VPN which would be a gray area currently?
| whstl wrote:
| I can only speculate. Trying to get publicity? Wanting to
| comply with the court order without censoring individual
| streamers? Just moving away from a problem? No idea.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > I'm all for freedom of speech, but not all cultures are the
| same and neither are local laws. Sometimes what works for
| America doesn't work elsewhere.
|
| If free speech doesn't work in some particular culture, then
| it's that culture that needs to be discarded, not free speech.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Okay that argument makes sense. The culture cannot change
| overnight when majority of your population is not educated.
| So what do you propose we do till then? Give free speech to
| everyone and let it all burn down?
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Oh no, uneducated people might express unapproved opinions!
| How improper, I think I might faint /s
| Matheus28 wrote:
| You'll be surprised to learn that the way free speech exists
| in the US doesn't really exist in most other countries. In
| many western countries, hate speech, racism and nazism are
| prohibited speeches.
| sakjur wrote:
| To add to this, I'd say as a European that I'm more
| concerned with the US limiting speech than our own laws.
| The US is good at excercising its diplomatic, trade and
| military power to prevent other countries from wielding
| free speech wrong.
|
| Trading with Iran is one example of that. You can be
| effectively shut out from the financial system of the world
| if you decide to ignore US sanctions, even when you don't
| have entities, customers, suppliers, or employees in the
| US. Cuba and Panama's existence are other examples of when
| countries ignored the US and paid the price.
|
| I don't think the US is particularly evil or anything like
| that, but true free speech is a whole lot easier to
| safeguard when you're not relying on the patronage of a
| superpower. And today, most countries either are a
| superpower in their own might or rely on one for
| participation in the global economy and modern world.
|
| ...and there's some cruel irony in suggesting the
| dismantling of a culture to leave room for free speech. I
| believe any sort of sustainable freedom of speech will have
| to grow organically into the culture. And that
| unfortunately takes time.
| o11c wrote:
| Paraphrasing XKCD 1357: citing "free speech" is bad, because
| it's admitting that the best argument you have is "it's not
| literally illegal to say this".
|
| And when it's literally about Nazis (it seems like it always
| is) ... Rumble isn't the one looking like they have standards
| here.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| You have a very dim view of the world if you actually
| believe most victims of censorship are "literal nazis"
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Nope.
|
| Seeing some your nuts in the US in positions of power -
| Jewish Space Lasers and QAnon adherents it shows me how
| unregulated free speech don't work so well.
|
| It might have been the case when the reach was the next town
| by donkey but in this day and age all it takes is an unhinged
| person to start a new cult around kids being molested at a
| Pizza Palour.
| speeder wrote:
| I am sad they had to shut down in Brazil, that is one of the
| few countries that has free speech in the constitution.
|
| What is going on is basically the government ignoring the
| constitution, and the Supreme Court allowing it, because they
| are corrupt.
| teknico wrote:
| > This is Brazil. [...] Sometimes what works for America
| doesn't work elsewhere.
|
| Shortening "United States of America" to just "America" is not
| good. Brazil is part of America. USA is part of America. USA is
| not America.
| Pat_Murph wrote:
| ..."holds the line for free speech and American values"
|
| There slogan is a litteral dodwhistle for the extreme right
| MAGA chuds in the US. Lol
| cvbnht wrote:
| Just a background:
|
| - [2022] Monark was fired from the podcast "Flow" in February
| 2022, after defending the existence of a Nazi party in the
| program, which is prohibited by law. After the criticism, Monark
| apologized and said he was drunk when he made the comment. While
| testifying to the Civil Police of Sao Paulo about the case, he
| changed the version of the story, and said he had "superficial
| knowledge" about Nazism. [1]
|
| - [2023-06-29] Heard by order of the minister of the Supreme
| Court Alexandre de Moraes, the influencer is accused of spreading
| false information about the Supreme Court and the elections. A
| statement was taken on Thursday (29). The influencer Monark
| denied to the Federal Police to have stimulated the coup acts of
| January 8, when vandals invaded and depredated the headquarters
| of the Three Powers. He also followed up with attacks on the
| Superior Electoral Court (TSE). [2].
|
| - [2023-08-02] Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal
| Supreme Court (STF), fined the influencer Bruno Aiub, known as
| Monark, in a breach of judicial decision and ordered the opening
| of an investigation to investigate the podcaster. [3]
|
| My question is, is this censorship or is this an investigation?
|
| All in Brazillian portuguese:
|
| 1. https://g1.globo.com/pop-arte/noticia/2022/02/08/flow-
| podcas... 2.
| https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2023/06/29/influencer-...
| 3. https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2023/08/02/moraes-
| mult...
| jevoten wrote:
| Could you elaborate on "He also followed up with attacks on the
| Superior Electoral Court (TSE)"? What form did these "attacks"
| take - a machete, or written statements?
|
| > My question is, is this censorship or is this an
| investigation?
|
| Those are not mutually exclusive. In fact, censoring someone
| under investigation is the most pernicious censorship of all -
| it's scary enough to be targeted by the vast resources of the
| State with intent to imprison you, but then silencing you so
| you can't tell your side of the story, try to get public
| support (or legal aid/funding), or alert the public to any
| injustice or corruption in your prosecution, makes it outright
| tyrannical.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| IIRC, publishing unfounded claims about the elections being
| manipulated, to his 1M+ twitter followers.
| rubslopes wrote:
| I present to you a more serious recent case, in my opinion. The
| comedian Leo Lins made jokes about slavery and minorities in a
| show. As a consequence, his YouTube channel was removed by the
| justice system [0]. Additionally, approximately $61k of his
| assets (equivalent to 300k in Brazilian currency) were frozen,
| and he is prohibited from making more "demeaning" jokes in
| public. Failure to comply will result in a $2k fine per day.
|
| Regardless of the quality of his jokes, I believe that when
| comedy faces censorship, it marks the erosion of the last
| barrier protecting free speech.
|
| By the way, I'm Brazilian.
|
| [0] In Portuguese: https://g1.globo.com/sp/sao-
| paulo/noticia/2023/09/05/leo-lin...
| jevoten wrote:
| I would prefer a "This user page censored in Brazil on order of
| the Brazilian government" for the censored users. Then we could
| see what they're trying to censor, and Brazilians could still
| read it with a VPN.
| whstl wrote:
| This is what the court actually ordered.
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| Brazil doesn't have "free speech" in the same way as the US does.
| Many countries don't, actually.
|
| For example, racism is a punishable offense in Brazil. You
| literally cannot say "I hate <insert race>". The value of saying
| what you want is not held higher than the value of not being
| discriminated against.
|
| Brazil has many issues, but it has an impressively modern /
| progressive constitution dated from 1988, written after the end
| of the military regime. Sadly the law isn't always applied and
| definitely not evenly applied...
|
| Personally, I think "life" and "liberty" are the two most
| important inalienable rights, but in that order. Liberty cannot
| go as far as infringing on Life.
|
| And pretty much every other right exist for how they protect
| "life" and/or "liberty"
| lulznews wrote:
| Try saying those things in America and you'll find out how free
| speech is here pretty quickly.
| yareal wrote:
| People say, "I hate <minority>" in America _all the time_? I
| can 't count how many times I've heard I hate the gays or I
| hate the Blacks/Indians/Mexicans or I hate women.
|
| It's truly staggering how common it is here.
| cortic wrote:
| >The value of saying what you want is not held higher than the
| value of not being discriminated against.
|
| Alternatively; The value of maintaining current discrimination
| is high enough to motivate laws protecting racists from
| exposing themselves publicly.
|
| Or; The value in maintain hatred within society is higher than
| the value of progressive discourse.
|
| My point is that there are a few ways to interpret speech
| controls, and i don't think its fair to just pick the positive
| spin.
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| What? None of those are cogent arguments.
|
| _> The value of maintaining current discrimination is high
| enough to motivate laws protecting racists from exposing
| themselves publicly._
|
| A law that punishes racist speech doesn't protect racist
| people from exposing themselves. It protects their victims
| from dealing with that form of hate speech. You're basically
| arguing that making "hate speech" illegal does more harm than
| good, but you haven't offered proof or any logical argument
| why that is. I argue silencing hate speech (or attempting as
| much) does more good than harm because it limits the impact
| of such hate speech.
|
| _> Or; The value in maintain hatred within society is higher
| than the value of progressive discourse._
|
| Same as the above.
|
| _> My point is that there is a few ways to interpret speech
| controls_
|
| Perhaps, but the ones you've provided don't really stand to
| scrutiny.
| cortic wrote:
| >proof or any logical argument
|
| All of human progress has happened through open discussion;
| i thought this was obvious. We gain immunity to bad ideas
| by hearing them within public areas where people can argue
| for and against them honestly. This leads to people
| gaining/learning good ideas because they more often defeat
| bad ideas. Leading to a more progressive society. Ban bad
| ideas in public and people become vulnerable to them in
| private.
|
| >The value of saying what you want is not held higher than
| the value of not being discriminated against.
|
| This is not a cogent argument; The vast majority of
| discrimination is not verbal, in fact the verbal bit isn't
| generally discrimination at all but a signal that
| discrimination may be happening.. suppress the signal and
| you can generally keep the discrimination.
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| _> All of human progress has happened through open
| discussion; i thought this was obvious. We gain immunity
| to bad ideas by hearing them within public areas where
| people can argue for and against them honestly. This
| leads to people gaining /learning good ideas because they
| more often defeat bad ideas. Leading to a more
| progressive society. Ban bad ideas in public and people
| become vulnerable to them in private._
|
| Brazilian Law doesn't preclude you from having actual
| intellectual discussions about any topic. There are
| limits to hate speech, harassment, bullying, etc. There
| is no real benefit from having bigots spew hatred openly
| in society. In fact, giving them the opportunity to
| promote intolerance tends to breed more intolerance. This
| has been the case with nazis, QAnon, extreme right more
| generally in the US, Bolsominions in Brazil... We cannot
| be tolerant of intolerance. Curtailing speech is a
| "necessary harm" to prevent a bigger harm from occurring,
| which is the curtailment of _life_.
|
| _> This is not a cogent argument; The vast majority of
| discrimination is not verbal, in fact the verbal bit isn
| 't generally discrimination at all but a signal that
| discrimination may be happening.. suppress the signal and
| you can generally keep the discrimination._
|
| I appreciate the discussion but unfortunately that's not
| logical. Specifically, I said:
|
| 1. All forms of discrimination are harmful and should be
| minimized or eliminated.
|
| 2. Verbal discrimination is a form of discrimination.
|
| 3. Therefore, verbal discrimination should be minimized
| or eliminated.
|
| You're saying
|
| 1. The majority of discrimination is non-verbal.
|
| 2. Verbal discrimination often signals non-verbal
| discrimination.
|
| 3. If a form of discrimination is less prevalent or is a
| signal of another form, it is less important to address.
|
| 4. Therefore, it's acceptable to allow verbal
| discrimination.
|
| But that's a fallacy. Specifically "false dichotomy", in
| that it implies that addressing one issue (verbal
| discrimination) precludes or is less important than
| addressing another (non-verbal discrimination). In
| reality, both can and should be addressed concurrently.
|
| All forms of discrimination, whether prevalent or
| indicative, contribute to the overall harm caused by
| discrimination.
|
| Therefore, even if verbal discrimination is less
| prevalent or a signal of non-verbal discrimination, it
| should still be minimized or eliminated alongside other
| forms of discrimination.
|
| You are specifically arguing that we must _allow_ verbal
| discrimination because we will be able to combat non-
| verbal discrimination better. I think the burden of proof
| is on you to prove that this is the case.
|
| Empirically, Brazil is _much_ less racist than the U.S.
| for a variety of reasons. If freedom of speech was so
| important to prevent non-verbal discrimination, it would
| stand to reason that one such example of a "infinitely
| free speaking" and "tolerant" society would exist. I
| can't think of any.
|
| Not to mention the fact that "non-verbal discrimination"
| is specifically harder to legislate against (or even
| harder to _prove_ in a courtroom), which explains why it
| is not as clearly outlawed in the Brazilian constitution.
| jevoten wrote:
| > For example, racism is a punishable offense in Brazil. You
| literally cannot say "I hate <insert race>".
|
| What if you dress it up a little? E.g. "<insert race> is
| primarily and disproportionately responsible for <insert
| societal ill>"?
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| Then a judge gets to decide whether it's enough to infringe
| the law or not, as is the case in all legal matters (except
| sometimes that is the role of a jury or arbiter, to be
| pedantic)
|
| Context is key. IANAL nor a judge, but I think saying
| "<insert race> is primarily and disproportionately
| responsible for <insert societal ill>" is a valid statement
| (i.e. not quote-unquote racist) IF you are saying it in the
| context of an intellectual discussion, open to providing data
| to support it, explaining why your comment has a purpose
| other than just discrimination, etc. etc.
| jevoten wrote:
| Do you happen to have the (translated) wording of that law?
| I understand your description is somewhat speculative since
| YANAL, but it's still troubling, especially the part about
| "purpose". E.g. could a true, objective statement of fact,
| based on some undisputed data (such as statistics gathered
| and published by the government itself), still be criminal
| if it was uttered for the "wrong" purpose?
|
| Conversely, are unsubstantiated and even false statements
| (that don't qualify as libel Edit: nor fraud, false
| advertisement, copyright infringement, and other strictly
| commercial limits on speech) allowed, so long as they
| advance the "right" purpose?
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| I think you're touching on various different issues like
| fraud, false advertising, racism, etc. so there's no
| clear answer. You would need to pick a specific case for
| someone to weigh in on.
|
| The Wikipedia article on freedom of speech in Brazil is a
| good starting point:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_Brazil
|
| It's not a particularly well-written article, but it does
| lay out the key article from the constitution (article 5)
| and the various articles in the penal code _and_ the
| anti-racism law (which is a specific law!) regarding
| freedom of speech.
|
| Additionally, Article 3, paragraph 4 of the Constitution
| is key. It's placement at the very top of the
| constitution, if not legally meaningful, feels
| politically meaningful to me:
|
| _Art. 3 The fundamental objectives of the Federative
| Republic of Brazil are:_
|
| _I. to build a free, just and unified society;_
|
| _II. to guarantee national development;_
|
| _III. to eradicate poverty and substandard living
| conditions and to reduce social and regional
| inequalities;_
|
| _IV. to promote the well-being of all, without prejudice
| as to origin, race, sex, color, age and any other forms
| of discrimination._
|
| So the proof of the pudding to me as a layman is whether
| whatever form of speech you used qualifies as "prejudice
| as to origin, race, sex, color, age and any other forms
| of discrimination"
| jevoten wrote:
| It's so much worse than I thought: _Article 287 - Making
| publicly, praise or justification of criminal act or
| crime author: Penalty - detention of three to six months
| or a fine._
|
| So "He was justified in sabotaging logging machines,
| because sacrificing our rainforests for profit is wrong,
| and the government hasn't done enough to reduce logging"
| carries an up to half a year prison term.
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| Don't ignore the "or a fine". A situation like you
| described doesn't commonly result in any jail time (or in
| any fine, tbh)
|
| Besides, I'd wager even if the whole state hated you, you
| would clearly be protected in that specific scenario by
| article 5 of the constitution, which trumps the penal
| code or other ordinary laws:
|
| _IX - are free the expression of intellectual, artistic,
| scientific and communication, regardless of censorship or
| license;_
|
| But again, IANAL (although married to one)
| kelnos wrote:
| Having to pay a fine instead doesn't make it better.
| abduhl wrote:
| Who determines what is considered a race? Who decides what's
| "racist"? Who decides when the "no racism" law is enforced?
|
| The best part about laws against wrongthink is that the things
| you're not allowed to think or say are wrong by definition. Who
| defines what's wrongthink? Well, asking that question sounds
| like wrongthink to me.
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| _> Who determines what is considered a race? Who decides
| what's "racist"? Who decides when the "no racism" law is
| enforced?_
|
| The judge. Feel free to argue your case in court. No law is
| black and white. Judges and juries get to decide on their
| application every single date.
| abduhl wrote:
| Ah yes the judge. Who decides when I see her? Do I just sit
| quietly in jail until then?
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| > Ah yes the judge. Who decides when I see her?
|
| Another judge decides when you see the judge that will
| try your case.
|
| > Do I just sit quietly in jail until then?
|
| No, you can have your attorney file an habeas corpus to
| either have your case tried speedily or have you be
| released from jail until the court date.
|
| Just because you don't know how the law works doesn't
| mean others haven't thought about these challenges before
| and solved them. Ignorance doesn't make your arguments
| stronger.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| > No, you can have your attorney file an habeas corpus to
| either have your case tried speedily or have you be
| released from jail until the court date.
|
| That is unless the individual is considered a flight risk
| from Brazil.
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| > That is unless the individual is considered a flight
| risk from Brazil.
|
| Although normally even if you are considered a flight
| risk you often just have to turn in your passport and
| wait for your trial at home, IIRC
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Okay serious flight risk, or whatever threshold it is in
| Brazil.
| andrenth wrote:
| > You literally cannot say "I hate <insert race>".
|
| Unless the "race" in question is white. In that case, you can
| absolutely say that, as has been done by government officials
| of the current administration.
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| Politically, yes, you can say that in Brazil today. But
| legally speaking that's not allowed...
| Georgelemental wrote:
| kto kogo?
| andrenth wrote:
| Legally speaking you can say whatever the Supreme Court's
| ad-hoc "interpretations" of the constitution will allow you
| to say, meaning whatever's aligned with their political
| interests.
| gota wrote:
| Show us some examples?
| andrenth wrote:
| An advisor to the ministry of social equality has referred
| pejoratively to fans of a soccer team as "white fanbase"
| and something like "f'ing europeans". That was after her
| boss used public money to travel to watch a soccer game.
|
| A district attorney has ruled [2] that there was no racism
| in that case because reverse racism doesn't exist.
|
| [1]https://g1.globo.com/google/amp/politica/noticia/2023/09
| /26/...
|
| [2] https://www.metropoles.com/sao-paulo/torcida-branca-
| mpsp-neg...
| kelnos wrote:
| Well, they're at least correct that reverse racism
| doesn't exist. Unfortunately they missed the bit where
| racism is racism, regardless of who the target is.
| shipscode wrote:
| Good. Free speech is a natural human right. Most act like it was
| invented by the US constitution instead of acknowledged by it.
| atticora wrote:
| I'm more of a free speech partisan that most people, but I
| don't understand the claim that it is a natural right in some
| sense. Is it more or less natural than the impulse of other
| people to suppress speech? I believe that protecting it is a
| better policy, but in what sense of the word is it more or less
| "natural" than suppressing it?
| logicchains wrote:
| "Natural right" means a right with a sound fundamental
| philosophical justification behind it, it doesn't mean
| "natural" in the sense of "something people do naturally".
| People by nature are often savages; learning to respect the
| rights of other people, and not just see them as tools for us
| to impose our own will upon, is part of the challenge of
| human moral development.
| atticora wrote:
| I'm in favor of human moral development through means such
| as free speech. But "a sound fundamental philosophical
| justification" doesn't appear to have any meaning, or
| rather can mean anything to anyone. It can envelop
| humanity's destruction as easily as its flourishing,
| depending on where your identity lies.
|
| I'd like to be able to deploy "natural" in defense of free
| speech, but I've found no substance to it. No premise
| beyond a personal value judgement, which I happen to share.
| So I default to appeals to utility.
| logicchains wrote:
| >. But "a sound fundamental philosophical justification"
| doesn't appear to have any meanin
|
| You're saying the entirety of moral philosophy has no
| meaning so people should just do whatever they feels
| like, that's a pretty barbaric position.
|
| >So I default to appeals to utility
|
| Utility also relies on a philosophical justification; if
| you throw out all philosophy, you also throw out
| utilitarianism.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rights_and_legal_ri
| ght...
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| I can go outside and shout whatever I want into the emptiness
| in front of me and involve nobody involuntarily. Suppressing
| speech necessarily requires coercion. That's as cut and dry
| of a natural/unnatural dichotomy as you can get.
| atticora wrote:
| I'd like to believe that there is a sense in which
| `voluntary` is more natural than `coercion`, but haven't
| found one. I'm a political extremist when it comes to
| preferring voluntary over coercion. But how is that more
| natural than the opposite?
|
| A lack of coercion doesn't seem to be the pattern of human
| history or the non-human natural word. Freedom is more of
| an aspiration for nature than a description of it.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| "Natural" here doesn't mean naturally occurring. Rape is
| naturally occurring. Natural here means that you could do
| it without any interference from another person or to
| another person. You're born with the ability and need no
| abstract systems to support your doing so, you need no
| unwilling participation, all that's required is for
| people to leave you be. Anything that derives from just
| your existence and form as a human being that requires no
| coercion whatsoever is a natural right.
|
| Coercion is naturally occurring. The aspiration is to
| understand an objective set of ethics that all people,
| when only considering power over themselves and not power
| over others, would agree to. There's a reason it was
| called the enlightenment, it was always about seeing how
| things should be, not how things are.
| atticora wrote:
| > There's a reason it was called the enlightenment, it
| was always about seeing how things should be, not how
| things are.
|
| And I probably broadly agree with you about that "should
| be". But when someone does not agree with us, it becomes
| just a personal value judgement. If someone makes the
| opposite value judgement -- for instance that our species
| is a blight on Gaia, and they prefer to identify with
| Gaia -- our preference has no more "natural" weight than
| preferring chocolate to vanilla. I wish it did.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| I disagree. I think what it comes down to fundamentally
| is coercion. You can call anything subjective so long as
| a person is not involuntarily subjected to the desires of
| another. Once that occurs, objectively it is no longer a
| question of subjectivity, because there is an individual
| with their own subjective experience and opinion being
| subjected to something else. Someone thinking "our
| species is a blight on Gaia" is subjective, someone
| deciding to help solve that problem and kill themselves
| is their business, someone deciding to solve that problem
| by killing others is objectively wrong. Chocolate or
| vanilla involves no unwilling participants, the analogy
| is flawed. You have an objective right to a preference
| there, you have no objective right to decide whether I
| should live or die.
|
| Again, when left to consider only sovereignty over
| themselves and not over others as a prerequisite, the set
| of natural rights will be arrived at unanimously,
| regardless of culture. The only time there are
| disagreements are when someone wants to seek control over
| other people, and OK, so you can say "the idea that
| coercing others is wrong is a value judgment and
| subjective" but then you have no fundamental reason why
| slavery is wrong, you only have a mishmash of arbitrary
| rules and no guiding principle whatsoever. If you agree
| that owning people is wrong on some fundamental,
| principled grounds, then you can't come to any other
| conclusion than coercion is the principle. If you think
| owning people should be disallowed not because of some
| fundamental principle, but because of some pragmatic
| reason like democracy says so or something, then you have
| to accept that enslaving people is acceptable if the
| culture or circumstances deem it OK. But you can't have
| both, it's doublethink. Either we have natural rights are
| slavery is acceptable if it is fashionable at the time.
| jorams wrote:
| I don't think that's a very strong argument since it
| applies to a lot of laws that are very much considered
| acceptable. From trespassing to the entire field of
| intellectual property.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| Trespassing is really the only one I struggle with.
|
| It is without a doubt true that land is a natural
| commons. Yet in order to make the most efficient use of
| it it has to be managed privately. When I walk across a
| field, I am not an aggressor, it is the man who erected
| the fence around it that is the aggressor. Yet without
| that fence nobody has any incentive to do anything useful
| with it. I suppose this emerges from the fact that might
| makes right and anyone with the capability of taking land
| without consequence will do so. But we are here to
| determine what is right, not what is simply true. This
| one is a difficult problem indeed.
|
| As far as intellectual property, I don't think you can
| own information. Nobody truly does, we create this
| abstract framework to try to make it so but it is
| fundamentally impossible to simultaneously own
| information and make it useful in the world and
| ultimately everyone knows this. To truly own information
| you have to keep it to yourself, but keeping it to
| yourself is mostly useless. A machine necessarily
| contains the information on its design in it's entirety,
| to put the machine into the world is to tell the world
| how to build it.
| anon291 wrote:
| It's a natural right because you have exclusive access to
| your vocal cords. If someone has hooked up your vocal cords
| to some sort of control device without your consent, then
| that's a criminal act. What recourse do those who want to
| suppress speech have other than illegal violence or further
| speech?
| benf76 wrote:
| Free speech includes freedom of religion derivative of
| freedom of thought. If someone can compel you to believe
| something or say something / or prevent you / they ultimately
| control what you think and if you don't have that you don't
| have a republic or any true freedoms which is why it's top of
| the list
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| > Free speech is a natural human right.
|
| It is, but it is not the paramount human right. Other rights,
| like "life" trump "liberty".
|
| One may argue that certain instances of "hate speech" encourage
| actions against "life" and that the "liberty" of exerting that
| speech is trumped by the need to protect that life.
|
| If you extend "life" to mean "health" and "health" to include
| "mental health", than the right to be a raging racist seems
| pretty obviously below the right for other people to not be
| attacked or threatened. QED.
| anon291 wrote:
| Speech doesn't kill people. Can you provide any evidence that
| talking has killed anyone?
|
| You don't have a right to be happy.
| chickenimprint wrote:
| What according to whom?
| kelnos wrote:
| There's no such thing as a natural right. The rights we have
| only exist because someone in power has granted them.
|
| You can believe that everyone _should_ have freedom of speech
| (and I 'd agree with you), but one look around the world should
| show you that it is not a natural right, as clearly it is
| suppressed heavily in some places. And even in places that
| claim to guarantee from of speech usually still restrict it in
| some ways.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Someone stranded on a desert island, thousands of miles from
| all civilization, can say anything they want without
| repercussions. Their right to free expression is innate, part
| of being human.
| kelnos wrote:
| Having the ability to do something under restricted
| circumstances doesn't make it a natural right. If something
| is truly a natural right, then they should be able to
| exercise that right under any circumstances, in any
| situation.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| There are two requirements for something to be a natural
| right:
|
| - It must be something any human can exercise in the
| absence of outside interference by other humans;
|
| - Any such interference must be presumptively immoral.
|
| Freedom of expression meets both the empirical and moral
| requirements for being a natural right.
| htk wrote:
| Brazil has been on a slippery slope regarding free speech. I see
| parallels with the war on terror, where the 9/11 attacks gave
| carte-blanche to gain power of the population. Brazil started
| with the "war on fake news" and now they just ban/censor whatever
| they think is objectionable. I hope it's not as sticky as the
| increase in surveillance from the NSA and the authoritarian
| approach from the TSA.
| logicchains wrote:
| It's not just Brazil; the vast majority of governments are
| trying to put a tighter leash on what people can say online.
| Because the decentralisation of information transfer is
| allowing citizens to be more informed than ever before about
| things their rulers don't want them to know.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| > the decentralisation of information transfer is allowing
| citizens to be more informed than ever before about things
| their rulers don't want them to know
|
| Racial superiority ideas and/or discrimination is the issue
| in this case, and 90% of other cases involving censorship in
| Brazil. How is that something "the rulers don't want you to
| know"?
| herval wrote:
| Who's "they" and what exactly are they "banning"? I haven't
| seen much outside the political disinformation sphere and some
| abuses of power around politicians protecting their own image.
| What aren't you allowed to say today in brazil?
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > political disinformation
|
| Translation: information (true, false, or just opinion) that
| the power structure sees as a threat to itself
| herval wrote:
| Information that the power structure of a country that's
| been controlled by the military twice sees as a threat to
| democracy, perhaps?
|
| Unlimited free speech absolutists just want to see the
| world burn
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Ah yes, military juntas, famous for their love of free
| expression /s
| throwawaysugar wrote:
| _> Brazil has been on a slippery slope regarding free speech._
|
| Citation needed. Free speech is not an "unlimited right" in
| Brazil (I'd argue it's not an unlimited right in the U.S.
| either, but that's not necessary here)
|
| Article 3 of the 1988 Constitution of Brazil states:
|
| Art. 3 The fundamental objectives of the Federative Republic of
| Brazil are:
|
| I. to build a free, just and unified society;
|
| II. to guarantee national development;
|
| III. to eradicate poverty and substandard living conditions and
| to reduce social and regional inequalities;
|
| _IV. to promote the well-being of all, without prejudice as to
| origin, race, sex, color, age and any other forms of
| discrimination._
|
| ---
|
| You can also just read on Wikipedia about this to be better
| informed... it's literally on the "Freedom of speech in Brazil"
| article
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_Brazil#Ty...
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > Free speech is not an "unlimited right" in Brazil
|
| Free speech exists as an unlimited right everywhere.
| Sometimes, tyrants fail to recognize that existence, is all
| waffleiron wrote:
| Human rights are cultural, for example the right to food
| and housing is seen by some other cultures as a human
| right. Does that mean the US ruled by tyrants for not
| recognizing that?
|
| Human rights are not as universal as you might think.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Human rights are human, that's why they're called "human
| rights." If they were cultural, they would be called
| "cultural rights." Some people claim that food and
| housing are "human rights"; those people are factually
| wrong because food and housing are limited resources that
| require time and effort to obtain. (In contrast, speaking
| one's mind is something anyone can just do; it's an
| intrinsic property of being human.)
| waffleiron wrote:
| The view that only negative rights are human rights is
| not a given and quite libertarian. For example education
| is often seen as a human right and is a positive right.
|
| Human rights depend on what one values and that's
| different for different groups. It's crazy to think that
| the way a certain country/person/ideology think about
| rights is the only correct way.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rig
| hts
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Once again, the universality of human rights is implied
| by their name, "human rights." If the government of
| Slevobia wants to provide healthcare to all Slevobian
| citizens, more power to them; but healthcare is then a
| "right of Slevobian citizens," not a "human right."
| TriangleEdge wrote:
| I am currently in Brazil. This is on the front page of the
| website: "NOTICE TO USERS IN BRAZIL: Because of Brazilian
| government demands to remove creators from our platform, Rumble
| is currently unavailable in Brazil. We are challenging these
| government demands and hope to restore access soon."
| hexage1814 wrote:
| Gleen Greewald, who lives in Brazil, is one the few foreign
| journalists covering what is happening. Essentially, censorship
| has become acceptable there as long as it is against Bolsonaro
| supporters - or, honestly, as long as it is against anyone who
| doesn't support the current status quo and the Lula/Brazil
| Supreme Court government.
|
| https://nitter.net/ggreenwald/status/1738311336898027770
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Reminds me of the expression that every nation has freedom of
| speech for the speech they agree with.
|
| The litmus test is whether they defend speech they don't agree
| with.
| gota wrote:
| In fairness, Lula's block has little to do with it. A bit more
| now that Lula gets to appoint new court Judges, I guess, but -
|
| there have been many pushes from the Supreme Court against the
| right-most Bolsonaro block because _it openly flirted with a
| military coup_. This is the blowback.
|
| In fact, the very first instances of those pushes were _during_
| Bolsonaro 's presidency; some motivated by government inaction
| or overreach (the disputes between Federal and State government
| during the pandemic comes to mind), some by political clash
| (Bolsonaro's son openly flaunting "closing down" the Court with
| military intervention; the usage of state cerimonies as
| rallies, and most importantly the Jan 8th stuff)
|
| As far as I can tell, a political group that threatened the
| established government structure lost and said structure is now
| reinforcing itself. If the purpose is to ensure resilience
| against future attacks or a power grab is anothee discussion,
| but the primordial movement's reasons are clear
| weare138 wrote:
| If these individuals were in the US I would bet dollars to donuts
| Rumble would have banned them if asked by a US law enforcement or
| regulatory agency rather than cut off access to the US.
| ponorin wrote:
| it's dangerous to equate freedom in freedom of speech as having
| less restrictions, because then the only speech you will hear is
| the one from people who can recover from whatever bullsh1t they
| spit. just like "free market" needs strong regulations to prevent
| monopoly and price gouging, freedom of speech should be about
| levelling the playing field and not as an excuse for bad takes.
| in that regard, united states isn't even the most free in terms
| of speech, it only has the least restrictions. indeed you see
| cases where the supposed land of freedom severely limits free
| speech such as dmca (specifically the anti-circumvention law) or
| charging edward snowden for feloney.
| devwastaken wrote:
| "bad takes" do not rise to a level where censorship is
| warranted. Humans communicate to learn, they are often wrong
| and convinced of wrong things. This is necessary to learn what
| a good take is.
|
| The moral panic of this age is synonymous to mcarthyism and the
| ages past. It never worked and as demonstrates today backfired
| to whole generations no longer believing their country or
| government are to be trusted.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > just like "free market" needs strong regulations to prevent
| monopoly and price gouging, freedom of speech should be about
| levelling the playing field and not as an excuse for bad takes.
|
| No, freedom of speech is actually unique in that there can be
| no "reasonable" restrictions on it. This is because determining
| whether a particular restriction is "reasonable" would require
| free discussion about that restriction, which is impossible as
| long as the restriction is in place.
| 0dayz wrote:
| Right, for the site proclaiming to be for free speech it doesn't
| seem that their in favor of practicing transparent speech i.e.
| Showing the court case or the individuals involved in the
| takedown:
|
| https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monark_(podcaster)
|
| You can think of the case against this individual as you please,
| my gripe with the site is that I just cannot trust outlets that
| brand themselves as an interest group and then withholds
| information when convenient, since then it's just propaganda.
|
| Oh and doing some further digging they even manages to somehow
| misread the EU media freedom act so badly that they quote a part
| of it that clearly states to protect journalists against Spyware,
| and yet they write that the EU wants to use Spyware against
| journalists.[1]
|
| And in the same article they paint orban as some freedom fighter
| of free speech. [1] .
|
| [1]https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-media-freedom-act-passes-key-
| vo...
| Pat_Murph wrote:
| Yep their bias is clearly on display we can Atleast give them
| that but them not gobong5the details of what the accusations
| are just comes off as dishonest...
|
| Hard to take seriously. As these free speech absolutist
| activists usualy are...
| 0dayz wrote:
| Yeah, it's unfortunately something I've seen happen with a
| lot of single-vote movment/groups, at best they play the
| useful idiot or have obvious biases that makes them not
| impartial.
| Pat_Murph wrote:
| Hilarious the dudes getting je banned are accusing the government
| of being a dictatorhip but their podcasts are based off their
| defense of an attempted coup by a wanna be dictator...
|
| And people are defending their right to encourage en entice
| people to fight against the elected government in place...
|
| Free speech absolutists are a joke. And they are mostly
| Americans. And they often ignore the fact that even in America
| there are limits on speech.
|
| It's just libertarian non sens. They want to say and encourage
| the worst shit and not face the consequences... Having a forum
| and being able to reech hundreds of thoudands of people like
| these clowns. There are and should be responsabilies and
| consequences for not meeting those resposibilities.
| byyll wrote:
| How is self-censoring "challenging government's censorship
| demands"?
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