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Press freedom !== entirety of freedom of speech

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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

Got anything substantive to say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

You cannot go around threatening to harm people without repercussions.


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

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

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


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

Sorry, my eyes just rolled out if my head.



Just Google it. It's been reported on various news sites. eg:

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irishman-arrested-for-...

Maybe it's not on The Guardian or the BBC but it obviously doesn't fit their bias so you may have to accept other sources.


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

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

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


Re-read what you just linked. In the response from the JIMU:

"A 51-year-old man from Aldershot was arrested on suspicion of sending by public communication network an offensive, indecent, obscene, menacing message or matter."

This is the legal basis for the arrest. Without the retweet, police would not have had authority to turn up to his place of residence - twice - and demand entry. No doubt they preferred Brady voluntarily submit himself for interview at the station, but he refused, which I hope we can all agree is the morally correct position. No one should have police turn up outside their house - TWICE - because of a parody retweet.


Why on earth was he legally obligated to have that discussion in the first place?

Those complaints should have been laughed at and ignored.


The law might be a bad one (and probably is) but on balance better that police investigate suspected illegality than don’t. Overall I’d rather be somewhere where even a former royal can be arrested than somewhere the rule of law is optional.

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

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


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

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

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


It’s bad now and not perfect for sure, but I doubt these instances would be upheld by the higher courts.

Kinda irrelevant, given that the go-to examples I see on Hacker News of this happening in the EU and UK are either actual death/violence threats etc. (which are also not protected speech in the USA) or also not upheld in higher European courts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...


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

I’m European and I do not. France and the UK especially come from the same liberal intellectual root as the USA. What we see today is a bastardisation of these principles in Europe. Only the US was smart enough to canonise it into law.

So there is censorship, you just think that it is good. That's fine! But you should own the position and justify it on its own terms instead of pretending that it doesn't count as censorship.

Sure but filtering what you say is also a form of censorship. Swinging the term around like it's some form of morality is silly; anyone who isn't for a form of censorship is just a moron and an asshole. Or even worse: a liberal.

Examples please.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/14/transgender-...

[2] https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Scottow-...

”Margaret Dodd of one offence of improper use of a public communications network, contrary to section 127(2)(c) of the Communications Act 2003. This provides that a person commits an offence if “for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another [she] … persistently makes use of a public electronic network”.”

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/dec/23/uk-police-le...

Regarding Graham Linehan who is by far the best example.


[1] is illegal

Not sure what [2] is about.

[3] doesn't appear relevant either.


“Is illegal”

Well yes, that’s my point. :)

2. Is a woman being arrested and charged with causing “anxiety” for a series of tweets.

3. Is the same; wrongthink guised as “threats” etc

If you just want to defend the censorship as is your right then just say so instead doing the usual:

“It’s not happening”

“Ok. It’s happening and that’s a good thing”

Rigmarole and wasting my time.


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

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

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

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

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


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

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


Two accounts of mine were banned for some reason and my sub was refunded. Literally from just inane conversations. Conversations also disappear and break randomly, but this happens on ChatGPT too sometimes

1. Because it is referring to the Super Bowl which was last week

2. Because everyone knows China is a surveillance state. It’s also entirely done by the state.

3. As above, the US’ surveillance is masked under private companies. This is far different from everywhere else.

4. Whataboutism (although I generally hate this newspeak term).


People are stupid and prone to blatant propaganda, that’s why. Even the so-called critical thinkers on this very website.

Remember the Ghost of Kiev?


No, a shared resource worth billions and an avenue for trade and repaired relations between the EU and Russia being sabotaged and false flagged by another country has the onus on that country.


> repaired relations between the EU and Russia being sabotaged and false flagged by another country has the onus on that country.

What relations? Nordstream went boom after 2022 war started.

And let's not forget that Russia purposely inflated gas prices to put pressure on EU during 2021.


Also affects the camera icon on the Lock Screen (bottom right). It also affects a partial left swipe gesture too which is very easy to do when the screen is touched


Make no mistake, this is not UBI. It is welfare/subsidisation by the taxpayer who actually brings in income. UBI is, well, universal. "UBI" that is not universal is welfare.


For Java development nothing comes close. VSCode feels like a text editor in comparison, even with its extensions

As for general development JetBrains just works. VSCode requires a bunch of extensions made by different independent authors with different standards and it just feels glued together and inconsistent


As if.

InteliJ only recently acquired the capability to use Clion plugins for JNI development, something that Eclipse and Netbeans have been capable of for the last 20 years, more or less.

They still don't have an incremental Java compiler, yeah you can use the one from Eclipse, so there is yet another thing that it doesn't do better.

Finally, what is with all that indexing after all these years?


Fair enough, I'm not a Java developer actually, but I know all the guys in work use it over everything else. I've tried VSCode for Java development a few years ago and it wasn't suitable as an IDE, just as a file editor.


It’s something to do with the TypeScript engine, it must be. I can also run IntelliJ fine with a huge Java project a but it’s TypeScript projects that grind it to a halt. It’s unusable on my work PC but the performance is still poor on my home PC. It’s been a steady decline since 2023


I didn’t read the paper but I know OR has an option to opt-in to reading/training off the prompts for a discount. Some free models also log, but I’m not sure if that is just the provider, or OR too


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