It happens when Cloudflare refuses to cancel service to some of the most disgusting sites on the internet, even though they're on the free plan and Cloudflare has no legal obligation to continue to host them.
It happens when reddit fights tooth and nail, at great expense and with no reward forthcoming, to maintain some of the most toxic communities on the internet, only agreeing to close them when there is truly no other choice.
It happens when computer scientists invent technologies like tor, freenet, and bitcoin, allowing unpopular groups to get their message out and collect donations, even if the majority would prefer that they be banished.
And yes, it even happens when a small ISP steps up to host The Daily Stormer, secure in their knowledge that the best way to contend with such filth is to let the sunlight disinfect it, rather than trying to bottle it up and hoping that bottle never breaks.
America is exceptional in its embrace of the cultural value of free speech. However bad we are about it sometimes, the rest of the world (including Western Europe) is much worse. This makes me proud to be an American citizen.
As a counterexample, in Europe, no company can fire an employee for "perpetuating gender stereotypes", or any other opinion, while in the US it seems quite easy to fire people for any reason.
I don't have much insight into European companies and how strongly they protect speech as a matter of policy, but rulings by the EU have been extremely discouraging. Here are some examples:
1. The EU's "right to be forgotten" can compel the removal of content that is both true and relevant. [1] In the US, my right to publish true facts about you trumps your right to have them swept under the rug.
2. The EU can compel publishers to remove content they deem "hate speech." [2] If you look up the EU's definition of hate speech, it actually sweeps broadly into what the US would call protected speech. For example, Germany's "incitement of popular hatred" [3] can be used to prevent newspapers from advancing the argument that migrants are disproportionately likely to commit crimes. Since there is no truth defense against hate speech accusations (unlike libel in the US), a newspaper that is dragged into court on hate speech charges couldn't defend itself by proving that what it wrote was true.
[1] http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/court-imposes-r...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/14/14920812/germany-facebook...
German court upholds its ban on comedian's Erdogan poem
Not the exact same business situation, but is that an example? Guy can't make a living off of his comedy because he's mocking a dictator.
Also, in the US, often companies offer you money to not sue them when they fire you. Doesn't mean the firing is legal, simply it is easier for everyone involved that way.
Here the guy was likely fired for saying that he witnessed discriminating hiring practices, i.e. quotas, to improve diversity metrics. And firing a whistleblower is illegal in the US as well. Most likely they will reach an agreement (or they have already reached). The guy will get some money and everyone will move on. Much easier than getting involved with legal stuff for both, google and the engineer.
What also matters is the practicalities and cost of redress and that varies across Europe. It's not the liberal paradise across the board as some suggest.
Its a phrase that different people use to express different culture values, but the one behind the Constitutional Amendment is, very clearly given the other evidence of the ideology of those wrote it, the freedom of private parties to speak and to use their own property to distribute their own speech and that of which they approve without constraint or compulsion by government.
It is not the idea that private parties, in general, are obligated, morally or otherwise, to amplify speech whether or not they agree with it, indeed, it is diametrically opposed to that idea.
It is true that there are some people who hold to the latter value and call it free speech, but that is entitlement rather than liberty.
In this case, cloudflare or whatever, is exercising their free speech by saying "We care so much about free speech, we'll amplify these jerk's speech".
I agree that expecting someone to do this for you is indeed a privilege, not a right.
So I'd say the difference between your comments is more semantic than anything. Parent commentor doesn't really imply everyone has a right to this kind of amplification.
To discuss does not legitimize. If you are fearful of an idea being debated, that says more about you than the idea.
"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
- Justice Louis Brandeis, Whitney vs California
Perhaps this is because not enough people are stepping up?
When was the last time you challenged a proclamation from some Fox News ditto head? When was the last time you looked at someone in your family spouting racist garbage and called them out on it?
"Exposure cures all" only works if someone is also willing to take on the challenge of creating the exposure.
You won’t see the same reaction when the story is about anti western Islamic propaganda. And I’m not talking about killing videos but speech that glorifies attacks for example in the same way that in the past day you can still read on the daily stormer how they glorify that domestic terrorism attack...
For the record I’m against any content of that nature but wake me up when it’s not only nazis that needs defending their free speech.
If you are not sure what you're saying is bullshit, just ask Aaron Swartz.
I will only use companies that always defend their customers for my own small business and personal sites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHZSfhd1X_8
And by the looks of it alt-right sites soon will barely have domains, they don't need to worry about the state requesting something like this.
O'Keefe is a conservative activist has a storied history of "severely editing" videos to mislead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O'Keefe
...any government? ... Including the inevitable non-trump one?
Because the justice department is demanding the IP address of everybody who ever connected to that website
It's the epitome of silencing exactly that speech, which is protected by the first amendment.
Source: https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/we-fight-for-the-users/
How many people have they killed recently? Are they marching through the streets ripping off Nazi salutes?
Free speech as a value and ideal must be content-neutral.
The ACLU understands this, which is why they defend such people.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2017/08/13/the-misguided-attacks-on...
Those trying to harm other people _must_ be less free to do so.
Freedom is not neutral
This is a tactic that seems to be more common recently: trying to equate expression of ideas with violence, and then claiming that violence is acceptable to suppress this supposed "speech violence".
We dont need political violence and any more escalation.
Dont believe me. How about the atlantic? https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/534192/ How about cnn ? https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/08/14/us/what-is-antifa-trnd/in...
Edit: ¡No pasaran!
Don't expect sympathy.
https://mobile.twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?la...
Anti-fa violence is investigated, but the levels of actual recorded violence, and threats of violence, from anti-fa groups is minuscule when compared to that from white supremacists.
They're simply not comparable.
White supremacists have already murdered people in the US, sometimes in mass killings.
Right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, in that order.
Groups calling for their extermination, I'm not going to stand up for any of them, because they're actively working against the first of those three values.
What good is freedom of speech or assembly when you're being run over by a white supremacist in a Charger?
If that's a slippery slope--that ordering of values that prizes life over website hosting--then it's one I'm still content to stand on, because the alternative isn't taking us anywhere good right now.
White supremacists are disgusting.
Other race supremacists are disgusting.
Anarchists are disgusting.
Communists are disgusting.
People calling for dead cops are disgusting.
People looting and committing arson during protests are disgusting.
There's a lot of disgusting people out there, and I'm beyond tired of people trying to escalate things even further. If all this political tension in the US escalates to full-blown civil war, it will be to no credit of a single group, but the many who keep getting excused by mainstream politicians, political commentators and journalists.
The fun fact is that most of this could probably have been widely defused by allowing people to speak up in public, and then providing better counter-speech, but I guess that was hurting way too many feelings.
https://beta.code.dccouncil.us/dc/council/code/sections/22-1...
The rioters broke DC law. Nothing scary, nothing shocking, it's a click bait title and nothing more.
I work for an ISP and I intentionally do not log user <-> IP address mappings. The time I've had to spend producing similar information in response to such requests is very minimal (basically, "sorry, we don't have that!").
I had a bogus DMCA takedown filed against a WP blog I have on a DH shared hosting account. DH went into my DB and took the post offline before they even notified me.
Had they bothered to notify me first or spend 5 min reading the blog they would have found it to be clearly fair use.
