
EFF takes out full page ad in Wired - anigbrowl
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-ad-wired-tech-community-must-secure-networks-against-trump-administration
======
rokosbasilisk
Donate to eff, and sign up.

Electronic freedom is under attack everywhere including america and europe.

Censorship under the guise of "fake news". Filters under the guise of
protecting children.

~~~
wahern
Really, you're putting fake news in scare quotes?

There's like a 0% chance in the U.S. that the government will be able to
censor any kind of news. As much as I dislike the Citizens United decision,
the fact of the matter is that now both conservative and liberal jurists have
committed the legal system to a radical notion of freedom of expression
untouchable by legislative powers. That can't be walked back, at least not in
our lifetimes short of a constitutional amendment.

If you're bored and really want to be scared about government speech police,
then your best bet would be worrying about mandatory filters and monitoring.
Government regulation can still impose a chilling effect by that route, though
I would think it would be significantly attenuated for topics beyond sex.

In as much as restrictions around encryption are a free speech issue (think
DMCA copy protection schemes, or chilling effect from being unable to secure
your porn browsing habits), that's for sure the most likely area to be
concerned with. It's too nerdy, though, for the frothing masses to understand.
Few non-nerds, non-lawyers, regardless of political affiliation, believe
requiring Apple to [have the capacity to] unlock a terrorist's iPhone is
undesirable, even though it's by far the most legitimate liberty threat. I'm
not optimistic on this front.

Also, you might want to watch out for a re-emergence of libel civil suits. I'm
not sure that would be a bad thing given that trolls have managed to carve out
a lucrative industry for themselves. But if you're the kind of person who
believes that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt
me, or you, or do any kind of harm whatsoever", then it's definitely an avenue
to be concerned about.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The problem is that while the government cannot censor free speech,
corporations can (on their respective platforms). And when those platforms
make up the vast majority of Internet communication, say, when Google,
Facebook, and Twitter all agree to ban certain content, effectively, yes,
censorship has occurred. Because it becomes impossible to reach the largest
body of the population. And of course, while government cannot censor, they
can certainly encourage corporations to.

~~~
wahern
Well, the same thing can be said about so-called fakes news--that it drowns
out more objective, fact-based news, making constructive discussion difficult
and ultimately damaging democracy. So then what? It sounds like quite a pickle
to me, without any easy answers.

Also, how can the government encourage censorship by corporations? Short of
making laws regulating speech (which it cannot do directly, period, or even
indirectly without strong justification based on a concrete need unrelated to
the speech), it would need a carrot or stick.

The carrot would be something like tax incentives. Are you seriously worried
Congress will use a tax give-away as an incentive for Facebook to censor news
in a partisan fashion? I suppose it's possible, but so is my winning the
lottery.

The stick would be using the threat of unfair regulatory scrutiny. Now this is
far more plausible, but definitely not something keeping me up at night. And
in any event, the solution would be to limit the ability to abuse discretion
by rescinding regulations, removing discretionary authority, and/or making
regulators more independent. That would be better overall.

By the way, this is why net neutrality is such a dilemma. It's a government
mandate that has the effect of limiting the ability of corporations to
effectively censor other groups by imposing transit taxes. But the mandate
does that by censoring corporations--they can't chose to throttle, block, or
otherwise differentiate communications from hate groups, etc.

Would you want to extend net neutrality principles to content publication
platforms like Twitter or Facebook? What about your own bulletin board system?
Mailing lists? How would you be able to block spam?

If your position is that all censorship is bad, and any law or market dynamic
which limits anyone's freedom to communicate or not communicate as they please
is bad, then you're just building a tower of dilemmas and paradoxes. The only
way out is to deconstruct "censorship" into finer, more concrete concepts. In
other words, avoid generalizations and discuss issues well within their
context. And don't spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt by making recourse to
poor rhetorical devices like slippery slopes (e.g. OMG if government or other
powerful agents does this than that parade of horribles will happen).

