What are we supposed to do when it is literally illegal to protect users' privacy and not censor speech?

I ask this in response http://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-816149" rel="nofollow - Pavel Durov's arrest in France . He himself has committed no crimes, but because a platform he runs does not censor speech the EU and Russia do not condone, he is being held personally accountable for "complicity" in others' anonymous behaviors.

I am out for words and don't even know where to begin on how much I f**king hate this. The governments hate freedom of speech, and yet countries like France are supposed to protect that very right - what is the point of the right to free speech if one cannot run a platform that allows others to exert it?

What infuriates me about this situation is the fact that the site owner, who himself has done no wrongdoing, is being held accountable for other people's supposed "wrongdoing" on a platform that operates in a country different from the one arresting him. I'd expect this scenario from China or Russia, not France nor the EU, and supposedly the United States was after him as well... the biggest issue is that Telegram is based in the UAE, NOT France nor the EU. Whatever French/EU laws were broken by other people (not Pavel himself) were done so on an app that operates in a different country, meaning the so-called "crimes" were committed in another country and thus not under French jurisdiction. Why does any of this have to do with French law enforcement?

This development is f**king enormous, and it should scare literally everyone sh*tless. This is the start of dystopia and I don't now aht the f**k I'm supposed to do next... not like I'm a cybercriminal or dark web fugitive/whatever but this news feels like something out of China.

I'm pissed and I don't know what to do...

When a government has 100% control of social media's narrative, the government will not arrest the CEO... for crimes committed on the site.  Zuckerberg is safe. 

ADMIN!

I'm surprised that I see so much anti-government speech then, all over the place. Wasn't it you yourself who linked piles of youtube videos that make your anti-government point?

HI,

I think it depends on each situation. NO two of them are ever the same. In the times of the Portugal/Spain dictatorships there was a lot of censorship and this and that and you already know the famous situation in Spain, with the Civil War ... if we need another Guernica for your mind/memory, or another Lorca snuff! In our case in Portugal it affected us directly. One of mom's brothers was snuffed out, and my dad went to Brazil with family to work on literature, where he made his fame. The "unknown" here, is why he left, thought the artistic thing is a bit strange considering that dad was high up in the Portuguese Navy ... I'm guessing that the politics were very sticky, and the literary thing of which he had been a part for a long time, seems like a good excuse.

Someone published a book, with a set of film reviews that were censored by the government, and they were all at least half the original size and made no sense. 

In the end, I am not sure what the complaint is about, as this even happens in America ... when a woman named Gore threatened businesses with bad publicity, and then Mr. T "firing" everyone publicly, and the media applauding ... goes ay back to the Lions and the Christians, and the like situations ... but it is about the money ... a site with bad/poor stuff has several million hits daily ... and lots of advertising revenue ... why the heck would they bother listening to you, except banning you for being anti-social ... you think Lus(k)t and any others worry about your words? It's simpler to just ban you these days ... less hassle, and your writing in many other places kinda ... dies off after a few days!

Can't win. 

In America you can do something about it, but too many folks don't care, and won't go elect someone else to reverse that ... this or that ... and some state groups are intentionally creating this and that without the public vote, because they know they will lose. But the public won't vote those folks out ... and it's hard to say those folks don't care! Next election? Same turkey ... same as the last turkey ... hey, it must be dinner time and Cruise time ... I need to get my daily puffing first, though! 

Depends on the country.  UK sentenced a man to prison for 20 months for an anti-immigration Facebook post. Another UK citizen was sent to jail for retweeting an anti-immigration post. It's hard to sentence folks to jail for anti-government narratives in America.  Free Speech is protected in our Constitution.  Instead, the US government wages lawfare, and censorship, and puts pressure on companies to fire employees. 

Tucker was fired from FOX after Blackrock bought 15% of FOX. Now? Tucker cannot fire himself.  The man that Tucker interviewed in the video just got arrested by France.

 Canada froze folks' bank accounts. Germany, France, and Australia arrest their citizens for anti-government narratives. 

Governments prioritize influencers and important people with a wide subscriber base to harass. Do you deny that the governments I listed are not targeting important people who express anti-government narratives? 

Hi,

I actually think that the Free Speech thing is a joke. And many folks abuse it, be it a bunch of falsities or simply political jargon, which is all the "media" cares about.

The "pressuring" should be added to the Constitution as ... not a form of Free Speech, but abuse. But when government folks do it, it adds another difficulty to the whole mess! It's now very stinky!

It won't be because of the topic itself, but because of the interveners insulting each other.

I'm from Germany. I know a lot of people who say anti-government stuff. None of them was arrested. The word "targeting" can have a wide range of meanings so you'll find the odd story to back that up. Not everybody can say absolutely everything legally in Germany, that's true, for example Holocaust denial. You may think that absolutely everything should be freely said, insults, slander, lies, incitement of hatred and violence, and that's OK, but there is a point for not allowing everything. Anyway examples for restriction of freedom of speech are few and far between. 

That's nice of you; still, to set the facts straight, I'm from Germany, have lived there some 35 years and still have close contacts there, but now live in Italy.

On the topic of "suppressing free speech": That is so 20th century. Today's leaders have learned from their mistakes and are now using more sophisticated means of controlling the populace. Cancelling, "Othering", Shadow-banning ... those are much more effective. As a specific example, in Germany (where I was born and lived until 2021) during the pandemic the word "Querdenker" emerged. Pure genius! Instead of suppressing criticism of the government, it was branded as pure lunacy, and people were conditioned by basically all mainstream media to ridicule any criticism without even listening to the argument. This mechanism automatically contains/isolates any criticism of the system without the need for any authoritarian action someone could point the finger at and complain about.

 

You are probably aware that the Querdenker movement introduced the term for themselves before anybody else used it to refer to them... Also their argument came to the people from all over the place, but many people just didn't like it. Tough luck. I don't know a single person who wasn't aware that it was around and where to find what the Querdenkers think. Actually pretty much all people I know got far more exposition to it than they wanted (except of course those who agreed with the argument, as everybody likes to have their opinions backed up by others). 

Your assumption is not correct. Sure, I think that SOME people are uninformed, some are in denial. But this system of suppression works even when many are "in on it". The point is that there is no organised resistance, people overall just accept that the government is beyond (serious) criticism. You can mock them (we do), explain how they're incompetent and corrupt (they are/we do), but at the end of the day they still take our money away, and we are light years away from any workable way to replace them with something better.

It doesn't really matter how the term "Querdenker" originated - during the pandemic the media ran with it and established it as a pejorative for anyone who questioned the government talking points. And the negative connotation stuck, independently of the specific arguments or whether they got corroborated by facts. It was all generalised, and of course there were some really crazy arguments (I remember David Icke suggesting that 5G caused Covid symptoms) which you would not want to be associated with.

It's fascinating - from my childhood I remember (or at least I think I do) that people used to be really critical of the government, to the point that they had to resign when they messed up too badly. These days nobody ever resigns, or if they do they are just moved to different positions. I don't know - maybe I have a glorified memory of the past, and it has always been this way. 

Picture a world without Trump. Imagine you could snip your fingers and he would not only be gone, but erased from history. Would that solve our problems?

I don't think so. In the USA the power lies with the money, not with the people. The (extremely) wealthy are running the show, including politics. This German cartoon hits the nail on the head:

https://scontent-arn2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/122194794_4828338750572953_5561034535213239545_n.jpg?_nc_cat=104&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=13d280&_nc_ohc=JDwJkMvS9DsQ7kNvgG-RGFO&_nc_ht=scontent-arn2-1.xx&oh=00_AYCt5FWwgeoPXytQ4WyBm9P2BRfJrg8u3CrQ8GzHKouQWA&oe=66F4D105" rel="nofollow - Cartoon

I can't imagine anyone being pissed or worried that any govt is reading your texts and emails or online posts,  unless you are writing about stuff they actually care about like radical terrorist stuff. If you are then you deserve to be spied on and you have no right to any privacy.

Does the US govt know how much money I have? Of course they do and I don't care, nothing I can do about it but probably keep it all under my mattress.

Most people who lose their money its because they fell for online scam or simply blew it all.

If I travel to another country do I expect that govt to spy on me, sure why not but I highly doubt it. Most govts know who they need to watch and I am not one of them LOL.

At a deep level privacy does not exist, not sure it ever did.