Not in America, it does not. You folks have "hate speech" laws, banned symbols, banned words, banned expressions, and used to have banned video games, music, and movies. The core of your legal system has the concept of "honor"/"dignity", which is inherently subjective.
The justification is always a variant of your thought, saying that it will only affect "bad people", with the very definition of that being heavily influenced by the aforementioned concepts.
Germans tend to defend the concept of filing charges against an individual for the crime of "insulting them" with similar logic - it's generally a nasty thing to do and only "bad people" will do it, therefore, it shall be punishable under the law.
Any limits to free speech are by definition on the famous "slippery slope". As others have called out, once the legal precedent is set, nothing stops politicians to expand it at their will, given that it is based on subjective judgment - history can be a great teacher - and I'd like to remind you that a much harsher version of the current German "social media hate speech" law just made its way through international media earlier this year. This law was justified with "a rise in right wing extremism".
I've said it before, I'll say it again: The ACLU, an arguably left-leaning organization, has famously defended KKK member's 1st amendment rights for those very reasons. They don't argue about the content - as an analogy to the HD topic, it should be easy to debunk with massive amounts of historical evidence - but rather about fundamental human (and, in the case of the United States, constitutional) rights.
Naturally, all those points apply to governmental censorship and not to a private entity. That being said, I don't believe in limits to free speech.
Not to mention the culture at work. I've never experienced a more stuffy, hierarchical, and old-fashioned IT "industry" as I have in Germany.
I've been hosting my server with a German company for years. They have recently opened a data center in Missouri - which would be great for latency (I'm in the southeastern US).
So, I send an email to the effect of "Hey folks, could you please let me know if it's possible to migrate server xxx.xxx to your MO DC? Thanks!" and that started an email-chain of mighty proportions. Every single email starts with "Dear Mr. XXX" (which is not common in the US, even with attorneys) and uses language that sounds like somebody fed a Markov chain with a fun mix between Nietzsche and the entirety of the German civil code. :)
(In all fairness, the company is fantastic and the end-result works great and was done on time)
Dear Mr. ..., is the direct transition for a common formal getting in Germany. Furthermore formal greetings are used for anything business related in Germany. Through that's getting less common with the younger generation.
So yes for a middle aged German speaker with non fluent English skills not using dear or omitting the "Mr" can seem that it maybe might be unprofessional or impolite so they will just add it.
I have struggled with both points of the argument for a while now. In general, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment that this would be a glaring overreach on the side of the feds. It's also apparent that social networks have a tendency to cater massively to one side of the increasingly divided political spectrum, as proven with experiments like Gab. I've always liked the idea of having a Twitter clone that bases their philosophy on the 1st amendment, but in reality, all it did was to attract the polar opposite of the /r/politics subreddit (to put it lightly), rather than to facilitate free and open discourse.
On the other hand, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube et al are undoubtedly massively influential on the public opinion and their corporate position on political topics - Yoel Roth's recent tweets serve as a decent example, showing clearly that this person cannot be an objective "fact checker" - essentially create a public forum where I am not able to exercise my first amendment rights (and, legally speaking, rightfully so). I cannot help but to find this very concerning.
YouTube (despite numerous issues with their interpretation of free speech), for instance, starting linking Wiki articles under videos that cover certain topics or are uploaded by certain channels. Videos by the BBC show a notice that the BBC is a British public broadcast service, simply informing the viewer about the fact that any bias they might encounter can be easily identified (feel free to switch "BBC" with "RT"). I've found that to be a decent middle ground between outright suppressing views by a corporation pretending to be the authority on certain topics and broadcasting everything without any context.
FWIW, the BBC World Service podcast "The Compass" [1] has an excellent series on free speech by the veteran BBC journalist Robin Lustig. I highly recommend it. He covers tech companies, universities, blasphemy laws, etc.
For me, free speech is fundamentally about trying to rectify the injustice of an imbalance of power between those in authority and the ordinary citizen. During the Enlightenment, the authorities were monarchs, but even before that, the origins of free speech can be seen in the Reformation, the authorities being the established Church and the battles being eg the right to a Bible in your own language or the right to worship without priests.
In modern times, authorities can be just straightforward, well, authoritarian. Global leaders & business people who tweet or post on FB carry an authority ex officio that make their proclamations much more acceptable to the neutral reader. That in itself is a dangerous situation and Twitter or FB absolutely need to take control. If these companies want us to take them seriously as champions of free speech, they have to play their role to help restore that balance of power, by being far more stringent about fact-checking the tweets of those global leaders than they would be for ordinary posters.
Those right-wingers who love to proclaim themselves champions of free speech are really objecting to the Tyranny of the Majority. That is not an authority that requires a rebalance of power. It is just an established opinion.
> If these companies want us to take them seriously as champions of free speech, they have to play their role to help restore that balance of power, by being far more stringent about fact-checking the tweets of those global leaders than they would be for ordinary posters.
What about the executive and majority stockowners of these companies, and how they might abuse their power?
I would rather prefer a federated structure like email. Anybody can choose their own clients to generate their own biased/unbiased feeds, and with plugins for fact checking.
Elizabeth Warren had a position on making the big tech companies open platforms. That was along the same lines, and would provide a far better solution than handing off the power to control people off to FB and Twitter execs
> Those right-wingers who love to proclaim themselves champions of free speech are really objecting to the Tyranny of the Majority. That is not an authority that requires a rebalancing of power. It is just an established opinion.
A tyranny of the majority—which you appear not to understand is a bad thing[0]—is a disaster and precisely what modern democratic institutions seek to avoid. It always leads to the repression of minorities, whether that's ethnic minorities, religious minorities, or political minorities. I doubt you would be much in favor of tyranny by a majority of a different political persuasion.
The platforms themselves are an established authority. Giving them power over what the media and politicians can say should be recognised as a real transfer of power. Objecting to such a concentration of power in the hands of three unelected American tech companies (Google, Twitter, and Facebook) who have billions of users and whose products cannot be avoided without significant difficulty is not exclusively right wing and has nothing to do with tyranny of the majority.
Weren’t newspapers and major TV networks in the same position of unelected power as recently as a decade ago?
There has never been “unbiased” media in the USA. Even PBS, NPR, and in other countries the CBC and BBC have been (often quite rightly) accused of bias.
I’m not sure what the ultimate answer to “fair public discourse” is, but “government regulated media” surely isn’t the answer we want.
Yes, the media were and are in a similar position of power, and despite some bumps in the road they've turned out to be a very good thing.
I don't object to a good-faith defense of Twitter etc. as arbiters of truth, because it's entirely possible they'll do a good job and become a responsible authority. I do object to the idea that only the political right would have a problem with them, and that the only problem anyone could have is tyranny of the majority. I'm more worried about tyranny of Jack Dorsey than tyranny of the majority.
It's pretty ironic but you miss the fact that the the ones in authority right now are indeed google, twitter, facebook etc. They are in control of the information you see and can curate what you call an "established opinion". Global leaders tweet don't carry any authority if you don't support their view, it is the perception of general opinion those tech companies create with their algorithm that creates this authority. Certainly, assigning CNN as the Washington Post as "fact checkers" is not a good start or stringent, it is simply touting an opinion which is not going to change anything because no Trump supporter takes the CNN seriously.
>In modern times, authorities can be just straightforward, well, authoritarian.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves with the current political climate. Everyone forgets the Y axis on the political compass! This is why people who understand that both parties are authoritarian could see past the Russiagate and other bullshits but most of the country couldn't.
If one is still falling for the left/right paradigm one won't be able to understand the bigger picture at play. It's much more about authoritarianism vs libertarianism.
> essentially create a public(1) forum where I am not able to exercise my first amendment rights(2) (and, legally speaking, rightfully so(3)). I cannot help but to find this very concerning.
(1) Private forum, displayed in the public.
(2) Those rights protect your speech from being suppressed BY THE GOVERNMENT.
(3) Correct if you meant legally as a private company running a private forum, they can manage the content as they see fit, including fact checking the POTUS. Or incorrect if you meant you have a legal right to exercise your speech on their platform free of their rules.
Privately owned areas are still often public (as opposed to publicly owned) spaces in the physical relam. While the digital is indeed different, you seem overly dismissive of this fact by omission and unnessarry capitolization.
The obvious way around both of these arguments is to offer consumers more choices. If someone is censored from a particular platform, there needs to be another that they can use.
There are a tiiiiny number of companies that are controlling global communications, and that should make us all uncomfortable.
Being banned from one restaurant in town, should not mean you're banned from all restaurants in the world.
Right, but if you dress in a shirt with a Swastika you're going to get banned from every restaurant in town pretty quickly, and I don't think that is a bad thing.
If each one came to that decision separately, then sure, ban them. The problem arises when a company controls, say, 90% of the restaurants. And then ban you for no reason.
It's not a problem if people frequent the popular restaurants by choice. Maybe regular people aren't fans of restaurants whose main differentiating feature is their "swastika shirts welcome" sign.
So when Twitter starts to ban people for no reason, let's object then. The idea that we all have to start when they are banning Nazi's because of some slippery slope is ludicrous.
I know that you really meant Nazi insignia when saying "Swastika", but it still may interest you to see this page (with many pictures): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika
Swastikas have a rich cultural history from long before NSDAP.
EDIT: to all the down-voters, I am not sure why the down-votes, but I suspect doing a Web search for "japan swastika" or similar may enlighten you.
EDIT2: FTR, I did not think of my post as some supposed big revelation, rather I mostly wanted to share my appreciation for the various Swastika forms (as old graphical art); and also thought banning Swastikas in general might be insensitive to Asians.
I downvoted you primarily because it is irrelevant to the point GP was making. On top of that I didn¨t find it interesting as I think it's fairly wide known that they co-opted the icon.
> EDIT: to all the down-voters, I am not sure why the down-votes
Probably because the point you're trying to make here is 1) nitpicking a detail of a hypothetical example which wasn't particularly relevant to the discussion, and 2) the "but it's not always a symbol of hate" argument is a rather common neo-Nazi talking point.
You're not being down-voted because people don't believe you. You're being down-voted because you de-railed a discussion to insert a commonly-known fact as if it were some big revelation. We all know the swastika has a history outside Nazism, just like we know that you are unlikely to encounter an out-of-context swastika in the western world.
There are a tiiiiny number of companies that are controlling global communications, and that should make us all uncomfortable.
I don't think that quite describes the situation. Those with no money often have no recourse against Google, Facebook or CNN. But those with money whether individuals or corporation (even outside the media world), have many ways of shaping opinion, whether that shaping is public relations, SEO, media-creation or legal action.
Just during the time that Facebook has attempted to spread the standard, cautiously wide mainstream view of covid and the shutdown through their information center, I've received an ocean of polarizing false-claims about Covid and the shutdown through sponsored ads. Those ads cost money and they certainly show how today, money, any money, has a voice.
There are a tiny number of big companies in each field now. Usually four or less. Four big banks. Four big cable companies. Last week it became clear that only four big meat companies are left. Still five big movie studios, although ViacomCBS is much smaller than the big four.
There are other platforms. The issue isn't the platforms, they want the audience from one platform on other platforms as well. Consumers have the choice to use those other platforms, and people do actively use those other platforms. They just don't necessarily bring the same audience.
> Being banned from one restaurant in town, should not mean you're banned from all restaurants in the world.
So is the suggestion that I should be forced to serve people I don't want to serve?
The current US law regarding restaurants is in fact that an commercial establishment have very little freedom to refuse to save people based on who they are.
The problem with social media is that the big platforms, like the post office or your ISP often ends up as an natural monopoly that can be just as dangerous to your political freedoms as any out of control government department by virtue of being just as powerful in the real world.
> The current US law regarding restaurants is in fact that an commercial establishment have very little freedom to refuse to save people based on who they are.
To be clear, current US law protects things that one can not change about themselves eg: race --and even this is a bit of an oversimplification (see being gay or a woman)-- but it in no way prevents a restaurant from serving someone because of the attire they are wearing or the speech they are speaking.
exactly, think of a bartender refusing to serve a problematic former client a drink, or the bouncers not letting them in, due to them being specifically sanctioned.
private business absolutely has the right to refuse service to people over their behavior or expressed intentions.
the US first amendment protects against GOVERNMENTAL infringement.
in terms of this Twitter tempest-in-a-teapot, they ALSO have a right to free speech and Trumps demonstrably FALSE claims can absolutely be addressed, labeled as false, and that is an absolute right to free speech that Trump has already threatened with specious "governmental action" which PRECISELY violates both the letter and the spirit of the first amendment!
> The current US law regarding restaurants is in fact that an commercial establishment have very little freedom to refuse to save people based on who they are.
I was referring to non-protected classes of people.
For example, I have the right to refuse to serve someone who has written bad checks at my establishment, for example.
Or I have the right to refuse service to someone who has caused harm to my clients.
Which leads back to my question: Should I be forced to serve these people?
[EDIT] I'd love to hear a counter argument to go with the down votes. Have I failed to add any substance to this conversation? [/EDIT]
> So is the suggestion that I should be forced to serve people I don't want to serve?
Well, yes. Like a utility company.
It doesn't matter who is hooked up to the water/sewer/internet/etc., they get service. I think the platform/publisher debate needs to actually be had.
Right now Twitter/FB/etc. are acting like publishers (silencing some, ignoring others) rather than platforms. If they are going to take responsibility for what is on their platform, they need to take full responsibility (a publisher). Or, they need to take no responsibility, as far as that goes under the law (a platform, which I here conflate with utility).
As it stands, all of the major social media companies are biased to the US left, and they cater largely to the left [0][1]. When they silence, they silence the US political right. Or comments that are critical of the CCCP[2]. Or legitimate medical opinions about Covid-19[3].
I get it, but your wording in the OP missed that nuance. I was merely pointing out that as a society we have decided some reasons to refuse service are unacceptable. It is therefore a lot less inconceivable that other reasons might be considered unacceptable.
>I've always liked the idea of having a Twitter clone that bases their philosophy on the 1st amendment, but in reality, all it did was to attract the polar opposite of the /r/politics subreddit (to put it lightly)
Well, a few other crowds did move to it but were quickly banned under the argument that their speech did not count as speech and thus wasn't protected. I remember it being quite a humorous (ironic?) twist for a company claiming to champion free speech.
Even if you take the most libertarian view of free speech, the proper recourse would be to sue and let the courts decide and/or work with Congress on explicit legislation on the responsibilities of content hosters. Declaring that he would use his executive authority to punish a private company for personal injury is dangerously authoritarian in my view.
What bugs me is that so many people always jump straight to the most base and rudimentary catch phrase arguments on the topic. It's always "private companies != free speech for others, just for them" or the opposite "we should be able to say whatever whenever", inevitably followed up by a "but you don't have a right to consequence/response free speech"... it's tiring and shallow thinking on the subject.
I just ctrl+f'd for "public forum" and yours was the first hit. One thing in particular I would like to comment on is that post-Trump's election I started listening to some of my SO's legal field podcasts because I wanted less sensational analysis. I very distinctly remember a series on the Opening Arguments one where they went into some depth about why Twitter should be legally considered a limited public-forum (this was in response to some other Trump-Twitter hubbub at the time).
So, just granting that, how does potentially being a "limited public forum" change it's rights and responsibilities to it's users? What about the heavy US government involvement in these companies, how could that change the analysis? What about the fact that dominate platforms are able to control the narrative due to that domination? Doesn't that completely fuck up the free speech concept? "Everyone uses X, but you can't because we don't like you, so you can have your free speech over there in that corner where nobody is." What kind of dangers in the long run does this present? Why do these companies so easily fall into models of censorship, and what kind of future would that mean for the public? (not looking to actually get into the convo necessarily, I'm commenting on the meta of the discussion and wish these kinds of questions were being asked more)
I personally hate youtubes banner for controversial shit. It always links to some shitty ass Wikipedia thats been heavily controlled/edited. Wikipedia is just not a good source of info on controversial topics, (though looking through revision history certainly can add context of what is "missing").
It's further complicated by the people who sued Trump for blocking them. They won, he had to unblock them.
Considering they could log out (or open a private tab) and view the content, obviously it wasn't access to the information that was fundamental but the act of the President taking a step to reduce someone's access.
With that in mind, the underlying host taking a similar action is either a) Okay because it's their system? or b) Bad because they're blocking or altering the message?
We're in this really weird spot of free speech vs private property vs public forum vs free access vs..
This is a point of concern I have that I rarely see others bring up. The problem with A is that it creates a loop hole as all the next government official has to do is pick a host that aligns with their own views to communicate to the masses.
Imagine a future president picks a Catholic forum to make the same sort of announcements that Trump currently does, specifically a catholic forum that bans any advocacy of pro-choice discussion. It is relatively easy to find a similar forum on any side of a modern hot button political issue.
Not really - the 1st amendment limits the government (including the President), not the public nor private companies.
Twitter's upcoming option to limit replies is being touted as a politician's dream, but in the US it's likely going to be unuseable for the same reason
If you want to go Constitution 101, you should probably be correct. The text of the 1st Amendment says "Congress" and nothing about the President/Executive Branch.. and is wholly irrelevant to the point I raised.
I think you will find that the prevailing interpretation is much broader than a literal reading of the text, in a number of ways. Though it mentions "make no law" it applies to executive agency rulings, though it specifies "Congress" it applies equally to state and local governments, etc.
If you're going to make legal nitpicks, you should probably have a thorough understanding of the jurisprudence.
In my original GP comment above, I was describing actual, recent rulings until the "nuh uh 1st amendment!" comment.
And I wish you were right. That was how I always read it too but we've found out repeatedly - and recently - that state & local governments (and state universities) can ban numerous things, contrary to the 1st Amendment.
I'm not sure what you're talking about, but the first amendment is exactly why state governments and local governments must allow, for example, the local satanic temple to open the council meeting with a prayer. And why publicly funded universities must allow street preachers and pro-life demonstrators.
That's the first amendment, not the concept of free speech. The concept of free speech can apply to private and public spaces, just as it can apply to government regulation of speech.
You are missing other laws that already enforce standards on certain platforms, that are similar to the concept of free speech.
Those laws are called common carrier laws.
It is already illegal for many communication platforms, that a subject to certain classifications, to discriminate on the basis of the content of the speech that they distribute.
Common carrier laws are not controversial. Few people would argue that we should get rid of common carrier laws.
Common carrier laws apply to the unbiased transportation of information over networks, they do not guarantee hosting of information by private parties or access to their audience.
Example:
- CC laws guarantee that if you are able to host your speech on your own server that ISPs have to route information requests to it.
- CC laws do not guarantee you can force Reddit to host your speech on their own private servers or force Reddit to give you broadcast access to their audience.
The point being that phone systems really aren't that different than Twitter or Facebook.
I am arguing that common carrier laws already exist, and are not controversial.
And that it really isn't much of a stretch to change and expand our existing, uncontroversial, common carrier laws, so as to apply to other things that really aren't much different than our phone system.
Even if those laws have yet to be slightly updated to apply to the modern era yet.
Phones systems are information transportation systems that handle information requests.
Phones systems are are not platforms to host speech - i.e. CC laws can't force me to play your phone recording in my private home when someone calls me.
You talk about how established Common Carrier laws are, but that's precisely what they're established for - transportation. Hence the word carrier. CC laws were originally for unbiased trucking and rail transportation, and do not guarantee that you can force a private warehouse to store your goods.
> Phones systems are information transportation systems that handle information requests.
> Phones systems are are not platforms to host speech - i.e. CC laws can't force me to play your phone recording in my private home when someone calls me.
> You talk about how established Common Carrier laws are, but that's precisely what they're established for - transportation. Hence the word carrier. CC laws were originally for unbiased trucking and rail transportation, and do not guarantee that you can force a private warehouse to store your goods.
But here we have an example of Twitter modifying communications in transit (by attaching additional information that is not metadata and not part of the original message). This would be like the post office marking letters from you as "do not open" in bold red letters before they reached the receiver.
2) Twitter isn't a post office, it's a privately owned website. They do not handle transportation requests for information on the internet, just their own private servers meaning they are not a common carrier.
3) Even if you conflate twitter with being a privately own post office, CC laws do not prevent them from putting "Toxic" stickers on any toxic waste being handled by them.
Would it be acceptable to you if your ISP inserted warnings for emails you sent? I understand we have "spam" classifications but this goes beyond that and is done client-side and I can modify my client to not mark messages as spam. Would you consider the addition of a warning to all emails you sent a modification of your message?
Your point of "toxic" labelling is interesting. I think there is a difference in the non-physical realm though as "toxic" as it applies to ideas is subjective.
It wouldn't be acceptable to me but ISPs aren't regulated in that way and have attempted to use the argument that requiring them to carry information without any modification/discrimination is a violation of the ISPs free speech rights.
It's weird how the administration that is responsible for de-regulating ISPs also wants to regulate platform-holders because they're concerned about how they treat their message.
We don't need to go far to the conclusion of that line of questioning: Twitter actively deletes spam accounts and takes measures to block troll factories from using their platform, and this is not controversial.
> You talk about how established Common Carrier laws are
I am saying that these laws are uncontroversial, and it would only require a slight expansion and change to them, to order for them to cover very similar things, that aren't that much different than what CC laws currently cover.
Yes, I understand that CC laws don't technically apply to what I am talking about. I am instead saying that it would only be a slight change, to make them apply, and therefore not as big of a deal as people are making it seem.
> but that's precisely what they're established for - transportation
I don't see how telephone companies transporting your phone calls is much different than twitter transporting your tweets. Yes, it is not exactly the same. It is slightly different. But only slightly.
> CC laws can't force me to play your phone recording
> do not guarantee that you can force a private warehouse to store your goods.
The private warehouse, or end phone user, in the twitter example, would be the end user. Twitter, is arguably, transporting your messages. And then the end user is not forced to keep it.
So even if CC laws were changed to apply to twitter, the end user would not be forced to keep their tweet. They could delete it, or not follow you, or whatever.
Just like how if I make a phone call to someone, they still receive the phone call, but you don't have to pick of the phone. The same argument could be applied to tweets.
> Phones systems are are not platforms to host speech
They have to transport speech. In the same way that twitter transports speech.
All that said, the concept of where and how to apply common carrier is of course controversial, hence the entire net neutrality debate. If an ISP isn't required to carry content the idea of an information service (ie Twitter) being required to is borderline absurd.
I have stated multiple times that I am aware that CC laws do not currently apply to these situations.
I am instead saying that these laws could be slightly changes, because, philosophical, there isn't much of a difference between a phone calls, and tweets or FB messages.
> is borderline absurd.
Apparently people don't think it is absurd to force phone companies to carry most phone calls.
And IMO, there isn't much difference, philosophically between a phone call and tweets or a FB message, even if our laws haven't been changed slightly to apply to them yet.
> I don't see how telephone companies transporting your phone calls is much different than twitter transporting your tweets. Yes, it is not exactly the same. It is slightly different. But only slightly.
Twitter is not transporting your tweets, they are storing them and distributing them to anyone who asks to see them (given a very loose definition of ask).
You are putting a large focus on something that most people would not say is the important and interesting part of the question.
Regardless, the actual storage of phone calls, or tweets, is not the reason that most people would say it is important for these things to not to be discriminated against or for.
Or another example, it is arguable that the water company stores water. And the storage of the water is a part of the transportation of it.
To use the example of phone calls, most people would not be OK with the phone company choosing to read your voice mail, and determining if you are allowed to store it based on the contents of it.
Regardless, the storage part is not the actual interesting part of the question here.
IANAL but common carrier laws are there to protect the carrier. e.g., people can use a telephone to plan a crime, but you cannot hold the phone company responsible for that crime. So the phone company does not discriminate otherwise they lose common carrier protections.
Regardless, I was responding to the 1st amendment claim by the GP.
> but you cannot hold the phone company responsible for that crime
Sure. But now imagine if we applied the same provisions to twitter or facebook. We could say that if they don't follow common carrier status, then we can hold them responsible for any crime done on their platform.
This is would almost effectively the same thing as forcing them to follow common carrier laws. And it would have the same effect as requiring them to follow the 1st amendment, but doing it in a round about way.
It is not exactly the same as using the 1st amendment. But it is close enough.
Because, TBH, we already use these laws for commication platforms, such as phone companies.
The way that common carriers laws work, is that companies that are subject to them do not have the right to pick and choose who they sell to, if they want the protections that theses laws provide.
Twitter isn't currently subject to these rules. But these laws already exist, and are uncontroversial, and could be extended to other platforms.
For example, if Twitter lost it's current content immunity, by being deemed a publisher, then it would be subject to significant liability, and may have to change up how it runs itself
To the point where the ACLU actively defended KKK members' First Amendment rights multiple times.
Second, and more directly related to the events of this weekend, there are important reasons for our long history of defending freedom of speech — including speech we abhor. We fundamentally believe that our democracy will be better and stronger for engaging and hearing divergent views. Racism and bigotry will not be eradicated if we merely force them underground. Equality and justice will only be achieved if society looks such bigotry squarely in the eyes and renounces it. Not all speech is morally equivalent, but the airing of hateful speech allows people of good will to confront the implications of such speech and reject bigotry, discrimination and hate. This contestation of values can only happen if the exchange of ideas is out in the open.
There is another practical reason that we have defended the free speech rights of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Today, as much as ever, the forces of white supremacy and the forces for equality and justice are locked in fierce battles, not only in Washington but in state houses and city councils around the country. Some government decision-makers are deeply opposed to the speech we support. We simply never want government to be in a position to favor or disfavor particular viewpoints. And the fact is, government officials — from the local to the national — are more apt to suppress the speech of individuals or groups who disagree with government positions. Many of the landmark First Amendment cases, such as NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware and New York Times v. Sullivan, have been fought by African-American civil rights activists. Preventing the government from controlling speech is absolutely necessary to the promotion of equality.
As far as I'm aware, that is only true for L1, not H1B, which has a 60 days grace period. I don't know how it affects folks with AOS to an I-485, though.
L1 - if you lose your job and you have no other status (ie have not filed for green card or have your H1B), that's it. You have to leave within 60 days and you cannot work at another company in the US.
H1B - you can switch to a new company and they port your H1B with USCIS. Otherwise, 60 day grace period to leave.
Adjustment of Status to 485 - if it has been pending with USCIS for more than 180 days & you have your EAD, you can port to another company under the AC-21 act.
I use it on my Gazelle and have been surprised how well it works. All the user friendly helpers, even including their "app store" (which is essentially an APT GUI) are actually useful.
The only issues I had with it were the lack of setup wizard support with LUKS and Dualboot to Windows w/ Bitlocker (for Games) over GRUB, so I had to configure everything manually.
Other than that, it works like a charm - unless it hits the proprietary Nvidia blob driver (no real hotplug for HDMI and mini-DP, sometimes screen tearing on big displays). But that is not a popOS! issue and most of the time it works fine.
> Instead, NoSQL systems like HBase, Cassandra, and MongoDB became fashionable as they marketed themselves as being scalable and easier to use
HBase did not - the project has always been very clear that they cater towards a very specific set of use cases - fast writes with little schema constraints, fast single-key and range/fuzzy lookups, not big ETL pipelines.
Even during the rise of Hadoop (everything is a file... I mean file based!) and the subsequent absorption of that into the Public Cloud vendors, SQL has always been there, just wrapped in different tools. These days, someone else hosts it and it's now called Athena instead of Hive, but fundamentally the same thing and has been the same thing.
Even Apache Sparks entire Dataset/Datframe interface yields SQL-like execution plans, exposing the same functions that an RDMBS would, just in Scala/Python/R.
For non-technical people, this is not surprising, as Google shoves it down your throat when you go to their website(s).
For technical folks, I really don't understand it - I'm not a web developer, so my use case might be different, but I really don't see what exactly people are missing. I've never had issues with browser performance (I use FF on mac, Windows, Linux, and (slow out of the box) development Linux VMs).
People here usually complain about performance, but how does one even objectively measure that? Do people's browsers freeze up? Do websites load noticeably slower?
This is a genuine question - not just a rant.
As a side node, syncing to your own server is a huge feature for me - as far as I'm aware, Chrome can't do that. That + DDG as default search engine is an open alternative to Google's/Chrome's monopoly, which in my opinion should take precedence over pure convenience for the audience of HN.
Anything but Safari takes an hour or two off my laptop's battery life and harms systemwide performance more than Safari does. Yes, still. I open FF or Chrome for specific purposes then close them as fast as I can. It's bad enough that I have Electron running amok on my system—all the more important that my actual web browser respect power use, memory, and processor cycles.
Maybe give Firefox 70 a try when it comes out next week? They've redone animation rendering on macOS to do it the same way Safari does, which should increase performance and reduce battery consumption.
Last I saw the favorable comparison for the upcoming performance improvements was "now uses as little battery and performs as well as Chrome"... so I'll try it—I mean I do use it pretty often anyway in short bursts—but there's a ways between that and Safari.
[EDIT] to be clear, I'm rooting for them. I've used Firefox since it was Phoenix. And Firebird. Back then I evangelized it, hard. I've not loved it since somewhere in the 2.x range, but I wish I could again. It's just, you know, been a while.
Unpopular opinion: as a "technical" person, Mozilla and Firefox's behavior over the last few years really should raise red flags in the technical community. The various so-called "experiments" with advertising and other features might have helped with the bottom line, but it erodes confidence at a time where people are more conscious of privacy-related matters. Even the open source advocates should consider that huge parts of Pocket are still closed source
I've switched from Chromium to Firefox on Ubuntu. Performance has been a bit worse with regards to rendering, tab switching etc. The scrolling isn't as smooth in Firefox. Otoh, Firefox stays responsive even if one page runs a lot of scripts; it freezes the tab, not the browser (as Chromium does).
It's not necessarily an issue for me, I won't switch back because of it, and I like Firefox for development, though the Chromium dev tools are still a bit better in some regards, but yeah, lower performance has been noticeable for me.
I don't remember what made me switch on Desktop, but I had switched on android before, simply because the internet was unusable on Chrome with ads.
I've noticed on MacOS (on two MBPs) that Firefox 69 (with ublock origin as only plugin) is noticeably slower to render / lay out sites and maybe download content than Chrome (with ublock origin as only plugin) on same machines. Battery life is noticeably worse as well compared to Chrome.
I've switched though to using Firefox despite the above on MacOS at least.
On Linux however, Firefox seems quite a bit worse than Firefox to the extent that it's approaching "painful" levels to use it - scrolling is very laggy (messed around with hardware accel, drivers, etc), downloading / rendering is noticeably slower, etc. (Same setup of only plugin in each browser on Linux being ublock origin). Even starting it seems much slower (with cold FS caches).
This is on several Linux machines, and seems pretty universal in my experience.
At work, we have to use the internet through a VDI terminal (main network is completely segregated from internet), and I've noticed that with this setup, Firefox is even slower than my "native" Linux comparisons. Also, as I can see the network traffic between the VDI and my machine, I've also noticed that a single blank page window in Firefox keeps sending updates (300KB/sec, like it's refreshing constantly in an event loop or something), whilst a blank page window in Chrome has no updates, which seems a bit weird to me, and indicates something's non-optimal in Firefox, as I don't see why a blank page should cause firefox to apparently re-render stuff...
>[...] which in my opinion should take precedence over pure convenience for the audience of HN.
is a no from me. Maybe I've done tech too long, but I don't feel obliged to ditch convenience for nerdcred or the feeling of authenticity or whatever your frame is. Several years ago, FF was slower -talking margins of magnitude- for me, both on windows and linux-machines. Maybe it was due to addons and whatnot, but I migrated to Chrome, and, in simple words, had no UX-related reason to switch back ever since. Chrome does what I want it to do, and I cba to switch back to FF unless I'll actually start seeing ads again. And I'm not a webdev either, for that matter.
> I don't feel obliged to ditch convenience for nerdcred or the feeling of authenticity or whatever your frame is.
That's an awfully dismissive way of putting it given the prevailing topic of this thread: privacy. Firefox isn't perfect in that regard, but I trust Mozilla a hell of a lot more than I trust Google.
Not to mention I don't want Google dictating how the web works through sheer force of market share. It's like nobody remembers the 90s and IE anymore. Do we really want a repeat of that?
Obviously there's a line to be drawn: when "convenience" turns into "browsing is actually a difficult chore because FF has bugs X, Y, Z", then sure, it's of course understandable that you'd ditch FF for an alternative. But I don't think that experience should be common.
Actions speak louder than words, and the actions of Mozilla in the last few years surrounding so-called "experiments" makes Google look like the more trustworthy actor wrt browser components. At least Google never called ads "user-enhancing"
When you say "orders of magnitude" slower, are you referring to specific measurements you made, or are you just saying that Firefox seemed a lot slower?
Some artists do special masters for vinyl, though. For Devin Townsend's new record, Empath, he spent an extra month (I believe) just mastering the vinyl version, not to mention the tremendous effort for extra artwork. This intentionally different sound offsets the technical inferiority of the format.
Wholeheartedly agree with your comment, though. My house as a "music room" without any screens for that purpose. Some people might say that's a bit excessive, but I too enjoy my hobby. :)
Not in America, it does not. You folks have "hate speech" laws, banned symbols, banned words, banned expressions, and used to have banned video games, music, and movies. The core of your legal system has the concept of "honor"/"dignity", which is inherently subjective.
The justification is always a variant of your thought, saying that it will only affect "bad people", with the very definition of that being heavily influenced by the aforementioned concepts.
Germans tend to defend the concept of filing charges against an individual for the crime of "insulting them" with similar logic - it's generally a nasty thing to do and only "bad people" will do it, therefore, it shall be punishable under the law.
Any limits to free speech are by definition on the famous "slippery slope". As others have called out, once the legal precedent is set, nothing stops politicians to expand it at their will, given that it is based on subjective judgment - history can be a great teacher - and I'd like to remind you that a much harsher version of the current German "social media hate speech" law just made its way through international media earlier this year. This law was justified with "a rise in right wing extremism".
I've said it before, I'll say it again: The ACLU, an arguably left-leaning organization, has famously defended KKK member's 1st amendment rights for those very reasons. They don't argue about the content - as an analogy to the HD topic, it should be easy to debunk with massive amounts of historical evidence - but rather about fundamental human (and, in the case of the United States, constitutional) rights.
Naturally, all those points apply to governmental censorship and not to a private entity. That being said, I don't believe in limits to free speech.