Say what you will about the US, but the UK and Australia seem to be trying to competing in a speed run to see who can reach ridiculous authoritarianism faster.
I thought it would the the UK with the way they have literally arrested people for tweets... but then I saw the insane and petty corruption taking place in Aus and a journalist getting their house firebombed.
I'm Australian and this remark is lunatic-fringe hogwash. These governments are not firebombing domestic youtube-grade nonentities or anyone else, nor are they enabling it.
The notable corruption we saw recently was Scott Morrison making himself a secret minister of several portfolios, and for these and other sins the electorate severely rebuked his party at recent state and federal elections.
That is what democracy, not authoritarianism, looks like.
The folks you should be suspicious of are those spoonfeeding these garbage takes to the credulous.
There were people arrested for posts on Facebook during COVID lockdowns. We had police on the ground hassling every person in sight. Multiple friends of mine were fined for taking a momentary pause on their 1 hour of allotted outside time per day. Police were checking whether coffee cups were indeed full of liquid. We had statewide man hunts for people who sneezed in lifts that they were the only one in. Protests against the draconian measures were violently suppressed by the state government. It was one of the most important and impactful government decisions in the history of the country, affecting the lives of every person and dissenting political demonstration was banned.
The Federal government passed a law requiring a backdoor for all encrypted communication in the country and the press was completely silent. We ban drawn Japanese porn for some unknown reason while allowing real porn which unambiguously provides greater risk of harm. Prior to internet distribution of video games, many were simply banned for import on the whims of a parental advisory board. Australia is a nation obsessed with prohibition and there's nothing Australians love more than collective moral outrage followed by a cathartic wholesale ban.
I'm Australian and whenever I see valid criticism of the country on the internet I soon find an upset Australian replying. They never really refute the underlying point, they'll reply with a non-sequitur or talk about how it doesn't affect their lives. The reality is most Australians don't even feel the noose around their neck because they've never stepped out of line in any way. Most protections on liberty are for extreme and unusual circumstances, you don't notice their absence until it's too late. The vast majority of Chinese people trust their government, and believe the various restrictions on speech and liberty are in the best interests of the nation. Their curbs on liberty are too invasive of course, ours are necessary.
Lol, well that story is significantly different to a manhunt because someone sneezed in a lift.
It’s the story of someone who was sick and legally ordered to quarantine, breaking that quarantine which authorities then wanted to track down. He was spotted on CCTV in a lift.
You can argue the real story is ‘totalitarian’ too if you like, but that doesn’t make the original statement either false or at best a very misleading summary.
Multiple police were out looking for him for days, they appealed to the public for info about his whereabouts. His face and name were plastered all over national media. I live in a different state and this guy was all anyone could talk about. People were desperate for him to be caught. If you saw this man, you were supposed to call the emergency services.
For context, I have never seen a murderer or armed robbery command this level of attention.
I've got to be honest here mate, your point of view is skewed.
This guy was being g tracked down because he was a quarantine dodger during a time when everyone was trying hard to contain the virus so it didn't break out and kill people.
The only banned Japanese porn is the kiddy stuff, but even then the law is around any kiddy porn stuff, filmed, animated, drawn, or otherwise.
The backdooring of security was discussed at large in the media, and to the best of anyone's knowledge hasn't even attempted to be implemented. This particular point is quite shit and we all should be up in arms about it, but Joe Average tunes out when it gets any more technical than their Ladbrokes multi on the weekend.
> This guy was being g tracked down because he was a quarantine dodger during a time when everyone was trying hard to contain the virus so it didn't break out and kill people.
Are you capable of understanding nuance. Do you sincerely think my complaint is that a man was punished for breaking quarantine laws? My critique was of the sum total of the restrictions and the hysterical reaction of the public.
> The only banned Japanese porn is the kiddy stuff, but even then the law is around any kiddy porn stuff, filmed, animated, drawn, or otherwise.
Just simply false, all it requires is a google search [1]. The border force has blocked the import of any 18+ material from Japan. This ban probably affects less than a thousand Australians, but I included it to give people a taste of the Australian style of governance. Grant sweeping powers to enforcers and hope they don't abuse them.
> The backdooring of security was discussed at large in the media,
One particular bill in 2018 received attention, mostly from international media and orgs. This bill [1] passed last year and gave the AFP further ability to backdoor encryption as well as the power to modify your data and impersonate you. There were minor mentions prior to it being tabled. The day it was passed in parliament there wasn't an article about it on any major news provider. Most people are unaware this even happened.
> and to the best of anyone's knowledge hasn't even attempted to be implemented
Do you get much insight into what the AFP, ASIO and ASIS are working on usually? Yes, I'm sure that they make it public knowledge that they've implemented this. That wouldn't defeat the intended purpose at all. Can I clarify, they sought these powers just to have them they don't actually want to use them? And it's my viewpoint that's skewed?
He seems to have violated a quarantine order at a time when Covid was under control.
There are no countries in the world, including "bastions of freedom" that allow infectious public health risks to willfully violate quarantine,
BTW: one side-effect of the quarantine travel restrictions was that people overseas saw Australia as being in some sort of draconian lockdown, when, in fact, life was almost totally normal for most of the pandemic because of travel restrictions and qurantine (outside of Melbourne and parts of Sydney in 2021). And many Australians (especially those without overseas ties) assumed that life was "normal" for the rest of the world, when there was, in fact suffering and death, in addition to restrictions.
Yes, the man appeared to have violated the law. I guess my criticism that the Australian government is overly restrictive and the public are hysterical moral busybodies has been rendered void because there was a law in place that he violated.
My friend was unable to go and see her dying mother in France because the Federal government wouldn't allow her to leave the country. Her request to leave was initially rejected and took so long that her mother was dead by the time she was given permission. Now I heard many people have similar experiences because of the inability to find flights. I didn't realise the government forbidding you to leave was a completely normal experience worldwide.
If she had travelled and gotten covid while travelling she could've easily passed it on to vulnerable people she'd bumped into and caused the untimely deaths of other peoples' loved ones.
We ALL had to make sacrifices during the pandemic.
Hindsight shows we were wrong and distracted on the wrong thing. Society doesn't care about flu this year, and it's hitting just as hard as covid was. Yet, all I see is messaging on Covid still.
Considering that life was normal for most of the country, the virus was contained until vaccines arrived, and the economy was booming, someone violating quarantine was a big deal.
> statewide man hunts for people who sneezed in lifts that they were the only one in
This is why we can't have a reasoned discussion. Use of hyperbole to replace actual good reasons.
"statewide manhunt" is actually more like a missing persons notice.
"sneezing" is actually having COVID.
"in lifts that they were the only one in" is actually leaving mandated quarantine to go spread COVID amongst a non-vaccinated society desperately trying to stop exactly that.
This is a glorified missing person's notice for someone who was being a dick. At the time, not many people were moving about and many had not much to do so yeah, a lot of people may have seen this news item in some form. But it wasn't a statewide manhunt.
EDIT: and instead of reasoned response. A downvote.
The fact that you can't see such measures as being draconian is kinda the point of this thread. The way that the heavy handed nature of the Australian government approach seems normalized to your average Australian is precisely the normalization of authoritarianism being protested!
... Not sure where in my post I comment on authoritarianism. I was criticising an absurdly skewed take compared to the source provided.
But sure. Lets go into this.
Part 1. Authoritarianism.
I don't like it. I do see the Australian government getting worse with it. And there is very little I could do to stop it other than vote right wing nutters out of parliament.
Part 2. heavy handed approach to COVID
I agree with it - even in hindsight. Society had no vaccine. No RAT. Awkward PCR testing process with delays. No real defense. The ONLY thing that we could do was to halt the spread until we could get a vaccine. As demonstrated by "elevator sneeze man", you can't trust the populace at large not to spread it.
And there were fuckups. Apart from "elevator sneeze man", the airport quarantine bungle anyone? These fuckups should be investigated in their own right.
Right now, Australia has ~10% of the number of cases as the US. Which is fair because we're roughly 10% the population size and now we're vaccinated COVID has been allowed to roam.
Australia has ~1.5% of the number of COVID deaths as the US. Which is down to being vaccinated BEFORE we let COVID roam.
I like my parents. I like the parents of many of my friends. At least some of them would have died due to COVID if it had been let to run rampant before we got a vaccine.
Conclusion
So yeah, I was happy to live through the Melbourne lockdown. As traumatic as it was, it was better than the alternative.
But ScoMo should be friggin' nailed for his "multiple ministries" bullshit.
That has literally nothing at all to do with Melbourne.
And yes, some governments definitely show two faces when it comes to China vs what they do themselves.
I'm not sure why you've decided to be so angry, instead of realising our government was doing it's level best to try and get it right. eg Give 'em a break dude.
The analogy is very obvious, come on now. Melbourne's lockdowns were even worse and longer than Canadas.
Not all actions get a "Well shucks, better luck next time" second shot. The anger of myself and others is completely justified. Unless you would also say the same to the Chinese at the moment?
To me the instincts of our leaders in high stress unique situations are critically important. The actions taken by Dan Andrews are disqualifying from leadership in my book. I'm not saying he's a bad guy in his personal life or anything like that, but not fit for office. His actions are by far the grossest breach of human rights in Australia in the last 50 years and will not be forgotten.
k. What's (in hindsight) the right approach that _should_ have been taken, that likely would have worked out better in important measures?
By "important measures" I'm meaning things like "number of deaths", "number of COVID infected", but also things like "people who kept their jobs" (etc).
Note that I'm not arguing here, I'm genuinely asking. My impression is that we (in Melbourne) "did ok" as we had low numbers of deaths/infections, and the government support package(s) seemed to have worked for a lot of people. With some notable exceptions (eg artists), which I really don't think should have been excluded from support. :/
You can't seriously be saying this is just a right-wing problem. Dan Andrews literally shutdown playgrounds to stop children playing (sorry "their parents congregating").
A brutal streak of authoritarianism runs deep on both sides of Australian politics. They only get angry about who gets to hold the whip.
Isn't that what we are doing now? Have you seen rates of uptake on boosters?
Lockdowns were a shocking totalitarian action I never thought I would live to see in my own country. But of course many can only see/say that when looking at China, even though what is happening there is just a more extreme mirror of our own crimes against humanity.
More people were dying from COVID in June and July in Melbourne than at any point during the pandemic. Case numbers look low because nobody even bothers getting the PCR anymore unless they work in health.
The public can't be trusted to do the right thing. Many people aren't getting additional doses of the vaccine so their immunity has weakened. Why are we not in lockdown right now? It's literally costing lives as we speak.
Yep, exactly. Lockdowns can only have been justified if we are willing to take the same action going forward under similar conditions and risk. If we aren't, then they were gross overreach of government powers.
For the record, I am not against the idea that the government would provide some financial support for people so they could have stayed at home etc. But the forced closure of the whole society including and especially the banning of seeing other people was unbelievably totalitarian and indefensible.
Have a look at "freedom-loving" red states like Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas and Alabama. All seem to be quite "draconian" when it comes to quarantine
That eliminates the US. Maybe there's some other country that doesn't have "draconian" quarantine measures?
I'm genuinely confused by your point. Are you saying that because other countries have quarantine restrictions, that makes their pandemic approach equivalently restrictive as Australia was? Victoria spent over 250 days in lockdown between March 2020 and October 2021. We had curfews at 6pm for weeks and were allowed out of the house for 1 hour a day and not beyond 5km of our houses. Are you seriously asserting that if the US enacted these restrictions, I would be on here professing that these were the pinnacle of freedom?
What I will remark is that US citizens have certain constitutional protections which we do not that in theory inhibit their government's ability to enact restrictions like these i.e. "freedom of movement".
We were talking about the "lift sneeze man" violating quarantine, and whether it was "draconian" or not for the authorities to pursue him. I pointed out, by way of the US, that authorities pursuing someone who violated a quarantine order is not uniquely Australian nor particularly draconian.
We were not discussing the merits, or lack thereof, of lockdowns. Let's not shift the goalposts. But FYI: Here's a list of lockdowns in response to Covid worldwide, including the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lockdowns
6pm curfew? Did Sydney do that? Melbourne didn't. The rest seems about right.
But having seen what Italy was going through - lockdowns with COVID still spreading and hospitals overloaded with the dying. I didn't want that for us.
The "freedom of COVID movement" people were cursed many times - they kept the lockdown running for longer because they couldn't see beyond themselves. They were the cause of the curfews because they tried to use cover of darkness.
>These governments are not firebombing domestic youtube-grade nonentities or anyone else, nor are they enabling it.
We don't know that one way or another. We just know he has pissed off someone enough to firebomb his house. Unless he's pissing people off in private, the only people he seems to piss off are those that are involved in corruption. The vast majority of times a journalist is murdered or targeted, it is relation to their reporting. But sure, that is all speculation.
What isn't speculation is the wide array of shady actions taken before the firebombing. Also some of the stuff that happened during covid was just insane to see.
Are we talking about friendlyjordies here? He most certainly has pissed people off. I wouldn't put it past mafia types to have a go at him after his relentless mockery of Barilaro. Not to suggest he's connected, just the whole Italian thing.
Not to take away from your point though. I too feel that our government, both state and federal, goes unchecked. Just that conspiracies about firebombing are hardly evidence. Instead consider the refusal to implement a federal ICAC or the NSW liberals overthrowing their own and cherry picking candidates.
You won't see it until you leave that place.
The firebombing of Shanks-Markovina should be a wake up call about the power of deeply entrenched corrupt and anti-democratic bodies. The existence of the private criminal investigation into Shanks by interest groups should leave one fearful on the path being followed there.
The Australian economy exists as source of raw materials for the world, a laundromat for wealth via gambling, and a ponzi around housing to enrich the ruling class. Any political force that challenges these pillars is not allowed to be.
These governments are not firebombing domestic youtube-grade nonentities
No one said it was governments who firebombed the person in question. As for Youtube-grade non-entities: I think the line is rapidly blurring between people on the internet and "real" journalists. I don't really follow the person in question though, so I can't speak for his credentials.
for these and other sins the electorate severely rebuked his party at recent state and federal elections
State elections maybe, but this secret portfolio stuff only came out after the federal election, when he lost his importance. If he had won the election, would it have come out?
> Scott Morrison making himself a secret minister of several portfolios, and for these and other sins the electorate severely rebuked his party at recent state and federal elections
Didn't this "secret minister" situation only really come to light AFTER the elections?
>Scott Morrison making himself a secret minister of several portfolios
For anyone confused about this, like me, wikipedia has an overview. The TLDR is that in Australia apparently you can have more than one person holding a ministry (health, etc) and the incumbent prime minister did this without telling the public.
Democracy that infringes on rights and liberties is still authoritarianism. Trump was democratically elected, did that make his bans on Muslims entering the US or other such policies any less authoritarian? Without protections of civil liberties democracy is easily capable of resulting in authoritarianism. As the saying goes, two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner is a democracy.
> Trump was democratically elected, did that make his bans on Muslims entering the US or other such policies any less authoritarian?
This is nonsense, Trump never put a ban on Muslims, from the ACLU (a stronlgy anti-Trump organization) President Donald
> Trump signed an Executive Order that banned foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries from visiting the country for 90 days, suspended entry to the country of all Syrian refugees indefinitely, and prohibited any other refugees from coming into the country for 120 days.[1]
Banning people from certain countries is a whole different ball game than banning people from a certain religion, further the country with the world's largest Muslim population, Indonesia wasn't even on the list.
Let me ask you how do you feel about the government labeling and suppressing misinformation?
Trump repeatedly stated that the point of the ban was to ban Muslims from entering the country. Your own source calls it a "Muslim ban":
> As the Muslim ban went into effect on Saturday, lawyers from the ACLU-WA and the NW Immigrant Rights Project rushed to SeaTac Airport to help immigrants on incoming flights who were being denied entry to the U.S.
Kind of hard to take this seriously, when your own source contradicts you. As an analogy, conservatives talk about gun bans in California and New York yet bolt action rifles remain legal there. Not every gun is banned, so it's wrong to call it a "gun ban"?
> Let me ask you how do you feel about the government labeling and suppressing misinformation?
They shouldn't and the fact that said governments are democracies doesn't make it any less authoritarian.
Fair enough - this was pre-election but still inexcusable. I didn't think he had explicitly called the 2017 travel ban a ban on Muslims, and I haven't seen anything to suggest he did.
You say "... the way they have literally arrested people for tweets", as if "tweets" is a special "thing" , but it's just communication. If something is illegal to say, it stands to reason that it would be illegal to say through the medium of a tweet. Is it less ridiculous to arrest people from what they write in a blog post or what they say on the street than what they say in a tweet?
It seems like one should either take free speech absolutist approach and say speech should never be illegal, or accept that some speech is illegal which would obviously mean that it's illegal even on Twitter. But you're not the first person I've seen who seemingly find it extra ridiculous to react to something someone tweeted, as if publishing a tweet or a series of tweets is not an act of speech, and I don't understand it.
At least in the U.S., nothing is "illegal to say." Rather, some illegal act defined by particular circumstances may be performed through speech. For example, "true threats" are illegal and not protected speech. But tweets have characteristics that make them less likely to be true threats. The famous example of a true threat is a Vietnam War protestor who shouted "If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J." https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/707/watts-v-uni.... That was held to be a political statement. The same speech in a tweet has the same hallmarks of a political statement--made in public, physically distanced from the target of the speech.
By contrast, if a protestor said that while right outside the President's office, that could be a true threat. The medium and surrounding circumstances matters, not merely what is said.
You're right it's not the media that matters, it's the message. But the reality is that people are being arrested for unambiguously political messages [1]. Nobody would care about people being arrested for making credible death threats over twitter, versus over snail mail. When people say "arrested for tweets" they're referring to stuff like the above link.
The "special thing" in terms of authoritarianism was the arrest part, not the tweet part. Arresting for (offline) communication is not unheard of in the UK, as evidenced by anti-monarchist protesters getting arrested for expressing their views during Charles' proclamation.
If I was talking about someone arrested for speaking against the monarchy on Twitter, I wouldn't talk about that as someone being "arrested for a tweet", maybe I would talk about someone being "arrested for tweeting critically about the monarchy" or just "arrested for being critical of the monarchy". If one thinks the speech in question should be legal, you'd think one would mention the kind of speech, not just the medium.
As it is, we can't judge for ourselves whether the arrest is warranted or not, which is kind of a big deal when the arrest is used by robswc to illustrate how the UK is approaching authoritarianism.
An example discussed earlier this year on HN: Joseph Kelly tweeted
> the only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella, buuuuurn
in relation to Tom Moore’s death. He deleted the tweet after 20 minutes. He was convicted of grossly offensive communications under the Communications Act, and was sentenced to 18 month’s probation and 150 hours of unpaid work.
That's certainly crass, but it shouldn't be illegal to say.
If people don't want to support their country's military and servicemen, that should be their business; it's a legitimate political position to take. Not least because all British soldiers are volunteers, and most of what British soldiers have been doing for the past generation is tagging along with American imperial military adventurism.
>Arresting for (offline) communication is not unheard of in the UK
This is not unheard of in the US either. So what is the distinction being made here?
And for the record the UK and Australia are generally higher up on the various freedom lists that rank countries. I don't know that there is much of an argument that their stricter speech restrictions have them any closer to authoritarianism than the various problems in the US have us.
There are plenty of them. You can start here[1] and do digging to find whichever one you think is most appropriate. It has been years since I have looked at any of these in depth, but the general consensus has often been that at our best the US is on par with countries like Australia and the UK and is occasionally a tier bellow those two. I'm not aware of any that have us a tier above either of them when it comes to general freedom metrics.
I looked at a random few of those and I honestly believe their categories are too broad/subjective.
Funny enough, downloading an actual report (https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index/2021), the UK scores almost perfect (9.8) on "Freedom of internet Expression." The country where you can quite literally be arrested for making an offensive tweet (not a threat), scores just shy of 10/10 on internet freedom? Are the arrests the reason for losing 0.2? I would _love_ to see the methodology behind that score.
Germany, the country where you can have your house literally raided over calling a politician a "dick", scores 9.36 "Internet Expression." 9's are some of the highest scores you can get.
The institutions that put these together have 0 skin in the game. I have tried to find how they create their "indicators" but haven't found anything. I honestly just cannot take these reports seriously unless someone has an answer for how countries that can arrest citizens over offensive tweets could score so high on this particular metric.
Maybe some of them do have categories that are too broad or subjective. That is why I referred to the consensus of the lists and not any individual list. Those list come from a variety of political and ideological backgrounds, so any biases should be reduced in aggregate and they all seem to end up showing the same pattern. The US is generally in the 2nd or 3rd tier while Australia and the UK are generally in the 1st or 2nd tier.
I would assume this means the experts have concluded that the right to be rude to a politician on Twitter is not a particularly important right and its removal doesn't have much impact on the overall freedom of that society. That seems more likely than a diverse group of think tanks, academic institutions, journalistic outlets, and NGOs have all either joined a conspiracy or randomly acted in concert to misrepresent the relative freedom of the US in comparison to our peers.
>Maybe some of them do have categories that are too broad or subjective.
All of the ones I have looked through have that. Every single one.
We're looking at just one metric though. Freedom to express ideas on the internet. Countries where you can get arrested for "offensive" tweets or get your house raided for calling a politician a dick score a few 0.1s away from the maximum of 10. We don't know how, because AFAIK, they do not go into specifics about why they give the UK/Germany a 9.x/10 on "Internet Freedom."
>I would assume this means the experts have concluded that the right to be rude to a politician on Twitter is not a particularly important right
Then I, along with most people, would conclude that their metric (and possibly by extension, their entire index) is useless. Not having your house raided for calling a politician a dick is exactly what most people would consider a particularly important "right."
The People’s Republic of China guarantees freedom of speech in its constitution. However, china doesn’t really do rule of law (the judicial branch has no power to interpret law or rebuke executive application of the law, instead it’s more rule by law), so it is mostly meaningless.
Respectfully, it is my opinion that arresting anyone who says something, in real life, on a blog or whispering to themselves, that is not a direct threat or inciting physical violence is wrong.
Right, so someone could be justly "arrested for a tweet" in your eyes, if that tweet contains a direct threat or inciting physical violence. If someone was arrested for tweeting something which is clearly not arrest-worthy, say someone was arrested for tweeting that the UK monarchy is bad, I would probably write that someone was "arrested for being critical of the monarchy", not that someone was "arrested for a tweet".
It depends on if you are writing a click bait headline to get higher engagement or not. So, someone paid to write those headlines would absolutely say arrest due to tweet and ignore the content of the tweet.
>I would probably write
suggests that you are not a click bait headline writer.
That makes a lot of sense if you think that only direct calls for violence result in violence. There's a slow burning genocide afoot that's taking place though "reasoned debates," that serves as a counterexample. It's, however, a lot easier to relabel it as something else than accept that speech falling outside "inciting physical violence" could be the cause.
I think that the perpetrators of violence carry the responsibility for it, not the people who may have inspired them. Since perpetrators are agents, the cause of violence terminates at the decision making process of the perpetrator. The best way to address violence is to arrest and imprison perpetrators.
Attempting to control second-order factors that may influence behaviour is a very short road to tyranny. How do we decide which factors to control for? Who gets to make this decision? How do we know in retrospect that such a decision was mistaken? The only justice lies in conviction beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of one's peers.
Also, how "slow burning" does a "genocide" have to be before it's indistinguishable from a normal process of cultural shift and assimilation? (honest question)
I think this makes sense if we're ok with the number of perpetrators going up due to being convinced it's ok to perpetrate.
> Attempting to control second-order factors that may influence behaviour is a very short road to tyranny. How do we decide which factors to control for? Who gets to make this decision? How do we know in retrospect that such a decision was mistaken? The only justice lies in conviction beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of one's peers.
It is very hard to read this as not sealioning. Is there a way you could rephrase it so that it doesn't come across that way?
> the number of perpetrators going up due to being convinced it's ok to perpetrate
It's an inevitable consequence of power (read: to do harm) being distributed rather than concentrated. With distributed power you're at the mercy of group dynamics and trends. However the risks of concentrated power have borne out to be much more severe.
> rephrase it so that it doesn't come across [as sealioning]
I'm genuinely mystified as to what distinguishes "well-intentioned" use of authority to control people from what we see as obviously tyrannical. What principle would you use to distinguish between the kind of control over speech exercised by the UK and what is commonplace in China? Or are you willing to concede that these are different degrees of the same thing? I'm simply arguing that this "thing" (the use of authority to limit speech) should be avoided at all costs in a free society.
That would make sense if we were talking about centralized vs decentralized power to do harm, but we're not having that conversation. We're having a conversation about the freedom of speech that has the power to convince people to do harm in ways that aren't direct calls to violence. Please stay on topic, or find someone else to engage with.
Again, please refrain from sealioning. Simply rephrasing your arguments in ways that don't appear indistinguishable from it. If you keep doing it, I will have to assume you're doing it on purpose an in bad faith. It's not a good debate tactic in a conversation about "rational debate" and its effects on violence. Sealioning is exactly one of the tactics used in the topic we're discussing. You must appreciate the irony.
To have a conversation about freedom of speech you have to have a conversation about "freedom", it's meaning, and it's value. Freedom of speech does indeed have the power to convince people to do harm. However the only alternative to "freedom of speech" are constraints on speech enforced by authority. In order to oppose freedom of speech you have to support the use of authority to constrain speech. You therefore must argue that such a use of authority does less harm than the freedom it is curtailing (and as a policy is resistant to corruption).
In addition to all of this, we have to agree that "reduction of harm" is a valid guiding principle to hold above all others. This is fundamentally consequentialist (and valid as such). My thesis though is that "freedom" itself has deontological value, even if it causes harm. Deontologists and consequentialists have a notoriously hard time seeing eye to eye.
I'm not at all trying to derail the conversation, but it just doesn't seem all that clear-cut to me.
You do know what sealioning is, right? It's a denial of service attack on the debate format. I really wish you could engage in a way that doesn't evoke this style. You seem smart, why not try?
Asking one question, which can be phrased as "what test would you propose to determine whether speech was responsible for violence?" is hardly sealioning.
It's weird how sealioning doesn't feel like it to the person who does it. I don't doubt you have no intention of doing it, but it always has the guise of "reasoned debates" and the strategy of pestering the other person with questions until they give up.
I'm so sorry that you came up with the idea that I need to have a test and then continue to ask me what it would be. I hope you can simply lay this to rest. The longer you insist that you're asking questions under the pretense of rational debate, the more and more it looks like it's definitionally sealioning.
You of course don't have to have a test. Not proposing one simply opens the position to a criticism of vagueness. This is compounded by the fact that this position seeks to empower authority. A vague limit is one of the strongest criticisms for a proposal to empower authority, particularly in a system that relies on checked power. There is a reason that our legal system relies on tests that are maximally well-specified.
Kelseyfrog, I'm sorry, but I'm deeply struggling to understand how you can interpret thegrimmest as sealioning, and I think you need to re-evaluate your tone and the way you're framing his responses.
The parent reply that started this discussion says they believe it is wrong to suppress speech that is not a call to violence. You responded saying that this logic doesn't work if speech that is non-violent can still lead to violence, with the insinuation being that you are okay banning speech that falls into this category of "not violent, but leads to violence." Which is a perfectly valid point, and I believe a strong argument!
thegrimmest has then attempted to point out that it can be extremely difficult to pinpoint what speech falls into this category, and stated that these sorts of bans can be inappropriately used as tools of oppression by authoritarian governments. He asks how you feel this sort of ban could be properly implemented, given these potential problems. This is a very on-topic response; you appear to be proposing that the government expand its abilities to censor speech, and thegrimmest is asking how we could ensure the government doesn't abuse this power if it is implemented. Given the current state of the world, and the authoritarian trends rearing their head in dozens of countries, this criticism is valid, on-topic, and very far from sealioning.
Rather than try to address his concerns by proposing ways this sort of ban could be thoughtfully and morally implemented, you immediately chose to accuse him of sealioning, which is a form of trolling and a pretty serious accusation. He gamely attempted to appease you by rephrasing his wording, only for you to become snarky, smug, and accuse him of repeatedly pestering you with questions--when you had directly asked him multiple times to please rephrase his questions!
As someone who has experienced sealioning, and finds it quite infuriating, I am genuinely baffled how you can see this interaction as thegrimmest sealioning. I think you may need to take a moment to re-read the HackerNews code of conduct and remember that engaging in good faith is a must.
If you don't wish to engage with thegrimmest's criticisms, that is 100% okay. You can always say, "I support banning speech in this category, and I'm not interested in discussing the possible ways a government could abuse this power." But you cannot pretend that thegrimmest is somehow morally at fault for wishing to discuss government abuse, because presenting these sorts of on-topic and civil criticisms is exactly what these forums are for.
You're a very intelligent person, and I think you raise some great points. I almost always enjoy reading your comments and listening to your insights. But they get lost when you engage like this. I see from your previous comments that this isn't the first time this has happened; other commenters have complained of you being rigid and accusatory. It's probably worth taking a step back and examining why this is a recurring theme in your interactions on here.
Thanks. You're right. I'm not the right person to debate this appropriately. I can't hold that space and be a participant in it at the same time. I have too much skin in the game.
There is always a lot of debate about how you define a word like genocide. The UN definition outlines several actions that qualify as genocide but specifically limits it to attacks on a community of people based on race, religion, ethnicity, or nationality. Actions like preventing medical care and removing kids from their parents would qualify as genocide according to that UN definition.
The US is guilty of both those things (and more) when it comes to our treatment of trans people. However, trans people clearly aren't a singular racial, religious, ethnic, or national group. That means they can't technically be the victims of a genocide according to that UN definition, but that is an awfully uncomfortable technically we need to not be guilty of genocide.
You could be right. Was that really kelseyfrog's point, though? Or was it Israel's treatment of Palestinians? Or Russia's treatment of Ukraine? Or China's treatment of the Uighurs? Or the police treatment of blacks? Or the Great Replacement theory? I honestly can't tell.
And, once we know what was actually being claimed, then we can debate whether it meets the definition of genocide.
I really hate vague-posting like kelseyfrog's post. Don't hint. If you have a claim to make, make it. (Just to be clear, this last paragraph is not aimed at the parent.)
I obviously can't know for sure without them chiming in. However, the context made me immediately think of trans people. It was in a conversation about issues specific to the US, UK, and Australia so I doubt they are talking about China's treatment of Uyghurs. They mentioned "reasoned debates" and the anti-trans contingent often defends themselves by saying they are "just asking questions" or are looking for reasoned debates about high school girls volleyball. OP also called out the speech that leads to violence even if it isn't a direct call to violence. That seems to be a reference to the way that numerous conservative figures have started using "pedo groomers" as a slur to describe people who participate in drag shows, are trans, or even just generally LGBT+ people. Someone just recently heard all that rhetoric, walked into an LGBT+ bar that does drag shows, murdered 5 people, and injured over a dozen more.
One of the reasons people are vague on HN about these issues is because a simple "The US is committing genocide against trans people" comment is more likely to be downvoted and flagged as being political. We often can only talk about these things here by hinting at them. Ironic considering how pro free speech this community claims to be.
A direct comment that the US is committing genocide against trans people I would downvote, not for being political, but for being BS. At least one thing more is needed to be genocide - some level of being systematic.
Yes, trans people get beaten to death in numbers that are appallingly high. That's a tragedy and a disgrace on our society. Does it rise to the level of genocide? Blacks get shot in numbers that are appallingly high, too. Is that a genocide?
Preventing medical care? Are trans people being denied medical care for, say, cancer or heart disease? Or are they only being denied medical care for transitioning? Or are they only being denied medical care at public expense for transitioning?
If trans people are being denied medical care for regular medical issues, in large numbers, yes, I could call that genocide. If they're being denied care at public expense for transitioning, no, I probably would not call that genocide.
The problem with lowering the bar to calling things genocide in order to highlight a particular issue is that it lowers the bar for everybody else, too. And if everything's a genocide, then nothing is.
The problem with just hinting at things is it leaves the rest of us unclear on what, exactly, is being claimed. One of the things that most people on HN ought to agree on is that the details matter. If you're making vague claims, all we can do is talk in platitudes, which is unlikely to be effective.
Some would argue that there are indeed systemic origins and incitements in both violence against trans people and violence against black people, that there are elements within the US government (or at least political apparatus) interested in the oppression of both groups, and actively engaged in spreading fear and encouraging violence against them.
I mean, you can trace a direct line from the current moral panic about "groomers" through QAnon to Pizzagate, and it goes through one specific political party, and you can trace another line from police brutality against black people to Jim Crow and segregation to slave-catchers. The systemic links are there.
The only things people are calling genocides are things that look disturbingly like genocides. No one is arguing everything is a genocide.
Strong disagree. You don't need "systematic origins", you need systematic violence for it to be genocide. Compare, say, the Holodomor or the Armenian genocide, to what's happening to blacks and trans people. They are not similar.
When it's done by the state, that's systemic, but it's not systematic. It's systematic when it's done to all trans people (or whoever), not just a few.
(Yes, "all" isn't actually necessary. Some large fraction, though. You can't have a genocide by killing 1% of the people. That's an atrocity, but it's not a genocide.)
Sorry, I apparently didn't read that close enough to notice the systemic/systematic difference.
The UN definition specifically calls out that it doesn't have to be directed at the entire population. It also doesn't make any effort to define any "large fraction" that needs to be met before the definition can be applied. A culling of a percentage of specific population would likely still qualify, but the specifics of these things always varies depending on the context of the specific example being judged. However, it is clear that the UN definition primarily hinges on how people are targeted and the actions that are taken, not the scope.
> There's a slow burning genocide afoot that's taking place though "reasoned debates," that serves as a counterexample.
I don't know if this is the right place to share a feeling, but I'm going to try to express it anyway.
I'm not sure whether you're right about this or not, but I think you might be, and it makes me sad almost more than you could believe. It genuinely depresses me.
The claim seems to be nothing short of saying that at the end of the day, all human intelligence sums to a net negative, at least in this area. That we're not collectively capable of rational discourse. That ultimately, we're so blinded by hate for the Other that debating our differences might actually lead to worse outcomes than if we just pulled guns to solve our problems. We're all ultimately just stumbling around in the dark. Maybe, one day, the light of humanity is doomed to go out.
I suspect that one reason liberals, rationalists, civil libertarians, and their allies are so insistent on free speech and an open public square is that they can't really bring themselves to take this possibility seriously. Or, to the extent they do, they think we have to ignore the possibility, because in the event this turns out to be true, who cares about humanity anyway?
Maybe the American attitude toward free speech is just a reflection of optimism about human nature?
Do you realize what you just did? You equate pointing out the existence of a genocide with a "call to violent action". In a conversation where a "call to violent action" is used to mean something which is worthy of arrest. Your comment, in the context of this conversation, argues in favour of arresting anyone who points out that a genocide is taking place. That is extremely dangerous.
>You equate pointing out the existence of a genocide with a "call to violent action"
I take it you favor a more passive approach.
>Your comment, in the context of this conversation, argues in favour of arresting anyone who points out that a genocide is taking place. That is extremely dangerous.
This is exactly what my comment was arguing. I wrote that comment not as a reflection of my personal views, but to highlight the consequences of prosecuting individuals for statements which aren't direct threats.
I don't believe arresting and prosecuting individuals for making such statements is justified. I agree that the context of this conversation argues in favor of arresting anyone who points out that genocide is taking place, and I agree that accepting it as a precedent is extremely dangerous. You've elucidated my reasoning on the subject perfectly.
Just as typical as it is for people who live in democratic countries to support democratic laws. I'm not quite sure what you expect us to conclude here.
Democracy isn't the opposite of authoritarianism...
Imagine you're a gay person, and marrying the person you love is illegal in your country. The authoritarianism of that isn't contingent on whether that law was put into place by a man in a scary suit or your fellow citizens voting.
The point is that one shouldn't expect people to stand up and say "that's an authoritarian law"! It doesn't work that way. Authoritarian laws get passed because people want them.
> Authoritarian laws get passed because people want them.
I don't think I agree. Almost by definition authorianism doesn't acknowledge what people want. A law passed because people want it would be either democratic or populist, depending on whom you ask.
I think that the issue here is that all laws are authoritarian at some level, since the principle of a law is to impose. And indeed most citizens would probably support most laws. That doesn't really make the law "bad" or "good" per se, though.
Many people think of tweets as offhand, throwaway remarks that are not well considered and often not especially serious. People tend to get ranty and emotional on twitter much more than in real life. People tweet when they are drunk or high, often to their later embarrassment.
Anything I hear about what anyone said on twitter immediately has reduced weight in my mind, just because it's twitter.
“you're not the first person I've seen who seemingly find it extra ridiculous to react to something someone tweeted, as if publishing a tweet or a series of tweets is not an act of speech, and I don't understand it.”
because people say stuff online they would never say in real life. i hope that cleared things up for you
Rather as if it makes the reality (and therefore the norms, and therefore any rules which aim to be descriptive rather than prescriptive) of online speech different from in-person speech.
> the decision of Justice Rothman of the Supreme Court of NSW in Voller v Nationwide News Pty Ltd, extended the reach of defamation law such that media outlets could be held liable as ‘publishers’ for defamatory Facebook comments made by third parties on the media outlets’ Facebook posts.
But it was a Judge, not the government. And it was the big media that as targeted, not Joe Citizen. Yet the net effect was a curtailment of Joe Citizen's ability to broadcast their thoughts on the news of the day, and how it was reported. The size of the penalty his honour handed out and the broadness of the ruling meant there was only one sane response from the media giants: heavy moderation of their comment sections, or shut them down. They mostly chose shut down. Heavy moderation is very expensive, so I don't blame them.
The end result has been a biggest reduction of internet speech, comment and civil discourse triggered by news events I've seen in 20 years. Yet it strangely goes mostly unmentioned. Instead we get these conspiracy theories. I guess a conspiracy theory is more titillating than gross incompetence by one powerful individual. If want to go for conspiracy theories try this: why the haven't the law makers drafted a new law to fix the judicial mistake?
The governments are largely just a product of the nosiest citizens. So there is always a connection to 'Joe Average'.
You see defenders of censorship all over HN these days, especially by people from the UK and Australia. The people saying "it's nothing to worry about because it only happens to bad people who deserved it" sort of defenses that pop up early on.
Then when authoritarianism naturally grows larger and larger people only blame the politicians, not the people defending it every chance they get.
Given that his producer was arrested by what amounts to Australia's secret police, at the request of the then deputy premier, I'm not certain that it's easy to dismiss. There's been a pretty strong condemnation of the way that situation was handled, both in the political and legal sphere, that wrong-doing took place.
As for the firebombing, to me that feels much more like ClubsNSW/Bikey gang related hush tactics.
OK, but you did seem to be holding the firebombing incident up as an example of Australia's "ridiculous authoritarianism".
I'm just not quite seeing how it shows authoritarianism if you weren't suggesting government involvement?
Also your original comment sounds like you're saying Aus and UK are worse than the US on this front, but the worst case example you've just provided is from the US.
Well, a journalist goes after a politician for corruption and then his house is firebombed... The government itself doesn't have to "organize" that but a corrupt politician with friends certainly could.
>Aus and UK are worse than the US on this front
They are. Just look at how people were treated during COVID and how you can literally get arrested for tweeting "offensive content." That wouldn't happen in the US.
And yes, the example shows that it is not above a politician to literally kill a journalist with their own hands because their corruption is being uncovered. I guess in this case, the dude unfortunately succeeded but there's still two attempted murders and arson cases in AUS over a journalist uncovering corruption. Seems much more organized and deeper than a dude singlehandedly breaking into a house to do such things.
Would it require it to have gov't involvement to be bad? Let's say that the leader of a country stood up on a stage during a speech (which was preceded by years of pro-violence rhetoric) that was very suggestive of committing acts of violence. Would that be gov't involvement even if it the violence was actually perpetrated by private citizens?
I don't follow Australian politics closely, so what has/hasn't been said by its leaders is unknown to me. I was merely suggesting that if a leader has insinuated that something like that wouldn't be a bad idea, then some might say you now how a gov't official involved.
As an Australian this true, but does vary a bit depending on each state.
Most Aussies want more government control in their lives and are rather apathetic.
Most first world countries do not really have freedom of speech. While the headlines are quite excessive from UK and Australia (for obvious reasons), there are a lot of countries where the simple existence of those laws are never talked about. Denial of the holocaust is illegal in a lot of countries, denial of historic events in a few less, insulting people in a few more.
Getting pulled through the legal system because you showed a middle finger to someone or because you said that some random war crime was not really that bad is a thing that just should not happen. But it is a thing that happened before.
Protests and speech being regulated has the effect of everyone just trying to not get jailed. Even if there are no big headlines about it. And that damage is arguably worse than media coverage, which pulls attention to the issue.
Are you aware that those first world countries you call out, still have way more freedom of speech than almost all other countries?
You can freely criticise all the governments of those countries. You can disagree with them, you can mock them, you can challenge their claims. Nobody in the US has gone to prison for their "alternative facts". Compare this to Russia where discussing the war can land you in prison for 15 years, China with its extreme censorship, and plenty of other countries where criticising powerful people or reporting inconvenient news can get you in all sorts of trouble.
It's true you can't say everything. That's always been true, but in recent centuries and decades it has moved from banning what's inconvenient to the powerful to banning that what hurts the powerless. Libel and slander are illegal, threats are illegal. There's the classic example of yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater. Planning crimes is illegal despite the fact that that's all just speech. But it's all speech that can lead to situations in which innocent people get hurt. Or silenced, or compelled to do things they don't want to do, or otherwise limited in their freedom. And the same is true for hate speech. We've seen what it leads to. It creates a culture where the people being attacked are more likely to get hurt. Words aren't harnless; they're powerful. It's why free speech is important. But it's also why we shouldn't tolerate lies meant to hurt vulnerable people.
"[...]you can mock them[...]" is already something that i do not agree with. This could very easily be seen as an insult and in court you would get fucked over. But then again, I am not american. It is illegal to show the middle finger here. Even to objects. Welcome to Germany.
I would say that the US still has freedom of speech. Just with a lot of cops that should not be cops at all. My country? No.
I thought it would the the UK with the way they have literally arrested people for tweets... but then I saw the insane and petty corruption taking place in Aus and a journalist getting their house firebombed.