Baffled European

Category: Freedom of speech

  • Rubber stamp

    Congress doesn’t have much to do these days. Mainly it is a forum for Republicans to coo over their dictator, while Democrats cluck disapprovingly, writing their strongly worded letters.

    It has only passed six laws in the first hundred days. The mob isn’t particularly interested in new laws. There are plenty on the books that they can ignore or abuse. One of these six laws is the Take It Down act. Melania herself wanted this, who could refuse?

    In any normal world, this new law would be a good idea. Designed to take down “deepfake” and revenge porn, it is intended to protect people from onling bullying and persecution. To a tyrant, the law is an effective method of government censorship, a way to clamp down on the free speech of his opponents.

    The key to it all is in the enforcement. Take Twitter, for example, which is owned by Elon Musk. Any violation of the new law will be policed by the FTC, which is currently controlled by Elon Musk.

    Much of the traffic on Facebook nowadays is bots sharing AI pictures with each other. Since Zuck has sworn fealty to the emperor, he has nothing to fear from the law.

    Smaller companies however will be hammered, or merely comply without question. Wikipedia will probably be the prize target.

    Many writers yesterday were complacently assuming the regime is burning out, that it is running into implacable opposition. It’s only just started.

  • Delusional

    Marco Rubio is worried about freedom of speech. “People out there, they put a post,” he says, “and they – a cop comes knocking on their door: You’re going to go to jail for 60 days for posting something online.”

    Terrible.

    He knows what’s important, and that is not “attacking Americans who are exercising their First Amendment rights.”

    Absolutely.

    That would be great. However, he seems to be talking about Europe and the attacks on freedom of speech on this continent. He’s very concerned about just how bad things have got.

    He admits it has been a problem in the USA until recently. Anti-vaxxers, racists and cranks of all sorts have been banned from Twitter and that is against freedom of speech. What’s more, it was the fault of the State Department. Therefore they are changing the State Department so that it better suits the interests of the US citizens.

    Back to Europe and the EU Digital Services Act. This demands a basic level of respect for truth and decency, something which Twitter has routinely failed to offer. Musk is expected to be hit with a big fine for non-compliance with basically everything. It turns out this is the attack on freedom of speech that exercises Rubio more than any other.

    Meanwhile in the USA, a Russian student – speaking anonymously, of course – describes the climate of fear in US universities as being “like Russia”.

  • You can do anything with computers these days

    It’s 2025, a quarter of the way through the 21st century. I’m stuck by the way I still so often think in 20th century terms. I was wondering how the administration will spy on its citizens and I initially imagined millions of inoffizielle Mitarbeiter informing the government about the indiscretions of family, friends and colleagues. The answer is staring me in the face as I write.

    Beyond destroying government departments, DOGE has been consistently targeting databases. Getting these is illegal, but that’s hardly a problem. They can now move all the data from all branches of government into a single dataset. At this point, the government can find out literally everything about anybody they want.

    On top of this is social media. They’ve already got AI trawling through everybody’s accounts, looking for signs of dissent. It’s just practice at the moment, getting rid of foreigners. It will work for everybody else just as well soon enough.

    It’s something AI is very good at. Fast and cheap. Produces pretty good results. It will make frequent mistakes, but that’s no problem. Collateral damage. None of those obeying Grok are going to question who to sack or disappear. It’s not their job and it takes too much time anyway. Who cares if you ruin a person’s life anyway? Empathy is causing the Downfall Of Western Civilisation.

    The best we can hope is that Peter Thiel is incompetent.

  • Academic freedom

    I saw a scatter graph recently, showing how many Nobel prizes each country had won over the years. Germany was the clear Weltmeister until 1933, when the number of awards suddenly dropped, never to recover. The USA, followed by the UK, have been dominant since 1945.

    There’s a good chance this will change. The USAians are happily destroying their university system. Some reasons are transparently ridiculous, such as withholding $175million from Penn because they had a trans swimmer in their team. Florida has sacked a professor because he is a Chinese refugee. Harvard and Columbia are both knuckling down to suppress unwanted opinions or disband departments that the government doesn’t like.

    These elite universities have collected literally billions in endowments over the years. I get that there might be a tight spot in the short term, but they don’t need government money. Instead of compromising their charter and sacrificing academic freedom, they are genuinely in a position to say no. For whatever reason, they don’t do this.

    The exodus is starting, with academics seeking new positions in Canada and Europe. This is indeed a good opportunity to attract the brightest and best, if the USA doesn’t want talent anymore. Not to mention that many foreign scholars are too scared to enter the country even for conferences, let alone for permanent positions.

    We won’t see the effects of this for a few years, but it’s pre-programmed.

  • Please update your mythology

    “If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” – George Washington

    “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

    “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” – John F. Kennedy

    “The fate of America cannot depend on any one man. The greatness of America is grounded in principles and not on any single personality.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

    “In the real world, as lived and experienced by real people, the demand for human rights and dignity, the longing for liberty and justice and opportunity, the hatred of oppression and corruption and cruelty is reality.” – John McCain

    “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” – Ronald Reagan

    “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

    “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.” – John Adams

    “The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.” – James Madison

    “When the dictatorship came, we just gave in straightaway. It was easier that way for us.” – Columbia University, probably, and many others.