France's President Macron Wants To Block Websites During Elections To Fight 'Fake News' (gizmodo.com)

French President Emmanuel Macron has a rather extreme approach to combat fake news: ban entire websites. In a speech to journalists on Wednesday, Macron said he planned to introduce new legislation to strictly regulate fake news during online political campaigns. Gizmodo reports: His proposal included a number of measures, most drastically "an emergency legal action" that could enable the government to either scrap "fake news" from a website or even block a website altogether. "If we want to protect liberal democracies, we must be strong and have clear rules," Macron said. "When fake news are spread, it will be possible to go to a judge... and if appropriate have content taken down, user accounts deleted and ultimately websites blocked."

Macron, himself a target of election interference, also outlined some less extreme measures in his speech yesterday. He proposed more rigid requirements around transparency, specifically in relation to online ads during elections. According to the Guardian, Macron said the legislation would force platforms to publicly identify who their advertisers are, as well as limit how much they can spend on ads over the course of an election campaign.

Comments

A perfectly good idea

[russotto]

I can think of no possible way this could be abused as political censorship to, say, protect the incumbent government from inconvenient reporting.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the people who are susceptible to being brainwashed with slander? We saw that happen in the US.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Luckyo]

As we have seen in last election, all the slander against Trump didn't work out in the end.

Re: A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Thatâ(TM)s exactly what Hitler used to say.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean all the young liberals that believe every claim of racist, biggot, nazi, sexist, etc lobbed at anyone that does not fit a certain agenda?

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You're mentally ill.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[amiga3D]

But right now both sides can use that tactic, that's called free speech. When only one side gets to tell their bullshit that is censorship. The fact that anyone could make a serious pitch for censoring free speech is chilling.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of loser register a name to make it appear like BeauHD? You are the fake news!!

Re:A perfectly good idea

[goose-incarnated]

I can think of no possible way this could be abused as political censorship to, say, protect the incumbent government from inconvenient reporting.

That's literally in the summary:

"If we want to protect liberal democracies[...]have content taken down, user accounts deleted and ultimately websites blocked."

That stuff in the "[...]" is fluff to ensure that people don't see the two ends of the sentence together. They are literally saying they want political censorship.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are the one that should and want to be shielded from the fake news, because you believe it.

Why does all socialist and globalist refuse to cooperate with Russia? Werent you globalists? Doesnt that include Russia as well?

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay, "democratic" government wants "democratic" election.... Works just like the rest of this stupid dollar-slave "democracy".

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It's almost like sexual assault allegations don't ruin a man's career.

Re: A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of no possible way this could be abused as political censorship to, say, protect the incumbent government from inconvenient reporting.

That's because you are retarded.

Anything else you can't think of? I'm guessing there is a lot.

Re: A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Heâ(TM)s retarded but you donâ(TM)t know or canâ(TM)t tell what satire is...

Yes, yes, he is the retarded one...

Re:A perfectly good idea

[angel'o'sphere]

Reading the summary and comprehending it helps: it will be possible to go to a judge... and if appropriate have content taken down,

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Boutzev]

Now think again what the current administration can do with such a system during the next elections. Got it ?

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:A perfectly good idea

[mwvdlee]

Hearing idiots speak is the price you pay for your own freedom of speech.

Re: A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not. You obviously haven't watched a Hitler speech before.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[K. S. Kyosuke]

When only one side gets to tell their bullshit that is censorship.

Under election silence laws, generally no side gets to tell there bullshit. What's so strange about that?

Re:A perfectly good idea

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm pretty sure that "liberal democracies" refers to the political systems, not to the specific governments.

Re: A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You've been lied to by the controlled media... about the Second World War, and who started it... and why it happened...

Try Googling 'The Hitler Test'.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, a Liberal Democracy in Europe is very different than a Liberal Democrat in America.

The first is an expression of the style of government, meaning very free democracies with protections.

The second is a bogey man sent out to scare moderate and right-wing voters in America into submitting to assholes like Trump.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[AmiMoJo]

What makes you think this law would only be usable by the government? Oh right, the bullshit summary.

I wonder if when the government decided to make libel a thing, people thought it would only be usable by government ministers.

Reading up on it, it seems that anyone will be able to petition a court, but the bar will be pretty high so that only easily and conclusively demonstrably fake news will get the fast-track treatment.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Stuarticus]

Having robots controlled by foreign governments shouting at you constantly while pretending to be real idiots is just a free bonus.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[RedK]

So let's tie up the court system in dealing with judicial attacks between political opponents, while actual judicial matters pile up from the now lack of judges and court clerks to process actual requests for actual justice.

Sounds like a great plan even if both sides get to use it as a tool!

How bout this : The solution is never more governement. There already exists libel and slander laws. The bar is already high enough. Let's not give courts the power to censor the Internet.

Re: A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake news exhibit 1,334,661

Re: A perfectly good idea

[guruevi]

It's also one of the many reasons Macron got his narrow win, media blackouts hindered "inconvenient facts" from reaching the public.

There are obviously sources outside of France, hence why Macron wants to block them, but if you're a Frenchie on Facebook saying stuff during election season, you could go to jail.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The person saying that is a LibDem, it's no different than a Republican referring to "the Republic" - the statement is said by someone who thinks they have some sort of objective monopoly on what the system is really supposed to be.

And in the case of France the media manipulation is already reaching frightening levels. It's one of the countries that is doing things like censoring any statistic that doesn't look good to the acting government and/or the EU. Macron has an exteremely creating interpretation of "liberal" that doesn't fit the dictionary definition...

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Kiuas]

"Liberal democracies" does not mean the same in Europe as in the US. Over here Liberalism is almost the polar opposite of Socialism

Someone didn't stay awake during classes I see. It's true that in colloquial usage there's a bif difference in the way the word liberal is used on the 2 sides of the Atlantic but the root cause of confusion is that on both sides people have forgotten that the political spectrum is not a line, it's a grid. The X-axis from left to right describes one's attitude to the economy and the role of the government in it. The Y-axis is is the liberal-authoritarian axis that describes one's attitude to individual rights.

There are quite a few leftist liberals both in the US and Europe, myself among them. I'm actually on the same page with right-wing libertarians on many topics, because we share common ground on the Y-axis which is what makes us liberal. I believe adults should be able to decide for themselves which substances they wish to enjoy, I believe in strong freedom of speech (and do not support laws like this) and so on. I also oppose the authoritarian left that mainly fuels itself with identity politics. These are the people who in the name of 'equality' think it'd be a good idea for example to legislate mandatory quotas for sexes in corporate boards and so on which in my opinion goes against true egalitarian principles.

In the US the term 'liberal' is currently thrown about mainly to refer to the more authoritarian left because of "liberal values" that they hold, even though they're closer to the other side of the liberal-authoritarian divide, but understandably very few people self-identify as authoritarian. Here in Finland the small 'liberal party' is indeed a right-leaning libertarian party, but it should be noted that unlike their US counterparts, said right-wing liberals here do not for example oppose universal health care, because a from a liberal point of view the argument can easily be made that since individuals cannot determine their own conditions of birth, the belief in equality of individuals necessitates that it is not right to gate people's access to a life-saving basic service based on their wealth or the wealth of their family. Put another way: it is no-one's fault for being born into a poor family, so the individual that is born into such a circumstance should not be punished for the mistakes of his/her parents, as the child is not responsible for the (poor) choices of his parents. Now I have my disagreements with the liberal party here as to how said universal model is to be arranged. I'm in favor of the currently existing universal single payer model which has kept costs very much down and is working very well results-wise, the liberals want to lessen the role of the state and take in more private instances. So because I'm more to the left of the liberal party, we differ on implementation, not the principle.

And of course we're completely ignoring the root of all this nonsense - interference from Vladimir Putin

Vlad is certainly a factor here, he's been promoting different nationalist groups across Europe for a long time indirectly because the more anti-EU sentiments there are in Europe, the better it is for Russia as it weakens cohesion of the Union. However, the thing to note is that this will not be solved by stooping down to the same level with Vlad and starting to censor critics and those who speak bullshit. In fact that's precisely what the Kremlin wants. The very moment websites start to be censored because they're 'fake news' they will start hammering the martyrdom angle real hard, saying that 'the truth is being silenced because the politicians don't want you to know it", which will only re-enforce the animosity and work in their favor because they can then say that European leaders are not in line with what the values of the Union are, freedom of speech being among the core values of all western societies.

Freedom of speech however is not freedom from con

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Aha, the "fake news" argument. Now, the kicker: Who defines "fake news"? Were it up to one side here in the US, they would describe a lot of scientific research that has been proven for decades as "fake news". The other side would explain remarks about high crimes against people, violence, and terrorism as "fake news".

You do NOT want to give either side that ability, regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum. It might just blow back on you. Where I live, if one had a "45" sticker on a vehicle, the vehicle would meet the business end of a baseball bat on all panes of glass, all tires would meet a pocketknife, and the paint would be given additional pinstriping by a key. However, Trump still won in my county because people got tired of the censorship (calls of racism, calling people deplorables, calling people Nazis when they were independants and had zero to do with a National Socialist movement, etc.)

Censorship is bad, no matter who does it. The Strisand Effect comes to mind, and even censoring extreme sites, just gives them legitimacy in people's minds.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[AmiMoJo]

How would this create any more cases than there already are (i.e. very very few)? The bar is going to be higher than a standard slander case, and it seems like it will only be available when there is an election on, so if French politicians were interesting in using the legal system against each other this would be the least effective way to do it.

Plus if they do try to clog the system up with spurious cases, there will be the usual legal consequences for bringing baseless cases in bad faith, which can include fines and sanctions for the lawyers.

So you really think that France's legal system is so poor that this crazy scheme of yours would actually work?

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

But it ALMOST did. Think of if the government had its rains over fake news. Hillary would of won by a landslide and we would have better energy policies and not be in bed with the Russians who handed TRUMP the election. If we started out by blocking Russian IP's that would be a start. -=]x[_Beau_]x[=-

Can't believe you're bitching about fake news surrounding Trump when it was the real fucking news that caused that lying bitch to lose the election.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[mjwx]

Hearing idiots speak is the price you pay for your own freedom of speech.

Being able call them idiots and to tell them to shut up and go away is liberty.

Far right wing blowhards want to keep their right of "free speech" as you describe it but take away our liberty to criticise them. This is why I detest the use of free speech to gain access to platforms and silence critics, it is the antithesis of free speech (which actually is "the government cannot arrest you for saying what you said") as it removes the right to critisise. The "free speech uber alles" crowd are the ones destroying free speech.

Just because it's not illegal for you to say stupid things does not mean I have to listen to it and silently agree with everything you say... which is exactly what the purveyors of hate and fake news want me to do.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

So you say:

Someone didn't stay awake during classes I see.

And then go on to reinforce the statement I made?
Why do you think I mentioned in particularly that Liberals usually are for a free market and deregulation? Socialists usually do not like these things. They prefer to have the economy more heavily regulated and taxed in order to get money for the things they like to implement. This is something that makes the US Liberals very different from the Europe Liberals (again with the exception of UK Liberals). The reason for this is probably because Liberals in Europe did not undergo the same developments as the political parties in the US, where all parts of the politcal plane practically had to be divided into two parties. So the European Liberals usually still adhere to classical Liberalism, which pursues economic AND personal liberties. In the left-right spectrum this usually puts them more on the right than the left. In the authoritarian-anarchy spectrum it clearly puts them more on the anarchy than the authoritarian part.

Furthermore, yes, there are already laws in place for these instances. Which makes it look like Macron is just saying things for the sake of saying things. Making people believe that he actually cares about stuff. That happens a lot in politics and there's no denying that it is a shitty practice. Unfortunately suing for slander and falsehoods it's an arduous processes that is very rarely successful in proving that the false claims were made knowingly and with malicious intent. It's a good thing because it allows political criticism through satire and caricature for example, but seeing how far things have gone lately you do have to question the current legal situation of this. A lot more transparency is required when it comes to these political speeches during elections. And if there needs to be a law to enforce this, so be it. The rest is pretty much a slippery slope fallacy, where people claim that one little thing here will inadvertently lead to a disaster.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple, just stop these peoples, codename 57UP1D, from appearing. Just legalize fake news. Just saying allows government to scraps news is a threat to civilization. We need to send France to the field, who voted for this guy?

Re:A perfectly good idea

[mwvdlee]

You're completely right. Free speech does not mean newspapers, TV stations and the like are obliged to distribute that speech.
In this case however, it's about banning the newspapers and TV stations themselves from deciding which speech they will or will not distribute.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[rickb928]

I was alive during that period of time, and not only able but did in fact read the 'news', from many sources, including what we now call 'fake news'. I also paid attention to and read about the various events, government and non-government statements and actions, and candidate statements and actions.

If you are claiming that it could have been worse, and the government could have somehow had more of "its rains (sic)" over the news and information distributed during the campaign, you are plainly deluded. Our government did things that a decade before would have been recognized as either corrupt or merely illegal. The actions we now know occurred should alarm any citizen. Our federal government could have been characterized during that period as entirely partisan, save for Congress and half the SCOTUS, and Congress is expected to be partisan.

And the 'news' during that time was largely orchestrated and focused on favoring one candidate over all others. Not exclusively, but overwhelmingly so.

To think otherwise is to ignore or discredit plain facts.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[deathguppie]

In Canada knowingly lying while reporting the news is illegal. I see no reason to believe that restricts free speech in any way. You can still lie all you want, you just can't call it "news". I don't see Macron calling for the elimination of speech. Simply honest clarification of who is speaking and from where.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[rickb928]

I don't believe France enjoys the benefits of protected rights to free speech. So this is quite likely legal there.

Another reason to defend the rights you have, wherever you are. Whatever they are. For all.

Re: A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: politics as an x-y grid. -- You're assuming that politics is a structured and well ordered system. In reality every message has been co-opted by one group or another for their hidden agendas, e.g. libertarianism for corporate deregulation: and yet corporations are, more often than not, against public free speech and transparency.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[rickb928]

What?

"Liberals in Europe (perhaps with the exception of the UK) usually are strong supporters of the free market, deregulation, free speech and self determination in general."

Huh? The most obvious proof that this is false is agricultural protections. Just because its food doesn't excuse it.

"Courts work independently from the government in most of Europe's countries (Poland being an exception in the near future). Judges are not appointed by politicians. They do not inherently support the incumbent 'government' as in the legislature. It's called separation of powers."

And does that actually work that way? Really? You believe that?

"And of course we're completely ignoring the root of all this nonsense - interference from Vladimir Putin."

Do you claim that this is either new, unexpected, or improper? Putin may well do whatever he believes is necessary or even justifiable to protect his interests and those of his nation. That is rational. To not be prepared for that is everyone elses' failures. To not recognize it is also a failure. To disguise your own intentions by misleading others that Putin is not your ally when in fact your leader actually told Putin's President he would have 'more flexibility' after an election, and then to pretend the opposition was the only political force in the US willing to 'work with' Putin is not merely disingenuous, but actually a lie...

"That's where the real enemy is in this, but we rather stay divided against ourselves and keep fighting."

In the US, IMHO, I see a different movement and different individuals engaged in this divisive tactic. They are generally identified by me as the Left.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[tehcyder]

on both sides people have forgotten that the political spectrum is not a line, it's a grid. The X-axis from left to right describes one's attitude to the economy and the role of the government in it. The Y-axis is is the liberal-authoritarian axis that describes one's attitude to individual rights.

So rather than the one dimensional left/right, you have got a two dimensional economy/rights simplification.

Reality is multi-dimensional.

The origin of the grid is to let extreme right wing Americans think they are different from Hitler because they are in favour of de-criminalising drugs.

Re: A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they mean that you can place political parties into a two dimensional plane depending on what they say and how they act. A political plane which has an axis for economic views which ranges from communism to libertarianism (left to right) and another axis for the form of government which ranges from authoritarian to anarchy and is often ignored. They don't mean that political parties and their members act accordingly to that political plane.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[coofercat]

You make a good point - and in fact, if such censorship were in place, then any website still accessible must be "truthful" because the government has shutdown all the fake news sites. Thus, all Vlad (or anyone else) has to do is to create a site that isn't blocked and then receive all the baited clickers and more, all believing it must be "telling the truth 'they' don't want you to hear" because it's not blocked.

I seriously doubt anyone believes this proposal is a sensible one. It'll be political posturing in order to get funding for secret services and more draconian surveillance laws.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Kiuas]

So rather than the one dimensional left/right, you have got a two dimensional economy/rights simplification.

Reality is multi-dimensional.

Of course reality is multi-dimensional, but that's precisely why a 2 dimensional plane is better than a 1 dimensional line. I'm not saying the 2 dimensional model is a perfect model either, but it's certainly superior to the line-version.

If better models come up, I'm entirely open to using or discussing them, but it's still clear that at the very least we need to transition away from a one dimensional simplification.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Kiuas]

Why do you think I mentioned in particularly that Liberals usually are for a free market and deregulation? Socialists usually do not like these things.

I know what you were going for yes, but the point made is that it doesn't make sense to have just a one dimensional line where you try to cram everyone into because my point was to try and illustrate that it's possible for people who're too often viewed to be at the different ends of the spectrum to actually have common ideals.

On top of that socialism does not mean opposing free market. Case and point: we have a state controlled monopoly on hard liquor. I'm opposed to that and would like to see the market being freed. And I'm a socialist, especially from an american perspective.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[JackieBrown]

That only works if you are dumb enough to think that journalist have no stakes in elections. As you can see by watching any network, the reporting is slanted based on the reporter's or network's own beliefs.

Unless you think the government should be the ones to decide what news is fair and balance - which works great when it's your person in power.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not disagree with the point that it is a political plane and not a line. In fact I fully support this if not even a system that has more than just two dimensions. So I'm not sure what you're aiming at. For example I also didn't explain General Relativity here. Does that mean that I didn't pay attention?

However, Socialism in itself does oppose the 'free' part in the market. While they generally do not oppose an economy with private entities and private properties, they still aim to regulate everything in order to make the economy should always work in favour of society. And in order to accomplish that, they at least want to regulate the economy. Something that usually creates additional bureaucratic work, which costs tax payer money. In my opinion it's not a bad idea in principle, but it simply flies in the face of the 'free' market idea. Because with such a Socialist system it's not supply and demand that primarily regulates the market, but also the government. Of course in the end it's still a spectrum instead of two discrete sides.
For example here in Germany I have to liberty to make my own hard liquor from my own fruits (grains included) or vegetables if my still has a capacity of 0.5l or less. But usually the law doesn't look too closely at these things as long as it is for personal needs. I have the liberty to share it with people. But if I want to sell it commercially most of my liberties stop there. Then I have to get a licence from the state and have to adhere to several rules and regulations and of course have to pay them a lot of additional tax money.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[gnick]

...all the slander against Trump didn't work out in the end.

"Slander" is typically false. The stuff the MSM railed DJT for was mostly accurate. That's not slander; that's reporting. Are you upset that the MSM didn't spin the Access Hollywood tape as DJT "reaching out to women"?

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to Socialists and Greens in Europe, who want to keep GMO bans intact and only want to support organic farming, yes, (European) Liberals are strong supporters of the free market.

Yes it works. Courts have quite often overturned legislation by the incumbent governments in the past. The politicians hate it, but they can't do much about it. Why would it suddenly be different in the future? Maybe if the way the judiciary works is changed. But that's not the case right now.

Yes, Putin may do whatever he believes is necessary for Russia in Russia. But when that involves interfering with the operations of other nations within their own boarders, then there's something wrong with that. Not recognizing that Putin is a highly corrupt mobster doesn't change that his actions are attacking the stability of our countries and are therefore of a hostile nature.
In the US, IMHO I see both sides engaged in these tactics, I can see the identity politics working in your very reply. The US Left certainly does a lot of crap, I would even call subsets of them them anti-American, but simply because the found Putin as their boogie man doesn't mean that Putin is actually a good guy.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

And how does that line make it any better? It's still state sponsored censorship. So now a gestapo member will have to go to a gestapo appointed judge to have something the gestapo dislikes removed? That's better how?

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, did you really just say "how would a new law create any more legal issues"?

And then besides, the entire rest of your post is about how it could bring more work for the courts clogging them up. And proving bad faith is really hard. Even the most BS lawsuits aren't hit with bad faith claims. That becomes a court case of its own after all.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorant fucks (aka anyone voting conservative) shouldn't be allowed to vote

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction: the facts that surfaced about Trump during his first run as president in 2012 (funny how few Trump supporters are even aware he ran in 2012) certainly caught up to him as Mitt Romney become the GOP candidate. The run in 2016 succeeded because the majority of the American electorate was successfully dumbed down and deceived by conservative fake news sources.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

the political spectrum is not a line, it's a grid.

It's not a 2D grid, it's a multi-dimensional hyperspace.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Clinton thanks you for your support.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[shadowknot]

I think it's the "knowingly" part of that that's the problem though. Many people, even politically savvy reporters and journalists, are subject to subconscious bias meaning that they might not be intending to slant their reporting but their worldview colors their perception of events making such a law only useful in causing outright falsehoods to not be reported as "news". It's purely speculative but I would suspect that such laws might have the more insidious consequence of making people more sneaky and subversive about furthering their personal views in the guise of news.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[rickb928]

You've gotten almost all of my comments about Putin wrong.

I wasn't condoning or accepting his actions, was identifying them and offering a rational basis for understanding them. There is something wrong with acting in your self-interest only for your opponents, be they real or imagined.

And acting in his own self-interest does, I believe, assure us that his actions are hostile towards us. And it's amazing to me that Putin, when accused of favoring their opposition, suddenly becomes the enemy... Not so much when they had power and the prospects of continuing power. It's part hypocrisy and part there flexibility of not having any clearly defined principles to guide policy, except at the very top, and then you end up following your leadership off the cliff.

But that's politics. Mine are not based on identity but principles. This is often mistaken for identity politics, since there is so much of that, and most who practice identity politics can't imagine how there is any other way.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[wyHunter]

My observation is that this is absolutely the case. But I don't know 'all' young liberals or even most of them.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Luckyo]

It always amuses me that there are actually people that still believe that most of the slander layered against Trump is actually true in the context it was reported. Even in Soviet Russia, most people knew they were fed propaganda that had some seed of truth, but was utter lie in context.

Must be an interesting world to live in to actually buy the propaganda you do, hook, line and sinker.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Luckyo]

Of course it was. It isn't that he was elected on merits he ran on. It's that other people are stupid, and you're smart enough to see it.

Re: A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Allegations of any sort should never harm anyone's career.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in favor of the currently existing universal single payer model which has kept costs very much down and is working very well results-wise, the liberals want to lessen the role of the state and take in more private instances.

Just look at how much private actors, medical and insurance providers have been already involved in healthcare in Finland for a long time and how much have the smaller municipalities contracted their health services, and you might question the system on the whole being a "single-payer model." If you have property and need care as you're getting older, it is you who are paying the bill as much as possible, to the dismay of the estate later. We live in a complicated society in the middle of a painful transition. The party politics have been starting to shown this already during the recent years, but many bureaucrats have not waken yet.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[gnick]

The pee-pee tape? Unverified, salacious gossip and irresponsible reporting. Reported more on comedy shows than MSM.

Russia? Ongoing. I think DJT's fine. Jr. might have stepped in it.

DJT's constant inaccuracies? His tweets? Access Hollywood? His conspiracy theories? Appointing unqualified family members? The sexual assault allegations*? His taunting a nuclear-tipped maniac? Yes, I buy that propaganda. Are you saying the media is fabricating those things?

* Admittedly those allegations could be false. After all, all we have is the women's word and his taped confession.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Luckyo]

Sometimes I genuinely wonder how it got to the point where a free state like US has a large minority of citizens that are utterly uncritical of propaganda they're fed, even after said propaganda has been utterly debunked as false.

Then I see a poster like you and I realise that it's just because they're too ideologically invested in their current position. It's just a pragmatic approach to avoid pain caused by cognitive dissonance. Essentially the same reason many people willingly went to work camps and even before the NKVD shooting squads in Soviet Union of 1930s.

It's quite interesting to see the this similarity across such divergent cultural chasm.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Luckyo]

I'm actually fairly certain that if hysteria didn't blow to the proportions it did, he wouldn't have gotten elected. Because the sense of urgency to resist the establishment narrative would not have gotten to the point that it did.

Essentially all the people who went to the booth telling themselves "I gotta vote Clinton, I gotta vote Clinton... FUCK IT, TRUMP" would have voted Clinton. And she would have won.

It's a good example of the fact that US still has its democracy intact, that when entire established order mobilizes to push one narrative, people can actually say "no and fuck you" and get it through in the political system. It's that one thing that genuinely makes US great. With no need to add word "again" to the sentence.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[gnick]

It's telling that you still stop short of telling me which of the things I listed is "propaganda".

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Luckyo]

You seem to assume that some of what you listed is not in that category, and that this is just a qualitative difference. It's telling that your core question isn't on principles. It's "which items on my list are propagandistic enough?"

I on the other hand am arguing about the core principle of the issue. Which is why I just call spade a spade here, having been able to read Soviet propaganda in its original language and what it did to its targets, and having the excellent opportunity to compare the two.

Your refusal to engage in any kind of discussion on principles, and merely discussing the "shades of propaganda" is the exact same mindset as those people who voluntarily went in front of the NKVD shooting squads, "because our ideology demands it, and our enemies will win if I don't".

Re:A perfectly good idea

[gnick]

I re-read your posts. You REALLY seem to focus on propaganda after you brought it up, which is why I followed up on it. If you're trying to have a discussion on some core principle unrelated to propaganda, you haven't made it clear what that is.

Your refusal to engage in any kind of discussion on principles, and merely discussing the "shades of propaganda"...

I'm happy to to have a discussion about principles. WTF are you talking about? Insisting that the world is falling for DJT slander with nothing to back it up is hollow. Let's review:

You: Everyone falls for the DJT slander.
Me: Many negative reports on DJT aren't slander; they aren't false.
You: Those reports are propaganda and you're falling for it.
Me: Which reports are propaganda?
You: Stick to the principles! Who's talking about propaganda? Also? Propaganda.

Can you see why I'm confused? You're accusing me of drinking the Kool-Aid. I'm asking what Kool-Aid you think I'm drinking. You're changing the subject.

Re: A perfectly good idea

[gnick]

Allegations of any sort should never harm anyone's career.

Unless you try to hide them. Then you open yourself to blackmail and shouldn't be trusted in secure positions.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Luckyo]

I do see why you're confused. You appear to conflate "propaganda" with "lie", and continue to ignore the point I make above. That best propaganda has a seed of truth in it. It only becomes a lie in the context that it's presented in.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

So what?
I could also offer a rational basis for understanding Hitler's actions. He also acted in his self-interest. However, he still was a dangerous megalomaniac that had to be stopped as soon as he tried to expand his influence beyond German boarders. Pretty much the same goes for Stalin, who pretty much only defeated Hitler because he wanted to rape Europe himself. There's also a rational basis to understand his actions.

Also, Putin did not suddenly become the enemy. Yes, perhaps that's true for the 'Left' in the US who need him as a scapegoat, but certainly not Europe. I can't really say much about the US and what's good for you or not. For the US Putin is probably not as much of a threat since Russia is pretty far away. However here in Europe Putin never was very friendly to begin with. And here I'm speaking as an European (Romanian living in Germany). Most people in my home country are not fond of Putin. As a relict of the Soviet Union, he's perceived as someone who wants to bring back the old times. And looking back at the communist dark ages many people had to suffer through, they don't like it at all. In fact masses of us go out on the streets demonstrating against the communist relics that still sit in the parliament and want to keep their corrupt ways. The Left in my current country likes Russia, they want better relations with Russia, although they do not condone the human rights situation in Russia due to Putin himself. In general you will find not much a lot of understanding and or love for Putin and his agenda in all countries where the Soviet Union was previously involved in.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[gnick]

You appear to conflate "propaganda" with "lie"...

I conflate "slander" with "lie". That's where we started. You said that we all fell for the MSM's "slander" against DJT. You're the one that combined slander and propaganda. Slander is false. I gave examples of negative DJT coverage that were not false, not slander. I'm waiting for your examples of slander. I'm suggesting that the MSM gave us a lot of accurate, negative coverage of DJT and that your accusations of slander are largely fantasy.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[gnick]

...best propaganda has a seed of truth in it.

When it's entirely true and presented accurately, that's news. When DJT lies to the world and the MSM calls him out on it, that's reporting not propaganda. Certainly not slander. The facts coming from DJT are propaganda and he barely bothers with the "seeds of truth".

81% whites murdered by blacks

That's straight from the White House. And that's just the latest of hundreds.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

* straight from the guy we elected to the White House *

Re:A perfectly good idea

[deathguppie]

Interesting perspective. So you believe that being honest is more sneaky than lying outright. I don't really see how that works but the world is pretty screwed up now so right being wrong and up being down.. ok. what can I do anyway.

Re: A perfectly good idea

[shadowknot]

You've rather twisted my words or misunderstood. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it was a misunderstanding. I'm most certainly not saying that being honest is more sneaky than lying, that's rather absurd. What I was really getting at is that if you think such laws guarantee those reporting the news are being honest then you're fooling yourself. It's my suspicion that legislation of this kind, like all legislation that attempts to control speech, could end up causing increased subversion and sneakiness in an effort, conscious or subconscious, to further the message we agree with. Let's not be absolutist about it though, please don't think I'm saying this is true for all reporters or journalists working within such regulations, merely that thinking they assure truth is utterly foolish in my view.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Luckyo]

So in your view, it's enough to sometimes have correct representation of one's words to justify the giant body of propaganda?

You really need to look into propaganda machine of CCP. I suspect they have work for you.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Luckyo]

You keep dropping the words "in context" with remarkable consistency from your quoting me. Even after being called on this several times now. Have you considered trying to actually engage with what I'm actually saying yet?

Re:A perfectly good idea

[gnick]

You keep dropping the words "in context" with remarkable consistency from your quoting me.

WTF are you talking about? I quote the portions of your text that I'm addressing. The "context" is all readily visible.

Even after being called on this several times now.

WTF are you talking about? What have you called me out several times now? Are you mixing up conversations?

Have you considered trying to actually engage with what I'm actually saying yet?

You accused the MSM of slandering DJT. I pointed out that much negative DJT coverage isn't slander. We've been here before. I'm STILL waiting for you to back up your slander accusation. I'm entirely engaged with what you said. You keep trying to change the topic.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Luckyo]

I guess that's a "no". Ok.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? The most obvious proof that this is false is agricultural protections. Just because its food doesn't excuse it.

The protections have been disappearing faster than people can adapt to it at the edge of the EU. Euro liberals are the last persons that would support the keeping up of agricultural subsidies, if they are logical in their policies.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[rickb928]

Among the protections that are not going anywhere:

Protected Designation of Origin - feta cheese being an excellent example, able to be so named and produced only if done so in Greece.
Protected Geographical Designation - a variety of German beers, French champagne and munster cheese being examples.
Traditional Specialties Guaranteed - Italian Prosciutto di Parma a great example.

Some make certain sense, such as Champagne, but cheeses for instance are sometimes able to be produced elsewhere and are indistinguishable from any pother source.

But the EU values cultural identity when it's a market or money. Not so much when it's merely human rights.

Re: A perfectly good idea

[deathguppie]

Ok. So maybe I'm not understanding something. Currently, the law stipulates that broadcasters “shall not broadcast any false or misleading news.” Now I have not been able to find even one instance of that law being enforced in Canada. It does however set a precedence. Now there will always be an argument for "what is truth" It's very circumstantial and is profoundly influenced by belief, so one person's "truth" is not the same as everyone else's. There are however instances where a news reporter is given, or finds information and then reports the opposite for political, religious or corporate interests. If we are to believe what is reported to us there has to be a baseline from which we can decide for ourselves what is in our best interest. If anyone can say anything and claim it's new then every conspiracy theory on the planet no matter how crazy is now just as real in the minds of the consumer. If we go around telling everyone that jumping off the golden gate bridge is safe then we are doing no one any good at all. Now I might believe that it is safe and that tons of people have done it safely because I saw a youtube video about it and this guy shows proof that you can do it safely, but if the news starts reporting it then we may end up with a bunch of people jumping off the bridge. While that might seem like a silly anecdote the reality is that major political and social decisions are made by people that watch or read the news every day. The idea that reporters knowingly outright lie to people is disturbing at best.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all nitpicking if you consider the statement was that Liberals in Europe are different from those in the US. That they are supporters of the free market. So you employ a nirvana fallacy and show that they're not supporters of some perfect free market.
In the end it's not that different from trade marks, with the only difference that these trade marks are not held by a specific private entity.
Champagne from somewhere else is simply called a different name and most people are well aware of that. The same goes for cheese. The German Reinheitsgebot only applies to German brewers that want to sell for the German market and then also only for kinds of brewing. While brewers from any other country can label their dog sweat 'beer' and sell it to Germans. When it comes to stuff like "Kölsch", a pislner hat has to be produced in Cologne, again, use a different name and all is fine. A lot of people are aware of these things, as the mainstream media constantly reports on these things and tells consumers that cheaper 'off-brand' are often just as good as the original, often perceived to be even superior in double blind tests.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

But the EU values cultural identity when it's a market or money. Not so much when it's merely human rights.

Here are the Union's roots at work. The human rights angle has been mostly left to the Council of Europe, traditionally. I personally view the basic agreements of the Union and its human rights charter as something that should guide the decisions that serve the economy, instead of prescribing and protecting rights of the EU citizens (voting right excluded). I wasn't always this cynical about it, though. I wonder how those people who want to deepen the Union into an Federation view this specific issue.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that your big 'debunk' focuses on something as minor as product labels, right?
Also, it's not the European Liberal parties that put these things in place. In most countries as well as in the European parliament and council the Liberals (who call themselves Liberals and are often called Neo Liberals by others) are in fact minorities. People in Europe don't appear to share their ideology as much as they do with Socialists or Christian parties. But if they were in the majority they'd probably be the first to try and get rid of those protections.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[rickb928]

Product labels. As in what they are named.

I buy Muenster cheese in the US from a variety of sources. The misspelling is intentional. Its history is interesting.

But in Europe, I wonder if you can buy muenster cheese. At least one, the EU tried to prevent that.

This is all protectionism, aka copyright/trademarking, aka interference. Sometimes that's useful, sometimes not. In the EU, we do not see an unfettered protectionist state yet, but it is still ruled by cross-border disputes. Melting pot indeed.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

And from that you infer that European Liberals are not supporting the free market? If that is all that you have, then it's a pretty weak argument. Kind of like if you claimed that the Trump administration is for the free market. And then I'd claim that this is false, because they're against legalizing recreational pot or something. Technically true since it is some kind of interference by the federal government, but also mostly irrelevant for the point you were making.
And the EU is not governed by Euro Liberals, it's governed by Euro Christian Democrats (which are considered to be conservatives here) and Socialists, hence their policies. The EU isn't even a Liberal Democracy, because the people have even less say in what happens. It's a freaking mess. Its member states however are Liberal Democracies in the sense of 'free democracies', which describes the way their governments are elected by their own citizens, without interference from other states.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[rickb928]

"And the EU is not governed by Euro Liberals, it's governed by Euro Christian Democrats (which are considered to be conservatives here) and Socialists, hence their policies"

Please, could we agree that when flip a coin, it isn't heads AND tails at the same time? The EU isn't governed by Euro Christian Democrats and Socialists as in 'governed by every spectrum political thought'. The EPP currently dominates leadership of the EC, but national leadership isn't nearly so unified. I can't define Merkel as conservative by actions. En Marche isn't easily defined as right-wing. Scandinavian political leadership doesn't seem right-wing either, to me. Britain is moving to the right it seems, but leaving the EU...

In fact, the EU seems a bit schizophrenic right now, but only in claimed philosophy. When political actions are examined they seem left-wing to me.

But I'm becoming contrary, so maybe I've missed this. Doubt it, but maybe.

Re:A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the EPP is Christian Democrats at heart no matter what they call themselves these days. They identify as centrist with a leaning to the right. Merkel herself does not seem to have any clear orientation other than down, which should be evident after the last federal elections in Germany. If you'd conducted a poll a lot of Germans would probably tell you that Merkel's party drifted too far away from German conservatism with their refugee policies. The current situation in Germany is pretty pathetic anyway. There still isn't a functioning government for the current term because Merkel doesn't have the guts to lead a minority government. Probably afraid that her policies won't stand up to the scrutiny of the other parties.

The second strongest pull in the EU parliament have the Social Democrats, who identify as left leaning. They're not too different from socialists anywhere else I suppose. They want a strong government, a lot of regulations, think that quotas will fix things and stuff like that (mostly nonsese in my eyes).

En Marche also identifies as centrist and social liberal. But so many parties with different ideologies identify as centrist that the term has lost most of its meaning. This leaves social-liberal, which usually applies some kind of leaning towards the left.

Schizophrenia is hallmarked by irrational delusions. I'd agree to this given the irrational stuff that goes on here. The leaning of the EU is clearly to the left. No argument here, I suppose.


However, how does that relate to the statement that Europe Liberals are different from US Liberals? And that the Liberals in Europe are strong supporters of the free market?

Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is dangerous. The government cannot be trusted to decide what is fake news and what is not? If this were implemented in the United States, the Trump Administration would probably block any news about the Russia investigation. France had a runoff involving a similar candidate to Trump, Marine Le Pen.

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Luckyo]

Now now. Government only has your best interests in mind. In fact, it should just have an official newspaper for this sort of work during elections.

I even have a name for it. Pravda. Truth. In Russian, because Russia is the one with fake news!

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now now. Government only has your best interests in mind.

Precisely. Government is only looking out for you, like a Big Brother would. There is nothing to fear, comrade.

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have convinced yourself that a section of the community are dangerous, out to get you, and Steps Need to be Taken against them. Because they didn't vote for a mobster.

You are part of the problem.

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[goose-incarnated]

When you can convince enough people that facts are lies, then you end up with tyranny, which is what we have now.

Where? You appear to have a very different understanding of the word "tyranny" compared to literally every dictionary on the planet.

I think that the fact that you believe in conspiracy theories AND are paranoid that they are out to get you says more about you than about whoever you are ranting about this week.

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[lucm]

If this were implemented in the United States, the Trump Administration would probably block any news about the Russia investigation.

Since there's been no evidence whatsoever in that "investigation", just speculation and theories based on nothing, the whole thing qualifies as fake news.

Look at this interview with the ultimate expert about this subject:
https://youtu.be/9Ikf1uZli4g

The guy has zero facts, only vague accusations, and yet he's on expert panels all the time to discuss this bullshit. There's no evidence, all they say over and over is that Russia would like to control people like Trump. They keep using buzzwords like "transactional relationship" but they don't back it with any information at all.

Re: Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

It bemuses me why you canâ(TM)t trust your elected representatives

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[fafalone]

Now now. Government only has your best interests in mind. In fact, it should just have an official newspaper for this sort of work during elections. I even have a name for it. Pravda. Truth. In Russian, because Russia is the one with fake news!

Well in the US we've already got a TV channel like that called "Fox News", so why not a newspaper too I suppose.

Re: Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Reverend Green]

There is no news in Truth, and no truth in News.

Re: Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[admin7087]

Did you come up with this eloquent-sounding bullshit or is it copy&paste?

Re: Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

As noted before, the courts \judges are not appointed by politicians; that would be stupid - you could just put in someone who favors your position. What kind of stupid coun... Oh, the United States does that? Interesting.

Re: Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Reverend Green]

Google it - it's an old Soviet joke. Based on the meanings of "Pravda" and "Izvestia", the names of the two biggest semi-official newspapers.

Re: Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[guruevi]

At least both parties have their news source, not for nothing people call it the Clinton News Network.

Re: Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead we should create an aristocratic caste that gets to choose its own members and is not accountable to anybody. Their decrees will be final. They promise they will not be biased.

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[tinkerton]

I think that's an important observation. If you can't trust official sources and if you can't trust the press then what do you do? A lot of people turn to extreme populists, and Trump is one of those. Where is this going?

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is your 'a lot' coming from? Source? These is what I observed from evening news. New casters are using a lot of quantifier to express their personal 'feelings' When you are on the job, your personal feelings is just that, personal, and please shove it back to your mouth. If you like to express your feeling, be a talk show host, not news caster.

News is about point-in-time fact. Not anyone feeling, especially not the person reporting it.

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[rickb928]

Newspapers in the US are what you use to distribute the news a day or several days later.

Re: Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[rickb928]

Our government was founded on principles that imply government cannot ever be trusted. And they were indeed correct.

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[tinkerton]

I think I can say 'a lot' in the specific case where Trump got elected, but I'm talking about a general pattern which is hard to prove. And to which you answer missing the point in all possible manners.

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake news is when a Trump surrogate says that Hillary Clinton is running a child sex trafficking ring out of the basement of a pizza joint, not when an investigation (that actually exists) finds evidence of criminal wrongdoing (that actually occurred) that results in at least one criminal conviction (that has actually been assured via plea deal).

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone once said.... a grand jury could indict a ham sandwich if it wanted to.

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

for process crimes, dipshit, not for an evidence of collusion.

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you kind of can. If you lie to the FBI accidentally or otherwise, they can charge you with lying to the FBI, even if the thing being discussed is not criminal or illegal.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448755/trump-investigation-shows-how-easy-it-feds-create-crimes

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we saying that T jr's tweet including the emails where he agreed to meet with a Russian to discuss damaging emails is not evidence?

I'm just wondering how that isn't evidence?

https://twitter.com/donaldjtrumpjr/status/884789418455953413?lang=en

Re:Who gets to decide what is blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah?
And who was that? You mean the liberal fake news?
Alex Jones has newer talked that the "pizzagate" was-is real. From the start he did talk that the whole pizzagate thing is probably fake and manifactured to keep the news from talking about police and fbi investigations to real child trafficking rings.
You can see the Jones talk about the fake "pizzagate" in youtube.

Let's also ban any pro-Intel news

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's also ban any pro-Intel news, so people aren't deceived into buying processors made by Intel. AMD is far superior and deserves your full trust because their processors aren't vulnerable to Meltdown. Spectre isn't relevant to the discussion, because it's less severe. We should ban anything positive about Intel so people will start buying more AMD processors. AMD deserves your trust because their processors aren't vulnerable to Meltdown.

I am not a shill for AMD and I don't own their stock. I'm just trying to help everyone by guiding them to more secure and generally better AMD processors. Pro-Intel news should be banned for the good of the people, so they're not deceived into buying Intel products.

Re: Let's also ban any pro-Intel news

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try. In reality will be banned any hate-Intel news, you know why.

Re:Let's also ban any pro-Intel news

[Narcocide]

Well, they should definitely be banned from lying. But technically they already are. They just keep getting away with it anyway.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"If we want to protect liberal democracies,"[we should destroy them.]

Censorship hard to make work

[Roger W Moore]

I can think of no possible way this could be abused as political censorship

While I detect a certain sarcastic tone I think you might actually be correct, not because they would not abuse it but simply because censoring the web does not work regardless of reason. Any affected website will just move to another country. This will apply both to real fake news sites as well as those targeted for political reasons. The can make it illegal in France but not Canada, the US or any other country with strong free speech laws.

Re:Censorship hard to make work

[AmiMoJo]

The web doesn't work like that. If it did, people wouldn't care so much when their favourite site gets demoted or removed from Google. People could just type the URL directly, right?

They wouldn't care when Facebook or Twitter bans one account, because they could just move to less popular services.

And they would be happy to have a Tor only service, because anyone can download the Tor browser and view it.

Fake news only works when people see it.

Re:Censorship hard to make work

[tinkerton]

This is misguided. You're treating this as an application of a principle instead of one of traffic. The first is an on/off switch , the second is one of amounts and can be measured
If you post an article and Google downranks it because its algorithms consider it bad for you, and other sites (including Twitter and Facebook) stop linking to you because that would downgrade them in Google search rankings or it could cause them to lose Google ads temporarily or permanently, and web providers only include your site in the more expensive tariffs (no net neutrality), then fewer and fewer people will find your article.

Net pseudocensorship can be put in place in an incremental manner. An important and pretty much invisible one is control: the accumulation of knowhow and infrastructure allowing government and others to intervene quickly when they see the need. You can build up that knowhow using politically correct cases. You increment it gradually and when there is a collision with powerful or loud enough interests you correct yourself. Meanwhile the threat of intervention causes everyone to adapt and avoid triggers or things that could be possible triggers. That is another aspect of control.

Once the organisations that control the major traffic get control over it they will be pressured more to do adjustments and every election will be accompanied by lobbying to get some kind of filtering through with an appearance of justifiability but with the intent of skewing the information flow. And since everything is being privatized there is a freedom to ignore the interests of the public while there is a willingness to go along with wishes of those with power.

So while you see a futile attempt, I see a dramatic and very negative evolution.

Re:Censorship hard to make work

[Freischutz]

I can think of no possible way this could be abused as political censorship

While I detect a certain sarcastic tone I think you might actually be correct, not because they would not abuse it but simply because censoring the web does not work regardless of reason. Any affected website will just move to another country. This will apply both to real fake news sites as well as those targeted for political reasons. The can make it illegal in France but not Canada, the US or any other country with strong free speech laws.

If one actually goes and RTFA it becomes clear that this is less Macron and the evil gubbermint coming to take away your sacred freedom of speech and more of a mixed bag of measures like increasing transparency in political advertising, introducing a spending cap on political adverting and providing what amounts to a fast-track legal mechanism to file libel suits in order to then take down malicious content or block abusive sites. It seems to be aimed at putting an end to the tactic of spewing large amounts of boldfaced lies and then rely on the fact that by the time the legal system finally reacts and issues take down notices, the election is over your guy has been elected and the shell organisations who spread the propaganda have been dissolved or declared bankrupt so, ... who cares? Mission accomplished. However, if Macron actually goes ahead and does this the process had also better be affordable to grassroots organisations to use and it had better have a mechanism to prevent it begin spammed and clogged up with large amounts of pointless lawsuits. Whatever you think of this idea, I think it is pretty clear that something has to be done to prevent the situation from becoming the norm where the guy with the most money and the ability to spew the most lie and slander saturated sewage into the news cycle from winning elections because the judicial system moves at a snails pace. We are all used to being showered with bullshit during the lead up to elections but the 2016 US election took that to a new low and IMHO that is too low to be tolerated.

Re:Censorship hard to make work

[Anonymous Coward]

The web doesn't work like that. If it did, people wouldn't care so much when their favourite site gets demoted or removed from Google. People could just type the URL directly, right?

They wouldn't care when Facebook or Twitter bans one account, because they could just move to less popular services.

And they would be happy to have a Tor only service, because anyone can download the Tor browser and view it.

Fake news only works when people see it.

Maybe the web should work like that. There needs to be an incentive for people to start using Tor by default, rather than merely being a handy tool for when their favorite bitorrent site is blocked.

Re:Censorship hard to make work

[rickb928]

"censoring the web does not work regardless of reason"

Currently this is only true because censoring the Web is virtually impossible. You might more accurately state "attempting to censoring the web does not work regardless of reason".

But it isn't impossible to censor the Web. The EU made the first attempts at this with the EC ruling that there is a 'right to be forgotten'.

That's actually a 'right to have negative information removed'.

I don't need to provide examples of how this could lead to not merely abuse, but ultimately to wholesale corruption and dictatorship, anywhere. Or do I?

Re:Censorship hard to make work

[Anonymous Coward]

All the government has to do is legislate as to consider gullibility as a mental health issue and have the person go to mandatory philosophy classes to learn the basics of logic and reasoning.
Don't outlaw the fake news itself, the problem is the people who are gullible and should have developed reasoning capabilities in their teens.

Re:Censorship hard to make work

[Anonymous Coward]

GPDR anyone ...reaches into US business interests as well.

Re:Censorship hard to make work

[CrimsonAvenger]

introducing a spending cap on political adverting

Which is an advantage for the incumbent. When he needs some publicity, all he needs to do is introduce some new legislation. His opponent doesn't have that option, not being in office and all that.

Do remember that the worst fate that a new politician can suffer is obscurity....

Re:Censorship hard to make work

[Anonymous Coward]

die in a fire,authoritarian asshole

How that actually works

[SuperKendall]

Macron has a rather extreme approach to combat fake news: ban entire websites.

Flowchart of how they decide to block websites:

1) Does website have negative material about Macron? Goto 3.
2) Do not block website. End.
3) Block website. End.

I could see making some response center, that countered material found on some websites, but even there you can game the content all day long, and even if the corrections are wrong no-one will fix it till after Election Day... best to just let people say what they want and have huge flamewars online over it so no-one reads fake news because they are tired of all news.

Re:How that actually works

[AHuxley]

Large teams of security service workers, contractors will watch the web from the USA, UK, France and other time zones to totally ban press freedom in France 24/7.

The EU, CIA, GCHQ, NGO's, NATO and others will give France real time list of new sites, comments, accounts, forums, video clips, cartoons, music, art, history to ban.
By web site, ip and any other method of easy networking. No just trying the news site ip.
Such a real time ban list will then be placed between the French ISP user and all ISP in France.
Any attempt to connect to a banned site will be reported and the user given a real time warning about the fact they are now under investigation.
Expect a police interview that will show how guilty the ISP user is and what must be done to become not guilty again.
Repeated attempts to read the news will result in formal interviews, fines, interviews with friends, work colleagues to find out why banned site are been accessed.
A medical expert will be consulted to help the investigation as such a repeated need for press freedom is not normal in the wider population.

Such investigations will be chilling and force users to consider an encrypted VPN product.
The next question will be full encrypted VPN service sold in France from other nations that still have press freedom.
The NSA and GCHQ can help French law enforcement find the original ip's of users trying to use a VPN to read the news.
The discovered user will be more guilty as they are trying to hide their reading of the news by using a VPN. The extra step needed to uncover the original ip will be considered by a special VPN investigation.
If that fails to stop the use of new VPN products France can use its own global telco skills to list the top VPN providers been used to read the news in France.
CC payments from French bank accounts can be stopped to VPN services. VPN services found to be located in the EU can have EU wide investigations started given they are helping French users access banned news sites.
Got a VPN outside the EU and get found to be letting French users read the news? France could apply legal diplomatic pressure in the VPN host nation to stop all such VPN activity.

Re:How that actually works

[angel'o'sphere]

As soon as it is law, everyone affected by 'fake news' during an election can approach a judge and file a complaint.
The judge decides if the complaint is valid.
Not the government, not the ruling party, not the president or prime minister.
THE LAW IS EQUAL FOR EVERY PARTY RUNNING FOR ELECTIONS.

Re: How that actually works

[Reverend Green]

I trust the average judge less than I trust the average wino passed out on a park bench. Way less.

Re:How that actually works

[MrMr]

The average French judge?
See: wikipedia "...The Ministry of Justice handles the administration of courts and the judiciary, including paying salaries or constructing new courthouses. The Ministry also funds and administers the prison system. Lastly, it receives and processes applications for presidential pardons and proposes legislation dealing with matters of civil or criminal justice. The Minister of Justice is also the head of public prosecution, though this is controversial since it is seen to represent a conflict of interest in cases such as political corruption against politicians...."

Re: How that actually works

[guruevi]

Already the case, French Law has an engrained 3 day media blackout before elections and they did pressure Facebook and large news sites successfully in complying when Macron's faux-pas came out. They do go so far as to threaten people in France with prosecution for sharing news articles about Macrons corruption.

Re:How that actually works

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard you gain your wings when you become a judge.

Re:How that actually works

[rickb928]

Not actually paying attention to current evens, are you?

Re: How that actually works

[angel'o'sphere]

Care to explain, why?

Re: How that actually works

[Reverend Green]

The typical judge is like the typical mobster - a lot of blood on his hands.

Re: How that actually works

[angel'o'sphere]

In France?

Wow ... just because you live in a retarded part of the world does make you an expert about judges in the rest of the world.

Re: How that actually works

[Reverend Green]

Perhaps you are right. My view of judges, lawyers, the whole juridicial apparatus, are based on my observation of the American version. It's possible that other countries implement rule of lawyers in a less disastrously bad way.

Otoh the great contemporary writer Tiqqun is French and expresses a really very unflattering view of the judiciary. So I just don't know. I've never visited France.

There is a scientific basis for this.

[Gravis Zero]

We as humans are animals and as such can be victims of our own nature. In this context, it's a well understood fact that humans have a tendency to make poor long-term decisions based on sudden emotionally charged events. After the flood of neurotransmitters has subsided, we are much better at making long-term decisions.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[hcs_$reboot]

And the next French presidential election is in 4 years...

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[DigiShaman]

It's called "leftism", and it comes in either fascism or communism; different sides of the same coin called tyranny. First Germany, now France wants to ban speech. Meanwhile in America, progressive college campuses are getting all violent with their Antifa (an ironic name considering the meaning and their own actions) movement while proclaiming safe spaces.

It's like the fucking matrix. Down the BLUE pill, and live a life of happy ignorance while under the control of tyranny. Take the RED pill, and accept the bitter world for what it is, but be liberated in knowing the truth, and having the liberty to walk a path of self determination.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[AmiMoJo]

In the face of it, it seems like he wants a fast track legal procedure. The law already allows action against this kind of thing (slander/libel etc) but it often moves slowly and elections are a hard deadline.

It might actually be a good way to handle fake news. There will be the transparency and oversight of the legal system, with separation of politicians and judiciary. If the news isn't fake then trying to abuse the system is unlikely to end well for the abuser.

Probably worth trying. My main concern would be the potential cost of mounting a defence. In the interests of democracy it should be free for both sides.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you can skill the fucking pill idiocy altogether, do the best you can with your life and endorse the third way politics of northern Europe.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[religionofpeas]

What are you going to do to accomplish this "fast track legal procedure" ? Delay other court cases ? Or spend less time looking at the evidence ?

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Down the BLUE pill, and live a life of happy ignorance while under the control of tyranny. Take the RED pill, and accept the bitter world for what it is, but be liberated in knowing the truth, and having the liberty to walk a path of self determination.

"Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven" ~ John Milton

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[AmiMoJo]

The US is far worse. This requires a judge to sign off on it, with consequences if you lie. In the US you can spam DMCA notices all day with impunity.

Re: There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven"

-John Milton

Better to reign in heaven than serve in hell.
-me

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

*yawns* More of the same tripe crap.

Beware of isms. It is dangerously easily to group and ignore views from people in groups.

The idea of a group to fight fascism isn't inherently wrong. Look at their actions. So far the blowback against them seems overblown.

The idea of communism isn't bad either. It simply doesn't work in practice.

The idea of limited government and individual responsibility is nice in theory, but people keep doing stupid stuff, so there must be a balance.

My complaints about the republican party is due to some of their stated goals, but their _actions_. You can't rail about responsibility for say 8 years, fiscal and otherwise, then say fuck it we want a tax cut and to hell with those that lose health care or see rate increases. So even in that case the ism doesn't mean much compared to the actions.

Fake news must be fought, but blocking websites is an extreme step. I like the goal, but the means may not end well. One appropriate solution is for google to rank results that are bs way down in their listings, and probably also provide links to debunk the sites. Sites like facebook should also vet all advertisements. If you run the ad, your providing your platform to support that advertisement. Some personal responsibility is required.

As far as google goes, It is, after all, part of googles job to turn up relevant listings. I suppose the bad guys could make their own "freedum" search engine that returns the fake news sites at the top, but if people are to the point where they believe in that level of crap, well they are well into deplorable land and likely can't be helped.

I rather think there are a lot of people in America that can't be reached, that will vote a certain way regardless of all the reasons not to. As Donald Trump might say. Sad.

Of course they are often part of his base, which is also Sad.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[h33t l4x0r]

Banning fake news is not the same thing as limiting free speech. You do not have the right to make false statements about political candidates. And if you think antifas are more violent than skinheads you need to get out more.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[pots]

Oh for gods' sake... communism is left, fascism is right. Here. You can't just take everything that you don't like and declare that the outgroup represents all of it.

Well... you can. I guess you did.

Re: There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol at that image.

Dude you just linked to an image which claims that the nazis and fascism are right wing...

Either you are trolling or you really are incredibly stupid with no knowledge of history or politics.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[thegarbz]

This IS the best long-term decision. ... For the incumbent political party.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your antifas caused hundreds of riots in dozens of cities in the US, continuing for more than 9 months. Thousand of cars burned, businesses trashed (and robbed), tens of thousands injured.

How many riots did those skinheads cause?

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[angel'o'sphere]

Facism has nothing to do with left and right.
Hitler had a fascistic regime, so had Stalin, so had Nero.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

That only works when there is a stable political and economic environment as well as common goals, something that is missing in the modern trend of multiculturalsm without expectation of integration. The EU is quickly becoming the new Soviet Union, there is an official dogma of tolerance, which means that only official opinions will be tolerated.

Re: There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever considered that the working class Americans who voted against Hillary - against her, not for Trump - were in fact voting for their own best interests?

Re: There is a scientific basis for this.

[Reverend Green]

EVERYONE knows fake antifascists / fake antiracists assemble ONLY to riot and assault people.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[pots]

... Where does this come from? Judging by the comments that I read on Slashdot, no one knows what fascism is. Which is not that weird. The weird thing is that everyone thinks that they know what fascism is (conveniently, it's the political philosophy of whoever they disagree with). But, come on, Nero? You could describe the Romans as fascistic in general, but Nero not more so than his contemporaries.

Here's the wikipedia page on fascism. Here's the first paragraph from that page:

Fascism /fæzm/ is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism,[1][2] characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and control of industry and commerce[3] that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.[4] The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I before it spread to other European countries.[4] Opposed to liberalism, Marxism and anarchism, fascism is usually placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum.

I don't know where you're getting your definition of fascism from, but... Well, I'd be interested in knowing that.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia isn't a valid source of anything. Neither is wordpress.

In political science, where these things are taught, is where correct knowledge on fascism comes from.

The previous commenter is correct. You are wrong. See your local community college for details.

Re: There is a scientific basis for this.

[h33t l4x0r]

And by everyone you mean your Alex Jones and Fox News viewing conspiracy buddies.

Re: There is a scientific basis for this.

[guruevi]

Fascism is on the right, Nazism was different. Fascism isn't always bad, you could call Linus a fascist within the Linux project.

The socialist ideology is what got Hitler to power by making it a nationalist movement. He was all about the expansion of government, free healthcare, regulated jobs, minimum wages but then framed it within the context of military conquest at the expense of minorities.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or give the judiciary a bigger budget? Or is that too obvious?

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[tinkerton]

a form of radical authoritarian nationalism,[1][2] characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and control of industry and commerce...

If you put it like that, Soviet Russia?

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, for example Stalin's regime had little to do with Marxism. Because in the end the he turned pretty much all regular citizens into member of the proletariat. He also make himself and the state the new bourgeoisie that exploited the proletariat. And in order to accomplish this the used a dictatorship and suppressed opposition rigorously. Ignoring other things, the main difference between Stalin and Hitler here is that Stalin did not discriminate asthat much. While Stalin certainly wasn't fond of Jews, as history tells us, he didn't single them out he rather thought that everyone but himself was garbage.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[mjwx]

It's called "leftism", and it comes in either fascism

Wrong.

Fascism is a far right ideology.

The far right is just as guilty as the far left in promoting censorship. Hell, it's worse here in the UK where the only people trying to tell you that you cant say things... are the Daily Mail crowd.

Finally, Macron has not asked for anything like censorship. If you actually read his speech, he's calling for rules around political advertising including complete disclosure about funding and organisation. Here's what the legislation actually calls for.

New legislation for websites would include more transparency about sponsored content. Under the new law, websites would have to say who is financing them and the amount of money for sponsored content would be capped.

So it's asking for who wrote it, who is speaking it and who paid for it.

Only someone who is daft enough to think fascism is left or uses the term "leftist" or "leftism" would possibly think that is a bad thing.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[lucasnate1]

Why the fuck did this get +5? There are several fallacies here:
1) facism = left, funny, I dont remember mussolini being left wing.
2) antida violence is a major danger - the radicals who actually ran over people with a car a few months ago were neo nazi right wingers.
3) the world is better and you should accept it - this is the classical argument of facists and dictators to justify their crimes.
4) Tyranny brings happiness, liberty is sad but honest - if this was true, much more people would support tyranny. In the end, tyranny only begets more suffering.
5) Liberty is being bitter about the world and thinking we must always be at war with each other - this is only true if you are a 15yo or a darwinist..

Re: There is a scientific basis for this.

[rickb928]

"Better to serve in heaven than reign in hell."

- Me

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[rickb928]

"One appropriate solution is for google to rank results that are bs way down in their listings,"

So the solution is corporate censorship?

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Xyrus]

Did the price of vodka go up today? Seems there a lot of Russian trolls are around here today. Next we'll be seeing pro-confederate, pro-nazi, etc. crap under the guise of "free speech".

Trump and his group of flying monkeys have been after the press since day one. He wants to use the justice department as a cudgel against his enemies. He wants to shut down "fake news". He's filled his cabinet with unqualified corporate lackeys, and has refused to divest himself of his business interests.

It's obvious which pill you took. You swallowed the brown steaming one.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Less so than modern Russia. The USSR was emphatically not "opposed to Marxism" and one of their most celebrated leaders was not ethnically Russian.

Don't get me wrong, the USSR committed unspeakable evils. But Party loyalty was more important than nationality, so fascism isn't a great fit to describe their system.

Re: There is a scientific basis for this.

[tehcyder]

Have you ever considered that the working class Americans who voted against Hillary - against her, not for Trump - were in fact voting for their own best interests?

As with Brexit, making a protest vote when you don't actually believe in the alternative is not a good idea.

Re: There is a scientific basis for this.

[Reverend Green]

Sorry, can't stand either of those rags. Do you actually read that crap? Doesn't it give you a headache?

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[pots]

How about the Oxford English Dictionary? It's not a community college, but I'm told that they know a thing or two about political science.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[pots]

There are a couple of ACs who have explained this already. I'll just link this one, since it seems as though he mistakenly replied to me instead of you.

Re: There is a scientific basis for this.

[pots]

Fascism is neither good nor bad, it's just a way of doing things. It's pretty effective at it's primary goal: preparing a country for war. Not so great outside of war.

Nationalism, expansion of government, free healthcare, and regulated jobs are all consistent with fascism. (Healthcare? There are only a few countries where that's argued as a left/right issue. Just for example: Cuba (left) and Saudi Arabia (right) both offer free healthcare.) The only really left-wing thing on your list is minimum wages. Hitler was not explicitly fascist, but he was an admirer of fascism. Have you heard of the Beer Hall Putsch? That was an attempt to imitate Mussolini.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your counter to the claim that biased, non-autoritative sources are not valid is to add another biased, non-authoritative source?

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically, per the definition you supplied, it's neither left, nor right, and the only portion of that entire thing you posted from wikipedia that mentions the right is the last bit that has no citation with it.

Critical thinking, you might want to work on it. Stalin had probably the most fascist regime in history. It was extremely far left. Putin, again, quite fascist, again, very far left.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

To point 1, Stalin was quite left wing (Communism being an extremist view of Socialism). And quite fascist. Or are you going to actually argue the communist Russia wasn't fascist? If it wasn't fascist, then please, enlighten me, what was it? Hell, lets take modern day Russia which has its roots in Soviet era KGB mentality. Fascist or not? If not, again, what the hell is it? Fascism is neither left nor right, it's authoritarian plain and simple.

Re: There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC as I've moderated a couple of posts in this thread.

I think facing an unknown (taking a chance) is a better option than facing a known bad. It's one of the reasons I support third parties so vehemently, and wish U.S. states would change their elector selection process to an instant run-off style election.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC because I've moderated in this thread - including the post I'm responding to.

4) Tyranny brings happiness, liberty is sad but honest - if this was true, much more people would support tyranny. In the end, tyranny only begets more suffering.

But isn't that how it traditionally works? People overthrow tyranny for a much more free society. When "freedom," (i.e. free markets and democracy) don't work out for the masses, they vote for more and more government intervention and redistribution of wealth, which (theoretically) leads to socialism which, as Marx stated, is merely meant as path to communism. Government uses force to enforce "communism," (which isn't really communism as it was meant to be, because that actually really can't happen), government becomes a tyrannical fascist regime.... then people eventually overthrow it (violently or not) and you come back to a "free" society.

The problem is different people want different things. Every political philosophy requires that everyone is on board with it, and that will never happen, so we keep cycling through them.

We are, perhaps, at the point where populations won't allow their free countries to go so far, but it doesn't keep the governments from trying, and inch by inch, they enact rules and laws that make life more restrictive, make us less free.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[DigiShaman]

With the exception of anarcho-communism being more libertarian-ism (free to walk from the clan or community without retribution), Marxism (AKA, Communism), is really fascism. So that said, fascism is fascism, and communism is fascism. The different is that with fascism, there's an overall honesty and up-front declaration of intentions. With Communism, it's fascism under the auspices of the ideology of collectivism.

I'd also throw in Iran as a fascist regime as well being that's what a theocracy is - fascist.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[david_thornley]

It's called "leftism", and it comes in either fascism...

Thanks for telling us up front that you're a right-winger who gets his "history" from slanted sources. There's nothing left-wing about Fascism. Fascism is authoritarian, and all the examples I know of Communist regimes headed that way, but only a propagandist thinks authoritarianism is left-wing in any way.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[david_thornley]

No, Communism is not Fascism. They're both heavily authoritarian. I've actually studied some of this stuff.

Re: There is a scientific basis for this.

[david_thornley]

Fascism as a political system is authoritarian, and therefore I'm against it. Private organizations have different needs.

Hitler got into power by being appointed Chancellor by right-wing authoritarians. He got rid of the Socialist wing of the party with extreme prejudice shortly after being appointed. He courted industrialists, which is precisely what socialists don't do. He divided the world into racial and national groups, whereas socialists divide the world into socio-economic classes.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[DigiShaman]

If the Nazi's weren't honest about their intentions and power structure, the National Socialist German Workers' Party would be labeled as "Communist lite".

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[lucasnate1]

I am actually not sure if facism can be left or not, I think it can. I just wanted to prove parent's claim that it can ONLY be left.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[DigiShaman]

It all comes in cycles. But from a Judaeo Christian perspective, I do like the Tytler Cycle

The cycles goes as follows...
sequence:

Bondage
Spiritual Faith
Courage
Liberty
Abundance
Selfishness
Complacency
Apathy
Dependence
Then starting over with Bondage

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[pots]

My counter to the claim that the only authoritative source is a college, is to reference a college.

If you are claiming that the Oxford English Dictionary is a non-authoritative source for what words mean, when it is in fact the most authoritative source... I can't help you. You are a lost cause.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[pots]

Hitler explicitly hated communists. One of the concepts in fascism is that the state, the country, is all-important, and individuals are not. Communists subscribe to a notion of a sort of universal proletariat brotherhood, where nationality isn't important.

This is not a small difference, nationalism is really central to fascism, it is the core principle. Calling Hitler a communist is just wildly inaccurate. You could call him a jew-lover and be no more wrong.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

"One appropriate solution is for google to rank results that are bs way down in their listings,"

So the solution is corporate censorship?

Here is an example.

If you search for information about climate change, you should get accurate information about climate change, not fake bullshit funded by those who are afraid doing anything would cut into their profits.

Here is another.

If you searched for information about Hillary, you should not get that she ran a child sex traffic ring out of some pizza joint. It is fake news. Sure nearer to the time of the actual fake news you might pull up articles about it being fake news, but in general, it is not accurate information about Hillary Clinton.

Put another way, ranking down bullshit results is just improving your algorithm to return _correct_ results, and like it or not, there is such a thing as truth. Sure something may not be that clear, but many are.

Re: There is a scientific basis for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Communism is fascism. State and thus politburo, control the allocation of resources and wealth. You know, for the motherland! Isnâ(TM)t that right comrade?

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[angel'o'sphere]

Communism is not fascism.
The regimes of Stalin (and successors), Pol Pot and now still North Korea are fascist. You likely find more.

Re:There is a scientific basis for this.

[david_thornley]

The Nazis weren't honest about their intentions and power structure, and the NSDAP was not labeled as "Communist lite". You made a false statement there.

The main things the Nazis and the Communists had in common was collectivization (the individual isn't important except as part of a larger whole) and authoritarianism (which was inherent in National Socialism and how Communism has actually worked on a national scale). The Nazis were capitalists, nationalists, and their philosophy was mystical. Communists are economic socialists, international and classist, and have a materialistic philosophy.

The water is heating up, jump out now! NOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

These fascists are taking over the west, and this diversity scam is just to demoralize/destabilize the natives...

Tabarnak!

People of France, rise up, Leave the EU and/or support/join the Visegrad and bring some civility back to your once respectable nation. Have babies of your own.

Those who didn't get it:
~Subject joke, French are sometimes called "Frogs" , and that whole frog in a a pot theory/saying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:The water is heating up, jump out now! NOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

You just realized that Tabarnak is a word that only ~ 8 million people will understand? This doesn't include French people. kkthxbai

Rothschild stooge Macron carrying out orders

[Anonymous Coward]

From his globalist banker handlers.

Re:Rothschild stooge Macron carrying out orders

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear, hear.

Will this be 'Fake News'?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I set up a website with nothing but VIVA MACRON and all the boot-licking articles, will it be counted as 'Fake News'?

Re:Will this be 'Fake News'?

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll be counted as poor French. Vive le!

So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité, that was nice while it lasted.

Re:So much for...

[lucm]

Two years before Macron, the French people had massive demonstrations to reject gay marriage.

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Paris on Sunday to demonstrate against gay marriage and to call for candidates in next year's presidential election to support "traditional family values".

http://www.france24.com/en/201...

That's not a couple dozens neonazis asking to leave a statue alone. That's tens of thousands of citizens offended at the idea of gay marriage to the point of spending a Sunday protesting. Liberté, égalité, fraternité? Not in recent decades.

Re:So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the freemason slogans?
And in the same time, people were going to quilliotines to get their head chopped off ...

we are just rolling over and letting the nazi take

[Joe_Dragon]

we are just rolling over and letting the nazi take France all armed forces will be ordered to lay down there arms and there will no more Elections or free press

AMD needs desktop class cpu board with IPMI &

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD needs desktop class cpu board with IPMI & ECC

Yeah sure...

[NormanHaga2580]

Typical liberal response - limit free speech.

It would be far better for Macron to teach his people to determine the difference and the markers between real and fake news.

Re:Yeah sure...

[rickb928]

"Typical liberal response - limit free speech."

No, the typical liberal response is to limit their opposition's speech.

All advertisements should be banned

[Baki]

Advertisements are exaggerated information at best, but often lies, are paid for by increasing product prices, a kind of tax that everyone of us has to pay as the advertisements budgets are paid by the advertisements and deducted from profits, i.e. in the end the consumer pays.

In addition, it is a time waster.

When it is not about product advertisement, like for politics, advertisements converts money into influence directly, i.e. money equals power. This is automatically at odds with a democracy ("one man one vote"), where each individual should have an equal weight, the rich should not have more weight.

Now they even start to undermine the democratic process.

Advertisements should be generally banned, or at least made 100% transparent. Don't think that advertisements enable free products such as this website, in the end we pay for it ourselves, just a bit indirectly. Taking quite a bit of collateral damage for granted (security issues, waste of time/screen, getting wrong incentives through lies, payment by the victims themselves).

If you own a VPN support free France

[AHuxley]

Get your French workers ready for a huge French advertising opportunity.
Get ready to find out how France will ban the news and have your VPN ready to support the freedom to read the news in France again.
Want to read the news French and EU bureaucrats have banned? Use a VPN.
Try a VPN service that will allow you to read all the news without French censorship.
A nice French GUI for the VPN that supports the needs of local users wanting to pay to escape EU censorship.

Surf the real internet like a free American not a blocked EU citizen only on a list of approved web sites.
No EU and French blocks on reading the news thanks to your VPN experts.
Reintroduce the French to the wisdom of a new Alexis de Tocqueville and show France the wonders of press freedom.

Don't be obtuse: It's about control.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be obtuse: It's about control.

AMD's Meltdown just has not dropped yet

[SuperKendall]

AMD is also theoretically susceptible to a Meltdown attack, it's just the current one did not quite work, but they still think it is possible... now that people know the technique expect AMD to follow in the next week or so (if not sooner).

Perhaps

[grasshoppa]

If "fake news" is really influencing an election, perhaps we're just not ready for democracy?

Re:Perhaps

[Neo-Rio-101]

If "fake news" is really influencing an election, perhaps we're just not ready for democracy?

That's right, and our glorious leaders will take democracy off us if we all don't learn how to vote properly.

Re:Perhaps

[PmanAce]

Democracy should include a test to see if you are fit to vote properly and know what parties are available. Bare minimum know what platforms they offer and such.

Re:Perhaps

[grasshoppa]

I was being snarky. Originally I couldn't believe reports that people were stupid enough to fall for "fake news" ( did you see the shit Russia supposedly did? Who'd be fooled by that? ). Then I realized that, yes, people really are that stupid. Which was depressing. Then I further realized that these same idiots were voting.

That was enough to drive me to drink. It's the only rational reaction I feel.

Re:Perhaps

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

You just failed the test.

Re:Perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

Been there, done that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test

Re:Perhaps

[gravewax]

Winston put it best "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.". The reality is most voters are morons, politicians know this and hence they lie their arses off to get voted in as no matter how outrageous they know a large percentage will trust or believe them.

Re:Perhaps

[david_thornley]

We're people. That's what we've got to work with. As Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.

You laugh but...

[Anonymous Coward]

France kept control of its country despite Russia's attacks despite traitors and collaborators in their midst.

We are stuck with Putin's puppet whose only skill seems to be having a smallest penis contest with Kim Jong Un...

Looking at the *wrong* election

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't fake news, the problem is the *wrong* election is being looked at. It's not France that is the problem here, its Putin in Russia that's attacking democracies. The regime change that needs to happen is in Russia, and Putin's not just blocking websites, he's arresting opponents, faking ballot counts, creating mock candidates that pretend to be substitutes for the ones he's arrested, in order to split the opposition.

In case you missed the obvious thing BTW, Bannon's book reveals the meetings (plural, there was follow up meetings) with the Russians were about the elections hack in the US, but the obvious thing you're missing is that Trump *attended* the meeting by videophone. Haven't you noticed he attends press conferences and meetings by videophone? He'll videoconference in even though he's just down the corridor. So do you think he wouldn't 'attend' this meeting in Trump tower just down from his office?
1) That is why he was so upset that the NSA had *wiretapped* Trump towers, because they would have recording of the Russian meeting and his attendance.
2) The NSA denied he was wiretapped because they didn't have a warrant. That's never stopped them before, they record stuff and simply say it wasn't surveillance because they didn't look at the recorded data.
3) Yet when a Russian military intelligence agent meets secretly in Trump tower, do you imagine NSA wouldn't record that??? It'll just be waiting for the warrant from the court to take an official look at the recording.

Re: Looking at the *wrong* election

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have a really sad, lonely, bitter fucked up life. Or as the missus says: you are a brain dead, brain washed fuckwit

Re:Looking at the *wrong* election

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of points:

1) NSA did have a (FISA) warrant. The fact that it was illegally obtained does not actually invalidate the warrant: once it's issued, it's valid, even though the evidence used was the fake Dossier that was the product of a foreign intelligence employees such as the British spook dude, and the Clintons colluding with Russia government officials to suborn the "peepee evidence" testimony. It doesn't even matter that numerous laws were broken, the warrant is still real.

2) Don Jr is guilty. And the fact that Obama admin has colluded with the Russians to actively entrap Don Jr. does not make it less of a crime for Don Jr to have spoken to a Russian.

3) It wasn't the Russian military. It was the Russian government employee who happened to be issued a visa by the Obama State department, in violation of the rules. Still, it's a crime to speak to any Russian at all. If you see one on the street, run away please.

4) Since the warrant was valid, the evidence must be there. The fact that is hasn't been released or leaked after a year means just one thing: there is actually too much evidence to release/leak. I think the CNN has all of it, but they are trying to edit down years of illegality of Trump Nazi Russia to just a single 1-2 hour clip. Too much work to be done, since Trump is so guilty.

5) Trump will be impeached any second now. I am going to hold my breath until he is impeached. Join me please.

Re: Looking at the *wrong* election

[Anonymous Coward]

He video phones because he's the spokesperson for some pyramid scheme phone system. One year's apprentice's final test had the teams make up their marketing.

Re: Looking at the *wrong* election

[Anonymous Coward]

"Or as the missus says: you are a brain dead, brain washed fuckwit"

Your English is very good.

Re: Looking at the *wrong* election

[Anonymous Coward]

No FISA warrant is illegal. Every single warrant has been approved by a judge. 100% pass.

Re:Looking at the *wrong* election

[rickb928]

I see what you did there...

~Re: A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Hitler would have said that Unicode makes your argument invalid.

Re: ~Re: A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Hitler would have had the authors of a web site that canâ(TM)t handle basic text shot.

Re: ~Re: A perfectly good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Using Unicode trash for a simple apostrophe is an abomination.

Re: ~Re: A perfectly good idea

[david_thornley]

Hitler would have considered letters with umlauts and that beta-looking thing that means lowercase double s as basic text.

So I want to

[oldgraybeard]

block just the commentary/news/political web sites ;) Right individuals with no clue!
Is this individual a real player, or a problem? That is the question?

it's being reported that

[Idisagree]

one man's fake news is another man's truth. YMMV.

Re:it's being reported that

[Anonymous Coward]

one man's fake news is another man's truth. YMMV.

So, just eliminate 'another man' and job well done! Kill the demand for fake news by eliminating those who habitually seek it out.

Heck, I think the EU even still has old camps built for the purpose left over from the last major war that could be brought out of mothballs! Ask the Germans, I'm sure they could loan you some consultants to get things organized properly and off to a smooth start.

Re:it's being reported that

[Anonymous Coward]

saying "macron is a stupid weener" might be considered fake news
but saying "i'm sure that macron is a stupid weener" is an opinion / belief and should not be considered news at all, but can influence people (by saying i believe / am sure / think that ... you can influence opinions )
Now by blocking biased texts / sites they will inherently block free speech.... it'll always be a fine line, but politicians will always try to bend/break/ alter those lines to suit it to their needs.. especially those in charge...

It'd b better to take shit on the net less seriously... and mayebe attack the shit at its roots.. stop copying from site to site
(he says, she said that she heard from the other one, and in the end it's no ones fault... )

crappy politicians ( not specifically saying who but you can say all of them)

Re:it's being reported that

[geekymachoman]

This must be the stupidest reasoning disguised as insight i ever heard. Like new-agers and hippies talking how there are many truths, everybody has their own truth etc. utter BS.

That statement is completely useless.

I know a guy out there that think earth is flat, and that's truth for him. See the problem yet with personal truths ?

There's only 1 truth, at least in case of "news".

Re:it's being reported that

[Anonymous Coward]

News stories have always includes a bit of bias, but many "news" have lately become more opinion pieces than reports of factual information. And of course everyone has their own truth, we're separate entities after all? But if things are transparent enough, we can usually use the scientific principle to observe and gather information, and hopefully discuss things freely until we come to a conclusion that most people agree with.

Re:it's being reported that

[AmiMoJo]

No. That's bullshit. There is objective truth. There is the scientific method. And the entire point of a court is to determine fact from fiction.

If we decide that truth is subjective, there will be no crime, no justice, no science, no democracy.

Re:it's being reported that

[tinkerton]

Bullshit.There is a whole range of statements where the relativism of opinions is real and 'fake news' is interpreted so broadly that it covers a whole range. Originally it referred to utterly baseless claims without any justification. Now it can be anything you don't like. It's mixed with conspiracy theories, anything that comes from anyone linked to anything russian, clickbait or dissenting opinions. Or anything that Propornot has listed as fake news. So in a way 'we'll first prohibit fake news and then tell you what it is'.
Here is an article from a few months back about Google fighting fake news, and a socialist site seeing its traffic plummet. As well as a lot of indy sites.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Re:it's being reported that

[AmiMoJo]

There is a whole range of statements where the relativism of opinions is real and 'fake news' is interpreted so broadly that it covers a whole range.

Fake news is not a "wrong" opinion. It's news that is factually incorrect, a deliberate lie designed to push a specific agenda.

Just because some people don't understand that (*cough*trump*cough*) doesn't change anything, at least not legally.

Re:it's being reported that

[tinkerton]

You can't have it both ways.
I agree that the meaning of fake news should be very limited, and my definition would be more limited than yours, but that is not how it's used. In reality it's like a slogan which sweeps up a whole category of things. As soon as you interact with people you have to take in account how they use the words. At the same time as soon as someone comes with measures that sound very specific, like suppressing fake news, that may sound good and you end up supporting them because of the narrow interpretation. You have to be very well aware what it's real life interpretation will be.
Such as 'suppress anything which can be linked to Russia becomes Fake NewsRussiaRussia Todayguests on Russia Today.
For instance http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/t...

There is no indication at all that RT's reporting drops as low as the narrow interpretation of fake news even if it had been total propaganda. I would not qualify propaganda as fake news. Parent post is valid in the practical interpretation of fake news.

Re:it's being reported that

[Ksevio]

Sure fake news can be expanded to cover a range of questionable stories, but there are some like "Clinton has brain cancer, will be dead in 6 months" that have no basis in fact

Re:it's being reported that

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake news is not a "wrong" opinion. It's news that is factually incorrect, a deliberate lie designed to push a specific agenda.

"AmiMoJo still has not been punished for a number of violent toddler rapes."

A headline that is exclusively factual, but still fake news...I assume.

Re:it's being reported that

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to define "factually incorrect" and "deliberate lie"? For example, is purposely omitting information to create a "lie of omission" then considered fake news? What about cherry picking statistics? If so, CNN, MSNBC, BBC and all of your favorite news sources are going to be labeled as fake news. Effective propaganda doesn't say so much as one thing that's factually incorrect, but it sure as hell does leave a lot of context out. So would that type of propaganda be fake news?

Re:it's being reported that

[tinkerton]

Your example fits the original core meaning, the claim that is pulled out of thin air. But it's not that it can be expanded(beyond debatable cases) , it already happened. If you look at what subjects are discussed and the people affected when you google fake news, you get the list I gave.

There's another rule I can invoke here, and that is that propaganda thrives on loaded words that are underdefined. Underdefined words are filled in according to circumstances to fit the purpose. Fake News has become 'disinformation', 'propaganda' or just anything you consider wrong

Macron is dumb as a brick

[Anonymous Coward]

Right place at the right time more than anything. He's lucky his rival was Marine LePen

Re:Macron is dumb as a brick

[Opportunist]

France and the US are more alike than I thought.

Re:Macron is dumb as a brick

[lfourrier]

Can anybody tell me where it is written in French law that there exist unlimited freedom of speech in France, as once envisionned in the USA ?
(I accept any legifrance link)

Re:Macron is dumb as a brick

[Opportunist]

I highly doubt anything like this exists. Mostly for a lack of necessity.

France has a rich history of sending its governments to hell if they try to pull something funny that's not supported by the people. When you have a population like this, you don't need some paper telling your government what not to do, the people are pretty capable of doing that themselves.

Re:Macron is dumb as a brick

[lfourrier]

France has also a long history of law writing and selective enforcement...

The nearest of free speech legislation is a 1881 law about freedom of the press, where papers can write anything, as long as some publication director is personnally responsible of what is written. It is the basis for legislating blog posts, where a bad comment about a business on social media can cost an individual thousands of euros. As for revolutions, french citizens are globally reticents about arms, except for hunters, and they no longuer use pitchforks to work.

Re:Macron is dumb as a brick

[Opportunist]

Revolutions don't stop at torches and pitchforks. That's so 1800s. Today, you light cars instead of torches and the thrown brick has replaced the pitchfork.

Revolutions change. Why would the most revolutionary thing of them all stay the same?

Re:Macron is dumb as a brick

[Whibla]

The closest specific 'legislation' you're likely to find, to the US ideal as embodied in the constitution, is Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Human Rights which became binding on governments in 2009. Article 11 States:

Freedom of expression and information

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions
and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless
of frontiers.

2. The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.

As always, the devil is in the detail...

fair's fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, but President Trump should have the same power, to alter or shut down web sites to fight Fake News. And maybe newspapers too!

Why stop there?

[Opportunist]

Just outlaw the whole advertisment bullshit surrounding elections. It's ALL fake news anyway.

running dog

[Reverend Green]

Bankster stooges sure do hate freedom of political speech.

\o/

[easyTree]

Macron said he planned to introduce new legislation to strictly regulate fake news during online political campaigns.

Only *approved* fake news will be allowed ^_^

Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

But right now both sides can use that tactic, that's called free speech. When only one side gets to tell their bullshit that is censorship. The fact that anyone could make a serious pitch for censoring free speech is chilling.

That noble sentiment still leaves us with the problem that one side is unscrupulously spreading a pack of outright lies, incredibly vicious character assassinations and even seems to be willing to stoop so low as to enlist the security services of foreign governments to accomplish that goal while the other is not willing to sink that low. Your solution seems to be that both sides should enthusiastically join in the race to the bottom of the sea of corruption, lies and moral bankruptcy. You also jump to the conclusion that a proposition to clamp down on news sites that are spewing obvious lies will automatically lead to the complete muzzling of one side in an election. It's the same overblown knee-jerk reaction as: "Patriots Arm Yourselves!!!!! Obama and the ZOG is coming to take a way our guns!!!" every time somebody suggests a simple reform like requiring background checks on all gun sales. It seems like a reasonable requirement to make, even in an election campaign, that both sides stick to something that at least resembles some kind factual debate. What we currently have, in the name of freedom of speech, is the complete freedom disseminate cleverly designed propaganda with a complete disregard for the consequences. Freedom of speech means you can say anything you want but it does not mean that you are also liberated from responsibility for any consequences of what you say. I'm not saying that censorship is the right way to go, but there has to be some set of well defined and penalties for spreading outright lies cleverly targeted and disguised as news. That Comet Ping Pong/Pizzagate incident for example ended without anybody getting killed but there is no guarantee we'll be that lucky next time. So what do we do the next time somebody falls for a harebrained conspiracy theory, walks into a pizza restaurant and actually mows down the staff and half the customers with an AR-15? ... award the news outlets responsible for disseminating the lies he fell for a free speech award? ... an "Excellence in Political Propaganda" prize? If we are not going to plug the pipes spewing sewage into our news-scape we are somehow going to have to ensure that there are really well defined limits to how outrageous your lies can get.

Re:This will certainly be interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, someone even went to the trouble to downvote this. Did I hit a nerve?

Just wanted to stress/add:

• When I say regulation, I mean measures against systematic misinformation. I.e. first and foremost: propaganda (e.g. from foreign troll farms).
• It can't be in the hands of the executive branch (that Macron got right), and the bar would obviously have to be high (remains to be seen/what I'm interested in)

And on the topic of censorship: It'd probably more effective to add information instead of removing it: e.g. force sites to add links to reputable sources when proven to spread FUD. Or force them to publicise their and their advertisers' cashflows, so people can see if there are moneyed interests at work.

Re:You never acknowledge *CHRISTMAS*, do you?

[Anonymous Coward]

A myth perpetrated by the right. Every liberal I know has ALWAYS said "Merry Christmas". See how they spread nonsense? Open your eyes people.

Teaching

[DrYak]

And teaching poeple how not to fall to obvious snake oil salesmen and ovious trolls is how you should handle it.

Not blocking the free speech on reasons of "idiots speaking".

---

(It's sad that this is coming from the French president, as they are one of the few countries to actually teach "media" in school and having pilot programs to teach kids how to spot urban myths/click bait/fake news/etc.)

Re:Teaching

[GameboyRMH]

This. The problem can be solved with education rather than censorship. And society has to stop coddling any ideologies that think they're entitled to their own facts.

Re:Teaching

[david_thornley]

It can't be solved with education when there's too many people that are anti-education.

Re:Teaching

[Hognoxious]

The problem can be solved with education rather than censorship.

If education means "Jesus killed the dinosaurs" you've solved the problem by replacing it with a worse one.

french style democracy is different

[Anonymous Coward]

It hit me a couple of years ago that the French and some other similar countries just look at democracy very differently than the countries more like the USA do. In some senses I think it's both styles prize equality and individual liberty. On the USA side we prioritize individual liberty when there is a conflict between the two but on the French side, they prioritize equality.

So like one outgrowth of that is on the USA side, we take great pains to protect against the "tyranny of the majority" and make sure that minority positions are protected (well, at least in theory that's what we try to do). Whereas in France, they've got no problem trampling on the minority if that's what the majority wants.

That's why France has so many stronger positions against things like foreign businesses. Most of the French people are just fine sticking it to Amazon and so France sticks it to Amazon.

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets do this in the U.S. We can finally block CNN. Good riddance.

Re:Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequen

[rickb928]

What stands our about your argument is the concern that free speech, if 'abused' (my term), could be dangerous in that it could spur some to commit despicable crimes.

More amazing that that, which is possible a genuine problem, is that it is ALREADY HAPPENING IN THE US.

The response to Trump's inauguration? Riots, violence, looting in Washington DC. College campuses are now the sites of violent demonstrations against, and even attacks upon, non-Leftist speakers.

A man actually went to a baseball field and shot Republican members of Congress, with the intent to murder them.

Which side of this argument both intended to and may have suppressed free speech, and also used physical violence to both suppress speech and attempt to murder the opposition?

Which side needs to be recognized as sufficiently dangerous that it needs to be identified as such and defeated at the polls?

Which side needs to be held accountable for the rhetoric they spread that leads to this unacceptable violence?

Re:This will certainly be interesting

[rickb928]

"I think some kind of regulation wouldn't hurt, especially during elections. I'm not entirely sure if this is the right move, though."

And so goes that right... 'some kind'is still regulation.

sure, what could go wrong?

[cascadingstylesheet]

It's not like governments would call anything that the existing occupants don't like "fake news" ...

Re: Freedom of speech is not freedom from conseque

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the header as a guide. Financial responsibility (liable) to the posters. Freezing submissions online until adjudication. Penalties for false or malicious charges. Expedited reviews. Verified identity checks. Removal or repudiation of libel statutes on political commentary.
In short, you take responsibilty for your statements, and pay the price for false ones.

Re:Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequen

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment is dangerous and should be censored.

See how easy that was? After you wrote that entire paragraph to justify why it should be ok to censor in certain situations, it took just 8 words for me to use it against you.

This guy said it best

[RottenJ]

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. H. L. Mencken US editor (1880 - 1956)"

Re:Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequen

[butchersong]

Here is a list of 15 news stories that were fake that have been broadcast in mainstream media recently: http://thefederalist.com/2017/...

I'll see your gunman in a pizza place and raise you an actual shooting of Republican congressmen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... by a leftist

Re: Freedom of speech is not freedom from conseque

[Anonymous Coward]

"You also jump to the conclusion that a proposition to clamp down on news sites that are spewing obvious lies will automatically lead to the complete muzzling of one side in an election."

If they are such obvious lies then why the need to censor them? This isn't an attempt to clamp down on obvious lies, its an attempt to control dissent and shift statistical advantage against political opponents.

Block Facebook and Twitter

[grumpy-cowboy]

Done.

Re:This will certainly be interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, not all regulation is bad, that's my opinion.

Propaganda is real and we know it to work on people -- and elections are a "weak point" of democratic systems.

Of course, censorship is a very hot iron topic, for some (a lot?) of the people here even a holy cow, not to be touched under any circumstances. Reading TFA I'm not convinced that Macron's implementation will be a good one, but even if it'd turn out to be a failure, it would at least be interesting to see in what ways it failed. (I'm not french, lucky me.)

And as I added in my second post: A better idea might be to force those actors who are provably spreading misinformation to reveal their hands instead of trying to remove them from the game entirely. The real question is: can it be done without opening the doors to abuse?

Re:we are just rolling over and letting the nazi t

[Ksevio]

I'd say the nazis are ideologically closer to the right wing candidate that Macron beat. I'd have a lot of concerns about any sort of censorship (especially one with political ties), but you have to admit there's a problem when you get people believing stuff like "Clinton ran a sex ring out of a pizza place" and some nut job walks in there with a gun.

Good start.

[Anonymous Coward]

They should also ban all t.v., radio, and news reporting. After all the previous are just tools of the elite to control the thoughts of the people. The only Democratic way to get your message out is face to face person to person. If your going to blow smoke up someone's arse, you should at have the decency to do it in front of them. Civilization declines with the advent of mass media.

No debate allowed

[Anonymous Coward]

If Europe does it, it's right and everybody should do like them. Anyone disagreeing is a nazi and should be killed. End of debate. Because, Europe.

Re:Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequen

[Cyberax]

Oh, Federalist - the true home of fake news. They even fake the fake news list. Let's list a couple of lies:

1) Federalist says that there was a fake surge in transgender suicides. This is not true, the linked article cites the increased number of suicide hotline calls.
2) They cite the Medium article that says that there are possible signs of fraud: https://medium.com/@jhalderm/w... - it's true. Statistical analysis shows that the resulting configuration is quite unlikely.
3) Multiple government climate change sites got purged: https://gizmodo.com/another-go...

In short, how to tell that a conservative lies? Easy, his lips are moving.

Return to the Soviet Era

[knorthern knight]

> All the government has to do is legislate as to consider gullibility
> as a mental health issue and have the person go to mandatory
> philosophy classes to learn the basics of logic and reasoning.

Da Tavarisch. In old USSR, we did not jail dissidents for opposing wonderful communism. We confined them to mental treatment centers, because you have to be mentally ill, if not downright crazy, to oppose wonderful communism.

Re:Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequen

[wyHunter]

It's merely the left pointing out that they are, in fact, thugs. During 8 years of an Obama Presidency, this didn't happen. Oh, I'm sure there were isolated wack jobs, but not that we heard much about - and given the overwhelming lefty bias of journalism, we would have. But since Trump became President we have insanity, where the left is showing how lunatic it actually is.

Re:JEWS. Need I say more?

[Anonymous Coward]

Frenchmen will be free when they torch the evil Grand Orient de France building and quilliotine all the members.

The Price of Freedom

[walllaby]

Censorship is unacceptable in a democracy. Unfortunately, the price of freedom is watching your country devolve into a mess of propaganda and messaging designed to exaserbate the fears and anger of the lowest common denominator.

George Carlin had it right: it's one big, entertaining show. Might as well grab some popcorn.

lies

[lucm]

That's how they got Martha Stewart. Couldn't get her for insider trading so they accused her of lying to federal agents.

http://coveringbusiness.com/20...

Re:Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequen

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/01/05/armed-man-with-white-supremacist-ties-stopped-amtrak-train-last-year-fbi-says/

meanwhile alt-righters are going further off the deep-end.
The problem is probably related to social media and the tendency for it to create concentrated pools of like-minded people that become more and more insular and extreme.

I have the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The government should create an agency whose sole task will be to scrub crimethink from all publications and transmissions.

We shall call this agency The Ministry of Truth.