Slashdot Mirror
US Declines in Internet Freedom Rankings (techcrunch.com)
If you need a safe haven on the internet, where the pipes are open and the freedoms are plentiful -- you might want to move to Estonia or Iceland. From a report: The latest "internet freedoms" rankings are out, courtesy of Freedom House's annual report into the state of internet freedoms and personal liberties, based on rankings of 65 countries that represent the vast majority of the world's internet users. Although the U.S. remains firmly in the top 10, it dropped a point on the year earlier after a recent rash of changes to internet regulation and a lack of in the realm of surveillance. Last year, the U.S. was 21 in the global internet freedom ranking -- the lower number, the better a country ranks. That was behind Estonia, Iceland, Canada, Germany and Australia. This year the U.S. is at 22 -- thanks to the repeal of net neutrality and the renewal of U.S. spy powers. The report also cited "disinformation and hyperpartisan content" -- or fake news -- as a "pressing concern."
Net neutrality going away has nothing to do with personal freedom. It does mean Netflix is going to have to charge more and give cable companies a cut. And it means YouTube may be totally broken and hopefully Google can put the pieces back together into a new business model.
The (German) laws have nothing to do with something as silly as using the wrong pronouns for someone. That is protected speech. You can also hate people as much as you want and tell everyone about it. That is protected speech as well.
There's a law against speech that incites the masses called "Volksverhetzung", which is usually applied when speech contains calls for violence and or other arbitrary actions against groups of people. You can read about it accurately enough on Wikipedia.
Then there's laws against slander, which exist in pretty much any civilized nations, of course including the US. Cases rarely hold up in court, because of their difficult nature.
Exactly! And yet, Germany is rated higher than the United States in that report... According to the report-publishers, TFA, and the other so-called "Liberals", America's freedom of speech — what's left of it — is detrimental to "Internet freedom". Which tells you all you need to know about this report...
The report — and TFA — both mention pure-private concerns like "fake news" and absence of "net neutrality" as valid. That means, they disagree with you regarding the role of private entities — and what can and cannot be done with them by government to improve "Internet freedom" (as they define it).
As I argue elsewhere, providing a forum for the despicables is not — should not be — any more toxic, than defending same in court. If a private Internet-company is toxic over allowing Robert Bowers to speak his mind before he committed his atrocity, a private law-firm defending him in front of a jury after it ought to be toxic as well — their bank-accounts closed (Paypal did stop accepting Gab's payments), the lawyers involved disbarred (GoDaddy not hosting their domain-name).
Heck, the private doctors treating him for wounds sustained in a firefight with police must be toxic too, by the same logic... Would you have approved of such boycotts too? Probably not...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.