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Comment by bjt2n3904 | Hacker News Reader

Europe telling a San Francisco based company what to do. I'd say, give them the middle finger, but the article has this little gem inside it:

> If the Archive does not comply with the notices, it risks its site getting added to lists which ISPs are required to block.

Well, that's Orwellian. Great job, Europe.

American sites should start giving Europe the finger en-masse. Just return a black page with "Sorry, European officials have their heads up their asses. Tell them to fix it" like they did for SOPA and PIPA. Let them firewall themselves off to oblivion.

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Meanwhile, I'd like to point out a little phenomenon.

Facebook: We're banning "fake news".

HN: Oh, this was so needed. They're not the government, so this is fantastic!

Facebook: We're banning "hate speech".

HN: Bravo, so brave of them. About time! A brighter future. Wonder if AI can automate this.

Facebook: This is a great idea. Governments, please make this mandatory.

HN: Wait, what!? Don't trust Zuck!

And now, here we are. Please stop the uncharitable "why do you think the 1st amendment applies to facebook" responses. We never did. Free speech is more than just some concept that only applies to governments.

When the general public ceases to respect and defend freedom of speech for each other, they will soon find the government coming for it.

Should large sites try their best effort at removing this content? Absolutely. Should there be a law saying that if you fail to do so (within a ridiculously short time-frame), you will be forced to give us money or completely blocked? Absolutely not.

There's a huge difference between those two. One is open to nuance and to the reality of how hard content moderation is; the other is a blind hammer that does more harm than good.

> Should large sites try their best effort at removing this content

"This content" being... what? Hateful posts? Falsehoods? The sites are incapable of discerning what is hateful or false.

Don't blend in "the site banned User A threatening to murder Politician B" with "the site banned User A for saying hateful things". One of them is objective, the other is subjective.

> The sites are incapable of discerning what is hateful or false.

Oh definitely, it's a grey area, hence me saying that making it law obliterates any chance for nuance.

Absolutely. The Internet Archive should not sacrifice its core mission so that Europeans governments can impose censorship without impacting their citizens negatively.

I suspect this goes with the territory of the U.S. giving up control of the internet to international bodies. Disclaimer: I don't claim to have a deep understanding of any of these issues. But I will point out no other great power, the E.U. included, has the same level of freedom of speech guarantees in their constitutions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/us-to-rel...

This is why free speech is such an essential right in the United States, and probably contributes to the success it’s had as a country in making things. It’s hard to create when some government can come along and crush your idea. I can’t think of any other country in the world that has fewer limits on speech.

It's a good thing that https://dweb.me/ exists. "The Internet views censorship as damage and routes around it."

Maddox took this approach back in '04.

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=websense

I totally agree this is shitty. But I mean come on. Glass house much...? :-)

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