I know they could just setup their own Pod but these values are what makes them any different from the likes of Twitter and I would've expected them to stand by them a bit more.
Yeah that's probably because the ISIS is known for suicide bombings, cutting off heads, video taping it so that the families and friends of the victim can see how gruesome their loved one died, killing unbelievers and tying multiple women to poles at the Mosul Dam to be raped. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to use to promote your values unless you're a psychopath. What the fuck.
What I find more outrageous was that the reporter apparently was held captive for 2 years... without anyone (in the public) knowing. Bergdahl was held captive for 5 years and luckily was returned in a controversial exchange. What is going on that we are not able to protect and/or recover our people?
Seems to send a clear message that if you get captured by an extremists group like ISIS, the government won't come running in to save you, nor will the public even know you are missing -- fore the government doesn't want to stir public opinion into favoring some sort of military action. So, in essence -- you are all alone out there, potentially for years, or worse. -- That is outrageous to me.
Anyway my comments were a response to the idea that Diaspora should promote its decentralized platform on the wake of ISIS publicity, which is a really stupid idea. It had nothing to do with government censorship, although I have no problems with governments discouraging murder videos.
A police officer explained this to me. They do this because they want the ability to arrest the people who are recruiting muslims using these videos. The "recruiting" thing is impossible to prove, so ...
These videos are made with one purpose only : to recruit more muslims to their cause. Assuming they know what they're doing, that's exactly what free dissemination of these videos will do (otherwise, after all, there wouldn't be an al qaeda or IS organization in the first place).
I think you can at least agree that using arrests, and even violence (of the police kind, not the IS kind), to prevent that from happening is unambiguously a good thing.
The arguments against these laws are mostly of the "slippery slope" kind, and I agree that these laws are open to abuse. I hate to say it but I also don't see an alternative.
Police can already arrest the people making the videos (if they were in the UK or US) without having to make it a crime to simply view the video.
I don't buy the argument that these videos are propaganda to recruit -- they are there to stir fear and incite the idea that no one will save you if you are captured. The goal of the videos are to bend the public opinion.
The video will only sicken the majority of US and UK citizens -- which will in turn demand direct military action. This is, what both administrations (US and UK) have been trying to avoid recently as both have campaigned in large to avoid any direct use of the military (aka, boots-on-the-ground). It would be bad, politically, to then renege on that and send troops in.
I take issue with this. They think someone is guilty of a real, serious crime, but they can't prove it so they want to convict them of something else. That is bypassing the concept of "innocent until proven guilty".
What does this mean? Of course no guarantee of safety could be absolute, so how large does the threat have to be for us to give up our basic freedoms? Terrorists are already, for western countries a statistically insignificant threat. Nothing compared to drunk drivers, diabetes, cancer etc.
You are appealing to an irrational fear.
I feel like I'm stating the obvious, but here goes : the US cannot protect every one of it's citizens from every external force. Not abroad, and not in America. Terrorist forces who recruit out of a near-global pool of 1 billion muslims, who effectively have presence everywhere, there's no way. If you think about this for 5 minutes, you'd realize that even a genocidal police state wouldn't be able to do that.
> Seems to send a clear message that if you get captured by an extremists group like ISIS, the government won't come running in to save you, nor will the public even know you are missing -- fore the government doesn't want to stir public opinion into favoring some sort of military action. So, in essence -- you are all alone out there, potentially for years, or worse. -- That is outrageous to me.
That's the message islam wants to spread, yes. Of course, the opposite is true [1]. The US military tried to rescue him (and others) and failed due to lacking intelligence.
[1] http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-us-syria-hosta...
Just want us to be careful here -- you don't have to be a Muslim to be a terrorist -- and not all terrorist's are Muslims.
So yes, for a true believer in basic human rights it can be shocking that we have restricted ourselves (as voters in democracies) in our right of free speech, and can feel that when trying to aid universal free communications ( by hosting pods).
Note that I myself support the restrictions on free speech as they are although I am keenly aware of the danger and evil of it.
The video being "suppressed" is of the gruesome, intimidating murder of James Foley, a journalist who risked his life for a profession dedicated to 1st amendment principles. Being intolerant of intolerance is perfectly ok for me. Maybe not you, because you're kind of extreme and not really thinking through things in my opinion, but ok whatever floats your boat.
Do you have a source for that? I would be very interested in seeing the details.
Just google "Secret Service twitter" or follow the @SecretService at https://twitter.com/SecretService They're not shy about this. It's probably illegal to threaten anyone's life or really any kind of violence on Twitter, not just politicians. I doubt threats of violence are protected speech.
The freedom is about lack of prior restraint. It does not absolve you from the consequences if your words cause another to be harmed.
You can shout "Fire!" in a crowded club, if there is a fire in it. You can even shout "Fire!" in a crowded club if there is a bomb in it, hoping for a more orderly and less panicked evacuation. You can also shout "Fire!" in a crowded club if you like the Ohio Players or P-Funk. But if you make a false alarm and someone gets an injury in the resulting panic--even if it's just fewer sales at the bar because everyone left--you'd better be prepared to accept the consequences. And it isn't enough that your words could have caused harm, there has to be some actual harm and some actual intent to cause mischief.
So if you stand before a crowd and encourage people to run riot and sack the city, the consequences you face are going to be a lot different if that crowd is a rotary club meeting or if it is an unruly mob with pre-sharpened pitchforks. It is absolutely your right to do it, but if you do it with criminal intent, expect to be punished for the damage that you caused.
* Freedom of speech is freedom of restriction from government.
* Calls to violence and videos of murder are not covered by the 1st amendment.
Calls to violence are generally not protected; though Brandenburg v. Ohio ruled that the call to violence must be likely to actually incite violence.
You could mean either :
1) US freedom of speech, which is only freedom from government interference with political speech, and obviously US-only.
2) UN "international" freedom of speech. Has 2 major problems
* cannot actually be used to sue anyone for denying it, unlike the US law
* has been repeatedly judged to not even cover "muhammad is an asshole", despite that obviously being political speech in a third of the countries that signed it. Same goes of Chinese and EU politicians, EU royalty, Thai royalty, and a myriad of other cases.
However, my conflict comes from the fact that censorship doesn't really solve the root problem. In child molesters, the problem is better treated in psychiatric care and in extremism the problem is better treated through education, peace, and tolerance.
All they need to do to is say, "Censoring this is not possible", as they seem to be doing, and that promotes their software. They don't need to talk about, approve of, or even be aware of the horrific things that ISIS does. It's enough to know that people really, really don't like what they're posting.
On the other hand, by actively attempting to censor the content, as Diaspora also seems to be doing, they're also sending the message that they don't actually truly believe in openness as a value, deep down, even though they designed their software to provide it. That actually hurts them a bit in the long run, I think.
Whether or not they thought through the ramifications of all edge cases, how they feel about it, and what they do about is another matter entirely.