France's President Macron Wants To Block Websites During Elections To Fight 'Fake News' (gizmodo.com) 299
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.
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.
A perfectly good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I can think of no possible way this could be abused as political censorship to, say, protect the incumbent government from inconvenient reporting.
Censorship hard to make work (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
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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 si
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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
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"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 abus
Re:A perfectly good idea (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:A perfectly good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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
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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
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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 transitio
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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 no
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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 'governme
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Reading the summary and comprehending it helps: it will be possible to go to a judge... and if appropriate have content taken down,
running dog (Score:2)
Bankster stooges sure do hate freedom of political speech.
Re: A perfectly good idea (Score:2)
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.
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As we have seen in last election, all the slander against Trump didn't work out in the end.
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...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"?
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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
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Now think again what the current administration can do with such a system during the next elections. Got it ?
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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
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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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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?
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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.
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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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 incl
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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:Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequen (Score:4, Insightful)
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:A perfectly good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Hearing idiots speak is the price you pay for your own freedom of speech.
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Teaching (Score:5, Interesting)
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.)
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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.
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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.
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I see what you did there...
How that actually works (Score:2)
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 h
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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 F
Re: How that actually works (Score:2)
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.
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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 (Score:3)
I trust the average judge less than I trust the average wino passed out on a park bench. Way less.
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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 represen
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Not actually paying attention to current evens, are you?
There is a scientific basis for this. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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Re: There is a scientific basis for this. (Score:2)
Sorry, can't stand either of those rags. Do you actually read that crap? Doesn't it give you a headache?
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Well... you can. I guess you did.
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Facism has nothing to do with left and right.
Hitler had a fascistic regime, so had Stalin, so had Nero.
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Here's [wikipedia.org] 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
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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?
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Re: There is a scientific basis for this. (Score:2)
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.
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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 aski
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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.
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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 p
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"Better to serve in heaven than reign in hell."
- Me
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"One appropriate solution is for google to rank results that are bs way down in their listings,"
So the solution is corporate censorship?
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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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 ?
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This IS the best long-term decision. ... For the incumbent political party.
we are just rolling over and letting the nazi take (Score:2)
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
All advertisements should be banned (Score:2)
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 o
Perhaps (Score:3)
If "fake news" is really influencing an election, perhaps we're just not ready for democracy?
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So I want to (Score:2)
Is this individual a real player, or a problem? That is the question?
it's being reported that (Score:2, Insightful)
one man's fake news is another man's truth. YMMV.
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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".
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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.
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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 t
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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.
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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 n
Why stop there? (Score:2)
Just outlaw the whole advertisment bullshit surrounding elections. It's ALL fake news anyway.
\o/ (Score:2)
Only *approved* fake news will be allowed ^_^
sure, what could go wrong? (Score:3)
Block Facebook and Twitter (Score:2)
Done.
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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? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no news in Truth, and no truth in News.
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Re: Who gets to decide what is blocked? (Score:3)
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? (Score:2)
At least both parties have their news source, not for nothing people call it the Clinton News Network.
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Newspapers in the US are what you use to distribute the news a day or several days later.
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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 [youtu.be]
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 "transactio
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Our government was founded on principles that imply government cannot ever be trusted. And they were indeed correct.
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France and the US are more alike than I thought.
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(I accept any legifrance link)
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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.
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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
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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?
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"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.
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"Typical liberal response - limit free speech."
No, the typical liberal response is to limit their opposition's speech.