Quote:
Originally Posted by montréaliste
That is stretching it. The same clobberhead racist organizations have a footing in Canada and spew their hate speech and few ever get arrested or shut up by our governments or police. Hate speech is hate speech though, and should be defined as such, not a problem to be swept under the table. People who make light stuff of the millions who died in WW2 or the Civil War need to be confronted one way or another. Nevertheless, I can't imagine there are many more cases where Canadian courts or authorities have stifled free speech vis-à-vis their US counterparts.
Free speech in Canada is not.any more endangered than in the US. The usual stories are of groups or speakers denied access to college campus platforms. This happens in both countries.
|
Firstly, I don't agree, because in the long view of history minority speech tends to get hit with laws claiming to "protect social harmony". Look how many conservatives favor or have seriously proposed calling groups protesting police issues or confederate statues a "terrorist" or "hate" organization. The logic of certain bad people has always been that anyone with a strong nonconformist opinion who is part of an outgroup is a threat that must be eliminated.
In order to have a free country we need to take this cudgel away from anyone who wanted to use it, for right or wrong. This isn't my opinion, it's an opinion held by all of the US Supreme Court Justices.
Secondly, racism is rooted in prejudicial but seemingly polite attitudes, not edgy teens posting intentionally offensive stuff on the internet. Censorship only makes certain beliefs more transgressive and therefore attractive to the kind of disaffected person who is also most prone to radicalization.
Thirdly and more importantly in this case, it imposes a huge burden on tech companies when they are forced to police and filter content. The more subjective and arbitrary the rules, the harder they are to enforce. What ultimately happens is the service provider takes a more blunt approach to protect themselves from liability, and the end user and consumer suffers from poorer quality services.
For example YouTube has come under fire by advertisers and by governments for the content of its user uploaded videos, and in order to protect themselves a lot of videos have been taken down or effectively demonitized for arbitrary reasons. Video game reviews get taken down because they talk about guns, for example. It's very silly. Meanwhile there is still a lot of piracy and a lot of downright creepy things on YouTube, but the nail that sticks out gets the hammer as they say.
Being in a country like Canada means they'd be a persistent target of lawsuits and inquiries from anyone who ever was unhappy with something they saw on the internet, and skeezy IP law firms and patent trolls claiming infringement. It's not worth it.
Prev
booth__hansen.jpg)
Linear Mode
