Jacob Mchangama argues that Europe has shifted from promoting internet freedom to pursuing “digital sovereignty,” expanding regulation of online speech through hate-speech laws, content moderation requirements, and proposals to end anonymity. He contends that these measures risk creating censorship systems similar to those used by China and Russia, while also underestimating citizens’ ability to judge information for themselves. He further argues that the United States has become an inconsistent defender of online freedom under President Donald Trump. Mchangama concludes that democracies should protect free expression online, relying on transparency, user empowerment, and enforcement of existing laws rather than expanding government control over digital speech.
Golda_M on
>Inspired by the social media–led movements of the Arab Spring, liberal democracies treated Internet freedom…
So, starting here, at the end, introduces problems that are hard to unproblem. The whole Consciousness of Journalism, “*ideas that journalism is aware of,” tends to be a spotlight that comes on and follows political salience.
The Arab Spring came at the time when smartphones proliferated, bringing most of the world online. Before that, the internet was a small, relatively self-selected bunch. It had its own culture.
Around this time, facebook is the internet .. and a handful of other platforms. The www itself, has been reduced to a mere protocol layer.
This is when journalists get obsessed with twitter, celebrities too, old people facebook, people who have never owned a computer get addicted to Instagram , or Farmville , Etc.
Anyway.. The ideologies of the internet .. FOSS, open protocols, anarchic, communallist, libertarian ideas… Information that wants to be free. Self governing systems. Open culture..
These are very deep, and extremely productive ideas and communities. That is the www, the modern generation of programming languages, Wikipedia, Linux… The materials from which Google was built.
The techno-optimism was a product of real success, in very non-trivial domains, of this thing that was neither government nor commercial nor anything like forms of organization known before.
Journalist, pundits, politicians… Their migration into the digital realm coincides and is a part of the death of the free internet.
They are the ones who crowded out, belligerently attacked, canceled and ultimately deposed the angry nerds who ran the show when the show was worth seeing.
In any case, as a liberal, I really dislike modern European take on rights. It’s an unstructured mess, for a concept that demands the opposite. You can’t really do rights if you are not principled. You cannot be both fuzzy and principled.
The European approach to rights is increasingly indistinguishable from regulation. It’s specific, myopic, and changeable.
There is no clear principle of free speech , and most of Europe that one can grasp.
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Jacob Mchangama argues that Europe has shifted from promoting internet freedom to pursuing “digital sovereignty,” expanding regulation of online speech through hate-speech laws, content moderation requirements, and proposals to end anonymity. He contends that these measures risk creating censorship systems similar to those used by China and Russia, while also underestimating citizens’ ability to judge information for themselves. He further argues that the United States has become an inconsistent defender of online freedom under President Donald Trump. Mchangama concludes that democracies should protect free expression online, relying on transparency, user empowerment, and enforcement of existing laws rather than expanding government control over digital speech.
>Inspired by the social media–led movements of the Arab Spring, liberal democracies treated Internet freedom…
So, starting here, at the end, introduces problems that are hard to unproblem. The whole Consciousness of Journalism, “*ideas that journalism is aware of,” tends to be a spotlight that comes on and follows political salience.
The Arab Spring came at the time when smartphones proliferated, bringing most of the world online. Before that, the internet was a small, relatively self-selected bunch. It had its own culture.
Around this time, facebook is the internet .. and a handful of other platforms. The www itself, has been reduced to a mere protocol layer.
This is when journalists get obsessed with twitter, celebrities too, old people facebook, people who have never owned a computer get addicted to Instagram , or Farmville , Etc.
Anyway.. The ideologies of the internet .. FOSS, open protocols, anarchic, communallist, libertarian ideas… Information that wants to be free. Self governing systems. Open culture..
These are very deep, and extremely productive ideas and communities. That is the www, the modern generation of programming languages, Wikipedia, Linux… The materials from which Google was built.
The techno-optimism was a product of real success, in very non-trivial domains, of this thing that was neither government nor commercial nor anything like forms of organization known before.
Journalist, pundits, politicians… Their migration into the digital realm coincides and is a part of the death of the free internet.
They are the ones who crowded out, belligerently attacked, canceled and ultimately deposed the angry nerds who ran the show when the show was worth seeing.
In any case, as a liberal, I really dislike modern European take on rights. It’s an unstructured mess, for a concept that demands the opposite. You can’t really do rights if you are not principled. You cannot be both fuzzy and principled.
The European approach to rights is increasingly indistinguishable from regulation. It’s specific, myopic, and changeable.
There is no clear principle of free speech , and most of Europe that one can grasp.