• haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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    12 days ago

    Yes indeed.

    Free speech or freeze peach as I call the populist american approach is no right. It is just a way for people to manipulate the lesser privileged.

    The european way of free speech is you are allowed to say whatever you want as long as you harm noone with it. Knowingly spreading lies is the latter. If thats anti free speech to you, then tough luck.

    • MudMan@fedia.io
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      12 days ago

      Europe’s approach to free speech (in general, there are tons of countries with different takes) is that it’s a right along with a bunch of others and it gets limitations like all others. I agree, the US view of rights as places where you do whatever you want and everybody else has to deal with the fallout is fundamentally different to the social democracy approach.

      But free speech remains a fundamental right for democracy. If you allow governments to have too much control over resources, private speech or news reporting you end up on the other end of the spectrum, where public resources are spent reinforcing the position of whatever the current government is.

      This is and has always been one of the hardest balancing acts of healthy democracies, and it’s borderline impossible in a world dominated by for-profit social media and hostile actors deliberately using communication as a weapon.