Social media posts inciting hate and division have “real world consequences” and there is a responsibility to regulate content, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, insisted on Friday, following Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking programme in the United States.
It’s also by a politician with political power.
Do you know what the difference is between political dissent and hate speech? A clever application of the law, or a particularly persuasive lawyer. The law should be limited to prosecuting credible threats of violence or other speech intending to cause direct harm (e.g. repeated harassment, shouting “fire” in a crowded room, etc).
Overbearing private moderation is absolutely fine, since people can take their speech to another platform or create their own. Laws controlling speech is another matter entirely.
Lemmy devs are free to moderate their instances however they see fit, and I’m free to not engage with their instance.
It sounds like we agree, but I’m much less lawerly due to my lack of experience in that field.
No worries, I don’t have any direct experience either, just a strong interest.
As a kid, I wanted to be a lawyer, but I was quite introverted so litigation wasn’t appealing, so I decided to go into software patent law (I loved computers). While doing a CS undergrad, I learned how terrible software patents are, so I stuck to software dev.
I still really like the law, but now I’m more interested as a citizen knowing my rights instead of looking to prosecute the law.