@ISIDEWITHQuestionsSocial Issues4yrs ago

Should hate speech be protected by freedom of speech laws?

Hate speech is defined as public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.

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Answer Overview

Response rates from 315 Varisella voters.

39%
Yes
61%
No
28%
Yes
47%
No
8%
Yes, as long as it does not threaten violence
12%
No, and increase penalties for hate speech
3%
Yes, because I don’t trust the government to define the boundaries of hate speech
1%
No, freedom of speech laws should only protect you from criticizing the government

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…9mos9MO

Brazil threatens to regulate social media after clash with Elon Musk

Brazil’s attorney-general has demanded “urgent regulation” of social media sites after Elon Musk threatened to disobey a court order banning certain profiles on his X platform and then called for a Supreme Court justice to “resign or be impeached”.“It is urgent to regulate social networks,” said Jorge Messias.“We cannot live in a society in which billionaires domiciled abroad have control of social networks and put themselves in a position to violate the rule of law, failing to comply with court orders and threatening our authorities.”The comments came after X’s global government affairs team posted that it “has been forced by court decisions to block certain popular accounts in Brazil”. “We do not know the reasons these blocking orders have been issued [and] We are prohibited from saying which court or judge issued the order, or on what grounds.”The profiles are probably linked to far-right movements, which have found fertile ground on X and other social media platforms, including Telegram.Musk suggested the court orders came from Alexandre De Moraes, a Supreme Court justice who has been a vocal advocate of cracking down on anti-democratic content online, particularly following riots on January 8 last year when thousands of far-right demonstrators stormed government buildings in Brasília.Musk, the billionaire owner of X, vowed on Sunday to “publish everything demanded by [De Moraes] and how those requests violate Brazilian law”.He called for Moraes to “resign or be impeached” and said the judge had “brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil”.Musk, a self-declared free speech absolutist, bought X in late 2022 and quickly relaxed its moderation policies and reinstated several previously banned accounts. The moves have been welcomed by some on the right, but critics including civil rights groups have argued the platform is failing to adequately police hate speech and extremist content.Musk’s latest comments echo talking points of Brazil’s far-right, which has long accused De Moraes and the Supreme Court of censorship and running a “judicial dictatorship”.De Moraes is widely considered to have played a role in protecting Brazilian democracy during the 2022 presidential election, when the president at the time Jair Bolsonaro was spreading unsubstantiated claims about the integrity of the electoral system.De Moraes also took a hard line in the aftermath of the Brasília riots, handing down lengthy sentences and accusing the demonstrators of trying to launch a coup.Orlando Silva, a lawmaker aligned with the government, said Musk had disrespected the judiciary and that in response he would propose legislation setting out a “responsibilities regime for these digital platforms”.“We have reached a limit. It is a response in defence of Brazil,” he said.The extent of the threat to Brazilian democracy in 2022 was highlighted by a police investigation in February, which has alleged that Bolsonaro, in conjunction with several military officers, considered an armed intervention to prevent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking office. Bolsonaro denies the claims.As part of the alleged plot, Bolsonaro had De Moraes put under constant surveillance for weeks following the polls in October 2022, according to federal police.Social media platforms have faced increasing pressure to comply with new laws in countries such as India and Turkey, which can require them to take down content or face bans, fines or the imprisonment of staffers.Critics argue such rules are oppressive and can be abused by country leaders to silence dissidents and activists.Despite regularly espousing free speech ideals, Musk has previously come under fire from critics for appeasing censorship demands from various governments. More recently, however, X has taken to posting publicly about the requests they receive.

 @ISIDEWITH submitted…9mos9MO

Scotland’s "hate speech law" sparks global outrage

A new Scottish law that criminalizes the “stirring up of” hatred against some groups has triggered a debate far beyond its borders, pitting human rights activists who say it’s needed against a rising tide of harassment and violence against conservative celebrities and politicians who say the law threatens free speech.Scotland’s law, enacted last week, makes it an imprisonable offense to incite hatred on the basis of race, religion, transgender identity, sexual orientation, age or disability.“If … it’s intended to stir up hatred because of their membership of that group, then that is a criminal offense,” Nick McKerrell, a senior law lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, said in a telephone interview Monday. In Scotland, prosecutors recorded 1,884 hate crime charges relating to sexual identity in 2022-23 — representing an eighth consecutive year-on-year increase — in addition to 55 charges relating to transgender identity.Rights groups say the change is a much-needed extension of hate crime protections, consolidating them into a single statute for the first time. Its opponents — including Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling — say they are concerned that the protections are so broad that they could unfairly criminalize free expression. (Critics have also argued that women should be listed as a protected category, too; the Scottish government says it intends to do this through separate legislation.)The furor underlines the polarizing impact of attempts by legislators around the world to find a balance. Backlash to the law has been so fierce that it reportedly prompted far-right agitators to flood police with crime reports to overwhelm them in protest.Legal experts and the Scottish government say the threshold for criminality is high enough to prevent the stifling of debate, pointing out that the law cannot be used to censor jokes or views that are offensive or shocking.“The test is that it has got to be threatening or abusive to someone, or it has to cause them fear or alarm,” McKerrell said. “That’s a very high threshold.”In a series of social media posts, which misgendered trans women and mocked their physical appearance, Rowling — who lives in Scotland — wrote that “freedom of speech and belief are at an end … if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal,” and dared Scottish police to arrest her “if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offense.”Rowling’s remarks last week drew condemnation from rights groups — Stonewall, Britain’s largest LGBTQ charity, said they “trivialise the very real violence committed against us.” Scottish police said Rowling’s comments were “not assessed to be criminal and no further action will be taken,” the Associated Press reported.Scotland’s leader, Humza Yousaf, told the BBC the newly created offenses “have a very high threshold for criminality.”“JK Rowling’s tweets may well be offensive, upsetting and insulting to trans people,” Yousaf said, “but it doesn’t mean that they meet a threshold of criminality of being threatening or abusive and intending to stir up hatred.”Outside Britain, Elon Musk and Joe Rogan were among the high-profile celebrities to critique the legislation. In an episode of his podcast last month, Rogan described the new law as “ridiculous” and incorrectly suggested that it empowered Scottish police to specifically target comedians.

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Active 18hrs ago

 @ISIDEWITH submitted…2mos2MO

Trump’s Unlikely Victory Among Arab Americans and Right-Wing Jews

It is an extraordinary new coalition. Along the way to his decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump drew at least some Arab American and Muslim voters who are outraged by the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza. He managed to do so without alienating the right-leaning American Jews who see Mr. Trump as Israel’s strongest champion.Even in an election marked by a reordering of the country’s traditional political teams, these strange bedfellows stand out. The two groups hold sharply divergent expectations for the president-elect. And both strongly pro-Israel Trump voters and some of Mr. Trump’s Arab American backers are skeptical that his ascent this week is the start of a durable cross-ideological, interfaith coalition.But in Dearborn, Mich., a majority-Arab city, Ms. Harris won just 36 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results, a roughly 34-percentage-point drop from Mr. Biden’s share of the 2020 vote in similar results released after that election. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate to the left of Ms. Harris, picked up 18 percent of the vote. But Mr. Trump’s support also jumped — to 42 percent of the vote from less than 30 percent four years ago, though turnout was lower.But in interviews throughout the campaign, Arab American and Muslim supporters said they were ready to take a chance on him anyway.Some were already aligned with the socially conservative views of the Republican Party. Many were nostalgic for the relative quiet of 2019.They also noted his efforts to campaign in Dearborn and the time spent in the area by his surrogates, especially Massad Boulos, a Lebanese American businessman and an in-law of Mr. Trump’s, and Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to Germany and acting intelligence chief.By contrast, they said, they saw Ms. Harris as inaccessible to the community.

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…1 day1D

Supreme Court Clears The Way For Trump Sentencing

Donald Trump will face sentencing over his New York “hush money” conviction on Friday, after the US Supreme Court declined to grant him a last-minute reprieve.The decision will force the president-elect to face public proceedings in the criminal case that he has fought strenuously to avoid. His lawyers had appealed to the high court on Wednesday to postpone the proceeding, claiming that allowing it to go ahead days before his inauguration would create a “constitutionally intolerable risk of disruption to national security” and interfere with his efforts to get his 34 felony convictions overturned.In a 5-4 decision handed down just hours before the sentencing was set to go ahead in a state court in lower Manhattan, a majority of the justices declined to do so, saying “the burden that sentencing will impose on the president-elect’s responsibilities is relatively insubstantial” especially as Trump was unlikely to face any prison time. They added that any issues with the evidence presented at trial — some of which Trump’s lawyers have claimed was inadmissible — “can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal”.Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberals on the bench in refusing to grant Trump’s appeal.Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he appreciated the Supreme Court’s time but vowed to continue fighting the case. “For the sake and sanctity of the Presidency, I will be appealing this case, and am confident that JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL,” he said.Lawyers representing Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Trump’s sentencing was repeatedly postponed while he mounted his third campaign for the White House and pursued various appeals against his conviction. Last week Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the “hush money” trial in New York earlier this year, finally set a firm date, in order to bring what he called “finality to this matter”.Trump will probably not face any punishment when he is sentenced, however, as the judge previously indicated he would not impose a fine or condemn Trump to prison time.

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…20hrs20H

Trump Gets No Jail Time for Felony

Donald Trump was not punished for his criminal conviction in the Manhattan hush money case, bringing a lackluster end to the legal saga that will make him the country’s first felon-turned-president.At a sentencing hearing on Friday, a New York judge declined to sentence the president-elect to prison time or impose fines after a jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts of business fraud in connection with a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in the final days of the 2016 presidential election.“This court has determined that the only lawful sentence that permits entry of judgment of conviction without encroachment on the highest office of the land is a sentence of unconditional discharge,” Justice Juan Merchan told Trump.While acknowledging the “extraordinary legal protections” Trump is set to enjoy as president, Merchan emphasized that “they do not reduce the seriousness of the crime or justify its commission in any way.”Friday’s sentencing, however inconsequential in terms of punishment, caps a remarkable chapter in Trump’s tangles with the justice system. At one point battling four simultaneous criminal indictments, he emerged with a single conviction last May that didn’t obstruct his path to reelection and will likely linger as little more than a stigma.Though Trump’s felony conviction allowed Justice Juan Merchan to send Trump to prison for up to four years or impose other penalties, the judge said in court papers prior to the sentencing that he wouldn’t do so, writing that incarceration was not “practicable” given Trump’s imminent return to the White House.Instead, Merchan imposed the sentence of “unconditional discharge” on Trump, which carries no punishment. The president-elect appeared virtually from Florida, his image presented via a video feed on large monitors in the Manhattan courtroom as the judge announced his decision. Prosecutors from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, as well as Bragg himself, attended in person.

▲  1915 replies1 agree