This site had some rather dire conversation about freedom of speech and what not else over the last year and change so let´s bring in an expert opinion for once. Reporters Without Borders puts together a ranking every year and here is the new 2020 World Press Freedom Index: https://rsf.org/en/ranking

There are 5 positions aside from getting a ranking. They go like this: Good, satisfactory, problematic, difficult and very serious.
Norway is the top position and North Korea is in the last place at rank 180. The US (this is an American site) is towards the very end of position 2 "good" at rank 45 and Japan gets position 3 "problematic" at rank 66.
Have fun with the map, 2018 and 2019 results can also be selected, and find out how many free peaches your country got. There is even a page on Covid-19 reporting under analysis.

Rank 11? Not bad, "good" even. I can live with that.

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Countries with "hate speech" laws and known censorship practices have "freer speech" than countries without "hate speech" laws and said censorship practices? I'm calling bull on that one. Also, deciding to look up how this site determines which country is where: https://archive.vn/YD4rB

Scores are calculated on the basis of the responses of the experts selected by RSF combined with the data on abuses and violence against journalists during the period evaluated.

So, this isn't about free speech at all, this is about journalists being able to keep their job and their funds rolling on it. And, as I learned watch Lee Kuan Yew, journalists are nothing more than lying hacks who will cry about censorship when absolutely none is taking place.

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Thanks for sharing. The online discourse about 'free speech' is often pretty laughable and revolves around 'freedom to give my opinion without people treating me like a douchebag' rather than 'in x country, people are jailed for reporting facts'. As doctors mysteriously fall out of windows in Russia, an American somewhere is complaining about how another American got angry at them for saying they hate gay people.

There's a difference between "Being a dick" and saying something people don't like to hear. You're example of someone proclaiming "I hate fags", is he doing just that (In other words, he's the former) or is he going, "I don't like homosexual because of X, Y, and Z" (In which case he's the latter). A lot of the online discourse that I've seen over the past few years has been people being banned for latter case while everyone is trying to claim that it was the former. That's on top of the fact that, yeah, people can be a lot more subtle and civil in the way they post information, however how much of that can also be said of the people who don't like the information being posted because it runs counter to everything they want to believe? Whatever happened to the phrase "I disagree with what you said, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it"?

Then, that's on top of the fact that you're being hypocritical in your own post. You're saying that people should be treated as scoundrels for making statements that people don't like to hear, but THEN going on about how we need to worry about people treated as scoundrels for making statements that people don't like to hear (But, only for those in other countries, not your own). Whether it's being banned on Twitter, imprisoned in the U.K., missing in China, or dead in Sweden, it's the same thing. People are being treated as scoundrels for making statements that people don't like to hear, the only difference is the consequences being delivered.

Now, if you disagree with what someone is saying, you can either (A) post about your disagreement and bring up points about why you disagree or (B) just not give the person any attention. Outside of that, the only people that blatantly need to be told to piss off are solicitors.

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Really interesting .
I was rather surprised how Israel was at 88 thought it would be way lower
I suppose it was to be expected how some countries have a higher/lower ranking depending on their affiliation with the US.

The poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko is the tip of the iceberg:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko
Look up what happens every time Putin is up for reaction. You don´t want to be his political enemy!

I wouldn´t face any danger if I stayed in my birth country, Nr 149/180, due to being a generic worker bee, but my mother randomly meeting my shitty stepfather at a bank who was on vacation in the 90s is how I ended up in a country that is placed at Nr 11. The difference between Germany: Federal parliamentary republic and Russia: Federal dominant-party semi-presidential constitutional republic. Both are "feral republics", like in the Star Wars prequels 😀, but it´s the "dominant-party" word vomit that buries Russia. Putin is also ex-KGB and...

Dark Mother Anita complaining about how videogames portray women isn´t censorship. The proto-alt right compelling about her isn´t censorship either as you as we aren´t talking about criminal behavior, fabricating "alternate facts" and so on. Both are protected free speech.
That´s why both viewpoints have such public platforms. Litvinenko being killed with Plutonium is censorship. Governmental censorship, aka the important kind of censorship! The only kind that truly matters in the end.

@Joese Israel´s profile if you are curious: https://rsf.org/en/israel
They started at Nr 112 in 2013! Uff.
Here is Japan, they have been declining in rank under Abe (obviously): https://rsf.org/en/japan
Change the country you want to read up on in the URL and tada. Or search for the country you want to see analyzed and then click on its tag. Also tada.

The funny thing about Germany, always in the mid-10s, isn´t us going up in raking. It´s others going down a bit. Our problems are far-right groups becoming somewhat popular after the ongoing refugee crises of the 2010s (not the voices you want to her during Covid-19!) and state surveillance but we have it made when it comes to state surveillance when looked at from a global view. Reporters were attacked twice during anti-lockdown protest in like one week so C-19 ain´t kind to reporters. Next year´s statistics (hello China) will be a sight to behold due to the virus:
https://rsf.org/en/news/coronavirus-information-heroes-china-silenced

The US elections will be another wild ride. Here is ´Merica: https://rsf.org/en/united-states
(America having free elections in a post-Florida recount of 2000 world, now that´s a real joke.)
Wiki leaks and co did a real number on it´s standing as shows if you click on "ranking since 2013". Snowden´s leak alone lead to a tumble from Nr 32 in 2013, to Nr 46 and Nr 49 in 2014/15.
Him and Chelsea Manning are absolute heroes! Insert gif of Spider-man being carried [here].

Edit: Why would anyone listen to a random biographer of Voltaire? It´s not even him who said those words. They weren´t even born in the same century. How embarrassing.gif
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

But like I say above. Free speech isn´t the issue the alt-right pretends to "fight for" here. It´s that some people want to have more equal speech than others while silencing their opponents (cons that hosted Queen Anita got bomb thread warnings while she and others got rape and death threats) and wanting to protect themselves from any consequences. Freedom of speech isn´t freedom of consequences. It never was.
But that´s not the problem Litvinenko and other reports or whistleblowers face, now is it. Being murdered, exiled, or imprisoned for exposing governmental corruption is an actual issue. Reporters not being able to report is how you end up with a dictatorship, a one-party system or the plot of 1984:

“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

Here is who Deep Throat from the Watergate scandal is btw:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Throat_(Watergate)
He was an FBI Associate Director! That truly was another world entirely. I still can´t believe that it was MGS 1 that introduced me to Watergate...
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Quote from residentgrigo

But like I say above. Free speech isn´t the issue the alt-right pretends to fight for here. It´s that some people want to have more equal speech than others and want to protect themselves from the consequences. Freedom of speech isn´t freedom of consequences. It never was. But that´s not the problem Litvinenko and other reports or whistleblowers face, now is it. Being murdered, exiled, or imprisoned for exploring governmental corruption is an actual issue.

Except, it is the same exact thing. The only difference is the consequences where all you get is unpersonned by losing access to all media profiles (Which IS censorship by the way, but you don't care about that because it's not the government doing it) in the U.S.; meanwhile you get imprisoned, tortured, and killed in other countries. Also, as an example of censorship, why are you bringing up something that happened over a decade ago when, just last year (And continuing into this year), you have protests tearing apart Hong Kong over a (Now reascended) extradition bill that would have stepped on people's freedoms in THAT territory?

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This one deserves its own post and not just an edit:
Here is why Fox News can make up (almost) whatever they want if you are curious:
Suing China, President Trump, and Fox News Over The Coronavirus (LegalEagle’s Real Law Review) - Min 15:00: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAPrImrYp2M

"Erroneous statements" during the process of reporting are protected by free speech and the 1964 case that is brought up. That´s the train Fox News will ride till the wheels come off and they will enjoy legal protection as long as criminal behavior can´t be proven.

It´s like YouTube´s Phoenix Wright says. Most misleading or false speech needs to be fought with "more accurate speech". There is a reason why Trump´s fake news footage comes right after that statement. Trump is quoting Hitler on basically a daily basis at this point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_press

The "Lügenpresse" is right out the Nazi playbook but Hitler didn´t invent it. He was the great regurgitator even when it came to fighting the press with that very phrase. Dito for Bashar al-Assad, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. Different name, same problem. The enemy of the press is the enemy of the people. Simple as that.
Discredit the media and people will believe anything you tell them.

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Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

Quote from residentgrigo

Trump is quoting Hitler on basically a daily basis

I thought Trump was quoting Obama, Bane, and Bill Clinton. So which is it?

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don't be a good reporter in any country. be anonymous. sorry if you trusted the 2020 WPFI and end up dead.

transaction

your forum rules suck. like all forums.