What other moral standard is there besides laws? Is it that the laws of non-tyrannical countries should override those of tyrannical ones? How do you decide tyrannicalness? Or should internet companies decide what should be allowed in other countries despite those countries and their populations disagreeing? Great firewalls are the solution when nobody can agree with each other across borders but that's a pity.
> Or should internet companies decide what should be allowed in other countries despite those countries and their populations disagreeing?
Internet companies (like all companies) can and indeed must choose how they behave. "We follow all laws inside each country" is one such choice, but it's not a special privileged choice that absolves the company of criticism for its behavior.
That's just a snapshot of popular western liberal morals of the time. They also took a pretty good stab at it in the Quran and Hadiths. Both moral standards are still very popular yet they contradict each other. Is Islam wrong or is western liberalism wrong? Should a country with one type of society coerce the other into compliance?
I'm afraid I don't have the answer as to the right balance of belief, force, and consensus it takes for a single society to get along, let alone multiple ones with each other. When I've got that sorted, I'll drop a tweet or something.
> What other moral standard is there besides laws?
To be honest, you could restrict your compliance to only the laws of the country you're based in. American companies follow American laws, etc. Then move your company to where you most agree with the laws.
Perhaps do not have an office in that country. As for employees, that is their concern. Ideally the country is not willing to punish the family members of employees of companies that do not follow its draconian laws, but we know some do, such as China. Regardless, that is not a reason to capitulate; if you do so, you are effectively enabling state-backed extortion.
The uncorrupted law would be a good start.
I'd bet 3:1 that what Erdogan is doing is illegal according to Turkish law as interpreted by a neutral and reasonable judge, but he's doing it anyway. Most countries' laws are much more agreeable than what the government actually does.
It's worse because it hands repressive authorities a much more powerful tool of mind control than what they had before. More powerful because targeted, hard to detect and even harder to prove.
It is when you get a letter from the government telling you to do that on whatever pretext which doesn't matter at that point because you either comply with the government requests, or have to leave the country otherwise they risk banning, fines or imprisonment/asset seizing.
Social media companies aren't gonna take a foreign government to court to arbitrate requests in order to protect a citizen since the law is always on the side of the government as they're the ones making it and enforcing it.
The EU and EU members also tell X to ban certain political topics they dislike under various pretexts, and X always complies without question. Like I was sending a friend from Germany a clip on X of Ukrainian recruiters kidnapping a guy off the street and throwing him in a van but surprise, my friend couldn't watch it as the video was banned in Germany but not in my EU country. What German law was it breaking? I don't know, it didn't say, but it doesn't really matter since any government makes up the speech rules as they go and uses selective enforcement on the basis of "for my friends anything, for my enemies the law" so every government practices its own version of domestic censorship in order to maintain its power.
What other moral standard is there besides laws? Is it that the laws of non-tyrannical countries should override those of tyrannical ones? How do you decide tyrannicalness? Or should internet companies decide what should be allowed in other countries despite those countries and their populations disagreeing? Great firewalls are the solution when nobody can agree with each other across borders but that's a pity.
> Or should internet companies decide what should be allowed in other countries despite those countries and their populations disagreeing?
Internet companies (like all companies) can and indeed must choose how they behave. "We follow all laws inside each country" is one such choice, but it's not a special privileged choice that absolves the company of criticism for its behavior.
> What other moral standard is there besides laws?
They took a pretty good stab at it in 1948: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
That's just a snapshot of popular western liberal morals of the time. They also took a pretty good stab at it in the Quran and Hadiths. Both moral standards are still very popular yet they contradict each other. Is Islam wrong or is western liberalism wrong? Should a country with one type of society coerce the other into compliance?
I'm afraid I don't have the answer as to the right balance of belief, force, and consensus it takes for a single society to get along, let alone multiple ones with each other. When I've got that sorted, I'll drop a tweet or something.
;)
> What other moral standard is there besides laws?
To be honest, you could restrict your compliance to only the laws of the country you're based in. American companies follow American laws, etc. Then move your company to where you most agree with the laws.
And when your company has an office in that country, or prominent employees have family in that country?
Perhaps do not have an office in that country. As for employees, that is their concern. Ideally the country is not willing to punish the family members of employees of companies that do not follow its draconian laws, but we know some do, such as China. Regardless, that is not a reason to capitulate; if you do so, you are effectively enabling state-backed extortion.
The uncorrupted law would be a good start. I'd bet 3:1 that what Erdogan is doing is illegal according to Turkish law as interpreted by a neutral and reasonable judge, but he's doing it anyway. Most countries' laws are much more agreeable than what the government actually does.
But then X just gets banned in said country
This is acceptable.
Now that country goes from having limited access to having none at all - seems worse.
If you don't like X (understandable) then it's much better to not visit it voluntarily than by a top-down block
It's worse because it hands repressive authorities a much more powerful tool of mind control than what they had before. More powerful because targeted, hard to detect and even harder to prove.
For the world and Turkey, yes, for X, no.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_A...
shadow ban is not part of that
It is when you get a letter from the government telling you to do that on whatever pretext which doesn't matter at that point because you either comply with the government requests, or have to leave the country otherwise they risk banning, fines or imprisonment/asset seizing.
Social media companies aren't gonna take a foreign government to court to arbitrate requests in order to protect a citizen since the law is always on the side of the government as they're the ones making it and enforcing it.
The EU and EU members also tell X to ban certain political topics they dislike under various pretexts, and X always complies without question. Like I was sending a friend from Germany a clip on X of Ukrainian recruiters kidnapping a guy off the street and throwing him in a van but surprise, my friend couldn't watch it as the video was banned in Germany but not in my EU country. What German law was it breaking? I don't know, it didn't say, but it doesn't really matter since any government makes up the speech rules as they go and uses selective enforcement on the basis of "for my friends anything, for my enemies the law" so every government practices its own version of domestic censorship in order to maintain its power.
Turkey has a law requiring social networks to shadowban opposition-party candidates?
this answers your question: https://x.com/GlobalAffairs/status/1920426409358455081
Not officially but they definitely requested twitter to shadowban the opposition candidate