Monthly Archives: February 2017

Forbes

How Twitter's New Censorship Tools Are The Pandora's Box Moving Us Towards The End Of Free Speech Forbes Earlier this morning social media and the tech press lit up with reports of users across Twitter receiving half day suspensions en masse as the platform abruptly rolled out its decade-overdue hate speech filter to its platform. The company has refused ... Twitter's time out: Site's new tool BLOCKS users for 12 hours for abusive behaviourDaily Mail all 30 news articles »

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How Twitter's New Censorship Tools Are The Pandora's Box Moving Us Towards The End Of Free Speech - Forbes

The director of a major new war museum in Poland has vowed to fight against government censorship and try to bring his collection to the public.

The Museum of the Second World War in Gdask is almost ready to open after eight years of preparation.

But a bitter legal battle has delayed its launch: the government has sought to gain control over the institution, which the ruling Law and Justice party fears will present an insufficiently nationalist view of Polands wartime experience.

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Writing in the design journal Disegno, the museums director Pawe Machcewicz said a final decision is due on the dispute in March or April. He said that before that, we will feverishly attempt to use this time to open the museum to the public before it is too late.

Machcewicz and his team want the museum to focuson the everyday experiences of millions of ordinary people, with a permanent collection centered around approximately 2,000 historical artefacts, many of them family relics donated by individuals.

But the government, he said, condemned our museum as too pacifistic, humanistic, universal, multinational, and not sufficiently Polish.

While the museum aims to make the Polish history a part of the European and world history, the government wants it instead to focus on presenting exclusively Polish sufferings and heroism, Machcewicz said.

In order to get its way, the government wants to merge the museum with an as-yet unbuilt institution, the Museum of Westerplatte and the War of 1939, a plan first announced in 2015.

This move would allow the government to appoint a new director, and gain influence over the tone and direction of the new, merged museum. But the museum has challenged the plan in the courts. Machcewicz said that the court had suspended progress on the merger. One ruling in the Supreme Administrative Court in January found in favor of the government. But the final decision is expected in the coming weeks.

Plans for the Museum of the Second World War were first announced in 2007 under the government of former Prime Minister Donald Tusk, now the President of the European Council.

The Second World War was different from all earlier conflicts because it touched civilian populations the most, Machcewicz said, As we developed the main concepts for the museum, we decided that the human dimension of the conflict is the most important to us.

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Polish Second World War Museum Director Vows to Fight ... - Newsweek

The aftermath of Donald J. Trumps stunning victory over Hillary Clinton brought with it much handwringing in news media circles and on social media platforms about the dangers of fake news. Some blame fake news for causing Clintons defeat, with the erstwhile candidate herself calling it an epidemic.

But theres a major paradox when it comes to peoples beliefs about fake news.

Specifically, many of us tend to believe that we can spot fake news we wont be fooled by it but others out there, who are more naive and less media savvy than us, surely will be duped.

For instance, a December 2016 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that most Americans

Yet despite the fact that some 84% of those surveyed were either very or somewhat confident in their own ability to spot fake news, 64% of the same people say fabricated news stories cause a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current issues and events. This sense is shared widely across incomes, education levels, partisan affiliations and most other demographic characteristics.

In other words, Im no fool, but others are!

If thats truly the case, then why are we so worried about fake news? A few high-profile incidents like the Pizzagate shooting perhaps have caused undue panic.

The notion that Im no fool, but others are is, in fact, consistent with what communication scholars call the third-person effect. As W. Phillips Davison, the theorys founder, summed it up in a 1983 article

The danger here, as I explain in a new article published in the Wake Forest Law Review Online, is that individuals who exhibit signs of the third-person effect are also prone to call for censorship of media content in the name of protecting others. This, of course, raises serious First Amendment concerns regarding free speech. In other words, the third-person effect has both a perceptual aspect (what we believe about the influence of messages) and a behavioral component (censorship).

For example, a scholarly study on support for censorship of rap music found that those surveyed

Ultimately, consideration of the third-person effect might help to tamp down some of the rampant frets and fears about fake news. And if it does something more than that, as I argue in my article, the third-person effect should give lawmakers serious reason to take a thoughtful and deliberate pause before proposing any bills aimed at the censorship of fake news.

Remedies of educating people about how to spot fake news and publicly shaming fake news websites are far better alternatives than governmental censorship.

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Fake News, Censorship & the Third-Person Effect: You Can't Fool Me, Only Others! - Huffington Post

Jonathan Nez | Published 02/15/17 11:38pm

THE ISSUE: The UC Berkeley College Republicans invited Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on campus. Protests erupted in response, leading to the event being canceled. The violent protest came from a non-student organization, but the event inspired substantial debate over free speech on campus. You can read the other sidehere.

Our disagreement is really about what free speech is and what its limits are. On one side, you have an alt-right figure whose views are pretty extreme. He has called feminism toxic, attacked transgenderism and labeled campus rape culture a myth. His views should never be normalized because they enable hate. On the other side, you have a liberal university culture. To these students, Milos words are emotionally traumatic, and by extension, they serve as an assault on their person in a way that warrantsbanishment.

While I am aware of my privilege and empathetic to those Milo belittles, violence is still not justified. No one has the right to live free of content that offends them. The victim card is not one that supersedes someone elses right to speak. What you do have a right to do is use your freedom of speech to fight back. You can organize a peaceful protest, engage in discourse with those you disagree with and publicly condemn organizations that support speakers whose beliefs you find repugnant. Attacking others and causing over $100,000 in property damage are not included in those rights.

People often conflate my support of Milos right to speak with support for his views; this is not the case. I disagree with all of his views, with the exception of those on free speech. Taking away freedoms sets a dangerous precedent that can be hard to undo. When you allow people to believe opposing views violate a nonexistent right, they will believe that censorship is not only justified, but also the only solution to the disagreement. Creating such an unhealthy culture of discourse with suppression is precariously fascist, which is why I believe we should err on the side of freedom. Milo sucks, but censorship is worse.

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Viewpoints: Err on the side of freedom, rather than censorship - The Daily Tar Heel

spikeds annual Free Speech University Rankings (FSUR) was released last week, to the usual cacophony of irritation from those on the receiving end of a Red ranking. Chief among the perpetually ticked-off, of course, was president of the National Union of Students (NUS), Malia Bouattia.

The NUS always frets about the FSUR, because it collects in one place all the bans and regulations students unions inflict upon their members. Not only did Bouattia pen a ripsote to the FSUR in the Huffington Post the day before its 2017 findings came out, she also attempted another take-down in the Independent a few days later.

In the latter, Bouattia claims that she can demonstrate expertly that the project is flawed, suggesting that what spiked doesnt understand is that students want to extend, not suppress, free expression. Free speech is universal, she says, but it is not limitless. To extend it to everyone means sacrificing some of our rights, preventing those who would suppress some peoples free expression from having theirs. In other words, you need to ban your way to free speech.

This is pretty mind-bending logic, even if it is by now sadly familiar. It speaks volumes that the NUS and universities feel it is their right to decide who should and shouldnt have their universal rights suspended. Whats more, the NUSs ban on those it deems to be fascist under its longstanding No Platform policy is really an expression of contempt for students, not far-right speakers.

What the NUS doesnt understand is that allowing your opponents the right to speak doesnt render you mute. One person speaking doesnt prevent the other from answering. This is what is so important about free speech. Believing in free speech means trusting people to defeat backward ideas in open debate. The NUS simply doesnt think students are up to it.

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Campus censorship is a big deal - Spiked

Wrestling Rumors

Impact Is Being Forced Into Some Strange Censorship Tonight Wrestling Rumors Normally when you hear censorship, you think violence or sexual content. Maybe some profanity, or a if we're in a dystopia, a restraint against political opinions. You don't generally expect an entire person to be censored. But that's exactly what's ... and more »

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Impact Is Being Forced Into Some Strange Censorship Tonight - Wrestling Rumors