Weekend tech reading: Facebook, Twitter banned from French media

So in France, I'm guessing... there is no freedom of speech.

Why stop there? I'm sure they still give out phone numbers on the air for people to call. This unfairly discriminates against telegraph operators, messenger pigeons, and smoke signal enthusiasts.

Quite a shock from France, no doubt about that. I thought the "west" were supposed to be setting the example for free speech?

Clearly not.

I have always felt that the Facebook and Twitter ban should be here in Australia but only for non-commercial stations that are not allowed to mention any commercial brand except if it is in the news or finance. But for any private or public company, that is completely absurd!


FFS…

The USA is one of the few countries that do have freedom of speech. Other supposed 'free' countries only have the illusion of free speech but most do not have a constitutional law declaring so.


The more you know…

Thats what they get for being so snooty.

Yea, but the West is supposed to be a "symbol of peace" for the whole world, this just shows that in France they are not any more free than in most Middle eastern countries.

Peace has NOTHING to do with free speech. The USA that has free speech has a homicide rate and death penalties (in certain states) that is akin to those very countries you allude to in your reply. So when push comes to shove, which would you prefer?

Banning FaceBook and Twitter on the news is NOT going to uproot any sense of peace what-so-ever…

Welcome to the Islamic republic of France xD

So, basically what you're saying is this, if the Nazis had been allowed to stay longer, France would have had a much more open society?

calm down kid lol it was a typo, i meant symbol of free speech geez lol

Ignore the kid part i was just in a bad mood, but yea it was a typo

We don't lol. We don't forgive. We don't forget xD

Freedom of speech in America is only tolerated if it conforms to what a person is told how to think through mainstream sources.

You have no idea what lack of free speech is, and hopefully you never will. The only thing you can't say is that you're going to harm someone. If that is lack of free speech, then you've got issues.

@gwailo247 I'm talking about speech that are against government policies, environmental issues, foreign policy. Here's an idea, go and protest the Federal Reserve and say that you are against their policies. You will find out very fast that your right to free speech is just an illusion. If you thought that I was talking about freedom to speech in terms of harming others, you're the one with issues.

So what you're telling me is that if I send a letter to the Federal Reserve protesting their policies, the FBI is going to show up at my doorstep?

What exactly are you not allowed to say in America? There are millions of blogs out there for the express purpose of criticizing the government. White supremacists have web sites that advocate race wars.

You have complete free speech. You can say anything you want. It really pisses me off to hear Americans complaining they have no free speech when a good chunk of the world wishes they had what we have.

But you seem to have more knowledge about this. Please give me some concrete examples of people's free speech being curtailed in the US, I'm really curious.

Well, first I would like to mention that more than a few posts have been pulled down at TS. So censorship does exist, both here and elsewhere. But presumably, it's for the greater good.

I would like to mention that while white supremacy blogs do exist, they are under the close scrutiny of several federal law enforcement agencies. of this I'm fairly certain. Probably this could be summarized as, "say whatever you like, but we're going to listen to everything you say".

All of that notwithstanding, this would make a good read for someone interested in the civil liberties discussion: http://www.amazon.com/Shouting-Fire-Civil-Liberties-Turbulent/dp/0316181412

Interesting weekend reading here. French obsession with rules and regulations as a cover for their resentment of Anglo-Saxon cultural symbols. I hope the French government and all the members of its bureaucracy haven't forgotten that their "Anglo-Saxon" allies were the ones who liberated their sorry lot from Nazi occupation and who will probably be the first ones to come to their aid the next time an invading army comes marching thru their "impregnable" Maginot line.