Tag Archives: free speech

But It’ll Help

Posted on by
Reply

Jason Riley says banning TikTok won’t solve data security problems.

TikTok is hardly the only social-media platform that offers heaping platefuls of misinformation and political propaganda. It isn’t even the only app owned by a Chinese company that gathers extensive data on American users. WeChat, the messaging app developed by the Chinese tech firm Tencent, is another. ….
Another problem with banning TikTok might be that it will do little if anything to address data-security concerns. Foreign and domestic tech companies capture mountains of user information, which enable them to target advertising. TikTok is far from the worst offender. A 2022 Consumer Reports study noted that Google and Meta collect much more data than TikTok.

Congratulations to Riley: he’s successfully identified how widespread and hoary in age that failure is.

Riley also is too narrowly focused. No one move will, by itself, solve data security problems. That, though, does not at all mean that no one move should be made; it just puts a premium on taking additional steps, ideally in concert with each other, but at least take them.

In the end, too, our government wouldn’t be banning TikTok: the PRC government, through TikTok‘s owner ByteDance, would be the one banning TikTok in the US. The PRC’s choice is clear: allow TikTok to continue operating in the US by selling it to a non-PRC-domiciled business or, by refusing, ban the app.

Nor are there any real free-speech concerns with a ban of TikTok. There are a plethora of other messaging and marketing venues. No one’s speech would be limited in any way; only a single tool, well used by an enemy nation for espionage against us, would be limited.

Riley concluded with this:

The reality is that nothing TikTok does is unique to TikTok, and China doesn’t need the app to access our data. If Congress wants to do something about digital privacy, it will have to do better than this.

Absolutely. But doing better requires, of necessity, first starting to do something.

Free Speech in New Jersey

Posted on by
Reply

It’s not allowed, at least in one township, especially if it’s centered on our flag or our Constitution.

This Progressive-Democratic Party-run Township of Edison, NJ, enacted an ordinance banning the use of that symbol of our nation and that governing blueprint for our nation while speaking before the township’s governing council. When a resident of the township, a citizen of the State and of these United States, did so anyway, Council President Nishith Patel had security eject the citizen from the meeting.

This is all too typical of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s attitude toward our core freedom.

More Free Speech Leftist-Style

Posted on by
Reply

As if we don’t need another example of Leftist censorship version of free speech, Ezra Klein, of the text [of our Constitution] is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago infamy, provides us with another.

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein slammed Democrats over their stubborn denials that US cities are plagued with rising crime, out-of-control migration, and skyrocketing prices….

To this point, Klein is right to decry the Progressive-Democratic Party’s foolishness.

As reported by the New York Post (the article is behind a paywall, but the tabloid’s subscription cost isn’t worth the candle), though, Klein couldn’t stop there, and he expressed a core tenet of Party:

And this idea that “The economy is actually good,” or “Crime is actually down, this is all just Fox News,” shut the f–k up with that[.]

Because speech of which Klein personally disapproves—even if he’s correct in its thrust—cannot be allowed. Free speech is only what he, or his Leftist cronies, say it is. It’s certainly not what that old-young Constitution of ours says it is. Of course, I have it on similarly good authority that [our Constitution] has no binding power on anything, anyway, so there’s that.

Should Folks Stand for the National Anthem?

Posted on by
Reply

Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris was asked that question, and she gave an answer that, at first blush (at least in this edited clip) seems a non sequitur. It was, but it needn’t have been had Harris actually understood the question and the significance and importance of our national anthem and of standing for it whenever it’s played. Her answer:

I think that one of the beautiful things about our country is that we were founded on certain principles that we articulated in 1776, that we are all to be treated as equals; we articulated those principles in our constitution. And part of what we decided that makes a fair and just and noble society is, in a democracy, a true democracy, is freedom of religion, freedom—right—to association, freedom to organize—first amendment. So, that is part of who we are as a country, and I will defend it to the core, which is that we give people certain choices in our country.

Her words are muddled, but in context, I think are substantially correct (leaving aside that we’re not a true democracy, but a republican democracy, but that’s a distinction for another time), but her problem—the Left’s problem, our problem, our nation’s free speech problem—is that Harris doesn’t understand why her muddled words are correct. That context of her lack of understanding makes her words, counterintuitively to be sure, wrong.

Her words themselves are consistent with accuracy for two reasons. The first is where she didn’t directly answer the question. Yes, I answer for her, folks should stand, and face our flag or face in its direction, hats off, hand over heart, or salute if in uniform, for our national anthem. Doing so shows respect for the symbol of our nation, respect for our nation itself, respect for all of those who’ve fought under our flag in defense of our nation, and especially for those who have been killed or maimed in that defense.

That’s what makes possible the intent of Harris’ fuddled words: not standing cannot be a protest of anything if standing is not a requirement, of respect if not of law. Absent that requirement, there is no counter; there is nothing to protest.

Free Speech German Style

Posted on by
Reply

A Gab user stands criminally accused of…free speech…in Germany. Gab, so far, is standing tall and refusing Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office demand that the social media outlet dox the user so s/he can be hauled before a German court to answer for his “crime.” The user, it seems, called the Leader of Alliance 90/The Greens, Ricarda Lang, fat.

This is from German Criminal Code, Section 186:

disseminat[ing] a fact about another person which is suited to degrading that person or negatively affecting public opinion about that person, unless this fact can be proved to be true [is a crime]….

Here is Lang, in all her bountifully curvaceous glory:

That’s fatter than fat, it seems to me, and her image provides ample proof of the Gab user’s characterization. But telling the truth, even when the truth is proved, seems to be illegal in Germany.

While we’re on the subject of free speech, here’s Section 188:

If…insult (section 185) is committed publicly, in a meeting or by disseminating content (section 11 (3)) against a person involved in the political life of the nation on account of the position that person holds in public life and if the offence is suited to making that person’s public activities substantially more difficult

Never mind that that’s the whole point of public insults against a political personage—especially if the insult turns out to be accurate and not merely contemptuous (which would be legal in any nation whose politicos are not terrified of their own constituents).

But wait—Section 192 the German attitude toward proof that Section 185 otherwise says would exonerate the person.

Proof of the truth of the asserted or disseminated fact does not preclude punishment in accordance with section 185 if the insult results from the form of the assertion or dissemination or the circumstances under which it was made.

Here’s my “form of the assertion or dissemination:” my echo of the Gab user’s characterization of Lang’s physique, repeated from above:

How far Germany has fallen.