Well, the EFF can get in the bin then. A pity.
@craiggrannell I swear there is something deeply broken in the brains of many tech liberals that prevents them from seeing Zuck, Andreesen, etc for who they really are. C.f. Gruber's inane take on this.
@angry_drunk I might have mentioned this before, but I recently saw an American who moved to France talking about a fundamental disconnect in terms of what people think of as freedom. Often in the US, it’s “freedom to”, whereas the EU prizes “freedom from”. That feels very apt in the tech space.
@craiggrannell Yup. I've seen that distinction made before; and I think it's spot on.
@craiggrannell @angry_drunk That's bizzarre - as I Brit who's lived in the US, I very much see it the other way around. 'freedom to' is a socialist concept of enabling everyone, while 'freedom from' is the libertarian ethos of freedom from large government.
@Rhube @craiggrannell @angry_drunk totally agree that «freedom to» is more prevalent in Europe, but I might be wrong
@craiggrannell @angry_drunk Just speaking as a philosopher who used to teach these concepts at university - these are basic ways we introduce left and right-wing concepts of freedom. No single country is entirely described in either way, but freedom-to is socialist (which is more of a dirty word in America than Europe) and freedom-from is very much what American libertarians are all about.
@Rhube All the big freedoms in the US:
- freedom to bear arms
- freedom to speak your mind
- freedom to exploit workers
Whereas in Europe it's
- freedom from hate speech
- freedom from guns
- freedom from worker exploitation
@Rhube i.e. this doesn't describe state interference in personal freedoms, but the way personal freedom is considered, in the egotistical US fashion (I want to X) or the European fashion (nobody should be subject to X).
@juliank @Rhube @craiggrannell Exactly. When a U.S. Conservative/Libertarian says freedom *from* ‘interference’, what they really mean is freedom to discriminate, use hate speech, fuck kids, defraud their customers, pollute, shoot ‘undesirables’, etc.
@juliank @Rhube @craiggrannell I mean, you can express the concepts using either form of language; which is why said conservatives/libertarians are able to convince people that they're not just raging assholes. Look at the Meta shit this week. “Freedom *from* censorship" = “Freedom *to* spew hate speech”.
@craiggrannell @angry_drunk Absolutely this. People from the UK and the US seem horrified at the whole "If you make too much loud noise after 10pm your neighbours can call the police!" thing in the German-speaking world, for instance, but when you look at it the other way round the law provides people with a right to a decent night's sleep and the right not to have to have other peoples' thumping beats imposed on them until they see fit to switch them off.
When you consider that in the UK and (much of) the US there is almost nothing you can do about neighbour noise other than going around to ask them to turn it down and maybe being told to fuck off or even threatened with violence (this has happened to me), it's clear that this is a "freedom from" issue that trumps the other party's "freedom to".
A nice observation. Had a similar regarding economic pressure. It is good to see other people coming to similar conclusions but from their perspective.
PS: It may be more "freedom of".
Freedom of choice. Choose one of the given options including(!) all of its consequences.
Which also includes not forcing new options. And not being forced to choose a certain option.
That leads to freedom of choice, if we want to use stuff from EFF or not.