Category: Free Speech

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There ain’t no such thing as a Russiagate

At the time of the events, Linkedin and the general media were flooded with comments on what was only a hypothesis (Russia’s involvement in conditioning the outcome of the American elections), with the plethora of implications on armies of trolls remotely controlled ? to manipulate consciences etc. etc.. It was a fake, but the damage caused by that news is more than real.

I refer, in particular, to the embarrassing institutional declarations on the gravity of a non-existent fact, not at all mitigated by the inevitable “if confirmed, the news would be serious”.

Fortunately, international diplomacy is still sufficiently keen to avoid the consequences of the “social media frenzy” that has also infected the institutions and that pushes its representatives to speak too quickly. Continue reading “There ain’t no such thing as a Russiagate”

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“Problematic” or “inappropriate” content: a Rose by Other Name

Self and pre-emptive censorship against non-illegal contents. This is the “other name” of the politically correct wording chosen by Facebook and Instagram to support their content removal policies.

Mind, as private companies Facebook and Instagram have the right to do whatever they want with their own services. And if they decide that perfectly legal contents have not to be accepted that’s absolutely fine.

One would expect, though, that they would have called the Rose with its own name: Censorship.

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Kevin Spacey’s Replacement as Paul Getty is the Sign of the Big Brother

I don’t enter into the merit of the tantamount hypocrisy surrounding Kevin Spacey’s fall from the Hollywood’s sky to the boiling Inferno of the media cauldron. I’m rather interested in the decision to re-take with another actor all the scenes of the movie where Mr. Spacey act as Paul Getty ? that looks like an Orwell’s Big Brother job. Continue reading “Kevin Spacey’s Replacement as Paul Getty is the Sign of the Big Brother”

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The ECHR to bash the online right to be forgotten

On Oct. 19 the European Court of Human Rights issued the decision of the case 71233/13 – Fuchsmann vs Germany where the Court held that:

No violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The case concerned the German courts’ rejection of the request by an internationally active entrepreneur for an injunction against ? certain statements about him in an article published in the online edition of the New York Times.

The Court found that the German courts had struck a reasonable balance between the applicant’s right to respect for his private life under Article 8 and the newspaper’s right to freedom of expression guaranteed by Article 10 of the Convention. They had taken into consideration, in particular: that there had been a public interest in the alleged involvement of the applicant, a German businessman, in embezzlement and organised crime; that there had been a sufficient factual basis for the statements at issue; and that the article – which concerned mainly his professional life – was free from polemic statements and insinuations.

Continue reading “The ECHR to bash the online right to be forgotten”