4 ms·
Free speech doesn't mean "anything goes even if illegal"
by bpicolo 10y ago
Free speech doesn't mean "anything goes even if illegal"
- krapp 10y agoTo me, it does. Free speech is an upper bound on human expression - anything less than absolute is something less than "free." I'm not advocating for this - sites should police certain illegal and immoral activities. Doing so is clearly in the benefit of society and the quality of any online community. But accepting this is subjugating free speech for the sake of cultural norms and legal necessity.
- veddox 10y agoThat is an extremely loose definition of freedom. Ever heard the dictum "One man's freedom ends where another's begins"? Or, as somebody once put it: "My freedom to swing my fist ends where your face begins." Liberty for all is only attainable when all restrict their individual liberty to accommodate others. If that isn't the foundation of your society, "homo homini lupus" is what you get.
- krapp 10y agoI prefer to see it as an idealistic definition, albeit one that most people wouldn't tolerate in practice. But as a philosophical point of reference, I think it's useful because it's absolute - other definitions of of free speech depend on a particular framework of law or cultural referents that not everyone agrees on.
- psyc 10y ago> "My freedom to swing my fist ends where your face begins." Ever heard it? How could we ever escape it? I've been reading this smug, patronizing sentence on the Internet for 20 years. I've come to believe that this formulation is so important to the people who say it, because they know they're exceptionally punchable.
- veddox 10y agoHm, you have honestly intrigued me. How is that a "smug, patronizing sentence"? Could you imagine any society worth living in that is not based on this rule? To me, respecting another person's freedom is the only way to ever get anywhere close to a society that offers "liberty and justice for all". Can you offer an alternative approach?
- psyc 10y agoI don't disagree. But it suggests an extremely low opinion of the intelligence of the audience to point it out. There's no need to point out to a civilized adult, especially professional, educated adults prevalent on a site like this, that freedom doesn't include violating others. And it's a strawman, because nobody is ever arguing that freedom includes violating others. What's usually being argued is whether a specific action should be considered a violation of others' rights, as opposed to those others being e.g. oversensitive, controlling, or intolerant.
- veddox 10y agoI was not addressing the audience in general, but the user whose comment I was referring too, specifically this statement: > anything less than absolute is something less than "free." Now maybe I misunderstood the poster, but that does sound pretty much like what I was talking about... If you felt patronized, my apologies, but my remark was not aimed at you.
- nilved 10y agoIt sort of does by definition, but nobody implements it that way.
- DanBC 10y agoVoat has rules against brigading other sites, which is not illegal.