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How do you stop both hate speech and censorship? If you stop hate speech you are effectively censoring ideas. And then you have the challenge of who defines “h

How do you stop both hate speech and censorship? If you stop hate speech you are effectively censoring ideas. And then you have the challenge of who defines “hate speech”. If you prevent censorship, you’re allowing hate speech because there will always be people who abuse a free speech environment.

albertgoeswoof 8y ago
This is a false dichtomy. We should spend time building an inclusive, diverse and fair society that reduces the amount of hate speech overall and the net impact of hate speech. Then you don't need to censor anyway.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  Sure, but this article is about technical solutions, not social solutions, and technical solutions face this trade-off.
  - Sir_Substance 8y ago
    This thing that you see as a problem that desperately needs a solution, I do not see as a problem. So I don't see the trade-off. There are lots of incredibly racist people out there using email. Email does not need a solution to prevent racist people using it.
- otabdeveloper1 8y ago
  Totally. If all the good people come together a kill all the bad people (maybe put them in special places and call them 'camps', need to think a bit more about this), then the world will be a paradise without crime. (Like murder, for example.)
- naasking 8y ago
  > We should spend time building an inclusive, diverse and fair society that reduces the amount of hate speech overall and the net impact of hate speech. Then you don't need to censor anyway. So right, society would just be perfect if we could all think the same way! Terry Pratchett said it best, "Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions."
- paradite 8y ago
  > We should spend time building an inclusive, diverse and fair society that reduces the amount of hate speech overall and the net impact of hate speech. Then you don't need to censor anyway. You could literally apply that kind of arguments to any problem: - gun violence vs gun control - war vs peace - crime vs police It is too idealistic and ignores the presence of bad actors.
Eridrus 8y ago
> Additionally, the web is facing critical internet health issues, seemingly intractable due to the centralization of power in the hands of a few large companies who have economic interests in not solving these problems I think that line is a very popular hot take, that all these platforms want extremist content, because it's good for clicks & ad impressions, but it's very clearly not the case. All these platforms are quite incentivized to prevent all these problems, it's just that these are hard problems to solve to begin with, and the definition of extremist content/hate speech/etc is a political minefield.
- fnord123 8y ago
  >I think that line is a very popular hot take, that all these platforms want extremist content, because it's good for clicks & ad impressions Where do you read that? I thought the hot take was that they want people to be in a perpetual state of pearl clutching but not actual extremist content.
  - Eridrus 8y ago
    I mean, this is exactly what the article says "companies who have economic interests in not solving ... Hate speech, harassment and other attacks on social networks". Maybe your definition of extremism does not include hate speech, but mine does.
    - fnord123 8y ago
      Sure maybe that's where we differ. For me hate speech is not extremism at all. Still odious. But its the difference between "GroupX is smelly and dumb and not welcome" and "All GroupX living in AreaY must die, and here's how we're going to do it"
ranit 8y ago
An effective way to suppress hate speech is to critique it and even to ridicule it.
- rapnie 8y ago
  Critique, yes. By being civil, reasonable and matter of fact. I think however, that ridiculing often achieves the opposite effect, making you the enemy in the eyes of those susceptible to the hate speech.
  - js8 8y ago
    "those susceptible to the hate speech" How do you define those people? My view is that hate speech is badly defined concept because it is predicated on assumption that people like this exist. But I don't think we should accept that such people exists. People should have freedom, and that freedom includes responsibly to act in moral way. By saying that somebody is "susceptible to (hate) speech", you're denying their agency.
    - rapnie 8y ago
      The term 'hate speech' is used throughout this thread, is why I mention it like this. I'm just saying that ridiculing someone you do not agree with (strongly), might backfire against your own arguments..
  - krapp 8y ago
    The intended effect of ridicule is to remove the mystique and potency around the threat of a forbidden idea. I recently saw a critique of satire[0] that mentioned white supremacists tend to be fans of movies like Apt Pupil which, while criticizing Nazism, still portray it as powerful and potent. But the Producers, which literally portrays an attempt at an in-universe pro Hitler play (albeit for in-universe subversive reasons) and similar parody content isn't well received by them, because it refuses to take them seriously. So yes, while ridicule might make more enemies, it can also serve to make those enemies less powerful. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE
beefhash 8y ago
> How do you stop both hate speech and censorship? You don't. You instead crank up the censorship and -- more importantly -- the social stigma against bigotry. Change does not happen naturally and people don't get better, but if they get enough backlash from family and friends, people will eventually pretend to accept whatever it is you're trying to promote by censorship. This pretense will turn into genuine acceptance in future generations because they will grow up with not being able to be bigoted without clear and univocal backlash.
- Sir_Substance 8y ago
  >You instead crank up the censorship and -- more importantly -- the social stigma against bigotry. I remember when we used to crank up the social stigma against censorship. The plan you've outlined will work, but it can be used to promote bigotry as much as suppress it, and bigotry can be wrangled to political power. It's better not to create tools with such potential for abuse.
- Wintamute 8y ago
  Who gets to define the bigotry? Because they have ultimate social power in your brave new world. Granted, the first wave of people to wield this power would generally do so out of compassion. The next waves that come to power would wield it ever more brutally in order to engineer ever more ideologically extreme visions of society. It is precisely this sort of extremism that caused 100 million+ deaths in the 20th century in the soviet union and china. You don't realise it, but you have just expressed an opinion equally extreme and dangerous as fascism. The only sane way to run a society is through the free exchange of ideas, good and bad, and the unfettered right to discuss and criticise those ideas.
chj 8y ago
"If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.” ― Noam Chomsky
- matt4077 8y ago
  "If you believe a society's future is endangered by a few companies not willing to be accomplices to anti-semitism, misogyny, racism, and fake-Rolex spam, you have understood neither freedom, nor Chomsky" – me
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    This falls flat when 1) those few companies are "the internet" for major parts of the population (actually it almost falls flat already here) 2) to make it worse those companies has a long history of censoring not only what we all despise but also things they didn't like (business wise), things their staff didn't see the value in (art, histn eoric photos from wars) etc etc. There, -now you haven't been downvoted without an explanation. (I really don't like anonymous downvotes and think all should do better most of the time.)
- Jaruzel 8y ago
  Also: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Evelyn Beatrice Hall
- posting2fast 8y ago
  He's talking about views. Hate speech is chanting "Kill all Jews". A view I would despise would be a well thought out argument why all Jews should be killed, expressed in a way that allows response.
  - 684387384381987 8y ago
    A strict interpretation of freedom of speech includes so-called hate speech. A non-strict interpretation of freedom of speech ceases to be freedom of speech.
RpFLCL 8y ago
They don't have to be mutually exclusive. Imagine that you empower users with the tools create and manage their own content filters. You allow them to decide what types of content qualifies as the "hate speech" they want to avoid, if any. Make it as easy as possible for them to share their filters and understand what is affected. In such a design any "hate speech" can be defined differently by each group or individual, and "censorship" isn't imposed by a central authority. In a distributed system this pattern is easier to defend. There is no one company that has to explain why the content is on their servers.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  I don't think this is sufficient for those calling for filtering of hate speech. The goal is not so that you personally don't see it, but rather that no-one sees it. You see this in the reporting about hate speech in private facebook groups - these groups are quite happy with their speech, but chunks of society are not. [EDIT]: To be clear, I am not arguing for censorship, but rather pointing out that the way most people see the problem of hate speech is not as one where they come in contact with it, but that it is allowed to exist at all and that others come in contact with it. Maybe the US won't legislate on this and being free from advertisers will be enough, but the EU (and Germany in particular) does legislate on these grounds, so you may find yourself in conflict with a bunch of governments if your solution is that users do their own filtering as they like.
  - RpFLCL 8y ago
    Is that a good or a bad thing? It seems like that's precisely one of the issues the 'dweb' hopes to solve: To prevent certain chunks of society from imposing censorship on the other groups through centralized services.
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    if every significant group had the ability to prevent the speech of other groups they didn't want to hear from, no-one would be able to speak.
  - deno 8y ago
krapp 8y ago
You don't. You either allow one or the other in their entirety, or both in moderation. Most communities (on and offline) choose the latter. It's just a matter of where you draw the line in the sand and how consistent you are with keeping it where it is.
fredley 8y ago
I would argue it's less about this and more about the power to dictate narratives at a broad scope. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube etc. have all been single points of failure in this regard: targeted, sustained efforts—probably by nation states—have resulted in extremist political content being in the feeds of almost anyone who uses these platforms. In the 'Dweb' (god I hate that word), the question isn't so much about censorship vs. hate speech, but how the system is robust (or not) to well organised/funded minorities pushing content throughout the whole network. The web has become centralised meaning there are relatively few targets required to compromise to reach a large number of people. In theory a decentralised or distributed network makes this harder, but in practice...?
- arkh 8y ago
  > targeted, sustained efforts—probably by nation states—have resulted in extremist political content being in the feeds of almost anyone who uses these platforms. It has more to do with the targeting algorithm used. Once you start watching some kind of content they start proposing more of the same kind of content to you. So people see less and less contrary ideas. And you can't select an option to "give me quality containt from domains I never touched". Instead of discovering random new content and concept you get pigeonholed into some things you already know and agree with.
thristian 8y ago
Censorship and hate-speech are opposed when you have a single big venue that hosts all communication, since the venue can't logically filter and not-filter at the same time. However, when you have multiple, smaller venues, it's less of a problem. If one venue filters the communication that occurs within it, people who don't like that can take their communication elsewhere. If another venue hosts hate-speech, people who don't like that can take their communication elsewhere. It's not a zero-sum game.
- pmichaud 8y ago
  This is exactly the dynamic that's already creating the extreme polarization we're seeing, where people are living in self-selected echo chambers that have no common overlap with each other or, frankly, with reality much of the time. We have to do better than this.
  - nine_k 8y ago
    "How do I only hear what I want to hear, but say whatever I like, with no external limitations?" I think the only way to achieve the above is just that: create an area with like-minded people, who think and speak similar enough things, also derogatorily called a filter bubble. Freedom is only freedom when it equally applies to people you like and people you don't like. Otherwise, it's a tyranny of your taste, however well-meaning it might be.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      In an analogue to censorship vs. filtering, we also want a society that has as much freedom as possible, but is also stable and not self-destructive. The two goals are, too, at odds.
      - nine_k 8y ago
        Yes, these goals are fundamentally at odds, and any close-to-current-optimum balance is a dynamic one. (Life is full of this; see more at "First noble truth". Alas.)
msiyer 8y ago
Stop hating hate speech and start hating censorship. Hate speech is bad only if we let it affect us. Censorship is bad because someone else decides what we need to think and how we need to react.
- Caspy7 8y ago
  > Hate speech is bad only if we let it affect us. I think this is an overly simple response to a deep problem. We are all affected by what we take in, some more than others (and certainly when we are attacked). Getting people to be unaffected (or less affected) is likely to prove untenable or impossible. Putting the onus on the recipient also leaves us blaming the bullied. "Maybe if they'd had tougher skin they wouldn't have committed suicide."
  - msiyer 8y ago
    This is in no way a deep problem. We make it deep by using psychological mumbo-jumbo, being too politically correct, getting triggered too easily, destroying the family support system... Start taking these less seriously. Start building better functional families. You will see these problems will slowly vanish. Happy kids from happy families have extraordinary bullshit avoiding capabilities.
    - Caspy7 8y ago
      So when we see systematic bullying or attacks on people for their race/religion/etc, we just need to tell the recipient to chill out.
      - msiyer 8y ago
        Yes. These negative forces feed on our negative reaction. My rottweiler is barked upon rather aggressively by the street dogs whenever we go for walks. He does not care; does not even look at them. He has a happy family and he is happy. I learn a lot from him. If it is a physical assault we need to engage the legal system. If not, treat these as mind games. The opponent expects you to behave in a predictable manner. If you react violently or weakly, they win. Censorship is a weak move. It is very much possible that your opponent (possibly, a front for some government agency or a political party) expects you to want more censorship (you can guess the reasons). Words cannot ruin our religion\race. If they can, our religion\race does not deserve to exist. A religion\race that needs the crutches of censorship is a weak religion\race.
harperlee 8y ago
You prevent hate speech the same way you prevent murder: 1. You deterr it "upstream" through society-wide education and well being. 2. You coerce with punishment. 3. And when someone engages in it, only then do you restrict liberties that make sense to give to wellbehaving citizens. You only enable judges to apply those restrictions.
- deno 8y ago
  Don’t forget Two Minutes of Hate and telescreens.
  - harperlee 8y ago
    I just described what most first world countries do; do you think it is Orwellian? What's your alternative?
    - deno 8y ago
      I believe free speech is sacrosanct and if you start chipping away from it even just a little, bad things follow. There can be no free society without free speech. The way to do away with hate is to shine upon it with the light of open discussion, not hiding it by labeling it “hate speech” and hoping it goes away. Hate hidden grows bolder.
      - walterstucco 8y ago
        Let's add responsibility to the discussion You are free, but then if something happen because your freedom, then you pay Does it work?
      - harperlee 8y ago
        Genuinely curious: Do you believe that there are no limits to free speech, nor any scenarios in which, without prior censorship, you may say something that is illegal? What I described enables someone to publish lies that actively harm a second person, but then the first person gets fined / jailed for it. Do you think this is reasonable? Or that the sanctity of free speech should protect that first person, and impose on third people the effort and responsibility of determining whether what was said about the second person is fact or lie?
zaarn 8y ago
Easy, you don't centralize the network. On mastodon, my instance doesn't allow hatespeech and I ban instances that propagate it. But these instances aren't censored and federate with lots of other places. As long as people are willing to federate with an instance, they can share, the code is open source so they can use their platform as before. It's just that my part of the platform won't speak with theirs.
wetpaws 8y ago
Why hate speech is such a concern for you?
bonaldi 8y ago
States should not be in the business of censoring speech, for all sorts of reasons listed below. But there are certain kinds of speech that we commonly do want to hold people to account for -- incitement to violence; dangerous speech ("fire!" in a theatre); speech to manipulate markets (insider trading); hate speech in some nations; CP in many more and so on. So the way you reconcile the two is not by preventing the speech, but ensuring that it can have consequences. It's why we have laws of libel for instance: governments don't censor the press directly, but if you knowingly lie about someone in print, they will have the right to recourse through the courts against you. For this to work, though, there needs to be some way to identify someone to hold to account. That takes you into other tricky areas around common carrier vs publisher, and anonymity of users. It's that balance that really makes this so tricky, and is the real question, I think. If there are no consequences, you get lots of more-or-less problematic speech as we've seen. If there are mechanisms to ensure consequences, if you're not careful you can end up exposing people you'd want to protect (eg posters in oppressive regimes) to consequences you would think unjust.
- adrianN 8y ago
  You can't both protect users in oppressive regimes and have the possibility of meatspace consequences.
  - bonaldi 8y ago
    Equally difficult to see how you can have unlimited consequence-free speech and protection from the sort of things people broadly agree protection is good for, so something has to give. That balance probably means having consequences at the publisher level rather than at the individual one. Meatspace publishers have historically shown willing to shoulder these burdens: journalism organisations have sometimes gone to extreme lengths to protect sources and staff working in oppressive regimes.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> If you stop hate speech you are effectively censoring ideas The point of freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas isn't that all ideas thrive regardless of merit, but that the coercive power of government isn't being deployed to determine which ideas survive.

albertgoeswoof 8y ago

This is a false dichtomy. We should spend time building an inclusive, diverse and fair society that reduces the amount of hate speech overall and the net impact of hate speech. Then you don't need to censor anyway.

Eridrus 8y ago
Sure, but this article is about technical solutions, not social solutions, and technical solutions face this trade-off.
- Sir_Substance 8y ago
  This thing that you see as a problem that desperately needs a solution, I do not see as a problem. So I don't see the trade-off. There are lots of incredibly racist people out there using email. Email does not need a solution to prevent racist people using it.
otabdeveloper1 8y ago
Totally. If all the good people come together a kill all the bad people (maybe put them in special places and call them 'camps', need to think a bit more about this), then the world will be a paradise without crime. (Like murder, for example.)
naasking 8y ago
> We should spend time building an inclusive, diverse and fair society that reduces the amount of hate speech overall and the net impact of hate speech. Then you don't need to censor anyway. So right, society would just be perfect if we could all think the same way! Terry Pratchett said it best, "Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions."
paradite 8y ago
> We should spend time building an inclusive, diverse and fair society that reduces the amount of hate speech overall and the net impact of hate speech. Then you don't need to censor anyway. You could literally apply that kind of arguments to any problem: - gun violence vs gun control - war vs peace - crime vs police It is too idealistic and ignores the presence of bad actors.

Eridrus 8y ago

> Additionally, the web is facing critical internet health issues, seemingly intractable due to the centralization of power in the hands of a few large companies who have economic interests in not solving these problems I think that line is a very popular hot take, that all these platforms want extremist content, because it's good for clicks & ad impressions, but it's very clearly not the case. All these platforms are quite incentivized to prevent all these problems, it's just that these are hard problems to solve to begin with, and the definition of extremist content/hate speech/etc is a political minefield.

fnord123 8y ago
>I think that line is a very popular hot take, that all these platforms want extremist content, because it's good for clicks & ad impressions Where do you read that? I thought the hot take was that they want people to be in a perpetual state of pearl clutching but not actual extremist content.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  I mean, this is exactly what the article says "companies who have economic interests in not solving ... Hate speech, harassment and other attacks on social networks". Maybe your definition of extremism does not include hate speech, but mine does.
  - fnord123 8y ago
    Sure maybe that's where we differ. For me hate speech is not extremism at all. Still odious. But its the difference between "GroupX is smelly and dumb and not welcome" and "All GroupX living in AreaY must die, and here's how we're going to do it"

ranit 8y ago

An effective way to suppress hate speech is to critique it and even to ridicule it.

rapnie 8y ago
Critique, yes. By being civil, reasonable and matter of fact. I think however, that ridiculing often achieves the opposite effect, making you the enemy in the eyes of those susceptible to the hate speech.
- js8 8y ago
  "those susceptible to the hate speech" How do you define those people? My view is that hate speech is badly defined concept because it is predicated on assumption that people like this exist. But I don't think we should accept that such people exists. People should have freedom, and that freedom includes responsibly to act in moral way. By saying that somebody is "susceptible to (hate) speech", you're denying their agency.
  - rapnie 8y ago
    The term 'hate speech' is used throughout this thread, is why I mention it like this. I'm just saying that ridiculing someone you do not agree with (strongly), might backfire against your own arguments..
- krapp 8y ago
  The intended effect of ridicule is to remove the mystique and potency around the threat of a forbidden idea. I recently saw a critique of satire[0] that mentioned white supremacists tend to be fans of movies like Apt Pupil which, while criticizing Nazism, still portray it as powerful and potent. But the Producers, which literally portrays an attempt at an in-universe pro Hitler play (albeit for in-universe subversive reasons) and similar parody content isn't well received by them, because it refuses to take them seriously. So yes, while ridicule might make more enemies, it can also serve to make those enemies less powerful. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE

beefhash 8y ago

> How do you stop both hate speech and censorship? You don't. You instead crank up the censorship and -- more importantly -- the social stigma against bigotry. Change does not happen naturally and people don't get better, but if they get enough backlash from family and friends, people will eventually pretend to accept whatever it is you're trying to promote by censorship. This pretense will turn into genuine acceptance in future generations because they will grow up with not being able to be bigoted without clear and univocal backlash.

Sir_Substance 8y ago
>You instead crank up the censorship and -- more importantly -- the social stigma against bigotry. I remember when we used to crank up the social stigma against censorship. The plan you've outlined will work, but it can be used to promote bigotry as much as suppress it, and bigotry can be wrangled to political power. It's better not to create tools with such potential for abuse.
Wintamute 8y ago
Who gets to define the bigotry? Because they have ultimate social power in your brave new world. Granted, the first wave of people to wield this power would generally do so out of compassion. The next waves that come to power would wield it ever more brutally in order to engineer ever more ideologically extreme visions of society. It is precisely this sort of extremism that caused 100 million+ deaths in the 20th century in the soviet union and china. You don't realise it, but you have just expressed an opinion equally extreme and dangerous as fascism. The only sane way to run a society is through the free exchange of ideas, good and bad, and the unfettered right to discuss and criticise those ideas.

chj 8y ago

"If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.” ― Noam Chomsky

matt4077 8y ago
"If you believe a society's future is endangered by a few companies not willing to be accomplices to anti-semitism, misogyny, racism, and fake-Rolex spam, you have understood neither freedom, nor Chomsky" – me
- reitanqild 8y ago
  This falls flat when 1) those few companies are "the internet" for major parts of the population (actually it almost falls flat already here) 2) to make it worse those companies has a long history of censoring not only what we all despise but also things they didn't like (business wise), things their staff didn't see the value in (art, histn eoric photos from wars) etc etc. There, -now you haven't been downvoted without an explanation. (I really don't like anonymous downvotes and think all should do better most of the time.)
Jaruzel 8y ago
Also: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Evelyn Beatrice Hall
posting2fast 8y ago
He's talking about views. Hate speech is chanting "Kill all Jews". A view I would despise would be a well thought out argument why all Jews should be killed, expressed in a way that allows response.
- 684387384381987 8y ago
  A strict interpretation of freedom of speech includes so-called hate speech. A non-strict interpretation of freedom of speech ceases to be freedom of speech.

RpFLCL 8y ago

They don't have to be mutually exclusive. Imagine that you empower users with the tools create and manage their own content filters. You allow them to decide what types of content qualifies as the "hate speech" they want to avoid, if any. Make it as easy as possible for them to share their filters and understand what is affected. In such a design any "hate speech" can be defined differently by each group or individual, and "censorship" isn't imposed by a central authority. In a distributed system this pattern is easier to defend. There is no one company that has to explain why the content is on their servers.

Eridrus 8y ago
I don't think this is sufficient for those calling for filtering of hate speech. The goal is not so that you personally don't see it, but rather that no-one sees it. You see this in the reporting about hate speech in private facebook groups - these groups are quite happy with their speech, but chunks of society are not. [EDIT]: To be clear, I am not arguing for censorship, but rather pointing out that the way most people see the problem of hate speech is not as one where they come in contact with it, but that it is allowed to exist at all and that others come in contact with it. Maybe the US won't legislate on this and being free from advertisers will be enough, but the EU (and Germany in particular) does legislate on these grounds, so you may find yourself in conflict with a bunch of governments if your solution is that users do their own filtering as they like.
- RpFLCL 8y ago
  Is that a good or a bad thing? It seems like that's precisely one of the issues the 'dweb' hopes to solve: To prevent certain chunks of society from imposing censorship on the other groups through centralized services.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  if every significant group had the ability to prevent the speech of other groups they didn't want to hear from, no-one would be able to speak.
- deno 8y ago

krapp 8y ago

You don't. You either allow one or the other in their entirety, or both in moderation. Most communities (on and offline) choose the latter. It's just a matter of where you draw the line in the sand and how consistent you are with keeping it where it is.

fredley 8y ago

I would argue it's less about this and more about the power to dictate narratives at a broad scope. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube etc. have all been single points of failure in this regard: targeted, sustained efforts—probably by nation states—have resulted in extremist political content being in the feeds of almost anyone who uses these platforms. In the 'Dweb' (god I hate that word), the question isn't so much about censorship vs. hate speech, but how the system is robust (or not) to well organised/funded minorities pushing content throughout the whole network. The web has become centralised meaning there are relatively few targets required to compromise to reach a large number of people. In theory a decentralised or distributed network makes this harder, but in practice...?

arkh 8y ago
> targeted, sustained efforts—probably by nation states—have resulted in extremist political content being in the feeds of almost anyone who uses these platforms. It has more to do with the targeting algorithm used. Once you start watching some kind of content they start proposing more of the same kind of content to you. So people see less and less contrary ideas. And you can't select an option to "give me quality containt from domains I never touched". Instead of discovering random new content and concept you get pigeonholed into some things you already know and agree with.

thristian 8y ago

Censorship and hate-speech are opposed when you have a single big venue that hosts all communication, since the venue can't logically filter and not-filter at the same time. However, when you have multiple, smaller venues, it's less of a problem. If one venue filters the communication that occurs within it, people who don't like that can take their communication elsewhere. If another venue hosts hate-speech, people who don't like that can take their communication elsewhere. It's not a zero-sum game.

pmichaud 8y ago
This is exactly the dynamic that's already creating the extreme polarization we're seeing, where people are living in self-selected echo chambers that have no common overlap with each other or, frankly, with reality much of the time. We have to do better than this.
- nine_k 8y ago
  "How do I only hear what I want to hear, but say whatever I like, with no external limitations?" I think the only way to achieve the above is just that: create an area with like-minded people, who think and speak similar enough things, also derogatorily called a filter bubble. Freedom is only freedom when it equally applies to people you like and people you don't like. Otherwise, it's a tyranny of your taste, however well-meaning it might be.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    In an analogue to censorship vs. filtering, we also want a society that has as much freedom as possible, but is also stable and not self-destructive. The two goals are, too, at odds.
    - nine_k 8y ago
      Yes, these goals are fundamentally at odds, and any close-to-current-optimum balance is a dynamic one. (Life is full of this; see more at "First noble truth". Alas.)

msiyer 8y ago

Stop hating hate speech and start hating censorship. Hate speech is bad only if we let it affect us. Censorship is bad because someone else decides what we need to think and how we need to react.

Caspy7 8y ago
> Hate speech is bad only if we let it affect us. I think this is an overly simple response to a deep problem. We are all affected by what we take in, some more than others (and certainly when we are attacked). Getting people to be unaffected (or less affected) is likely to prove untenable or impossible. Putting the onus on the recipient also leaves us blaming the bullied. "Maybe if they'd had tougher skin they wouldn't have committed suicide."
- msiyer 8y ago
  This is in no way a deep problem. We make it deep by using psychological mumbo-jumbo, being too politically correct, getting triggered too easily, destroying the family support system... Start taking these less seriously. Start building better functional families. You will see these problems will slowly vanish. Happy kids from happy families have extraordinary bullshit avoiding capabilities.
  - Caspy7 8y ago
    So when we see systematic bullying or attacks on people for their race/religion/etc, we just need to tell the recipient to chill out.
    - msiyer 8y ago
      Yes. These negative forces feed on our negative reaction. My rottweiler is barked upon rather aggressively by the street dogs whenever we go for walks. He does not care; does not even look at them. He has a happy family and he is happy. I learn a lot from him. If it is a physical assault we need to engage the legal system. If not, treat these as mind games. The opponent expects you to behave in a predictable manner. If you react violently or weakly, they win. Censorship is a weak move. It is very much possible that your opponent (possibly, a front for some government agency or a political party) expects you to want more censorship (you can guess the reasons). Words cannot ruin our religion\race. If they can, our religion\race does not deserve to exist. A religion\race that needs the crutches of censorship is a weak religion\race.

harperlee 8y ago

You prevent hate speech the same way you prevent murder: 1. You deterr it "upstream" through society-wide education and well being. 2. You coerce with punishment. 3. And when someone engages in it, only then do you restrict liberties that make sense to give to wellbehaving citizens. You only enable judges to apply those restrictions.

deno 8y ago
Don’t forget Two Minutes of Hate and telescreens.
- harperlee 8y ago
  I just described what most first world countries do; do you think it is Orwellian? What's your alternative?
  - deno 8y ago
    I believe free speech is sacrosanct and if you start chipping away from it even just a little, bad things follow. There can be no free society without free speech. The way to do away with hate is to shine upon it with the light of open discussion, not hiding it by labeling it “hate speech” and hoping it goes away. Hate hidden grows bolder.
    - walterstucco 8y ago
      Let's add responsibility to the discussion You are free, but then if something happen because your freedom, then you pay Does it work?
    - harperlee 8y ago
      Genuinely curious: Do you believe that there are no limits to free speech, nor any scenarios in which, without prior censorship, you may say something that is illegal? What I described enables someone to publish lies that actively harm a second person, but then the first person gets fined / jailed for it. Do you think this is reasonable? Or that the sanctity of free speech should protect that first person, and impose on third people the effort and responsibility of determining whether what was said about the second person is fact or lie?

zaarn 8y ago

Easy, you don't centralize the network. On mastodon, my instance doesn't allow hatespeech and I ban instances that propagate it. But these instances aren't censored and federate with lots of other places. As long as people are willing to federate with an instance, they can share, the code is open source so they can use their platform as before. It's just that my part of the platform won't speak with theirs.

wetpaws 8y ago

Why hate speech is such a concern for you?

bonaldi 8y ago

States should not be in the business of censoring speech, for all sorts of reasons listed below. But there are certain kinds of speech that we commonly do want to hold people to account for -- incitement to violence; dangerous speech ("fire!" in a theatre); speech to manipulate markets (insider trading); hate speech in some nations; CP in many more and so on. So the way you reconcile the two is not by preventing the speech, but ensuring that it can have consequences. It's why we have laws of libel for instance: governments don't censor the press directly, but if you knowingly lie about someone in print, they will have the right to recourse through the courts against you. For this to work, though, there needs to be some way to identify someone to hold to account. That takes you into other tricky areas around common carrier vs publisher, and anonymity of users. It's that balance that really makes this so tricky, and is the real question, I think. If there are no consequences, you get lots of more-or-less problematic speech as we've seen. If there are mechanisms to ensure consequences, if you're not careful you can end up exposing people you'd want to protect (eg posters in oppressive regimes) to consequences you would think unjust.

adrianN 8y ago
You can't both protect users in oppressive regimes and have the possibility of meatspace consequences.
- bonaldi 8y ago
  Equally difficult to see how you can have unlimited consequence-free speech and protection from the sort of things people broadly agree protection is good for, so something has to give. That balance probably means having consequences at the publisher level rather than at the individual one. Meatspace publishers have historically shown willing to shoulder these burdens: journalism organisations have sometimes gone to extreme lengths to protect sources and staff working in oppressive regimes.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> If you stop hate speech you are effectively censoring ideas The point of freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas isn't that all ideas thrive regardless of merit, but that the coercive power of government isn't being deployed to determine which ideas survive.