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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

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.

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.