In a perfect world, I would limit the way speech can have consequences (at least as legislation goes) only to things that cause actual immediate harm. Which cov

In a perfect world, I would limit the way speech can have consequences (at least as legislation goes) only to things that cause actual immediate harm. Which covers the fire thing. Now, we don’t of course live in a perfect world. There are other acts of speech that can have dire consequences and should be deterred. Probably the most obvious topical example is a false rape accusation. In a perfect world such claims would be outright ignored without any evidence, however as it doesn’t seem to be the case there should be some recourse for the accused. At the same time you need to balance this with the chilling effect this will have on the speech. To this extent this is not a black & white issue, as nothing ever is. Nevertheless all of this deals with liability, not censorship, and as such is transparent and can be limited. There is no case for censorship under any circumstance whatsoever. So as to act vs speech to me this is the distinction. Murder is illegal, but we don’t censor it. Accusing someone of something or yelling is similarly an active thing, however the actual information should never be limited. There is certain conflation here of speech in abstract and the act of expression of speech, however I think there is a distinction and it is important. There is also in my mind no overlap with “hate speech.” Yelling fire is very context specific, and an accusation directed at someone similarly deals with actual person or persons, this is why such exceptions are justified. Most examples of “hate speech” are often general statements that do not deal with specific persons, but rather with ideas. As such there is no “act” of speech, only speech.