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> Freedom of Speech is not the right to be heard. People keep saying this and repeating it, but as far as I can tell this meme is destructive and wrong. Freedo

> Freedom of Speech is not the right to be heard. People keep saying this and repeating it, but as far as I can tell this meme is destructive and wrong. Freedom of speech isn't just a legal assurance that congress shall make no law abridging it. It is also a set of cultural norms rooted deeply in a long lineage of hard won ideas. It is Evelyn Hall's principle "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". It is Friedrich Nietzsche's dictum that only insecure societies are threatened by quirky characters with weird ideas. It is our own Daniel Gackle's observation that tolerance is the experience of suffering through unpleasant ideas. We endure that suffering because the world is dramatically better on balance when we do. Popper and the paradox of tolerance have nothing to do with it because we aren't talking about fascists angling to march on Washington DC to burn down the Library of Congress. We're talking about people who may have made a careless remark, or have quirky ideas, or disagree with the overall bent of the arc of history. By banning these people platforms like Twitter and Patreon are eroding free speech not in the legal sense, but in the cultural norms sense. If these norms continue getting eroded, god help us all -- it may set humanity and the western civilization back by hundreds of years.

zamalek 8y ago
Thanks for that, it's the first reply that's given me food for thought.
smrtinsert 8y ago
This is total crap. That norm was long abandoned. Absolutely no one on the right defends freed of speech as a cultural norm. The modern right uses "freedom of speech" as a proxy to discriminate/marginalize and spread hate speech. Edit:Boohoo, I offended the snowflakes.
- derp_dee_derp 8y ago
  The fact that you believe what you wrote makes it painfully obvious you've never actually listened to any of what the "modern right" is saying and have no idea what message they are spreading, hate speech or not. Perhaps you should look at your own faults before condemning others. Your misguided hard line belief makes you similar to the Puritans of old trying to suppress anti Christian heresy. It's kind of ironic, actually.
- mancerayder 8y ago
  Discrimination and marginalization are actions. Patreon is a platform for media. Can you kindly show how the two are connected rather than leave us with 'This is total crap' ? You've made no effort to reply to the actual argument you called crap.
- dpark 8y ago
  > Edit:Boohoo, I offended the snowflakes. If anyone disagreeing with you is automatically a “snowflake”, you’re the one with a sensitivity problem. Just something to think about.
SolaceQuantum 8y ago
I'm really confused, culturally we didn't really have freedom of speech the way is being described here (the freedom to be in private spaces and say disagreeable things without being ousted). Being bullied out of social circles, shunned for behaving in socially unacceptable ways (like women wearing pants, being gay, accepting interracial marriage) including speaking socially unacceptable things (like women are objects, I choose not to vaccinate my child) have always had consequences in the public space including being shunned broadly by friends, families, and business partners.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- coffeemug 8y ago
  The difference is that the internet has discontinuously more scalable network effects, so technology companies often find themselves in a winner-takes-all dynamic. If some publisher, newspaper, or literary magazine refused to publish Walt Whitman, he could always try and find another publisher. But if Twitter bans Titania McGrath, there is no other Twitter for her to join because the next best alternative has 1/10000th the number of users. This effect is new. These platforms are private entities, but effectively they operate as public commons. So culturally we must treat them similar to public commons where it isn't acceptable to kick out quirky characters because some of us don't like what they have to say.
  - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
    Yes, and this was problem exists to this day in prevailing cable and newspapers. During the time they were prevalent, unpopular events and speech were not spoken on the biggest networks (still not spoken about) and significant silenced perspectives had to make do with smaller platforms, poorer cable times, smaller venues, and self-publishing newspapers assuming they could fund a printing press. There was not a push to force those networks to host these voices. Yes, it’s an existing problem. I don’t understand why this is a new problem and am confused why this is unacceptable on the level that is new.
toofy 8y ago
> If these norms continue to getting eroded, god help us all — it may set humanity and the western civilization back by hundreds of years. Haven’t these norms already been well established? I mean, almost every business which deals in exposure to humans sensory inputs has always seemed to have standards. Concert venues, magazines, record companies, night clubs with stages, publishing outlets etc etc... all of these business owners have always been able to pick and choose what types of output they send to the humans consuming that output. Hasn’t this always been the norm? I’m just curious why some insinuate this is an enormous step backward when from my perspective it would seem to be SOP for a society which idolizes private property.
- coffeemug 8y ago
  I just made an argument about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494. > The difference is that the internet has discontinuously more scalable network effects, so technology companies often find themselves in a winner-takes-all dynamic. If some publisher, newspaper, or literary magazine refused to publish Walt Whitman, he could always try and find another publisher. But if Twitter bans Titania McGrath, there is no other Twitter for her to join because the next best alternative has 1/10000th the number of users. > This effect is new. These platforms are private entities, but effectively they operate as public commons. So culturally we must treat them similar to public commons where it isn't acceptable to kick out quirky characters because some of us don't like what they have to say.
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    If some publisher, newspaper, or literary magazine refused to publish Walt Whitman, he could always try and find another publisher. But if Twitter bans Titania McGrath, there is no other Twitter for her to join because the next best alternative has 1/10000th the number of users. This is pretty much exactly wrong (the situation is basically the exact opposite). When there were a very finite number of publishers in the English speaking world and self-publishing barely existed, an idea that could not be published would only diffuse by word of mouth. When Henry Miller could only be published in France, his works were only available to a very small number of individuals even if many could be interested. Anyone banned from every single media site still can create a website, publish on Tor, etc. The inability to get a million followers is far from the inability to get your ideas heard. The argument confuses an inability to make money with an inability to be hear (and feel free to argue about the right make money with incindiary ideas, that obviously has a different implication). By creating the ability to bypass publisher, the Internet produced a situation where far more ideas could be heard than previously. That situation still exists (for good and less-good). The average person still depends on filters but those filters are voluntary and a substantial portion of people know they can bypass them if they wish. And I'd say present days are also wider than earlier filters.
bunderbunder 8y ago
It's interesting how this gets framed differently nowadays. 20 years ago, before social media, there was no assumption that everyone has a fundamental right to be able to broadcast their ideas using others' platforms. Since publication was more resource-intensive, the default for most media was to not publish things, and deciding that someone's ideas didn't merit publication wasn't seen as a violation of any great moral code. They were always free to self-publish. At their own expense, of course. Fast forward, and, since most these sites default to letting anyone publish on their platform, with no questions asked beforehand, we've apparently come to think that using these platforms is a human right. It is not. It is a privilege. One with which they have been quite liberal with sharing, yes, but one that they are still free to revoke at any time. There's another important right to consider, in this siuation: Freedom of association. It is also fundamental, and it goes hand-in-hand with freedom of speech. It encompasses, among other things, the right to not associate with people you don't want to be associated with. If Patreon, a private entity, does not want to be associated with sexism and racism, they should not be required to do so.
- coffeemug 8y ago
  I just made an argument about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494, and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765509. > The difference is that the internet has discontinuously more scalable network effects, so technology companies often find themselves in a winner-takes-all dynamic. If some publisher, newspaper, or literary magazine refused to publish Walt Whitman, he could always try and find another publisher. But if Twitter bans Titania McGrath, there is no other Twitter for her to join because the next best alternative has 1/10000th the number of users. > This effect is new. These platforms are private entities, but effectively they operate as public commons. So culturally we must treat them similar to public commons where it isn't acceptable to kick out quirky characters because some of us don't like what they have to say.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    The fact that Twitter is way more popular than Mastodon doesn't really change anything. It's freedom of speech, not freedom of venue.
peterwwillis 8y ago
These "norms" are generalized and not always applicable to real life. If I disapprove of you yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, should I also have to defend your right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater? We "erode freedom of speech" when it hurts people. This is not about "weird people with quirky ideas". This is about people who use speech to abuse, cause harm, intimidate, harass, or inspire others to commit such abuses. This cannot be tolerated in a society that wants the right to "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." One can always find a non-abusive way to present an idea. But when they cross the line into a form of abuse or violence, they should be stopped.
- coffeemug 8y ago
  Nonsense! Yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater has a very high risk of getting hundreds of people instantly killed. It is not at all equivalent to verbally abusing someone. More so, verbal abuse is frequently socially desirable and useful! 2pac verbally abused people, many think of him as a great artist and social commentator. Many, many, many, many, many great artists did too -- Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoevskiy, among countless others.
  - panorama 8y ago
    I've been reading your comments with a lot of interest, but I feel like you took the easy road out on this reply. I think it's clear the OP isn't talking about single instances where someone verbally abuses another person. I agree it's useful/fine to criticize political leaders or for a rapper to diss another rapper. What we're actually dealing with in practice are people instigating hate for other groups of people, in some cases often the same fascist rhetoric used to incite violence (and the acceptance thereof) in Nazi Germany (yes, Godwin's law, yada yada), where do you draw the line? Do we philosophically want to live in a world where people can be incited to great amounts of violence just because we want to protect FoS on private platforms?
    - _Tev 8y ago
      > Do we philosophically want to live in a world where people can be incited to great amounts of violence just because we want to protect FoS on private platforms? Do we want to live in a world, where everyone will be scared to say anything socially unacceptable (because it _might_ lead to violence!) because of the total deplatforming that might happen as a conseqence? There is a lot of blurring around the definition of "inciting violence", and I am scared of the slippery slope too.
notahacker 8y ago
> By banning these people platforms like Twitter and Patreon are eroding free speech not in the legal sense, but in the cultural norms sense. If these norms continue getting eroded, god help us all -- it may set humanity and the western civilization back by hundreds of years. I have a feeling that Western civilization which has for most of its existence censored people across nearly all media for offences as mild as saying "damn", displaying a naked person or drawing a particular shape of mouse without permission is not about to collapse because the management of a particular web platform decides that Carl Benjamin arguing with other white supremacists about whether they're behaving like "niggers" or "white people" isn't the sort of thing they wish to financially support. This really is the reductio ad absurdum freedom of speech argument.
mcguire 8y ago
Careless remarks? "Before your stupid social justice feminine bullshit, [mass murders] didn't happen on this scale, it's crazy. This is a disease of the modern age. YOU are responsible for perpetuating it, by disenfranchising these poor fucking guys who don't have any options left. When someone takes the option of absolute insanely last resort, you have to wonder, what kind of system is producing them? And I'll tell you what, Laci, it is a fucking feminist system that is doing this." Quirky ideas? "I wouldn't even rape you, @jessphillips. #AntiRapeThreats #FeminismIsCancer" Do you really think Carl Benjamin is quirky and careless? Are you really defending him as having done something harmless, funny, or simply unthinkingly? Are you as laissez-faire about, say, the anti-vaccine crowd or the creationists---they're just disagreeing "with the overall bent of the arc of history?" In a more serious mode, have you any evidence that we are "talking about people who may have made a careless remark, or have quirky ideas, or disagree with the overall bent of the arc of history?" I would think everyone would be up in arms if such were the case. All of the examples I have run across are individuals who are repeatedly, deliberately and provocatively making loathsome statements, and, due to "tolerance", being applauded for it.
- nicky0 8y ago
  The "wouldn't rape you" tweet is crass but the first, longer quote is a perfectly reasonable point of view.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- _Tev 8y ago
  Frankly, yes, those ideas are just "quirky", if you want to use that word. I would use "extreme", and maybe even "a bit crazy", but I still think deplatforming those stupid ideas is wrong, because: 1) you should be able to say stupid stuff in public, as long as it does not actually cause violence ... 2) ... Which I think this does not. Yes, the line is blurred, but that's the point - is presumption of innocence a good idea? I think yes, mainly because 3) this deplatforming apparently does not work to reduce the following of such people (I might be wrong, but have not seen any data disproving this). Btw I get the impression that Trump has said similarly abhorrent things. Should we deplatform him? The slippery slope arguments starts to get real when you expand the bans to people like the one you quoted (assuming those were the worst things from him).
danans 8y ago
> It is also a set of cultural norms rooted deeply in a long lineage of hard won ideas. > By banning these people platforms like Twitter and Patreon are eroding free speech not in the legal sense, but in the cultural norms sense. If these norms continue getting eroded, god help us all -- it may set humanity and the western civilization back by hundreds of years. Not among those hard-won norms are: hate speech, incitement of violence against groups and individuals, either directly or by thinly disguised dog whistles. Those voices, though they were always present among people, were held back, suppressed if you will, by large media organizations since around the end of the second world war, and definitely since the civil rights movement, when public exclamations of hate-speech and racism became taboo. Prior to that, it was common for newspapers to regularly carry articles that we would today consider vile and bigoted. But norms changed for the better. But the internet came along and gave a medium to hate speech that had been restrained for decades by traditional media. Bemoaning the restraint of hate speech now is lamenting the loss of a forum which has existed for only 20 years or so, from roughly when the internet became a popular medium, and was discovered by existing hate groups. The rise of, and tacit societal acceptance of mass-distributed hate speech via the Internet was actually the erosion of the norm, rather than the other way around.
heyjudy 8y ago
Platform businesses aren't public commons, they're businesses, which means they're free to pick-and-choose winners and losers arbitrarily, if they so desire. OTOH if controversial content creators want the freedom to publish, fundraise and engage audiences, it behooves them to prefer audience-funded, almost-anything-goes platforms that will cater to all forms of legally-protected speech. Otherwise, they're asking for trouble in the form of arbitrary silencing. Cultural fascism, whereby people are censored because their legal speech is unpopular, is a path towards totalitarianism and civil war.
paulcole 8y ago
Do you happen to know Evelyn Hall’s twitter handle? Seems like an interesting person to follow.
- waterhouse 8y ago
  Heh heh heh, if only. Evelyn Hall was born in the 1800s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Beatrice_Hall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Beatrice_Hall
mindslight 8y ago
Thank you for putting this so well. What you've written shouldn't even need to be defended as a minority opinion, but alas a little bit of power is a hell of a drug.
anigbrowl 8y ago
Popper and the paradox of tolerance have nothing to do with it because we aren't talking about fascists angling to march on Washington DC to burn down the Library of Congress. We're talking about people who may have made a careless remark, or have quirky ideas, or disagree with the overall bent of the arc of history. Neo-fascism is a real phenomenon that kills real people and Patreon doesn't want to be associated with people who have that stink on them.

zamalek 8y ago

Thanks for that, it's the first reply that's given me food for thought.

smrtinsert 8y ago

This is total crap. That norm was long abandoned. Absolutely no one on the right defends freed of speech as a cultural norm. The modern right uses "freedom of speech" as a proxy to discriminate/marginalize and spread hate speech. Edit:Boohoo, I offended the snowflakes.

derp_dee_derp 8y ago
The fact that you believe what you wrote makes it painfully obvious you've never actually listened to any of what the "modern right" is saying and have no idea what message they are spreading, hate speech or not. Perhaps you should look at your own faults before condemning others. Your misguided hard line belief makes you similar to the Puritans of old trying to suppress anti Christian heresy. It's kind of ironic, actually.
mancerayder 8y ago
Discrimination and marginalization are actions. Patreon is a platform for media. Can you kindly show how the two are connected rather than leave us with 'This is total crap' ? You've made no effort to reply to the actual argument you called crap.
dpark 8y ago
> Edit:Boohoo, I offended the snowflakes. If anyone disagreeing with you is automatically a “snowflake”, you’re the one with a sensitivity problem. Just something to think about.

SolaceQuantum 8y ago

I'm really confused, culturally we didn't really have freedom of speech the way is being described here (the freedom to be in private spaces and say disagreeable things without being ousted). Being bullied out of social circles, shunned for behaving in socially unacceptable ways (like women wearing pants, being gay, accepting interracial marriage) including speaking socially unacceptable things (like women are objects, I choose not to vaccinate my child) have always had consequences in the public space including being shunned broadly by friends, families, and business partners.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
coffeemug 8y ago
The difference is that the internet has discontinuously more scalable network effects, so technology companies often find themselves in a winner-takes-all dynamic. If some publisher, newspaper, or literary magazine refused to publish Walt Whitman, he could always try and find another publisher. But if Twitter bans Titania McGrath, there is no other Twitter for her to join because the next best alternative has 1/10000th the number of users. This effect is new. These platforms are private entities, but effectively they operate as public commons. So culturally we must treat them similar to public commons where it isn't acceptable to kick out quirky characters because some of us don't like what they have to say.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  Yes, and this was problem exists to this day in prevailing cable and newspapers. During the time they were prevalent, unpopular events and speech were not spoken on the biggest networks (still not spoken about) and significant silenced perspectives had to make do with smaller platforms, poorer cable times, smaller venues, and self-publishing newspapers assuming they could fund a printing press. There was not a push to force those networks to host these voices. Yes, it’s an existing problem. I don’t understand why this is a new problem and am confused why this is unacceptable on the level that is new.

toofy 8y ago

> If these norms continue to getting eroded, god help us all — it may set humanity and the western civilization back by hundreds of years. Haven’t these norms already been well established? I mean, almost every business which deals in exposure to humans sensory inputs has always seemed to have standards. Concert venues, magazines, record companies, night clubs with stages, publishing outlets etc etc... all of these business owners have always been able to pick and choose what types of output they send to the humans consuming that output. Hasn’t this always been the norm? I’m just curious why some insinuate this is an enormous step backward when from my perspective it would seem to be SOP for a society which idolizes private property.

coffeemug 8y ago
I just made an argument about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494. > The difference is that the internet has discontinuously more scalable network effects, so technology companies often find themselves in a winner-takes-all dynamic. If some publisher, newspaper, or literary magazine refused to publish Walt Whitman, he could always try and find another publisher. But if Twitter bans Titania McGrath, there is no other Twitter for her to join because the next best alternative has 1/10000th the number of users. > This effect is new. These platforms are private entities, but effectively they operate as public commons. So culturally we must treat them similar to public commons where it isn't acceptable to kick out quirky characters because some of us don't like what they have to say.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  If some publisher, newspaper, or literary magazine refused to publish Walt Whitman, he could always try and find another publisher. But if Twitter bans Titania McGrath, there is no other Twitter for her to join because the next best alternative has 1/10000th the number of users. This is pretty much exactly wrong (the situation is basically the exact opposite). When there were a very finite number of publishers in the English speaking world and self-publishing barely existed, an idea that could not be published would only diffuse by word of mouth. When Henry Miller could only be published in France, his works were only available to a very small number of individuals even if many could be interested. Anyone banned from every single media site still can create a website, publish on Tor, etc. The inability to get a million followers is far from the inability to get your ideas heard. The argument confuses an inability to make money with an inability to be hear (and feel free to argue about the right make money with incindiary ideas, that obviously has a different implication). By creating the ability to bypass publisher, the Internet produced a situation where far more ideas could be heard than previously. That situation still exists (for good and less-good). The average person still depends on filters but those filters are voluntary and a substantial portion of people know they can bypass them if they wish. And I'd say present days are also wider than earlier filters.

bunderbunder 8y ago

It's interesting how this gets framed differently nowadays. 20 years ago, before social media, there was no assumption that everyone has a fundamental right to be able to broadcast their ideas using others' platforms. Since publication was more resource-intensive, the default for most media was to not publish things, and deciding that someone's ideas didn't merit publication wasn't seen as a violation of any great moral code. They were always free to self-publish. At their own expense, of course. Fast forward, and, since most these sites default to letting anyone publish on their platform, with no questions asked beforehand, we've apparently come to think that using these platforms is a human right. It is not. It is a privilege. One with which they have been quite liberal with sharing, yes, but one that they are still free to revoke at any time. There's another important right to consider, in this siuation: Freedom of association. It is also fundamental, and it goes hand-in-hand with freedom of speech. It encompasses, among other things, the right to not associate with people you don't want to be associated with. If Patreon, a private entity, does not want to be associated with sexism and racism, they should not be required to do so.

coffeemug 8y ago
I just made an argument about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494, and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765509. > The difference is that the internet has discontinuously more scalable network effects, so technology companies often find themselves in a winner-takes-all dynamic. If some publisher, newspaper, or literary magazine refused to publish Walt Whitman, he could always try and find another publisher. But if Twitter bans Titania McGrath, there is no other Twitter for her to join because the next best alternative has 1/10000th the number of users. > This effect is new. These platforms are private entities, but effectively they operate as public commons. So culturally we must treat them similar to public commons where it isn't acceptable to kick out quirky characters because some of us don't like what they have to say.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  The fact that Twitter is way more popular than Mastodon doesn't really change anything. It's freedom of speech, not freedom of venue.

peterwwillis 8y ago

These "norms" are generalized and not always applicable to real life. If I disapprove of you yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, should I also have to defend your right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater? We "erode freedom of speech" when it hurts people. This is not about "weird people with quirky ideas". This is about people who use speech to abuse, cause harm, intimidate, harass, or inspire others to commit such abuses. This cannot be tolerated in a society that wants the right to "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." One can always find a non-abusive way to present an idea. But when they cross the line into a form of abuse or violence, they should be stopped.

coffeemug 8y ago
Nonsense! Yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater has a very high risk of getting hundreds of people instantly killed. It is not at all equivalent to verbally abusing someone. More so, verbal abuse is frequently socially desirable and useful! 2pac verbally abused people, many think of him as a great artist and social commentator. Many, many, many, many, many great artists did too -- Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoevskiy, among countless others.
- panorama 8y ago
  I've been reading your comments with a lot of interest, but I feel like you took the easy road out on this reply. I think it's clear the OP isn't talking about single instances where someone verbally abuses another person. I agree it's useful/fine to criticize political leaders or for a rapper to diss another rapper. What we're actually dealing with in practice are people instigating hate for other groups of people, in some cases often the same fascist rhetoric used to incite violence (and the acceptance thereof) in Nazi Germany (yes, Godwin's law, yada yada), where do you draw the line? Do we philosophically want to live in a world where people can be incited to great amounts of violence just because we want to protect FoS on private platforms?
  - _Tev 8y ago
    > Do we philosophically want to live in a world where people can be incited to great amounts of violence just because we want to protect FoS on private platforms? Do we want to live in a world, where everyone will be scared to say anything socially unacceptable (because it _might_ lead to violence!) because of the total deplatforming that might happen as a conseqence? There is a lot of blurring around the definition of "inciting violence", and I am scared of the slippery slope too.

notahacker 8y ago

> By banning these people platforms like Twitter and Patreon are eroding free speech not in the legal sense, but in the cultural norms sense. If these norms continue getting eroded, god help us all -- it may set humanity and the western civilization back by hundreds of years. I have a feeling that Western civilization which has for most of its existence censored people across nearly all media for offences as mild as saying "damn", displaying a naked person or drawing a particular shape of mouse without permission is not about to collapse because the management of a particular web platform decides that Carl Benjamin arguing with other white supremacists about whether they're behaving like "niggers" or "white people" isn't the sort of thing they wish to financially support. This really is the reductio ad absurdum freedom of speech argument.

mcguire 8y ago

Careless remarks? "Before your stupid social justice feminine bullshit, [mass murders] didn't happen on this scale, it's crazy. This is a disease of the modern age. YOU are responsible for perpetuating it, by disenfranchising these poor fucking guys who don't have any options left. When someone takes the option of absolute insanely last resort, you have to wonder, what kind of system is producing them? And I'll tell you what, Laci, it is a fucking feminist system that is doing this." Quirky ideas? "I wouldn't even rape you, @jessphillips. #AntiRapeThreats #FeminismIsCancer" Do you really think Carl Benjamin is quirky and careless? Are you really defending him as having done something harmless, funny, or simply unthinkingly? Are you as laissez-faire about, say, the anti-vaccine crowd or the creationists---they're just disagreeing "with the overall bent of the arc of history?" In a more serious mode, have you any evidence that we are "talking about people who may have made a careless remark, or have quirky ideas, or disagree with the overall bent of the arc of history?" I would think everyone would be up in arms if such were the case. All of the examples I have run across are individuals who are repeatedly, deliberately and provocatively making loathsome statements, and, due to "tolerance", being applauded for it.

nicky0 8y ago
The "wouldn't rape you" tweet is crass but the first, longer quote is a perfectly reasonable point of view.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
_Tev 8y ago
Frankly, yes, those ideas are just "quirky", if you want to use that word. I would use "extreme", and maybe even "a bit crazy", but I still think deplatforming those stupid ideas is wrong, because: 1) you should be able to say stupid stuff in public, as long as it does not actually cause violence ... 2) ... Which I think this does not. Yes, the line is blurred, but that's the point - is presumption of innocence a good idea? I think yes, mainly because 3) this deplatforming apparently does not work to reduce the following of such people (I might be wrong, but have not seen any data disproving this). Btw I get the impression that Trump has said similarly abhorrent things. Should we deplatform him? The slippery slope arguments starts to get real when you expand the bans to people like the one you quoted (assuming those were the worst things from him).

danans 8y ago

> It is also a set of cultural norms rooted deeply in a long lineage of hard won ideas. > By banning these people platforms like Twitter and Patreon are eroding free speech not in the legal sense, but in the cultural norms sense. If these norms continue getting eroded, god help us all -- it may set humanity and the western civilization back by hundreds of years. Not among those hard-won norms are: hate speech, incitement of violence against groups and individuals, either directly or by thinly disguised dog whistles. Those voices, though they were always present among people, were held back, suppressed if you will, by large media organizations since around the end of the second world war, and definitely since the civil rights movement, when public exclamations of hate-speech and racism became taboo. Prior to that, it was common for newspapers to regularly carry articles that we would today consider vile and bigoted. But norms changed for the better. But the internet came along and gave a medium to hate speech that had been restrained for decades by traditional media. Bemoaning the restraint of hate speech now is lamenting the loss of a forum which has existed for only 20 years or so, from roughly when the internet became a popular medium, and was discovered by existing hate groups. The rise of, and tacit societal acceptance of mass-distributed hate speech via the Internet was actually the erosion of the norm, rather than the other way around.

heyjudy 8y ago

Platform businesses aren't public commons, they're businesses, which means they're free to pick-and-choose winners and losers arbitrarily, if they so desire. OTOH if controversial content creators want the freedom to publish, fundraise and engage audiences, it behooves them to prefer audience-funded, almost-anything-goes platforms that will cater to all forms of legally-protected speech. Otherwise, they're asking for trouble in the form of arbitrary silencing. Cultural fascism, whereby people are censored because their legal speech is unpopular, is a path towards totalitarianism and civil war.

paulcole 8y ago

Do you happen to know Evelyn Hall’s twitter handle? Seems like an interesting person to follow.

waterhouse 8y ago
Heh heh heh, if only. Evelyn Hall was born in the 1800s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Beatrice_Hall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Beatrice_Hall

mindslight 8y ago

Thank you for putting this so well. What you've written shouldn't even need to be defended as a minority opinion, but alas a little bit of power is a hell of a drug.

anigbrowl 8y ago

Popper and the paradox of tolerance have nothing to do with it because we aren't talking about fascists angling to march on Washington DC to burn down the Library of Congress. We're talking about people who may have made a careless remark, or have quirky ideas, or disagree with the overall bent of the arc of history. Neo-fascism is a real phenomenon that kills real people and Patreon doesn't want to be associated with people who have that stink on them.