5 ms·

Then you dont get freedom of speech. Defending rights isn't easy.

by gdhbcc 8y ago

DanBC 8y ago
Most of the world is fine with their version of freedom of speech. The extremist version from the US is rare, and causes huge amounts of harm. US business owners need to wake up to the fact that their products are seen as publishers, not pipes, and that publishers in most of the world are regulated.
- thatcat 8y ago
  Can you explain how US free speech causes harm?
  - fixermark 8y ago
    The white nationalist rally in Charlottesville was the sort of fascist rally that other countries would categorically refuse a permit to. The US does not, in general, refuse permits under the assumption that a group (even a group with a violent ideology) will turn from a peaceable demonstration to a violent riot. Federal, state, and local law is heavily bent toward assumption of good faith. Charlottesville had several injuries and one death.
    - s9w 8y ago
      An overweight woman died from a heart attack. Meanwhile over here we have a dead German every day on average. If I were to name the ethnic origin of the murderers I would get sued. This goes both ways.
      - fixermark 8y ago
        I take it you're contradicting the coroner's report that Heather Heyer died of a blunt-force chest injury? Given that the driver of the car was convicted in her murder, you may want to walk that back.
        s9w 8y ago
        Sure. And when a "new German" stabs an "old German" in the heart and kills him, he died of "causes unrelated to the injury" to quote one of our coroners, 6 hours (!) after the attack. These things aren't worth the papers they're printed on. A tool in the hand of politics [1] https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article181477442/Obduktionsergebnis-22-Jaehriger-in-Koethen-starb-an-akutem-Herzversagen.html https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article181477442/Obduktionse...
        fixermark 8y ago
        The source you've linked to doesn't mention a stabbing, and nothing I've been able to dig up suggests there was a stabbing in the Köthen death. Death from heart condition was unrelated to the injuries sustained from a fall the victim suffered scuffling with the 18-year-old (which, yes, smells fishy, but I think you're casting aspersions on an unrelated coroner who was looking at a woman with a crushed ribcage because of possible malpractice on a local-to-you coroner's part, which is... Well, this is the sort of misinformation-spreading and stereotyping, and the harm it causes, that we're discussing in this thread). Are you conflating the facts from two situations? Media coverage of the Köthen protests suggests there was a stabbing incident in Chemnitz close in time to Köthen. All of that having been said: I think your point that Germany has laws discouraging you from casting aspersions on groups due to individual actions of the groups, and America has far fewer such restrictions, stands. Except... Germany's homicide rate is lower than the US. So Germany's clearly doing something right relative to its neighbor 'cross the pond (of course, it may not be this---but given that Germany had to deal with actual Nazis and the US has not yet had that challenge, I'm not in the habit of gainsaying Germany's strategy here regarding laissez-faire freedom of speech).
        s9w 8y ago
        It wasn't a stabbing, the rest was correct. It was very close after Chemnitz and the following protests, so this case was given close attention. Unwanted attention, so this ridiculous report was put out, and later the details were kept secret as "Ermittlungsgeheimnis". I'm just using this ridiculous case to make the point that these reports don't mean anything. Both cases had extreme political pressure to make things happen.. and that exact thing was written on the report. But besides that: I think it's faulty logic to say that as long as Germany's homocide (or whatever) rates are lower than the US, it must be better. You can't compare things like that. A murder used to be something extraordinary. Now it's everyday. According to statistics they're at an all-time low. See the case above and numerous other examples.
    - fullofhatred 8y ago
      Free speech didn't cause the Charlottesville murder. A murderer did. Removing freedom doesn't make anyone safer. Look at London, for example, where they have less freedom than in Soviet Russia; no guns, not even tipped knives are allowed. That's like a child's school cafeteria. They're literally treated like little children, and yet the murder rate is epic. Would you fix that by removing more freedom? If you lock all Londoners in separate cells, the murder rate will surely go down. The great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free.
      - fixermark 8y ago
        You're broadening the discussion from freedom of speech to freedom in general, and I don't think the conversation is particularly valuable over-broad. In terms of homicides, looking at London's rate relative to, say, major cities in the US, I strongly suspect the 2nd Amendment in the US plays a lot more role than the 1st. Comparing London to, say, Chicago, it seems that the freedom to run around with untracked firearms isn't doing the US any favors. Maybe it's the cultural difference, but I don't see London's rate as "epic" given that they're a city of 8 million souls and US cities with smaller populations have more murders. But freedom of speech and freedom to be armed are different freedoms.
        fullofhatred 8y ago
        Except that A) freedom of speech is the most essential freedom (hence, "first" amendment), so I'm not broadening the discussion too much, am I? (aka, slippery slope argument is not always a fallacy) B) I'm glad that you brought up Chicago, since it's run by leftists and anti-gun politicians, just like every other high crime city in the US and Europe; in fact, just like pretty much every high crime dump in the world is run by leftists. It used to be easy enough to dismiss such silly arguments by saying "Chicago and the rest of Illinois has some of the toughest gun laws", but leftists have a fallacious argument for everything. Fortunately, the leftists' favorite argument of "Chicago's gun crime is caused by the 2nd amendment and the ability to bring guns across state line, etc." doesn't last very long when you consider that the states with the most gun freedom in the US have some of the lowest crime rates (Idaho, Vermont, etc.). Or, are you prepared to offer a theory (other than "cultural differences" - last I checked murder is not an acceptable "culture", or is that the next wave of leftism?) about why people in Idaho and Vermont aren't murdering people due to their nearly unrestricted access to guns and legal ability to carry them in public?
  - rayvd 8y ago
    Because he doesn't like it and doesn't consider government "tyranny" harm.
    - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
      I'm not sure how you consider blocking 4chan "tyranny" compared to some of the stuff the US government (or any government, for that matter) gets up to?
  - afuchs 8y ago
    > Can you explain how US free speech causes harm? A good example that could be considered to be overall harmful would be the anti-vax movement. It has spread by speech over social media through patently inaccurate information.
- fullofhatred 8y ago
  > extremist version from the US "extreme freedom" :)
- fixermark 8y ago
  In point of fact, US law defined (via the DMCA "Safe Harbor" clause) most communications-media products (fora, video sharing sites, music repositories, etc.) as pipes for this reason. "They're pipes" is how the US regulates them.
  - iooi 8y ago
    Is this still accurate after SESTA/FOSTA?
    - fixermark 8y ago
      In general, yes. SESTA/FOSTA nudged the definition of the safe harbor away from content that facilitated sex trafficking. This has no bearing on whether, say, iTunes is still safe in sharing the subversive, anti-government music of Creedence Clearwater Revival. ;)
radiorental 8y ago
I believe you mean that separation of hate speech from freedom of speech rights isn't easy.
- detcader 8y ago
  I think the hardest thing for folks is actually arguing that speech X, Y, and Z are hateful, because all people of every political background who log online seem to want to do is legislate others into silence or post innuendo and memes about people's character behind their backs. There's an essay I found pretty unique, "Reflections on Debating The Right" on Current Affairs, explaining why much more public debates would be helpful... of course, that website could well be blocked soon in Australia for their articles on Palestine, given the precedents now set!
  - ratling 8y ago
    Debating a bad actor isn’t debating. People on the right (the proles, not the rich people making money off the whole affair) don’t want to have honest intellectual discourse. They want to ‘own libruls’ and be smug (despite their choices actively hurting their livelihood and their lives leaving little to be smug about). There’s nothing to debate, they’re just idiots. Easy to fleece idiots considering how easy it is to make money by throwing out a bunch of controversial statements and then retracting when their audience has moved on.
    - detcader 8y ago
      I hope you're never categorized as a bad actor for a view you develop by your friends or fellow activists. From what I can tell, the bleeding-edge version of the line between honest soul and bad actor is under continuous deployment... it will be crucial to study each set of changelogs! By the way, do you think sex work is liberating, or capitalist exploitation? What do you think, a 2-state solution or not? I wouldn't want to get cancelled by talking to you. I hope to come back to this debate in a few decades and see that Robinson's pieces on debating the right, along with Mark Fisher's "Exiting the Vampire Castle" and Benjamin Studebaker's "The Left is Not a Church" will be considered important overlooked resources.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Then you dont get freedom of speech Does Australia have an enumerated right to free speech? I thought that remains a somewhat novel feature of the American Constitution. (Owing--in large part--to our culture.)
- Consultant32452 8y ago
  Freedom of speech is not just a law that happens to exist in some countries, it's a moral principle.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

Then you dont get freedom of speech. Defending rights isn't easy.

by gdhbcc 8y ago

Then you dont get freedom of speech. Defending rights isn't easy.

Most of the world is fine with their version of freedom of speech. The extremist version from the US is rare, and causes huge amounts of harm. US business owners need to wake up to the fact that their products are seen as publishers, not pipes, and that publishers in most of the world are regulated.

thatcat 8y ago
Can you explain how US free speech causes harm?
- fixermark 8y ago
  The white nationalist rally in Charlottesville was the sort of fascist rally that other countries would categorically refuse a permit to. The US does not, in general, refuse permits under the assumption that a group (even a group with a violent ideology) will turn from a peaceable demonstration to a violent riot. Federal, state, and local law is heavily bent toward assumption of good faith. Charlottesville had several injuries and one death.
  - s9w 8y ago
    An overweight woman died from a heart attack. Meanwhile over here we have a dead German every day on average. If I were to name the ethnic origin of the murderers I would get sued. This goes both ways.
    - fixermark 8y ago
      I take it you're contradicting the coroner's report that Heather Heyer died of a blunt-force chest injury? Given that the driver of the car was convicted in her murder, you may want to walk that back.
      - s9w 8y ago
        Sure. And when a "new German" stabs an "old German" in the heart and kills him, he died of "causes unrelated to the injury" to quote one of our coroners, 6 hours (!) after the attack. These things aren't worth the papers they're printed on. A tool in the hand of politics [1] https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article181477442/Obduktionsergebnis-22-Jaehriger-in-Koethen-starb-an-akutem-Herzversagen.html https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article181477442/Obduktionse...
        fixermark 8y ago
        The source you've linked to doesn't mention a stabbing, and nothing I've been able to dig up suggests there was a stabbing in the Köthen death. Death from heart condition was unrelated to the injuries sustained from a fall the victim suffered scuffling with the 18-year-old (which, yes, smells fishy, but I think you're casting aspersions on an unrelated coroner who was looking at a woman with a crushed ribcage because of possible malpractice on a local-to-you coroner's part, which is... Well, this is the sort of misinformation-spreading and stereotyping, and the harm it causes, that we're discussing in this thread). Are you conflating the facts from two situations? Media coverage of the Köthen protests suggests there was a stabbing incident in Chemnitz close in time to Köthen. All of that having been said: I think your point that Germany has laws discouraging you from casting aspersions on groups due to individual actions of the groups, and America has far fewer such restrictions, stands. Except... Germany's homicide rate is lower than the US. So Germany's clearly doing something right relative to its neighbor 'cross the pond (of course, it may not be this---but given that Germany had to deal with actual Nazis and the US has not yet had that challenge, I'm not in the habit of gainsaying Germany's strategy here regarding laissez-faire freedom of speech).
        s9w 8y ago
        It wasn't a stabbing, the rest was correct. It was very close after Chemnitz and the following protests, so this case was given close attention. Unwanted attention, so this ridiculous report was put out, and later the details were kept secret as "Ermittlungsgeheimnis". I'm just using this ridiculous case to make the point that these reports don't mean anything. Both cases had extreme political pressure to make things happen.. and that exact thing was written on the report. But besides that: I think it's faulty logic to say that as long as Germany's homocide (or whatever) rates are lower than the US, it must be better. You can't compare things like that. A murder used to be something extraordinary. Now it's everyday. According to statistics they're at an all-time low. See the case above and numerous other examples.
  - fullofhatred 8y ago
    Free speech didn't cause the Charlottesville murder. A murderer did. Removing freedom doesn't make anyone safer. Look at London, for example, where they have less freedom than in Soviet Russia; no guns, not even tipped knives are allowed. That's like a child's school cafeteria. They're literally treated like little children, and yet the murder rate is epic. Would you fix that by removing more freedom? If you lock all Londoners in separate cells, the murder rate will surely go down. The great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free.
    - fixermark 8y ago
      You're broadening the discussion from freedom of speech to freedom in general, and I don't think the conversation is particularly valuable over-broad. In terms of homicides, looking at London's rate relative to, say, major cities in the US, I strongly suspect the 2nd Amendment in the US plays a lot more role than the 1st. Comparing London to, say, Chicago, it seems that the freedom to run around with untracked firearms isn't doing the US any favors. Maybe it's the cultural difference, but I don't see London's rate as "epic" given that they're a city of 8 million souls and US cities with smaller populations have more murders. But freedom of speech and freedom to be armed are different freedoms.
      - fullofhatred 8y ago
        Except that A) freedom of speech is the most essential freedom (hence, "first" amendment), so I'm not broadening the discussion too much, am I? (aka, slippery slope argument is not always a fallacy) B) I'm glad that you brought up Chicago, since it's run by leftists and anti-gun politicians, just like every other high crime city in the US and Europe; in fact, just like pretty much every high crime dump in the world is run by leftists. It used to be easy enough to dismiss such silly arguments by saying "Chicago and the rest of Illinois has some of the toughest gun laws", but leftists have a fallacious argument for everything. Fortunately, the leftists' favorite argument of "Chicago's gun crime is caused by the 2nd amendment and the ability to bring guns across state line, etc." doesn't last very long when you consider that the states with the most gun freedom in the US have some of the lowest crime rates (Idaho, Vermont, etc.). Or, are you prepared to offer a theory (other than "cultural differences" - last I checked murder is not an acceptable "culture", or is that the next wave of leftism?) about why people in Idaho and Vermont aren't murdering people due to their nearly unrestricted access to guns and legal ability to carry them in public?
- rayvd 8y ago
  Because he doesn't like it and doesn't consider government "tyranny" harm.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    I'm not sure how you consider blocking 4chan "tyranny" compared to some of the stuff the US government (or any government, for that matter) gets up to?
- afuchs 8y ago
  > Can you explain how US free speech causes harm? A good example that could be considered to be overall harmful would be the anti-vax movement. It has spread by speech over social media through patently inaccurate information.
fullofhatred 8y ago
> extremist version from the US "extreme freedom" :)
fixermark 8y ago
In point of fact, US law defined (via the DMCA "Safe Harbor" clause) most communications-media products (fora, video sharing sites, music repositories, etc.) as pipes for this reason. "They're pipes" is how the US regulates them.
- iooi 8y ago
  Is this still accurate after SESTA/FOSTA?
  - fixermark 8y ago
    In general, yes. SESTA/FOSTA nudged the definition of the safe harbor away from content that facilitated sex trafficking. This has no bearing on whether, say, iTunes is still safe in sharing the subversive, anti-government music of Creedence Clearwater Revival. ;)

radiorental 8y ago

I believe you mean that separation of hate speech from freedom of speech rights isn't easy.

detcader 8y ago
I think the hardest thing for folks is actually arguing that speech X, Y, and Z are hateful, because all people of every political background who log online seem to want to do is legislate others into silence or post innuendo and memes about people's character behind their backs. There's an essay I found pretty unique, "Reflections on Debating The Right" on Current Affairs, explaining why much more public debates would be helpful... of course, that website could well be blocked soon in Australia for their articles on Palestine, given the precedents now set!
- ratling 8y ago
  Debating a bad actor isn’t debating. People on the right (the proles, not the rich people making money off the whole affair) don’t want to have honest intellectual discourse. They want to ‘own libruls’ and be smug (despite their choices actively hurting their livelihood and their lives leaving little to be smug about). There’s nothing to debate, they’re just idiots. Easy to fleece idiots considering how easy it is to make money by throwing out a bunch of controversial statements and then retracting when their audience has moved on.
  - detcader 8y ago
    I hope you're never categorized as a bad actor for a view you develop by your friends or fellow activists. From what I can tell, the bleeding-edge version of the line between honest soul and bad actor is under continuous deployment... it will be crucial to study each set of changelogs! By the way, do you think sex work is liberating, or capitalist exploitation? What do you think, a 2-state solution or not? I wouldn't want to get cancelled by talking to you. I hope to come back to this debate in a few decades and see that Robinson's pieces on debating the right, along with Mark Fisher's "Exiting the Vampire Castle" and Benjamin Studebaker's "The Left is Not a Church" will be considered important overlooked resources.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> Then you dont get freedom of speech Does Australia have an enumerated right to free speech? I thought that remains a somewhat novel feature of the American Constitution. (Owing--in large part--to our culture.)

Consultant32452 8y ago
Freedom of speech is not just a law that happens to exist in some countries, it's a moral principle.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]