4 ms·
Attitudes towards free speech have changed a lot in recent times. This is related to the rise of social media. The advent of social media had made it too easy t
by interlocutor 7y ago
Attitudes towards free speech have changed a lot in recent times. This is related to the rise of social media. The advent of social media had made it too easy to spread hate online. It started off innocently enough, with cat videos uploaded to youtube, but soon extremists were taking advantage of social media for radicalization purposes, and others even live-streaming mass murders. This has caused an upheaval in attitudes towards free speech. There needs to be limits. People started imposing limits to free speech. For example, consider that UC Berkeley, renowned for giving birth to the Free Speech Movement, is now making news for banning controversial/harmful speech, such as that by Ann Coulter. The people (as opposed to governments) have decided that some censorship is in order. This is a natural evolution of societal norms. This particular evolution was causated by the excesses seen in social media. It is befitting to see that a social media company, Facebook, is now in the news for censoring harmful speech. This type of censorship, as opposed to absolute free speech, will be the new normal.
- JakeTheAndroid 7y agoI am very much in favor of Free Speech myself. But I think the annoying thing people forget is that it's the job of society to determine what is okay and what isn't. The government isn't supposed to decide our morals, we tell the government what those should be. Society is deciding that this is not stuff we want. Society is rejecting these ideas, and Facebook or Cloudflare when they dropped the Daily Stormer, etc, are deciding that this isn't what they want as part of their society. If a bulk of society does want these ideas, these people will move to a new platform that supports them, and people will use them and make the ideas mainstream. Stop complaining that society is rejecting ideas they don't like. It's literally how it works.
- chasd00 7y agoSociety isn't deciding, Facebook is deciding. I personally think Facebook can do whatever the please with their website. However, if they remove the users they don't like then that implies they approve of the users that remain.
- JakeTheAndroid 7y agoFacebook is deciding because society is pressuring them to decide. Facebook doesn't care about shit, but their bottom line. They have proven that time and time again. This should highlight the social pressures, because they are not legally responsible as far as anyone can tell. Thus, society is deciding.
- beasteurope 7y agoIt's not pressure from society, it's pressure from specific activist groups like the SPLC.
- raarts 7y agoWho themselves have been recently outed for internal rampant racism and sexism.
- kofejnik 7y ago"Society is rejecting these ideas," No it obviously isn't. If it were, there would be no need for bans whatsoever, they would simply have no audience.
- raarts 7y ago> bulk of society does want these ideas This is completely unproven.
- drderidder 7y agoI agree. People tend to forget that their "rights" end where another person's rights begin. Every right comes with responsibilities. While freedom of speech is important, the right to live peacefully free from hateful invective is probably even more fundamental.
- dingo_bat 7y ago> the right to live peacefully free from hateful invective is Nobody can take that away from anybody else by posting on Facebook. Just log out.