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There's a certain amount of irony here given the FBI's history (I'm thinking of COINTELPRO). I support conspiracy theorists. I think they are canaries in the

There's a certain amount of irony here given the FBI's history (I'm thinking of COINTELPRO). I support conspiracy theorists. I think they are canaries in the coal mine of free speech. Right now we seem to be wrestling with the fear that someone can write something online, someone else can read it, buy a gun, and go do something illegal. While I find this worrying, I think any cure would be worse than the disease.

digsy 7y ago
Maybe they were canaries in the coal mine of free speech but now some of them have been co-opted to do real arm e.g. Russian trolls pushing anti-vax memes [1]. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/
rdtsc 7y ago
> I think they are canaries in the coal mine of free speech. Interesting take on it. I remember years back Chomsky had defended the right of some despicable Holocaust denier to publish his stuff https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair. I always wonder if he would do it again today.
- ColanR 7y ago
  I hope someone will. Intellectual discussion seems to always play second fiddle to emotion and personal attacks (attack the idea, please, instead of the person). Takes courage to stand up to a mob, online or in person. We need to defend the right to discuss distasteful things, and even to wonder if they are true (should I add a holocaust disclaimer here?).
  - gwm83 7y ago
    Does it make a difference if there is no true discussion or debate, but instead one party that simply desires to spread misinformation? (Party in this context not meaning a US political party)
    - ColanR 7y ago
      It makes no difference whatsoever: because otherwise we need to appoint a referee that gets to decide what counts as misinformation.
  - danaris 7y ago
    Intellectual discussion has no chance against a mob of people who are convinced that you're against them, and anything you say to try to prove you're not is just more evidence of how awful you are. The people whose speech you're defending aren't interested in intellectual discussion or good-natured adversarial debate. They want to kill people, deprive them of rights, shout down everyone who disagrees with them, and justify all of this with a tissue of lies and conspiracy theories grounded primarily in bigotry and self-importance.
    - ColanR 7y ago
      Doesn't mean they are any less entitled to the right of free speech. > They want to kill people, deprive them of rights, shout down everyone who disagrees with them, and justify all of this with a tissue of lies and conspiracy theories grounded primarily in bigotry and self-importance. You're talking about a vocal / violent minority of conspiracy theorists. Most are investigating their theories about possible conspiracies. Is there anything a conspiracy theorist could say, to try and prove they aren't against you? Because your blanket description of 'the people whose speech I'm defending', and your implication they should be denied the freedom to speak their theories, makes you look disinterested in an intellectual discussion with any conspiracy theorist.
panicthrowaway 7y ago
The problem is that conspiracy theory and moral panics are not victimless crimes. I grew up with an ultrarightwing christian conspiracy theorist who claimed my mother was a witch that was satanically ritual abusing me and my brother and "sacrificing" us to Satan. He also believed she was a serial killer running a daycare scheme that allowed her to mass slaughter children in the name of Satan. I was basically coerced into confessing this shit by the church when I was in kindergarten because I was caught by the playground attendant looking up girls skirts. My mother always wore jeans so I didn't understand the concept of a dress so I was picking up their skirts because I didn't understand the purpose of the garment. But the play ground attendant assumed it was sign that I was being sexually abused. My dad came to pick me up took me to the church shrink who basically coached me to say a bunch of really fucked up shit about my mother. She ended up loosing any custody of me and was not allowed to even be in the same room as me without police supervision until I was 18. She had to register as a sex offender. Don't believe me? Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria I am an adult survivor of this abuse. So when you tell me that you support conspiracy theorists it makes me sick. Fuck them, they ruined me and my mother's life. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to undo the indoctrination and brain washing I basically went through? And its not like these are your run of the mill conspiracy theorists that believe in aliens and JFK grassy knole shit. This ruins lives. When I see people like QAnon who front ideas like Pizza Gate and Alex Jones claiming Sandy Hook was a false flag and ruining the lives of people that lost their kids with death threats. Fuck them. And if you support them, fuck you too. If you want further reading I recommend reading Satan's Silence
- iamnothere 7y ago
  You're making the same class of mistake made by people who support (for instance) the death penalty against criminals in group X because their loved one was a victim of one of those criminals. I empathize with you and understand that your experience must have been very difficult. That said, there are fundamental freedoms that must be defended even when the group in question is distasteful. Freedom to speak your mind -- and possibly propagate dumb conspiracies -- is one of them.
iamnothere 7y ago
Indeed, there were many true conspiracies in the nation's history, some of them which sound absolutely false and ridiculous until you read the declassified documents. The CIA's experiments with LSD, the FBI's threats to MLK, COINTELPRO as you mentioned, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, these are all sordid (and true) episodes in US history that perfectly fit the "conspiracy theory" mold. If one of these events happened today and people uncovered it, they would be relentlessly mocked as "Russian trolls" by blue checks on Twitter, ignored by the mainstream media, and blocked by centralized social media gatekeepers like YouTube and Facebook. (Needless to say, the US is not the only country with skeletons in its closet. Many others are worse.) Some so-called "conspiracies" -- not all, not even most, but some -- ARE true. They are usually pretty horrible, and they deserve to be exposed. Do we really want to suppress conversations that could uncover these kind of institutional crimes? It's not like the bought-and-paid-for media is going to do it. My opinion: violent people are going to find something to lash out no matter what. It might be an obsession with a celebrity, an ideology, a conspiracy theory, a religion, a politician, a neighbor or coworker, or something else. Rather than playing whack-a-mole with possible "triggers" for violence, realize that potential triggers are everywhere and adjust strategy accordingly.
fzeroracer 7y ago
So how would you say to fix the problem of white supremacists organizing and committing acts of terrorism against local communities, synagogues and so forth? Or are we as a community only allowed to be reactive to such events? Or to make it perhaps more palatable: Would you defend the rights of say, Al-Qaeda to organize, plan and carry out acts of terror within the US because we consider parts 1 and 2 to be part of their right to freedom of speech? Or what about cults? At what point does their freedom of speech become psychological abuse?
- subjectsigma 7y ago
  I don't get what you're arguing. Neither of those are examples of protected speech. In fact, the first example Wikipedia gives of speech that isn't protected is the KKK inciting violence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
  - subjectsigma 7y ago
    Whoa, I totally read that backwards like a moron: the article says that the KKK was actually let go because it wasn't clear they expressed immediate intent to do violence. Leaving the comment for posterity's sake. The point I was trying to make is that there are limits to free speech, I don't think you can plot a terrorist attack in public and get away with it.
geofft 7y ago
Do you feel the same about al-Qaeda? (Not a trick question–honestly I would be willing to argue in favor of al-Qaeda's freedom of speech, including their freedom to advocate their ideology in the US. And I work in a high-rise building in lower Manhattan.) It seems like designating anyone as a terrorist or stating that any ideology is a root cause of a national security threat is a direct risk to the freedom of speech. Yet it seems valid and important for a country's executive to do so.
- basch 7y ago
  theres freedom of speech and then theres free broadcasting. theres a difference between blocking people from having conversations with each other, and choosing not to give away free broadcast. the problem right now is that there are probably around 20 gatekeepers for nearly all broadcast in the country. if you want the massess to hear you, you need to convince some of those 20 to lend you broadcast space. (facebook, google, twitter, disney, verizon, att, sony, microsoft, comcast, charter, iheartradio, nationalamusement, sinclair, tribune, gannett, hearst, advanced publications, associated press, thompsonreuters, discovery. who did i miss.) if you have a propaganda message to get out, you just need to feed it to those 20 places and get your generals up on their screens. those twenty companies conspiring (either directly, or just being aligned because taking the same side benefits them) to silence a message does violate the principal of freedom of speech in some way, but can we really compel them to offer conspiracy theorists equal air time? forcing them to displace speech they prefer for speech they down violates their own speech. im not sure telling these companies what they should and shouldnt be allowed to say is the right way forward, vs decentralizing communication platforms and dealing with the repercussions of a system that cant be censored. I would imagine that a future decentralized platform would end up similar to something like ublock filter lists. Some sort of default "these are the servers you want to follow to see most of the world news." For it to work, the default setting needs to be something most people can just click NEXT on and never think of again.
  - geofft 7y ago
    Access to platforms (and the freedom of the press) is an important topic, yes, but I'm not sure what it has to do with the question of whether the FBI calling a group of people with odious opinions a national security threat endangers their freedom of speech.
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
Someone can run an entertainment channel under the guise of a news service to influence the thoughts of millions. Which is more dangerous?

digsy 7y ago

Maybe they were canaries in the coal mine of free speech but now some of them have been co-opted to do real arm e.g. Russian trolls pushing anti-vax memes [1]. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/

rdtsc 7y ago

> I think they are canaries in the coal mine of free speech. Interesting take on it. I remember years back Chomsky had defended the right of some despicable Holocaust denier to publish his stuff https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair. I always wonder if he would do it again today.

ColanR 7y ago
I hope someone will. Intellectual discussion seems to always play second fiddle to emotion and personal attacks (attack the idea, please, instead of the person). Takes courage to stand up to a mob, online or in person. We need to defend the right to discuss distasteful things, and even to wonder if they are true (should I add a holocaust disclaimer here?).
- gwm83 7y ago
  Does it make a difference if there is no true discussion or debate, but instead one party that simply desires to spread misinformation? (Party in this context not meaning a US political party)
  - ColanR 7y ago
    It makes no difference whatsoever: because otherwise we need to appoint a referee that gets to decide what counts as misinformation.
- danaris 7y ago
  Intellectual discussion has no chance against a mob of people who are convinced that you're against them, and anything you say to try to prove you're not is just more evidence of how awful you are. The people whose speech you're defending aren't interested in intellectual discussion or good-natured adversarial debate. They want to kill people, deprive them of rights, shout down everyone who disagrees with them, and justify all of this with a tissue of lies and conspiracy theories grounded primarily in bigotry and self-importance.
  - ColanR 7y ago
    Doesn't mean they are any less entitled to the right of free speech. > They want to kill people, deprive them of rights, shout down everyone who disagrees with them, and justify all of this with a tissue of lies and conspiracy theories grounded primarily in bigotry and self-importance. You're talking about a vocal / violent minority of conspiracy theorists. Most are investigating their theories about possible conspiracies. Is there anything a conspiracy theorist could say, to try and prove they aren't against you? Because your blanket description of 'the people whose speech I'm defending', and your implication they should be denied the freedom to speak their theories, makes you look disinterested in an intellectual discussion with any conspiracy theorist.

panicthrowaway 7y ago

The problem is that conspiracy theory and moral panics are not victimless crimes. I grew up with an ultrarightwing christian conspiracy theorist who claimed my mother was a witch that was satanically ritual abusing me and my brother and "sacrificing" us to Satan. He also believed she was a serial killer running a daycare scheme that allowed her to mass slaughter children in the name of Satan. I was basically coerced into confessing this shit by the church when I was in kindergarten because I was caught by the playground attendant looking up girls skirts. My mother always wore jeans so I didn't understand the concept of a dress so I was picking up their skirts because I didn't understand the purpose of the garment. But the play ground attendant assumed it was sign that I was being sexually abused. My dad came to pick me up took me to the church shrink who basically coached me to say a bunch of really fucked up shit about my mother. She ended up loosing any custody of me and was not allowed to even be in the same room as me without police supervision until I was 18. She had to register as a sex offender. Don't believe me? Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria I am an adult survivor of this abuse. So when you tell me that you support conspiracy theorists it makes me sick. Fuck them, they ruined me and my mother's life. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to undo the indoctrination and brain washing I basically went through? And its not like these are your run of the mill conspiracy theorists that believe in aliens and JFK grassy knole shit. This ruins lives. When I see people like QAnon who front ideas like Pizza Gate and Alex Jones claiming Sandy Hook was a false flag and ruining the lives of people that lost their kids with death threats. Fuck them. And if you support them, fuck you too. If you want further reading I recommend reading Satan's Silence

iamnothere 7y ago
You're making the same class of mistake made by people who support (for instance) the death penalty against criminals in group X because their loved one was a victim of one of those criminals. I empathize with you and understand that your experience must have been very difficult. That said, there are fundamental freedoms that must be defended even when the group in question is distasteful. Freedom to speak your mind -- and possibly propagate dumb conspiracies -- is one of them.

iamnothere 7y ago

Indeed, there were many true conspiracies in the nation's history, some of them which sound absolutely false and ridiculous until you read the declassified documents. The CIA's experiments with LSD, the FBI's threats to MLK, COINTELPRO as you mentioned, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, these are all sordid (and true) episodes in US history that perfectly fit the "conspiracy theory" mold. If one of these events happened today and people uncovered it, they would be relentlessly mocked as "Russian trolls" by blue checks on Twitter, ignored by the mainstream media, and blocked by centralized social media gatekeepers like YouTube and Facebook. (Needless to say, the US is not the only country with skeletons in its closet. Many others are worse.) Some so-called "conspiracies" -- not all, not even most, but some -- ARE true. They are usually pretty horrible, and they deserve to be exposed. Do we really want to suppress conversations that could uncover these kind of institutional crimes? It's not like the bought-and-paid-for media is going to do it. My opinion: violent people are going to find something to lash out no matter what. It might be an obsession with a celebrity, an ideology, a conspiracy theory, a religion, a politician, a neighbor or coworker, or something else. Rather than playing whack-a-mole with possible "triggers" for violence, realize that potential triggers are everywhere and adjust strategy accordingly.

fzeroracer 7y ago

So how would you say to fix the problem of white supremacists organizing and committing acts of terrorism against local communities, synagogues and so forth? Or are we as a community only allowed to be reactive to such events? Or to make it perhaps more palatable: Would you defend the rights of say, Al-Qaeda to organize, plan and carry out acts of terror within the US because we consider parts 1 and 2 to be part of their right to freedom of speech? Or what about cults? At what point does their freedom of speech become psychological abuse?

subjectsigma 7y ago
I don't get what you're arguing. Neither of those are examples of protected speech. In fact, the first example Wikipedia gives of speech that isn't protected is the KKK inciting violence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
- subjectsigma 7y ago
  Whoa, I totally read that backwards like a moron: the article says that the KKK was actually let go because it wasn't clear they expressed immediate intent to do violence. Leaving the comment for posterity's sake. The point I was trying to make is that there are limits to free speech, I don't think you can plot a terrorist attack in public and get away with it.

geofft 7y ago

Do you feel the same about al-Qaeda? (Not a trick question–honestly I would be willing to argue in favor of al-Qaeda's freedom of speech, including their freedom to advocate their ideology in the US. And I work in a high-rise building in lower Manhattan.) It seems like designating anyone as a terrorist or stating that any ideology is a root cause of a national security threat is a direct risk to the freedom of speech. Yet it seems valid and important for a country's executive to do so.

basch 7y ago
theres freedom of speech and then theres free broadcasting. theres a difference between blocking people from having conversations with each other, and choosing not to give away free broadcast. the problem right now is that there are probably around 20 gatekeepers for nearly all broadcast in the country. if you want the massess to hear you, you need to convince some of those 20 to lend you broadcast space. (facebook, google, twitter, disney, verizon, att, sony, microsoft, comcast, charter, iheartradio, nationalamusement, sinclair, tribune, gannett, hearst, advanced publications, associated press, thompsonreuters, discovery. who did i miss.) if you have a propaganda message to get out, you just need to feed it to those 20 places and get your generals up on their screens. those twenty companies conspiring (either directly, or just being aligned because taking the same side benefits them) to silence a message does violate the principal of freedom of speech in some way, but can we really compel them to offer conspiracy theorists equal air time? forcing them to displace speech they prefer for speech they down violates their own speech. im not sure telling these companies what they should and shouldnt be allowed to say is the right way forward, vs decentralizing communication platforms and dealing with the repercussions of a system that cant be censored. I would imagine that a future decentralized platform would end up similar to something like ublock filter lists. Some sort of default "these are the servers you want to follow to see most of the world news." For it to work, the default setting needs to be something most people can just click NEXT on and never think of again.
- geofft 7y ago
  Access to platforms (and the freedom of the press) is an important topic, yes, but I'm not sure what it has to do with the question of whether the FBI calling a group of people with odious opinions a national security threat endangers their freedom of speech.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

Someone can run an entertainment channel under the guise of a news service to influence the thoughts of millions. Which is more dangerous?