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But don't you see how the lines blue very quickly? It's not always as clear where morality lies as when some lunatic posts terroristic threats. Arbitrary value

But don't you see how the lines blue very quickly? It's not always as clear where morality lies as when some lunatic posts terroristic threats. Arbitrary value judgements must be made when enforcing censorship so censorship always leads to conflict between groups that disagree on what should be censored. That's why the best course of action is to not censor at all and allow the system to work itself out.

mort96 7y ago
What system are you talking about if not the system where people and companies can choose who they wish to associate with? I should clarify, I'm not advocating complete freedom in this regard. We don't want a society where it's hard to be a gay person because lots of companies deny service to homosexuals. However, we also can't claim that every company should always have to serve everyone. There is certainly some nuance and ambiguity here, but not hosting services for groups which support far-right terror seems to be fairly reasonable.
- FourScore 7y ago
  I'll be very clear about what I want. I want companies that facilitate speech to be forced to tolerate all legal speech on their platforms. It's that simple. In the 1700's, when we were having the debate over speech protected from government interference, someone could have easily said "yes well if you don't like the government's policies you should go to another country!" The existence of alternatives is irrelevant to the fact that freedom of speech is sacred and forums for speech - public or private - must never infringe upon its freedom.
  - mort96 7y ago
    > I want companies that facilitate speech to be forced to tolerate all legal speech on their platforms. It's that simple. I don't think it's that simple. Taken at face value, you want it to be illegal for someone (say, a game publisher) to have a discussion forum which facilities speech around a particular topic (say, their game) while banning off-topic discussions (say, porn). I'm therefore going to assume you're just thinking of companies which facilitate all kinds of speech, such as forums like Reddit and Twitter and infrastructure like Cloudflare, but excluding Hacker News and lobste.rs and /r/factorio which focus on a particular subject area. The problem with your approach is that, invariably, a discussion forum which doesn't get rid of despicable content ends up repelling people who dislike that content and attracting people who like that kind of content. A great example is voat.co, which looked like a fairly good Reddit alternative until its free speech absolutism ended up attracting all kinds of hateful people and content. If a platform isn't allowed to reject legal speech, we would need much stronger laws regarding what counts as hate speech and what doesn't. I don't know if that's what you want.
  - otterley 7y ago
    I’m afraid the basis on which your argument is made is shaky. The First Amendment was not rooted in concerns about the government controlling speech in general. It was rooted in concerns about criminal liability for contra-government speech as reflected in the seditious libel laws in England that had been in place since the 1500s. Like, you could go to jail for criticizing the government. If you study our jurisprudence you’ll find that no free speech cases were decided by the Supreme Court despite plenty of common law surrounding speech such as civil libel, commercial regulations, etc. for nearly 150 years (!) until the early 1900s. Debs v U.S. (1919) was the first case and it was about - surprise, surprise - an anti-war speech.
kwesthaus 7y ago
> That's why the best course of action is to not censor at all and allow the system to work itself out. I disagree with this sentiment, and upon reflection of why, it seems we've come to a real-life example of the trolly problem. Choosing to be passive and "let the system sort itself out" will almost certainly result in more deaths (edit: specifically in terms of mass shootings), but choosing to be active means the powers that be are forced to make subjective choices. I personally believe that it's worth taking on the responsibility of subjective choice. Edit: However, I also realize that censorship oftentimes just ostracizes already-radical groups. This has the advantage of making it harder for them to find an audience, but also allows them to radicalize further while under less scrutiny, which also seems like a complicated balance to me.
- odessacubbage 7y ago
  the problem here is that in one case you're sending the trolley into a tunnel where the potential harm or prevention thereof is largely based on your preexisting (and likely incomplete) assumptions. what if rather than being a viper pit of nefarious hatemongers seeking to brainwash the youth into committing acts of violence, imageboards tend to be popular among a subset of the population more prone to depression & more severe mental illnesses which also happens to the encompass the the kinds of loser psychopath edgelords who commit these sorts of crimes. the whole response around these events simply shows we've learned nothing from columbine and are still in essence trying to eradicate the trenchcoat mafia.
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    It's not helpful to palm this off on mental illness - that does a disservice to people with such issues and doesn't address the fact that virulent ideologies exist in the real world and have proponents that are capable of planning, organizing, and recruiting. Sure, 8ch is also full of autists who just need a hug (subject to certain terms and conditions) but if I discover that a bunch of people are making plans to kill me I'm not under any obligation to put my enemy's problems ahead of my own survival.
wsy 7y ago
The rules of society are always a trade-off. In this case, the idea is to lose a bit of free speech, and gain less hatred and less murder. That is not an arbitrary judgement; admittedly this is also not a clear-cut judgement. The system never works itself out, successful societies are the ones which have established governing rules. Game theory has given us pretty good indication that systems rather self-destruct without governance than self-stabilize.
- FourScore 7y ago
  Hatred and murder has always existed! The idea that online discussion forums create or foment hatred is laughable. That hatred has always been out there. Now people just have a place to vent. The good part about it being out in the open is that we can actually see it and be aware of it.

mort96 7y ago

What system are you talking about if not the system where people and companies can choose who they wish to associate with? I should clarify, I'm not advocating complete freedom in this regard. We don't want a society where it's hard to be a gay person because lots of companies deny service to homosexuals. However, we also can't claim that every company should always have to serve everyone. There is certainly some nuance and ambiguity here, but not hosting services for groups which support far-right terror seems to be fairly reasonable.

FourScore 7y ago
I'll be very clear about what I want. I want companies that facilitate speech to be forced to tolerate all legal speech on their platforms. It's that simple. In the 1700's, when we were having the debate over speech protected from government interference, someone could have easily said "yes well if you don't like the government's policies you should go to another country!" The existence of alternatives is irrelevant to the fact that freedom of speech is sacred and forums for speech - public or private - must never infringe upon its freedom.
- mort96 7y ago
  > I want companies that facilitate speech to be forced to tolerate all legal speech on their platforms. It's that simple. I don't think it's that simple. Taken at face value, you want it to be illegal for someone (say, a game publisher) to have a discussion forum which facilities speech around a particular topic (say, their game) while banning off-topic discussions (say, porn). I'm therefore going to assume you're just thinking of companies which facilitate all kinds of speech, such as forums like Reddit and Twitter and infrastructure like Cloudflare, but excluding Hacker News and lobste.rs and /r/factorio which focus on a particular subject area. The problem with your approach is that, invariably, a discussion forum which doesn't get rid of despicable content ends up repelling people who dislike that content and attracting people who like that kind of content. A great example is voat.co, which looked like a fairly good Reddit alternative until its free speech absolutism ended up attracting all kinds of hateful people and content. If a platform isn't allowed to reject legal speech, we would need much stronger laws regarding what counts as hate speech and what doesn't. I don't know if that's what you want.
- otterley 7y ago
  I’m afraid the basis on which your argument is made is shaky. The First Amendment was not rooted in concerns about the government controlling speech in general. It was rooted in concerns about criminal liability for contra-government speech as reflected in the seditious libel laws in England that had been in place since the 1500s. Like, you could go to jail for criticizing the government. If you study our jurisprudence you’ll find that no free speech cases were decided by the Supreme Court despite plenty of common law surrounding speech such as civil libel, commercial regulations, etc. for nearly 150 years (!) until the early 1900s. Debs v U.S. (1919) was the first case and it was about - surprise, surprise - an anti-war speech.

kwesthaus 7y ago

> That's why the best course of action is to not censor at all and allow the system to work itself out. I disagree with this sentiment, and upon reflection of why, it seems we've come to a real-life example of the trolly problem. Choosing to be passive and "let the system sort itself out" will almost certainly result in more deaths (edit: specifically in terms of mass shootings), but choosing to be active means the powers that be are forced to make subjective choices. I personally believe that it's worth taking on the responsibility of subjective choice. Edit: However, I also realize that censorship oftentimes just ostracizes already-radical groups. This has the advantage of making it harder for them to find an audience, but also allows them to radicalize further while under less scrutiny, which also seems like a complicated balance to me.

odessacubbage 7y ago
the problem here is that in one case you're sending the trolley into a tunnel where the potential harm or prevention thereof is largely based on your preexisting (and likely incomplete) assumptions. what if rather than being a viper pit of nefarious hatemongers seeking to brainwash the youth into committing acts of violence, imageboards tend to be popular among a subset of the population more prone to depression & more severe mental illnesses which also happens to the encompass the the kinds of loser psychopath edgelords who commit these sorts of crimes. the whole response around these events simply shows we've learned nothing from columbine and are still in essence trying to eradicate the trenchcoat mafia.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  It's not helpful to palm this off on mental illness - that does a disservice to people with such issues and doesn't address the fact that virulent ideologies exist in the real world and have proponents that are capable of planning, organizing, and recruiting. Sure, 8ch is also full of autists who just need a hug (subject to certain terms and conditions) but if I discover that a bunch of people are making plans to kill me I'm not under any obligation to put my enemy's problems ahead of my own survival.

wsy 7y ago

The rules of society are always a trade-off. In this case, the idea is to lose a bit of free speech, and gain less hatred and less murder. That is not an arbitrary judgement; admittedly this is also not a clear-cut judgement. The system never works itself out, successful societies are the ones which have established governing rules. Game theory has given us pretty good indication that systems rather self-destruct without governance than self-stabilize.

FourScore 7y ago
Hatred and murder has always existed! The idea that online discussion forums create or foment hatred is laughable. That hatred has always been out there. Now people just have a place to vent. The good part about it being out in the open is that we can actually see it and be aware of it.