5 ms·
> Though that has more to do with potentially being illegal. Death threats, and many other forms of hate speech, are illegal in many jurisdictions, and yet tha
by msbarnett 7y ago
> Though that has more to do with potentially being illegal.
Death threats, and many other forms of hate speech, are illegal in many jurisdictions, and yet that is not used to justify a blanket ban on angry text.
> The more serious (violation of free speech) thing is political censorship
It is not obvious to me that these things are even separable; to pick but one obvious example, a topless photograph posted by advocates for an equal right for both men and women to be topless in public is clearly political speech.
More broadly, look at someone like Larry Flint. The pornagraphic is the political. The current hand-wringing over “censorship of political speech” seems terribly narrowly focused on but one fairly conservative form of speech, to the point that it’s a bit hard to take at face value.
- buboard 7y agobecause the people advocating for tits equality are a tiny group, while mainstream politics have wide implications. I m all for tit freedom, but facebook's lawyers have to weigh in the costs of litigation
- msbarnett 7y agofree speech is only for popular, mainstream speech? I don’t really care what’s cost effective for Facebook’s lawyers; we don’t have to care about that, so we should stop enabling the lie that their main concern is enabling free speech. Costs, playing nice with established powers, not scaring away advertisers by putting their ads too near a nipple — these are their concerns, and we should stop participating in the destruction of the meaning of “free speech” by calling “a narrow spectrum of speech compatible with our current corporate goals” “free speech”.
- buboard 7y agoSure, but , i mean they are free to call it free speech, and use it as a selling point. People judge the truth of that statement by their actions
- msbarnett 7y ago> People judge the truth of that statement by their actions. Which is what I’m doing? I’m not clear what your issue is with me pointing out the inconsistency between their their new fluffy marketing and their actions, given what you just wrote.
- buboard 7y agono issue. i m all for letting people (and the market) judge them. But people are calling for regulation because apparently it 's too "free speech"
- BurningFrog 7y ago> a topless photograph posted by advocates for an equal right for both men and women to be topless in public is clearly political speech. Sure, but you can state the same opinion with words, and not get censored. If certain opinions are forbidden from being expressed, it's a very different thing.
- msbarnett 7y ago> Sure, but you can state the same opinion with words, and not get censored Sure, but that is in no sense what “free speech” means, so we should stop pretending that “free speech” is what Facebook is offering.
- BurningFrog 7y agoThe core of free speech is definitely the right to express any opinion, no matter how offensive.