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I used to take principled free speech position in these kind of arguments. I have for Maybe 10 years. I stopped when I realized that not once, in all the hotly

by Iv 7y ago

I used to take principled free speech position in these kind of arguments. I have for Maybe 10 years. I stopped when I realized that not once, in all the hotly debated discussions I had, I found anything of value in the person being censored. Actually in most cases, removing them provided a smoother environment/community/event. I stopped caring about hate speech removal when it is actually about hate speech. Now I worry about state censorship more and stop defending trolls and Nazis.

concordDance 7y ago
Interesting how different your experience was. I saw the opposite, where repeated removings/suppression of people with different views resulted in the creation of echochambers from which little of value emerges.
- Iv 7y ago
  I am not talking about removing people with different views, I am talking about removing people who promote hate speech. Someone has a talk saying "Linux is the worst thing that ever happened in IT", let her in. Someone has a talk saying "Arabs are inferior people and if you shut that opinion down you are a snowflake", shut him down. Like you, I used to conflate the two, now I see how different it is.
  - quotemstr 7y ago
    > I am not talking about removing people with different views, I am talking about removing people who promote hate speech. Who gets to decide what counts as hate speech? You? Why do you get to make that call and not somebody else? The distinction you're attempting to draw does not exist: you're talking about censoring people based on whether they agree with your perspective. Free speech for the purposes of saying only inoffensive things is not free speech.
    - Iv 7y ago
      Hate speech has some fairly clear legal definitions in many places. It is speech that singles out negatively a group based on [make a list of criterion]. Typical list: gender, nationality, ethnicity, sex orientation, skin color, preferred text editor. Honestly, I have yet to find a minority that I find problematic to include to classify hate speech at a tech conference. I am super vocal about my hostility toward every religion, I just shut it up at tech conferences. And when I do talk about the religions I find stupid, I am not calling their supporters names. That's really that simple. > you're talking about censoring people based on whether they agree with your perspective. On inclusion of other people? Hell yeah. Except I am giving objective criterion to judge it. > Free speech for the purposes of saying only inoffensive things is not free speech. I agree with that sentiment. However, I see nothing of value in purely offensive speech. Once again, I am still waiting of a single example of hate speech that would be valuable to a discussion and that can't be replace by non-offensive one.
      - quotemstr 7y ago
        Any time you give people a button labeled "make my opponent shut up", they're going to mash it all day regardless of the ostensible purpose of the button. Preventing someone attending a professional conference because he agrees with half the country on a controversial issue is simply unacceptable in a democracy regardless of what words you use to justify this behavior. Who are you to demand that people prove that speech is worthwhile before being able to speak? Why should their ability to speak depend on your evaluation of their speech's discursive worth? You're just using a lot of words to claim that you should get to decide what people are allowed to say.
        Iv 7y ago
        > Any time you give people a button labeled "make my opponent shut up", they're going to mash it all day regardless of the ostensible purpose of the button Bis repetita, that's why you don't have a button: you have a process. > Preventing someone attending a professional conference because he agrees with half the country on a controversial issue is simply unacceptable in a democracy regardless of what words you use to justify this behavior. Please don't refer to US as "the" country, some of us come from another country, maybe even a democracy with gasp different rules. And well, I agree it is certainly problematic, but the problem lies in the fact that half of your country defends hate speech. Which can be defined objectively, and has been by laws in my country (France). I used to be a fan of the first amendment, to believe in the slippery slope fallacy that it would lead to more violent censorship, that it would lead to the removal of controversial but worth content. I have yet to find a single example of that. > Who are you to demand that people prove that speech is worthwhile before being able to speak? Why should their ability to speak depend on your evaluation of their speech's discursive worth? You're just using a lot of words to claim that you should get to decide what people are allowed to say. Dude, I know I am pretty cool, but why do you think you have to ask me? Where did I propose you send me an email before speaking? Or that I set rules myself? I am merely saying that hate speech is something that can be clearly defined, that it has been in a way actually enforced by tribunals in France, that it does not lead to censorship of worthwhile content and it is applied a posteriori, not a priori. Believe it or not, we manage to have a healthy democracy while still forbidding people from wearing nazi apparel (which is still illegal in France)
  - lisp_enthusiast 7y ago
    You're not arguing in good faith here. You'd have to be completely insane to conflate "Linux is bad" with "Arabs are inferior," and I don't believe that you ever did. Supporting a democratically elected candidate, especially outside of the conference in question, can not be conflated with claiming "Arabs are inferior" at a fucking talk at the conference. You people are so swept up in ideology that you are willing to immediately jump to completely unrealistic positions, that nobody on the opposite side holds, and sidetrack the original discussion into arguing about the position you imagine that your opponents hold. You're fighting ghosts to feel self-righteous.
    - Iv 7y ago
      I am answering to someone who conflates hate speech equals to "stating opinions I disagree with". I am glad my example was clear enough to show you how absurd this equivalence was. > Supporting a democratically elected candidate, especially outside of the conference in question, can not be conflated with claiming "Arabs are inferior" at a fucking talk at the conference. How about "African countries are shitholes"? "Mexicans are rapists"? You wear a person's symbol, you claim ownership over their ideology. And I know historical comparisons are tired, but there are a few racist and genocidal leaders who were democratically elected. As a European friend, I am sad you are at that point in the US, but yes, one side of your politics is really fucked up to the point of being toxic. It is racist and misogynistic. A community has to choose between being inclusive of women and minorities and being inclusive of people who reject them. > You're fighting ghosts to feel self-righteous. When you grew up in some parts of Europe, you learn to fight when some ghosts rise. More than half of the people I work with could not contribute in a world where sexism and racism would reign.
      - lisp_enthusiast 7y ago
        Why did you assume I'm from the US? I'm from a progressive Scandinavian country and would be considered slightly left of center here (which is far-left in the US.) Trump never said "Mexicans are rapists," he said something along the lines of "They're not bringing their best people... their rapists" which could be misconstrued as "they're." He did say that African countries are shitholes, while complimenting my country, which wasn't great for our public image worldwide, but I did chuckle at it. It's the sort of off-hand stupid wording you'd hear at a bar late at night, which I figure is part of his appeal to the people that actually like him. Not a good look for a president to be sure. Trump is not the ghost of Hitler, it can be fun to argue in that kind of hyperbole but he really isn't. And ~50% of the American voting public chose him over Hillary, because it was a shit sandwich vs giant douche race, you can't reasonably suggest banning all those people from Linux conferences.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - concordDance 7y ago
    > I am talking about removing people who promote hate speech. This is pretty off-topic given that there was nothing interpretable as hate speech done here. But I want to note that was how the two left wing echo chambers I saw started (the right wing ones took a different turn). Initially they just banned people who made statements that were simple expressions of hatred. But people generally express views on a bit of a bell curve, so all the people whose curves had a portion inside the banned space left (often self-censoring for a while, then leaving). After that, the cultural interpretation of the rule changed a bit and it started including statements about groups (e.g. Mexican immigrants are [way more likely to be] rapists). Once all the people who expressed such a view were gone/silenced there was a popular update to the forum rules that clarified and banned a bunch more things. This process repeated a number of times. First comes the change in rules, the vocal population changes. Then a cycle of changes in enforcement and interpretation of the rules interleaved with changes in the vocal population. Then another rules change. Repeat a bunch of times to end up with an echo chamber that I think the hn population would consider "full of ridiculous SJW nonesense" based on the commentary I've recently seen here.
rmtech 7y ago
> in all the hotly debated discussions I had, I found anything of value in the person being censored I think history is a better guide because we can more clearly see what was valuable. Things that were censored in the past: * Heliocentricism * Evolution, esp of humans from other apes * Capitalism/market economics (in socialist states) * Currently mainstream views about biology (e.g. Lysenkoism) Free speech is a "hits" business: most of the value comes from a few incredibly valuable ideas that someone powerful is trying to censor. The damage done to Russia and China under communism easily exceeds all the extra "smoothness" that they got out of censoring those who disagreed with them.
- Iv 7y ago
  Yes, which of these views would have been shut down by a policy forbidding hate speech? I am now mostly worried about state censorship, which do remove things like the items you list. Censoring hate speech and people who promote exclusion of minorities? I have not a single example of it being detrimental to a healthy debate.
  - rmtech 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure that all of those views were censored because they were immoral according to the dominant ideology of the day, and in every case it would have been argued that this time the censorship was good because the dominant ideology was good, whereas previous instances of censorship were bad. How would someone in the USSR know that censorship of opponents of Lysenkoism was bad? As far as they were concerned, the people being censored were evil counter-revolutionaries of whom nothing good could come.
    - hunter2_ 7y ago
      Wouldn't "only censor/condemn hate that's tied to a protected class" be a decent test? Where protected class is defined as the stuff people cannot change about themselves. This test seems quite timeless and orthogonal to the problematic "immoral."
      - 7y ago
ppf 7y ago
Interesting argument. By the same token, we should remove all cyclists from all roads, as it would provide a smoother transportation experience.
- Iv 7y ago
  Well we do so when we want to go very fast e.g. highways.
  - ppf 7y ago
    Right, and going to a conference is like driving on a highway?
    - Iv 7y ago
      I don't know, I don't play football.
- flingo 7y ago
  Car roads, bike roads, bus roads. With some intersection. I think that's the ideal
lliamander 7y ago
Did Mr. Wood engage in hate speech? If so, what did he say that constituted free speech. One of the other individuals involved in this row has said previously "white men in tech ain't shit". Should this individual be allowed to participate in tech conferences?
- Iv 7y ago
  I know neither their rules, nor what was said there. I can only tell you that systems exist that allow: - hate speech to be objectively defined - due process to exist in processing complaints > "white men in tech ain't shit". Should this individual be allowed to participate in tech conferences? All I can tell you is that it would probably be judged hate speech in France and fined if said publicly. I know nothing of the rules and penalties this specific place's CoC implements. And I'll be the first to say that it is problematic if the rules in the matter are not written. But I am sure the tech world, through its typically clumsy approach of human affairs, will end up having enough jurisprudence to piece out a workable code.
  - wott 7y ago
    > All I can tell you is that it would probably be judged hate speech in France and fined if said publicly. Extremely unlikely. Members of the P.I.R. (black/arab racialist party) and other organisations who swim in the same waters have been spouting many many worse things. Or a few of the crazy chicks who took over the U.N.E.F. (student union) and have said stuff like "the whites should be gassed".
    - Iv 7y ago
      Did anyone care to bring their case to court? IF they did, I am pretty sure they would be found guilty.
Skaruts 7y ago
Hate speech is the only speech that needs to be protected. If speech doesn't offend or upset anyone, then there's nothing that it needs to be protected from. Your reasoning is upside down. If you find someone's opinion disagreeable, you don't shut it down, you refute it. Shutting it down just tells me you have no counter arguments, so maybe they have a point and I should listen to it. Understand the Streisand Effect.
- a1369209993 7y ago
  Technically it's possible for speech to be offensive/unpopular/blasphemous (and thus need and deserve protection) without being hate speech. Hate speech is a specific kind of offensive speech. Other than that you're spot on though.
  - Skaruts 7y ago
    Well, someone that finds speech offensive/upsetting/etc can pretty much call it hate speech. So in the end, hate speech can be anything that upsets someone. I mean, you can reasonably define hate speech as something any reasonable person could agree is actually potentially harmful (like promoting some kind of prejudice in some dangerous ways), and I presume that's how it's defined under legal terms, but colloquially people most likely won't be doing that.
fche 7y ago
> not once, in all the hotly debated discussions I had, I found anything of value in the person being censored. This says much more about you than about those people. Shame on you.

by Iv 7y ago

concordDance 7y ago

Interesting how different your experience was. I saw the opposite, where repeated removings/suppression of people with different views resulted in the creation of echochambers from which little of value emerges.

Iv 7y ago
I am not talking about removing people with different views, I am talking about removing people who promote hate speech. Someone has a talk saying "Linux is the worst thing that ever happened in IT", let her in. Someone has a talk saying "Arabs are inferior people and if you shut that opinion down you are a snowflake", shut him down. Like you, I used to conflate the two, now I see how different it is.
- quotemstr 7y ago
  > I am not talking about removing people with different views, I am talking about removing people who promote hate speech. Who gets to decide what counts as hate speech? You? Why do you get to make that call and not somebody else? The distinction you're attempting to draw does not exist: you're talking about censoring people based on whether they agree with your perspective. Free speech for the purposes of saying only inoffensive things is not free speech.
  - Iv 7y ago
    Hate speech has some fairly clear legal definitions in many places. It is speech that singles out negatively a group based on [make a list of criterion]. Typical list: gender, nationality, ethnicity, sex orientation, skin color, preferred text editor. Honestly, I have yet to find a minority that I find problematic to include to classify hate speech at a tech conference. I am super vocal about my hostility toward every religion, I just shut it up at tech conferences. And when I do talk about the religions I find stupid, I am not calling their supporters names. That's really that simple. > you're talking about censoring people based on whether they agree with your perspective. On inclusion of other people? Hell yeah. Except I am giving objective criterion to judge it. > Free speech for the purposes of saying only inoffensive things is not free speech. I agree with that sentiment. However, I see nothing of value in purely offensive speech. Once again, I am still waiting of a single example of hate speech that would be valuable to a discussion and that can't be replace by non-offensive one.
    - quotemstr 7y ago
      Any time you give people a button labeled "make my opponent shut up", they're going to mash it all day regardless of the ostensible purpose of the button. Preventing someone attending a professional conference because he agrees with half the country on a controversial issue is simply unacceptable in a democracy regardless of what words you use to justify this behavior. Who are you to demand that people prove that speech is worthwhile before being able to speak? Why should their ability to speak depend on your evaluation of their speech's discursive worth? You're just using a lot of words to claim that you should get to decide what people are allowed to say.
      - Iv 7y ago
        > Any time you give people a button labeled "make my opponent shut up", they're going to mash it all day regardless of the ostensible purpose of the button Bis repetita, that's why you don't have a button: you have a process. > Preventing someone attending a professional conference because he agrees with half the country on a controversial issue is simply unacceptable in a democracy regardless of what words you use to justify this behavior. Please don't refer to US as "the" country, some of us come from another country, maybe even a democracy with gasp different rules. And well, I agree it is certainly problematic, but the problem lies in the fact that half of your country defends hate speech. Which can be defined objectively, and has been by laws in my country (France). I used to be a fan of the first amendment, to believe in the slippery slope fallacy that it would lead to more violent censorship, that it would lead to the removal of controversial but worth content. I have yet to find a single example of that. > Who are you to demand that people prove that speech is worthwhile before being able to speak? Why should their ability to speak depend on your evaluation of their speech's discursive worth? You're just using a lot of words to claim that you should get to decide what people are allowed to say. Dude, I know I am pretty cool, but why do you think you have to ask me? Where did I propose you send me an email before speaking? Or that I set rules myself? I am merely saying that hate speech is something that can be clearly defined, that it has been in a way actually enforced by tribunals in France, that it does not lead to censorship of worthwhile content and it is applied a posteriori, not a priori. Believe it or not, we manage to have a healthy democracy while still forbidding people from wearing nazi apparel (which is still illegal in France)
- lisp_enthusiast 7y ago
  You're not arguing in good faith here. You'd have to be completely insane to conflate "Linux is bad" with "Arabs are inferior," and I don't believe that you ever did. Supporting a democratically elected candidate, especially outside of the conference in question, can not be conflated with claiming "Arabs are inferior" at a fucking talk at the conference. You people are so swept up in ideology that you are willing to immediately jump to completely unrealistic positions, that nobody on the opposite side holds, and sidetrack the original discussion into arguing about the position you imagine that your opponents hold. You're fighting ghosts to feel self-righteous.
  - Iv 7y ago
    I am answering to someone who conflates hate speech equals to "stating opinions I disagree with". I am glad my example was clear enough to show you how absurd this equivalence was. > Supporting a democratically elected candidate, especially outside of the conference in question, can not be conflated with claiming "Arabs are inferior" at a fucking talk at the conference. How about "African countries are shitholes"? "Mexicans are rapists"? You wear a person's symbol, you claim ownership over their ideology. And I know historical comparisons are tired, but there are a few racist and genocidal leaders who were democratically elected. As a European friend, I am sad you are at that point in the US, but yes, one side of your politics is really fucked up to the point of being toxic. It is racist and misogynistic. A community has to choose between being inclusive of women and minorities and being inclusive of people who reject them. > You're fighting ghosts to feel self-righteous. When you grew up in some parts of Europe, you learn to fight when some ghosts rise. More than half of the people I work with could not contribute in a world where sexism and racism would reign.
    - lisp_enthusiast 7y ago
      Why did you assume I'm from the US? I'm from a progressive Scandinavian country and would be considered slightly left of center here (which is far-left in the US.) Trump never said "Mexicans are rapists," he said something along the lines of "They're not bringing their best people... their rapists" which could be misconstrued as "they're." He did say that African countries are shitholes, while complimenting my country, which wasn't great for our public image worldwide, but I did chuckle at it. It's the sort of off-hand stupid wording you'd hear at a bar late at night, which I figure is part of his appeal to the people that actually like him. Not a good look for a president to be sure. Trump is not the ghost of Hitler, it can be fun to argue in that kind of hyperbole but he really isn't. And ~50% of the American voting public chose him over Hillary, because it was a shit sandwich vs giant douche race, you can't reasonably suggest banning all those people from Linux conferences.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- concordDance 7y ago
  > I am talking about removing people who promote hate speech. This is pretty off-topic given that there was nothing interpretable as hate speech done here. But I want to note that was how the two left wing echo chambers I saw started (the right wing ones took a different turn). Initially they just banned people who made statements that were simple expressions of hatred. But people generally express views on a bit of a bell curve, so all the people whose curves had a portion inside the banned space left (often self-censoring for a while, then leaving). After that, the cultural interpretation of the rule changed a bit and it started including statements about groups (e.g. Mexican immigrants are [way more likely to be] rapists). Once all the people who expressed such a view were gone/silenced there was a popular update to the forum rules that clarified and banned a bunch more things. This process repeated a number of times. First comes the change in rules, the vocal population changes. Then a cycle of changes in enforcement and interpretation of the rules interleaved with changes in the vocal population. Then another rules change. Repeat a bunch of times to end up with an echo chamber that I think the hn population would consider "full of ridiculous SJW nonesense" based on the commentary I've recently seen here.

rmtech 7y ago

> in all the hotly debated discussions I had, I found anything of value in the person being censored I think history is a better guide because we can more clearly see what was valuable. Things that were censored in the past: * Heliocentricism * Evolution, esp of humans from other apes * Capitalism/market economics (in socialist states) * Currently mainstream views about biology (e.g. Lysenkoism) Free speech is a "hits" business: most of the value comes from a few incredibly valuable ideas that someone powerful is trying to censor. The damage done to Russia and China under communism easily exceeds all the extra "smoothness" that they got out of censoring those who disagreed with them.

Iv 7y ago
Yes, which of these views would have been shut down by a policy forbidding hate speech? I am now mostly worried about state censorship, which do remove things like the items you list. Censoring hate speech and people who promote exclusion of minorities? I have not a single example of it being detrimental to a healthy debate.
- rmtech 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure that all of those views were censored because they were immoral according to the dominant ideology of the day, and in every case it would have been argued that this time the censorship was good because the dominant ideology was good, whereas previous instances of censorship were bad. How would someone in the USSR know that censorship of opponents of Lysenkoism was bad? As far as they were concerned, the people being censored were evil counter-revolutionaries of whom nothing good could come.
  - hunter2_ 7y ago
    Wouldn't "only censor/condemn hate that's tied to a protected class" be a decent test? Where protected class is defined as the stuff people cannot change about themselves. This test seems quite timeless and orthogonal to the problematic "immoral."
    - 7y ago

ppf 7y ago

Interesting argument. By the same token, we should remove all cyclists from all roads, as it would provide a smoother transportation experience.

Iv 7y ago
Well we do so when we want to go very fast e.g. highways.
- ppf 7y ago
  Right, and going to a conference is like driving on a highway?
  - Iv 7y ago
    I don't know, I don't play football.
flingo 7y ago
Car roads, bike roads, bus roads. With some intersection. I think that's the ideal

lliamander 7y ago

Did Mr. Wood engage in hate speech? If so, what did he say that constituted free speech. One of the other individuals involved in this row has said previously "white men in tech ain't shit". Should this individual be allowed to participate in tech conferences?

Iv 7y ago
I know neither their rules, nor what was said there. I can only tell you that systems exist that allow: - hate speech to be objectively defined - due process to exist in processing complaints > "white men in tech ain't shit". Should this individual be allowed to participate in tech conferences? All I can tell you is that it would probably be judged hate speech in France and fined if said publicly. I know nothing of the rules and penalties this specific place's CoC implements. And I'll be the first to say that it is problematic if the rules in the matter are not written. But I am sure the tech world, through its typically clumsy approach of human affairs, will end up having enough jurisprudence to piece out a workable code.
- wott 7y ago
  > All I can tell you is that it would probably be judged hate speech in France and fined if said publicly. Extremely unlikely. Members of the P.I.R. (black/arab racialist party) and other organisations who swim in the same waters have been spouting many many worse things. Or a few of the crazy chicks who took over the U.N.E.F. (student union) and have said stuff like "the whites should be gassed".
  - Iv 7y ago
    Did anyone care to bring their case to court? IF they did, I am pretty sure they would be found guilty.

Skaruts 7y ago

Hate speech is the only speech that needs to be protected. If speech doesn't offend or upset anyone, then there's nothing that it needs to be protected from. Your reasoning is upside down. If you find someone's opinion disagreeable, you don't shut it down, you refute it. Shutting it down just tells me you have no counter arguments, so maybe they have a point and I should listen to it. Understand the Streisand Effect.

a1369209993 7y ago
Technically it's possible for speech to be offensive/unpopular/blasphemous (and thus need and deserve protection) without being hate speech. Hate speech is a specific kind of offensive speech. Other than that you're spot on though.
- Skaruts 7y ago
  Well, someone that finds speech offensive/upsetting/etc can pretty much call it hate speech. So in the end, hate speech can be anything that upsets someone. I mean, you can reasonably define hate speech as something any reasonable person could agree is actually potentially harmful (like promoting some kind of prejudice in some dangerous ways), and I presume that's how it's defined under legal terms, but colloquially people most likely won't be doing that.

fche 7y ago

> not once, in all the hotly debated discussions I had, I found anything of value in the person being censored. This says much more about you than about those people. Shame on you.