10 ms·

Anyone being locked up anywhere for a "speech violation" is a travesty.

by NickBusey 7y ago

umvi 7y ago
While I agree with you, "hate speech" is a controversial topic outside the USA (and even inside the USA).
- frockington1 7y ago
  What are the arguments for censoring hate speech? Not saying you are either for or against censorship, just trying to understand the other side
  - d-sc 7y ago
    Hate speech can have harmful physiological effects on those it targets.
    - ne0flex 7y ago
      >physiological effects I think you mean psychological.
    - claudiawerner 7y ago
      Very true; I'm reminded of the funny example used in debates on these matters, in which a legal professor is saying he'd rather have somebody break his left leg than to publish something alleging sexual misconduct with a student, and further, there are absolutely non-physical harms which can cause just as much, if not more, pain and anguish than physical harms. In this view, the idea that speech should be able to contain any content by law is about as ridiculous as saying that actions in general should be able to contain any content. The first amendment in the US is on a very shaky metaphysical model which does not accord with what we know about the brain or trauma.
  - danharaj 7y ago
    Free speech is important because speech has consequences. If speech didn't matter, then it wouldn't be a right worth enshrining. One has to grapple with the fact that speech has power regardless of whether they think it is an inviolable, unrestricted right. If it has power, it has the power to be abusive.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    I would recommend papers by Susan Brison for the censorship case (and an argument as to why she thinks the First Amendment is baseless), and Rae Langton's case for why pro-free speech liberals can (or even should) support a restriction on hate speech and pornography, based on their own principles.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    We already have a wide body of law covering inciting others to commit crimes on our behalf or at our behest. I can't stand around working up a bunch of drunk college kids to flip over cars expect to not be implicated in the subsequent crimes, and that's just property damage. If I'm talking about a minority student instead... it'd be pretty fucked up that a piece of insured property has more protection under the law than a fellow human being. Especially since if you were in a car accident and bleeding out, the EMTs are allowed to engage in destruction of property in order to save your life. They can damage the car, shred your clothing. They're trained to do this without even thinking (and wasting heartbeats).
    - livueta 7y ago
      I think that if in your hypothetical you were _directly_ inciting violence against a minority student (so, "let's go fuck up X" "let's go fuck up students with Y characteristic"), you'd also definitely (and uncontroversially) be implicated. Where it gets harder is what most people seem to want "hate speech" provisions to cover are much more diffuse forms of incitement, if you can even call it that. When you can't make a direct causal mapping between speech and crime, you start having problems. If you didn't personally direct drunk college students to flip cars, but instead had previously posted online somewhere that flipping cars while drunk is fun, it's a lot harder to say that absent your speech, the illegal act would not have occurred. Say a large number of commentators talked up how fun car-flipping is. Does each now possess 1/nth of the criminal liability for incitement? Do we know the actors read a given post? Even if we do, can we quantity the degree to which a given post influenced their actions? Obviously IANAL, but in my lay experience it seems that the sort of incitement liability we have is limited to no-brainer cases where it's quite obvious that the speech was the primary motivating factor for the subsequent criminal action. Anything further quickly gets into an enormous can of worms of unknowables. I think the term of art is the imminence of the incited lawless action. Without imminence, causality is difficult, and you open the door to all kinds of crazy contributory claims - are the authors of the Anarchist's Cookbook liable for every bombing to occur following its publication?
- cmcd 7y ago
  I don't think it is that controversial in the US. There is a small, vocal minority that is against free speech but the overwhelming majority of Americans do not see things that way.
  - gruez 7y ago
    >>While I agree with you, "hate speech" is a controversial topic outside the USA (and even inside the USA). >I don't think it is that controversial in the US. There is a small, vocal minority that is against free speech but the overwhelming majority of Americans do not see things that way. Looks like you're conflating free speech with hate speech? The parent mentioned "hate speech", but you're talking about "free speech".
    - cmcd 7y ago
      Restricting hate speech restricts free speech, they are the same issue. You only have to look back a few years to understand why this is important. What we consider acceptable has changed vastly over time, if we don't have the freedom to discuss topics against the status quo we won't progress as a society.
    - vorpalhex 7y ago
      Hate speech is free speech. No man is fit to play the censor. Unless it's a direct, actionable call to violence, it's free speech.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - brobinson 7y ago
      Hate speech is 100% protected in the US.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    I think that's true up to a point. I think Americans support Free speech, but Hate speech, especially when violence is involved, elicits a far different response. Just ask any poor woman who has had her son arrested for mouthing off in some CounterStrike session about something he's gonna do at school. Just mouthing off trying to look big and all of a sudden police are at his door the next day. Basically, in the US, you get free speech up to the point where they think your kid is going to shoot up a school full of kids or church full of little old ladies. At that point, there will be guys knocking at your door. I understand the motivation of law enforcement there, I get the point of "terroristic threat" laws. I just don't know if we've calibrated the application of the laws correctly. But the point is, that this "overwhelming majority of Americans" you were speaking of would tell me to get lost, and tell the police "Good job! Better safe than sorry with these school shooters."
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- brink 7y ago
  Hate speech is free speech. The whole point of free speech laws is to protect controversial opinions. Good or bad, because the bad of censorship is often much worse than the bad of free speech.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    That "hate speech is free speech" is not an opinion shared by many countries in Europe, nor even by many philosophers of law or legal scholars in the U.S. - it is true that 1A covers "hate speech", but whether it should be that way is a matter of intense debate.
    - brink 7y ago
      I agree that hate speech is often the bad side of free speech. What I disagree on is who should decide what hate speech is. Taking away the right for someone to speak their mind is too much power for one individual or group, and is ripe for abuse, so it's better to not do it at all.
      - Reedx 7y ago
        Indeed, that's a power you'd have to be comfortable having in the hands of your opponents. Because at some point it will be and then they'll be the ones defining what speech is restricted.
      - claudiawerner 7y ago
        >What I disagree on is who should decide what hate speech is. It is a risky business, but so are many others: food and drug regulation, road regulation, flight regulation etc. - the case must be made why freedom of speech is such a special right as opposed to any other action, such as selling food, driving cars, or building planes. >Taking away the right for someone to speak their mind is too much power for one individual or group We already do this globally, with copyright law, or less controversially, laws against threats, assault and child pornography. This at least shows that there is some scope, and unless that scope is a dogma, it should be open for questioning - either in broadening or narrowing.
- JoshTriplett 7y ago
  Nobody should be locked up for speech (threats and similar notwithstanding). Many people chanting "free speech" these days seem to mean "consequence-free speech", such as "nobody should adjust their opinion of me no matter what I say", or "everyone should be forced to carry my words and see my words no matter what I say". That's not free speech, that's compelled listening and controlled public opinion, and other such tools that only the most authoritarian governments would consider.
  - dependenttypes 7y ago
    > such as "nobody should adjust their opinion of me no matter what I say", or "everyone should be forced to carry my words and see my words no matter what I say". More like "I should not be fired, refused service, and kicked out of teams/events due to my speech/opinions". Do you agree with this or not?
    - vertex-four 7y ago
      I don’t agree with that. All those are voluntary associations, and freedom of association is at least as important as freedom of speech. What I do think is that being fired should not be a death sentence; that there should be a mechanism, possibly the Government in our current society, by which one can continue living with food and a roof over one’s head even if people refuse to associate with that person. Generally speaking, I don’t think there should be an entity which can prevent you from feeding and housing yourself in the first place, though.
      - dependenttypes 7y ago
        > freedom of association is at least as important as freedom of speech. In that case, do you believe that it should be legal to fire/refuse service/kick out of teams and events someone due to their gender, religion, or sexual orientation?
        vertex-four 7y ago
        The fact of the matter is that all this happens, legal or not. I’ve not had work in years, in the first instances because of illegal discrimination. I’ve been assaulted for being in the “wrong” spaces. People care so intensely much about freedom of association that they’ll break the law and use violence in order to maintain it. So what should we do, given that enforcing association by law doesn’t work? My solution is in anarchism; stop preventing me from living my own life (through a capitalist society enforced by the state, police and prisons) and I’ll stop forcing myself on yours.

Anyone being locked up anywhere for a "speech violation" is a travesty.

umvi 7y ago

While I agree with you, "hate speech" is a controversial topic outside the USA (and even inside the USA).

frockington1 7y ago
What are the arguments for censoring hate speech? Not saying you are either for or against censorship, just trying to understand the other side
- d-sc 7y ago
  Hate speech can have harmful physiological effects on those it targets.
  - ne0flex 7y ago
    >physiological effects I think you mean psychological.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    Very true; I'm reminded of the funny example used in debates on these matters, in which a legal professor is saying he'd rather have somebody break his left leg than to publish something alleging sexual misconduct with a student, and further, there are absolutely non-physical harms which can cause just as much, if not more, pain and anguish than physical harms. In this view, the idea that speech should be able to contain any content by law is about as ridiculous as saying that actions in general should be able to contain any content. The first amendment in the US is on a very shaky metaphysical model which does not accord with what we know about the brain or trauma.
- danharaj 7y ago
  Free speech is important because speech has consequences. If speech didn't matter, then it wouldn't be a right worth enshrining. One has to grapple with the fact that speech has power regardless of whether they think it is an inviolable, unrestricted right. If it has power, it has the power to be abusive.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  I would recommend papers by Susan Brison for the censorship case (and an argument as to why she thinks the First Amendment is baseless), and Rae Langton's case for why pro-free speech liberals can (or even should) support a restriction on hate speech and pornography, based on their own principles.
- hinkley 7y ago
  We already have a wide body of law covering inciting others to commit crimes on our behalf or at our behest. I can't stand around working up a bunch of drunk college kids to flip over cars expect to not be implicated in the subsequent crimes, and that's just property damage. If I'm talking about a minority student instead... it'd be pretty fucked up that a piece of insured property has more protection under the law than a fellow human being. Especially since if you were in a car accident and bleeding out, the EMTs are allowed to engage in destruction of property in order to save your life. They can damage the car, shred your clothing. They're trained to do this without even thinking (and wasting heartbeats).
  - livueta 7y ago
    I think that if in your hypothetical you were _directly_ inciting violence against a minority student (so, "let's go fuck up X" "let's go fuck up students with Y characteristic"), you'd also definitely (and uncontroversially) be implicated. Where it gets harder is what most people seem to want "hate speech" provisions to cover are much more diffuse forms of incitement, if you can even call it that. When you can't make a direct causal mapping between speech and crime, you start having problems. If you didn't personally direct drunk college students to flip cars, but instead had previously posted online somewhere that flipping cars while drunk is fun, it's a lot harder to say that absent your speech, the illegal act would not have occurred. Say a large number of commentators talked up how fun car-flipping is. Does each now possess 1/nth of the criminal liability for incitement? Do we know the actors read a given post? Even if we do, can we quantity the degree to which a given post influenced their actions? Obviously IANAL, but in my lay experience it seems that the sort of incitement liability we have is limited to no-brainer cases where it's quite obvious that the speech was the primary motivating factor for the subsequent criminal action. Anything further quickly gets into an enormous can of worms of unknowables. I think the term of art is the imminence of the incited lawless action. Without imminence, causality is difficult, and you open the door to all kinds of crazy contributory claims - are the authors of the Anarchist's Cookbook liable for every bombing to occur following its publication?
cmcd 7y ago
I don't think it is that controversial in the US. There is a small, vocal minority that is against free speech but the overwhelming majority of Americans do not see things that way.
- gruez 7y ago
  >>While I agree with you, "hate speech" is a controversial topic outside the USA (and even inside the USA). >I don't think it is that controversial in the US. There is a small, vocal minority that is against free speech but the overwhelming majority of Americans do not see things that way. Looks like you're conflating free speech with hate speech? The parent mentioned "hate speech", but you're talking about "free speech".
  - cmcd 7y ago
    Restricting hate speech restricts free speech, they are the same issue. You only have to look back a few years to understand why this is important. What we consider acceptable has changed vastly over time, if we don't have the freedom to discuss topics against the status quo we won't progress as a society.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    Hate speech is free speech. No man is fit to play the censor. Unless it's a direct, actionable call to violence, it's free speech.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - brobinson 7y ago
    Hate speech is 100% protected in the US.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  I think that's true up to a point. I think Americans support Free speech, but Hate speech, especially when violence is involved, elicits a far different response. Just ask any poor woman who has had her son arrested for mouthing off in some CounterStrike session about something he's gonna do at school. Just mouthing off trying to look big and all of a sudden police are at his door the next day. Basically, in the US, you get free speech up to the point where they think your kid is going to shoot up a school full of kids or church full of little old ladies. At that point, there will be guys knocking at your door. I understand the motivation of law enforcement there, I get the point of "terroristic threat" laws. I just don't know if we've calibrated the application of the laws correctly. But the point is, that this "overwhelming majority of Americans" you were speaking of would tell me to get lost, and tell the police "Good job! Better safe than sorry with these school shooters."
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
brink 7y ago
Hate speech is free speech. The whole point of free speech laws is to protect controversial opinions. Good or bad, because the bad of censorship is often much worse than the bad of free speech.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  That "hate speech is free speech" is not an opinion shared by many countries in Europe, nor even by many philosophers of law or legal scholars in the U.S. - it is true that 1A covers "hate speech", but whether it should be that way is a matter of intense debate.
  - brink 7y ago
    I agree that hate speech is often the bad side of free speech. What I disagree on is who should decide what hate speech is. Taking away the right for someone to speak their mind is too much power for one individual or group, and is ripe for abuse, so it's better to not do it at all.
    - Reedx 7y ago
      Indeed, that's a power you'd have to be comfortable having in the hands of your opponents. Because at some point it will be and then they'll be the ones defining what speech is restricted.
    - claudiawerner 7y ago
      >What I disagree on is who should decide what hate speech is. It is a risky business, but so are many others: food and drug regulation, road regulation, flight regulation etc. - the case must be made why freedom of speech is such a special right as opposed to any other action, such as selling food, driving cars, or building planes. >Taking away the right for someone to speak their mind is too much power for one individual or group We already do this globally, with copyright law, or less controversially, laws against threats, assault and child pornography. This at least shows that there is some scope, and unless that scope is a dogma, it should be open for questioning - either in broadening or narrowing.
JoshTriplett 7y ago
Nobody should be locked up for speech (threats and similar notwithstanding). Many people chanting "free speech" these days seem to mean "consequence-free speech", such as "nobody should adjust their opinion of me no matter what I say", or "everyone should be forced to carry my words and see my words no matter what I say". That's not free speech, that's compelled listening and controlled public opinion, and other such tools that only the most authoritarian governments would consider.
- dependenttypes 7y ago
  > such as "nobody should adjust their opinion of me no matter what I say", or "everyone should be forced to carry my words and see my words no matter what I say". More like "I should not be fired, refused service, and kicked out of teams/events due to my speech/opinions". Do you agree with this or not?
  - vertex-four 7y ago
    I don’t agree with that. All those are voluntary associations, and freedom of association is at least as important as freedom of speech. What I do think is that being fired should not be a death sentence; that there should be a mechanism, possibly the Government in our current society, by which one can continue living with food and a roof over one’s head even if people refuse to associate with that person. Generally speaking, I don’t think there should be an entity which can prevent you from feeding and housing yourself in the first place, though.
    - dependenttypes 7y ago
      > freedom of association is at least as important as freedom of speech. In that case, do you believe that it should be legal to fire/refuse service/kick out of teams and events someone due to their gender, religion, or sexual orientation?
      - vertex-four 7y ago
        The fact of the matter is that all this happens, legal or not. I’ve not had work in years, in the first instances because of illegal discrimination. I’ve been assaulted for being in the “wrong” spaces. People care so intensely much about freedom of association that they’ll break the law and use violence in order to maintain it. So what should we do, given that enforcing association by law doesn’t work? My solution is in anarchism; stop preventing me from living my own life (through a capitalist society enforced by the state, police and prisons) and I’ll stop forcing myself on yours.