4 ms·

Free speech (well, most freedoms, really) will die the day we decide "saving lives" is worth _any_ cost. Heck, we already decided trashing the economy is worth

by umvi 7y ago

Free speech (well, most freedoms, really) will die the day we decide "saving lives" is worth _any_ cost. Heck, we already decided trashing the economy is worth "saving lives" (how many?), I imagine some people would be overjoyed to remove the 1st amendment in order to lower disease spread, lower the suicide rate of those vulnerable to hate speech, etc. And why stop there? Remove 2nd amendment and you can save even more lives! Too much freedom just seems to lead to people dying, because people make bad choices that affect others.

ff10 7y ago
You’re on a slippery slope and don’t consider that this is an exceptional situation. The danger of losing civil liberties comes when the exception becomes the rule. AFAIK, no amendments have been violated since YouTube is a private entity. They can editorialize what they, how they want. It’s is their liberty to make a choice here, the same as your liberty to not support that choice.
- umvi 7y ago
  > and don’t consider that this is an exceptional situation exceptional situations are ripe for exploitation by corporations and governments and political parties. And indeed we've seen all of these try (and succeed) in taking advantage of the situation... "Never let a good crisis go to waste" -- Winston Churchill
- nyczomg 7y ago
  A reasonable point. But I am worried about the day that those who seek more power are able to convince people that we are in a sustained exceptional situation that is not really all that exceptional. And with private entities doing their bidding to clamp down on dissenting voices, that could become even more possible. I don't think we are there yet, but we should be wary of that possibility.
- HarryHirsch 7y ago
  since YouTube is a private entity That's a slippery slope right there, a very dangerous one. In the US, spaces where one engages in political activities have moved from public (town square in front of City Hall) to private (the mall plus parking lot). That's a problem. The other thing is monopolies. In the past, when you were on the fringes of the spectrum you'd publish with your fringe publisher and could at least get your message out. Nowadays Youtube suppresses the neonazis. That's nice and good, as long as it's nazis, but what if they don't like what you have to say? Big publishers and government have a symbiotic relationship, and there is always a sprachregelung.
  - surfpel 7y ago
    That’s not a slippery slope but your point further on is valid. The privatization of the town square carries the potential to erode our civil liberties as these new public centers aren’t held to the same standards. The question here is then how do we protect that. Which freedoms do we give up here? Freedom of the individual or freedom of enterprise? Imo if a corporate entity decides to act like a public space, then it should be treated like one and held accountable as such. Otherwise we’ve created a simple way of bypassing some constitutional liberties. That still however doesn’t answer the question as to where we draw the line for freedom of expression. Nazis took over once in the public sphere and they can do it again. I will argue against moral relativism here and say yes it’s ok to suppress nazis so long as we don’t turn that around and become needlessly oppressive in other ways.
- arkh 7y ago
  > They can editorialize what they, how they want. Then they are publishers and not platforms. So they are liable for all content on their website.
  - jimsmart 7y ago
    Indeed they are liable... well, to a certain degree: A prime example here is the DMCA — but there are also other existing laws that place restrictions on content, which Youtube (and other platforms/publishers) must adhere to.
- tengbretson 7y ago
  > You’re on a slippery slope and don’t consider that this is an exceptional situation. The basis for those civil liberties is a document written by people accustomed to seeing 400k Europeans die of smallpox every year.
  - glitcher 7y ago
    Despite all their best efforts at studying the effective transmission rate, wearing PPE, and developing treatment drugs and vaccines! Yeah, seems like an equivalent comparison to me.
    - yellowapple 7y ago
      If anything that only proves the GP's point. During the mentioned time period the only solution was to infringe on civil liberties by imposing a strict quarantine, and yet the people of the day still decided that it was better to die free than to live oppressed.
hobs 7y ago
It happened in 1798, this isn't something that we've been waiting for. https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1700s/The-Sedition-Act-of-1798/ https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1700s/The-Se...
subhobroto 7y ago
I am noticing, increasingly in the country I live in - the U.S., an extremely concerning attitude towards love for censorship. More concerning is that the proponents have "good intentions" at heart. It's almost as if the concept of freedom is not understood. Freedom is not free. Freedom has a price, often a heavy price that one has to pay for it. The fact that we are not children anymore who desparately need oversight and constant handholding, seems to be an alien concept. "Oh! What do you do about those YouTUbe videos that tell you to drink bleach because it saves you from SARS-COV2!" Well, I watch that video and research what the potential effects of drinking bleach even if there was no SARS-COV2 in this world would be and then weigh the potential effects of a COVID-19 infection and weigh the options. This is, what I assumed, were the responsibilites of an adult - a process to make rational decisions instead of being spoonfed and told what to do like one would a child. As I clarified elsewhere on this thread, the point I was making wasn't "liars, cranks and con artists don't exist, and no one gets to decide otherwise." It was "liars, cranks and con artists do exist, and we need to empower people to decide which is which by letting them practise." Yes, being an adult means having the freedom to drink alcohol and drive a car instead of waiting for a bus or a parent to come pick me up. It also means having the responsibilities of making my own decisions instead of waiting for someone else to do it for me. What's the expectation - that if the decision making authority makes a wrong decision that kills me, I can then blame them and collect damages? That's crazy talk - for one, I will be dead already!
- im3w1l 7y ago
  If we want to convince people, we can't stop at saying "freedom", as if that makes the rest self evident. We have to explain why freedom is important. Why the cost is worth paying.
- maerF0x0 7y ago
  >Oh! What do you do about those YouTUbe videos that tell you to drink bleach because it saves you from SARS-COV2!" Also you should be free to sue the content creator, maybe instead of censoring content youtube should have better "know your creator" type legislation?
tengbretson 7y ago
> I imagine some people would be overjoyed to remove the 1st amendment in order to lower disease spread Well, if you read the whole thing, the 1st amendment includes the freedom to peaceably assemble, so at least to that extent it has already been removed and to cheering crowds no less.
heavyset_go 7y ago
> Heck, we already decided trashing the economy is worth "saving lives" (how many?), People dropping dead in the streets will trash the economy.
- nostrebored 7y ago
  [citation neeeded] People die all the time. Pretending that the jury is out on the long term impacts of Covid 19 is ascientific.
  - dijit 7y ago
    I'm responding to this not for you, but for others. You should know that what you've just said indicates a disgusting train of thought not characterised by any good intention. -- The issue when talking about the long term affects is that, you're right, we don't have enough information. However that doesn't mean we should sit on our hands and do nothing. The whole point of humans recording history (and science is mostly just trying things and writing them down so we can build on this knowledge later) is to see patterns and conclude things. There's all kinds of misinformation that can spread in the cracks here because only history will tell us the real truth, but drawing on similarly infectious diseases from history will help significantly. It's not 'ascientific' to draw from the corpus of scientific knowledge. It is ascientific to say: "This disease is completely unknown so we should wait until the human death toll has reached critical mass before making an action which could impact our wealth". For the sake of the parent, there are studies on the loss of population and if we lose 1-2% of the population in the span of a few months then indeed that will recess the economy quite sharply.[0] In case you forgot, economy is the quantity and value of transactions in a market. Less people is lower quantity. From the admittedly little we know about the disease, it is much more deadly than anything that's currently making the rounds. (If you're going to rebut me please control for number of people infected, because it's a common misconception that "more people die of other things" but that's because "other things" are affecting more people) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_consequences_of_population_decline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_consequences_of_popul...
    - 7y ago
Mikhail_Edoshin 7y ago
Don't you think this is because the modern secular attitude has no real foundation to make moral choices and picks "saving lives" almost randomly, just as a plausible highest good? :) For example, Christianity strives to save souls, not lives. That gives a very different vantage point. From this point it's absolutely clear that the right to speak candidly cannot be abolished on such a ridiculous premise as saving lives.

by umvi 7y ago

ff10 7y ago

You’re on a slippery slope and don’t consider that this is an exceptional situation. The danger of losing civil liberties comes when the exception becomes the rule. AFAIK, no amendments have been violated since YouTube is a private entity. They can editorialize what they, how they want. It’s is their liberty to make a choice here, the same as your liberty to not support that choice.

umvi 7y ago
> and don’t consider that this is an exceptional situation exceptional situations are ripe for exploitation by corporations and governments and political parties. And indeed we've seen all of these try (and succeed) in taking advantage of the situation... "Never let a good crisis go to waste" -- Winston Churchill
nyczomg 7y ago
A reasonable point. But I am worried about the day that those who seek more power are able to convince people that we are in a sustained exceptional situation that is not really all that exceptional. And with private entities doing their bidding to clamp down on dissenting voices, that could become even more possible. I don't think we are there yet, but we should be wary of that possibility.
HarryHirsch 7y ago
since YouTube is a private entity That's a slippery slope right there, a very dangerous one. In the US, spaces where one engages in political activities have moved from public (town square in front of City Hall) to private (the mall plus parking lot). That's a problem. The other thing is monopolies. In the past, when you were on the fringes of the spectrum you'd publish with your fringe publisher and could at least get your message out. Nowadays Youtube suppresses the neonazis. That's nice and good, as long as it's nazis, but what if they don't like what you have to say? Big publishers and government have a symbiotic relationship, and there is always a sprachregelung.
- surfpel 7y ago
  That’s not a slippery slope but your point further on is valid. The privatization of the town square carries the potential to erode our civil liberties as these new public centers aren’t held to the same standards. The question here is then how do we protect that. Which freedoms do we give up here? Freedom of the individual or freedom of enterprise? Imo if a corporate entity decides to act like a public space, then it should be treated like one and held accountable as such. Otherwise we’ve created a simple way of bypassing some constitutional liberties. That still however doesn’t answer the question as to where we draw the line for freedom of expression. Nazis took over once in the public sphere and they can do it again. I will argue against moral relativism here and say yes it’s ok to suppress nazis so long as we don’t turn that around and become needlessly oppressive in other ways.
arkh 7y ago
> They can editorialize what they, how they want. Then they are publishers and not platforms. So they are liable for all content on their website.
- jimsmart 7y ago
  Indeed they are liable... well, to a certain degree: A prime example here is the DMCA — but there are also other existing laws that place restrictions on content, which Youtube (and other platforms/publishers) must adhere to.
tengbretson 7y ago
> You’re on a slippery slope and don’t consider that this is an exceptional situation. The basis for those civil liberties is a document written by people accustomed to seeing 400k Europeans die of smallpox every year.
- glitcher 7y ago
  Despite all their best efforts at studying the effective transmission rate, wearing PPE, and developing treatment drugs and vaccines! Yeah, seems like an equivalent comparison to me.
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    If anything that only proves the GP's point. During the mentioned time period the only solution was to infringe on civil liberties by imposing a strict quarantine, and yet the people of the day still decided that it was better to die free than to live oppressed.

hobs 7y ago

It happened in 1798, this isn't something that we've been waiting for. https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1700s/The-Sedition-Act-of-1798/ https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1700s/The-Se...

subhobroto 7y ago

I am noticing, increasingly in the country I live in - the U.S., an extremely concerning attitude towards love for censorship. More concerning is that the proponents have "good intentions" at heart. It's almost as if the concept of freedom is not understood. Freedom is not free. Freedom has a price, often a heavy price that one has to pay for it. The fact that we are not children anymore who desparately need oversight and constant handholding, seems to be an alien concept. "Oh! What do you do about those YouTUbe videos that tell you to drink bleach because it saves you from SARS-COV2!" Well, I watch that video and research what the potential effects of drinking bleach even if there was no SARS-COV2 in this world would be and then weigh the potential effects of a COVID-19 infection and weigh the options. This is, what I assumed, were the responsibilites of an adult - a process to make rational decisions instead of being spoonfed and told what to do like one would a child. As I clarified elsewhere on this thread, the point I was making wasn't "liars, cranks and con artists don't exist, and no one gets to decide otherwise." It was "liars, cranks and con artists do exist, and we need to empower people to decide which is which by letting them practise." Yes, being an adult means having the freedom to drink alcohol and drive a car instead of waiting for a bus or a parent to come pick me up. It also means having the responsibilities of making my own decisions instead of waiting for someone else to do it for me. What's the expectation - that if the decision making authority makes a wrong decision that kills me, I can then blame them and collect damages? That's crazy talk - for one, I will be dead already!

im3w1l 7y ago
If we want to convince people, we can't stop at saying "freedom", as if that makes the rest self evident. We have to explain why freedom is important. Why the cost is worth paying.
maerF0x0 7y ago
>Oh! What do you do about those YouTUbe videos that tell you to drink bleach because it saves you from SARS-COV2!" Also you should be free to sue the content creator, maybe instead of censoring content youtube should have better "know your creator" type legislation?

tengbretson 7y ago

> I imagine some people would be overjoyed to remove the 1st amendment in order to lower disease spread Well, if you read the whole thing, the 1st amendment includes the freedom to peaceably assemble, so at least to that extent it has already been removed and to cheering crowds no less.

heavyset_go 7y ago

> Heck, we already decided trashing the economy is worth "saving lives" (how many?), People dropping dead in the streets will trash the economy.

nostrebored 7y ago
[citation neeeded] People die all the time. Pretending that the jury is out on the long term impacts of Covid 19 is ascientific.
- dijit 7y ago
  I'm responding to this not for you, but for others. You should know that what you've just said indicates a disgusting train of thought not characterised by any good intention. -- The issue when talking about the long term affects is that, you're right, we don't have enough information. However that doesn't mean we should sit on our hands and do nothing. The whole point of humans recording history (and science is mostly just trying things and writing them down so we can build on this knowledge later) is to see patterns and conclude things. There's all kinds of misinformation that can spread in the cracks here because only history will tell us the real truth, but drawing on similarly infectious diseases from history will help significantly. It's not 'ascientific' to draw from the corpus of scientific knowledge. It is ascientific to say: "This disease is completely unknown so we should wait until the human death toll has reached critical mass before making an action which could impact our wealth". For the sake of the parent, there are studies on the loss of population and if we lose 1-2% of the population in the span of a few months then indeed that will recess the economy quite sharply.[0] In case you forgot, economy is the quantity and value of transactions in a market. Less people is lower quantity. From the admittedly little we know about the disease, it is much more deadly than anything that's currently making the rounds. (If you're going to rebut me please control for number of people infected, because it's a common misconception that "more people die of other things" but that's because "other things" are affecting more people) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_consequences_of_population_decline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_consequences_of_popul...
  - 7y ago

Mikhail_Edoshin 7y ago

Don't you think this is because the modern secular attitude has no real foundation to make moral choices and picks "saving lives" almost randomly, just as a plausible highest good? :) For example, Christianity strives to save souls, not lives. That gives a very different vantage point. From this point it's absolutely clear that the right to speak candidly cannot be abolished on such a ridiculous premise as saving lives.