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People misunderstand that quote as much as people misunderstand the concept of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech means that the police can't raid your house

by znpy 6y ago

People misunderstand that quote as much as people misunderstand the concept of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech means that the police can't raid your house for what you think or say or a judge cannot rule against you for what you think or say. But freedom of speech doesn't mean that other people are forced to either listen to you or provide with their own private means (like content hosting or bandwidth) for you to express your ideas.

keiferski 6y ago
This line of argument is really tiresome and comes up every single time in discussions like this. It's been done over and over and over again and I'm not really interested in arguing about it. What I am talking about is the culture of defending free speech. The cultural value of defending the right of people you dislike to express ideas that you disagree with, because the value and importance of free expression goes beyond the short-term unpleasantness of ugly opinions. This is what we are losing / have lost and it is extremely dangerous for democratic society and civil liberties. It has nothing to do with the legal definition of free speech.
- deegles 6y ago
  How do you categorize anti vaccine, flat earthers, and people who believe BillG wants to implant people with microchips? This is the paradox of tolerance. Some ideas are worth debating, some are not. We all have limited time and energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Edit: the irony of getting downvoted while trying to have a discussion about being able to express ideas...
  - keiferski 6y ago
    No, the paradox of tolerance is relevant when you have radical political factions inflicting violence on the population and preventing opposing opinions, not when some small group of people has crazy ideas that have little-to-no impact on society as a whole. The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Crazy people thinking that the Earth is flat doesn't prevent you from circumnavigating it.
    - MagnumOpus 6y ago
      > Crazy people thinking that the Earth is flat doesn't prevent you from circumnavigating it Crazy people believing that vaccines are a Democrat/BillG/CIA plot will prevent you from achieving herd immunity, if they are numerous enough. Crazy people who think the Earth is flat will deny your circumnavigation project government funding, if there are enough of them. In any organisation that is not a totalitarian autocracy, crazy people hurt the organisation's goals. The more numerous and organised, the bigger the gridlock.
    - archagon 6y ago
      Meanwhile, the person holding the most powerful office on Earth is retweeting Q memes...
  - thu2111 6y ago
    So don't debate with flat earthers. Nobody is forcing you to. Anyway, you've listed three things and one of them isn't like the others. I'll give you a hint: hate anti-vaxxers or not, there have been vaccines in the past that had extremely severe side effects. That is an absolute fact. Everything from that point on is about risk tolerances, tradeoffs and group safety vs individual freedoms, i.e. things debated for thousands of years. Lumping people who are scared of vaccines into the same category as people who think the earth is flat is the kind of tactic that makes so many of us think ... fuck it, just let everyone say what they want. Total freedom of speech everywhere. Why, because trying to institutionally determine what's "true" is a complete waste of time. Everyone who thinks it's easy ends up causing massive collateral damage by shutting down legitimate and important debate. See how Wojcicki at YouTube has been deleting videos of epidemiologists and Nobel Prize winning scientists for "misinformation". See how she's been forcibly upranking outlets like CNN in recommendations, even though people don't want to watch it and it makes Google lose money. See how Facebook has shut down groups for people who think lockdowns are a harmful policy. See how Google is now censoring "communist bandit" globally. This kind of childish behaviour doesn't make the tech industry look smart, it makes us look like arrogant fools.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    Tattoo them, not implant. I believe that because billG said that’s what he wants to do, unless the official website is some sort of joke I’m not getting: https://id2020.org/ https://id2020.org/
- mnm1 6y ago
  In the US, it depends on whether the violence incited is "imminent" or not. In this case, I'd say that it was and the government failed to act (surprise! /s) to enforce its own laws because the president is indeed above the law while serving, as the Mueller report found. Lamenting society's loss of free speech in a situation where that free speech isn't even legally protected seems strange to me.
  - therealdrag0 6y ago
    > seems strange Why would it be strange to have values that go beyond what is legal?
    - mnm1 6y ago
      Because we don't even have values to back the legal system. It's strange to demand companies act ethically when the legal system allows and encourages them to act unethically.
- cdsmith 6y ago
  I'm puzzled that you feel we are losing this, when it seems clear that with every passing day, we are moving further and further into a world where anyone can freely express anything they like. You and I and everyone around us has the ability to write whatever opinions we have, and immediately share them to tens of thousands of people. This is something that would have been unthinkable 20 or 30 years ago. Groups that were for much of history suppressed by dominant cultures are now vibrant and active. The LGBT community certainly doesn't wish for a return to the past, for instance. Whole social movements have been organized between people who, prior to recent history, would have been logistically unable to communicate with each other. At the same time, certain people have views that are morally abhorrent. Or, heck, even just not very interesting. It's important to NOT to shoehorn some kind of homesteading right over public attention in the name of free speech. In the past, society's way of protecting itself against this was mainly that speech was expensive, and extremists frequently lacked the money to impose themselves on others' attention. This was in some ways a horrifying way to solve the problem, since it suppressed the disadvantaged, and didn't work anyway. In any case, it's gone. Speech is no longer expensive. What remains to see how we can regain some semblance of sanity in a world where all public communication devolves into people shouting at each other. I'm sick of living in that world. I don't particularly care whether Facebook takes down Trump's comments; they've already been heard. But I do care about notions of free speech that prevent tech companies from trying to solve the pressing social challenge of how to let people regain control over their own attention spans.
- archagon 6y ago
  This line of argument is really tiresome and comes up every single time in discussions like this. It's been done over and over and over again and I'm not really interested in arguing about it. (Sorry, you can’t just say you’re tired of an argument and then continue with only your side of that argument.)
  - keiferski 6y ago
    I’m not giving my side of the argument, because I’m not engaging with the argument. I’m talking about cultural values, not legal definitions of free speech.
    - archagon 6y ago
      Sure. But it's still one of many branches in this same exact conversation tree. ("What happened to free speech culture?" "Free speech doesn't mean you can say whatever you want without consequence, and these are private companies" "But Facebook and Twitter are really more like public squares" etc. etc. etc.) If you accept that you'd never let some soapbox rando yell politics in your face just for the principle of the matter, the discussion will inevitably boil down to the role social media plays in society.
- iron0013 6y ago
  The line of argument you’re objecting to comes up every time because it continues to be correct every time. Instead of saying you’re tired of it, it might be more productive to admit that you’re wrong.
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  Where your argument fails is that nowhere in the Constitution, or quotes like that is mentioned the right to be _heard_. You have no inherent right to an audience (either on Facebook, or in a public place). In-person, I can walk away. But the virtual equivalent is "stifling"?
  - keiferski 6y ago
    > It has nothing to do with the legal definition of free speech. I am not talking about the Constitution. I’m talking about a cultural value. Not the same thing.
    - yladiz 6y ago
      You can't say that and use the quote in the original comment. The quote references a right, which comes from laws and the Constitution, yet you mention a cultural value instead. Which are you talking about here, the right of free speech, or the cultural value of free speech?
      - bryan_w 6y ago
        Rights don't come from laws, we are endowed with them by our creator.
    - FireBeyond 6y ago
      These people, groups, organizations are not having their ability to speak stifled. They're having their choice of location stifled. There are plenty of people willing to host views that others might find unpleasant. From Gab, to Voat, to nearlyfreespeech.net, self-hosting and the like. Now if your argument is (as often, theirs is) that those platforms are fringe, not nearly-as-popular, I would theorize that that is because a larger majority of people have heard some of these things and have zero interest in hearing more. But they can still say it. And at that point, I ask, what is the cultural value of requiring people to hear things they've decided they do not wish to?
      - 6y ago
- darkarmani 6y ago
  > The cultural value of defending the right of people you dislike to express ideas that you disagree with, because the value and importance of free expression goes beyond the short-term unpleasantness of ugly opinions. This is what we are losing You are really missing the point though. Part of the balance is that one still cannot escape the consequences of their free expression. That's the backpressure that makes it work. Email is a medium with which lacked that kind of backpressure and suffered by massive amounts of spam. Filtering out spam is preventing "free expression". If you don't have backpressure, you won't get the free expression you imagine, because the noise will overwhelm everything else.
- znpy 6y ago
  my point was more in the line that there are times in history when people and organization have to take sides. refusing to do so means implicitly taking sides. facebook not using its right to kick violence-mongers off their platform is an implicit way of supporting them. Facebook doesn't have to support trump or to spread his hate speech. Facebook is choosing to do so.
koheripbal 6y ago
You are conflating "The First Amendment" with "freedom of speech". "The First Amendment" is the law that protects us from the government stopping free speech. "Freedom of speech" is a principle that civilized cultures adopt so that people who disagree aren't shut out of the conversation.
jordanisalive 6y ago
To add clarity: You have freedom of speech, not freedom from speech.
DeonPenny 6y ago
But that has always stood in media and on the metaphysical soap box. Which is why media companies haven't been able to censor politicians and its illegal for politicians to block you on social media. Look at the AOC law suit. She tried silencing people on her private social media but because she is now in government she got sued immediately.

by znpy 6y ago

keiferski 6y ago

This line of argument is really tiresome and comes up every single time in discussions like this. It's been done over and over and over again and I'm not really interested in arguing about it. What I am talking about is the culture of defending free speech. The cultural value of defending the right of people you dislike to express ideas that you disagree with, because the value and importance of free expression goes beyond the short-term unpleasantness of ugly opinions. This is what we are losing / have lost and it is extremely dangerous for democratic society and civil liberties. It has nothing to do with the legal definition of free speech.

deegles 6y ago
How do you categorize anti vaccine, flat earthers, and people who believe BillG wants to implant people with microchips? This is the paradox of tolerance. Some ideas are worth debating, some are not. We all have limited time and energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Edit: the irony of getting downvoted while trying to have a discussion about being able to express ideas...
- keiferski 6y ago
  No, the paradox of tolerance is relevant when you have radical political factions inflicting violence on the population and preventing opposing opinions, not when some small group of people has crazy ideas that have little-to-no impact on society as a whole. The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Crazy people thinking that the Earth is flat doesn't prevent you from circumnavigating it.
  - MagnumOpus 6y ago
    > Crazy people thinking that the Earth is flat doesn't prevent you from circumnavigating it Crazy people believing that vaccines are a Democrat/BillG/CIA plot will prevent you from achieving herd immunity, if they are numerous enough. Crazy people who think the Earth is flat will deny your circumnavigation project government funding, if there are enough of them. In any organisation that is not a totalitarian autocracy, crazy people hurt the organisation's goals. The more numerous and organised, the bigger the gridlock.
  - archagon 6y ago
    Meanwhile, the person holding the most powerful office on Earth is retweeting Q memes...
- thu2111 6y ago
  So don't debate with flat earthers. Nobody is forcing you to. Anyway, you've listed three things and one of them isn't like the others. I'll give you a hint: hate anti-vaxxers or not, there have been vaccines in the past that had extremely severe side effects. That is an absolute fact. Everything from that point on is about risk tolerances, tradeoffs and group safety vs individual freedoms, i.e. things debated for thousands of years. Lumping people who are scared of vaccines into the same category as people who think the earth is flat is the kind of tactic that makes so many of us think ... fuck it, just let everyone say what they want. Total freedom of speech everywhere. Why, because trying to institutionally determine what's "true" is a complete waste of time. Everyone who thinks it's easy ends up causing massive collateral damage by shutting down legitimate and important debate. See how Wojcicki at YouTube has been deleting videos of epidemiologists and Nobel Prize winning scientists for "misinformation". See how she's been forcibly upranking outlets like CNN in recommendations, even though people don't want to watch it and it makes Google lose money. See how Facebook has shut down groups for people who think lockdowns are a harmful policy. See how Google is now censoring "communist bandit" globally. This kind of childish behaviour doesn't make the tech industry look smart, it makes us look like arrogant fools.
- Lammy 6y ago
  Tattoo them, not implant. I believe that because billG said that’s what he wants to do, unless the official website is some sort of joke I’m not getting: https://id2020.org/ https://id2020.org/
mnm1 6y ago
In the US, it depends on whether the violence incited is "imminent" or not. In this case, I'd say that it was and the government failed to act (surprise! /s) to enforce its own laws because the president is indeed above the law while serving, as the Mueller report found. Lamenting society's loss of free speech in a situation where that free speech isn't even legally protected seems strange to me.
- therealdrag0 6y ago
  > seems strange Why would it be strange to have values that go beyond what is legal?
  - mnm1 6y ago
    Because we don't even have values to back the legal system. It's strange to demand companies act ethically when the legal system allows and encourages them to act unethically.
cdsmith 6y ago
I'm puzzled that you feel we are losing this, when it seems clear that with every passing day, we are moving further and further into a world where anyone can freely express anything they like. You and I and everyone around us has the ability to write whatever opinions we have, and immediately share them to tens of thousands of people. This is something that would have been unthinkable 20 or 30 years ago. Groups that were for much of history suppressed by dominant cultures are now vibrant and active. The LGBT community certainly doesn't wish for a return to the past, for instance. Whole social movements have been organized between people who, prior to recent history, would have been logistically unable to communicate with each other. At the same time, certain people have views that are morally abhorrent. Or, heck, even just not very interesting. It's important to NOT to shoehorn some kind of homesteading right over public attention in the name of free speech. In the past, society's way of protecting itself against this was mainly that speech was expensive, and extremists frequently lacked the money to impose themselves on others' attention. This was in some ways a horrifying way to solve the problem, since it suppressed the disadvantaged, and didn't work anyway. In any case, it's gone. Speech is no longer expensive. What remains to see how we can regain some semblance of sanity in a world where all public communication devolves into people shouting at each other. I'm sick of living in that world. I don't particularly care whether Facebook takes down Trump's comments; they've already been heard. But I do care about notions of free speech that prevent tech companies from trying to solve the pressing social challenge of how to let people regain control over their own attention spans.
archagon 6y ago
This line of argument is really tiresome and comes up every single time in discussions like this. It's been done over and over and over again and I'm not really interested in arguing about it. (Sorry, you can’t just say you’re tired of an argument and then continue with only your side of that argument.)
- keiferski 6y ago
  I’m not giving my side of the argument, because I’m not engaging with the argument. I’m talking about cultural values, not legal definitions of free speech.
  - archagon 6y ago
    Sure. But it's still one of many branches in this same exact conversation tree. ("What happened to free speech culture?" "Free speech doesn't mean you can say whatever you want without consequence, and these are private companies" "But Facebook and Twitter are really more like public squares" etc. etc. etc.) If you accept that you'd never let some soapbox rando yell politics in your face just for the principle of the matter, the discussion will inevitably boil down to the role social media plays in society.
iron0013 6y ago
The line of argument you’re objecting to comes up every time because it continues to be correct every time. Instead of saying you’re tired of it, it might be more productive to admit that you’re wrong.
FireBeyond 6y ago
Where your argument fails is that nowhere in the Constitution, or quotes like that is mentioned the right to be _heard_. You have no inherent right to an audience (either on Facebook, or in a public place). In-person, I can walk away. But the virtual equivalent is "stifling"?
- keiferski 6y ago
  > It has nothing to do with the legal definition of free speech. I am not talking about the Constitution. I’m talking about a cultural value. Not the same thing.
  - yladiz 6y ago
    You can't say that and use the quote in the original comment. The quote references a right, which comes from laws and the Constitution, yet you mention a cultural value instead. Which are you talking about here, the right of free speech, or the cultural value of free speech?
    - bryan_w 6y ago
      Rights don't come from laws, we are endowed with them by our creator.
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    These people, groups, organizations are not having their ability to speak stifled. They're having their choice of location stifled. There are plenty of people willing to host views that others might find unpleasant. From Gab, to Voat, to nearlyfreespeech.net, self-hosting and the like. Now if your argument is (as often, theirs is) that those platforms are fringe, not nearly-as-popular, I would theorize that that is because a larger majority of people have heard some of these things and have zero interest in hearing more. But they can still say it. And at that point, I ask, what is the cultural value of requiring people to hear things they've decided they do not wish to?
    - 6y ago
darkarmani 6y ago
> The cultural value of defending the right of people you dislike to express ideas that you disagree with, because the value and importance of free expression goes beyond the short-term unpleasantness of ugly opinions. This is what we are losing You are really missing the point though. Part of the balance is that one still cannot escape the consequences of their free expression. That's the backpressure that makes it work. Email is a medium with which lacked that kind of backpressure and suffered by massive amounts of spam. Filtering out spam is preventing "free expression". If you don't have backpressure, you won't get the free expression you imagine, because the noise will overwhelm everything else.
znpy 6y ago
my point was more in the line that there are times in history when people and organization have to take sides. refusing to do so means implicitly taking sides. facebook not using its right to kick violence-mongers off their platform is an implicit way of supporting them. Facebook doesn't have to support trump or to spread his hate speech. Facebook is choosing to do so.

koheripbal 6y ago

You are conflating "The First Amendment" with "freedom of speech". "The First Amendment" is the law that protects us from the government stopping free speech. "Freedom of speech" is a principle that civilized cultures adopt so that people who disagree aren't shut out of the conversation.

jordanisalive 6y ago

To add clarity: You have freedom of speech, not freedom from speech.

DeonPenny 6y ago

But that has always stood in media and on the metaphysical soap box. Which is why media companies haven't been able to censor politicians and its illegal for politicians to block you on social media. Look at the AOC law suit. She tried silencing people on her private social media but because she is now in government she got sued immediately.