4 ms·
Yes, real world problems are hard. I'm not sure what point you're trying to convey though? We can't just say, "The boundaries of hate speech are unclear, so w
by TomSwirly 6y ago
Yes, real world problems are hard.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to convey though?
We can't just say, "The boundaries of hate speech are unclear, so we'll do nothing and have uncensored speech." This experiment has been tried over and over again, with uniformly bad results.
- hutzlibu 6y agoMy point was, that it is hard and the lines are blurry. But actually I do believe in the concept of unrestricted speech. But I really don't know when was the last time, that was tried. There were times, when certain topics were ok to speak freely about, like racism, yes, but at those times other topics were restricted, so what exactly are you talking about?
- thinkloop 6y ago> I do believe in the concept of unrestricted speech. Including illegal things?
- hutzlibu 6y agoWhat do you mean by that? In Saudia Arabia it is illegal to say, God does not exist. (and in germany under special circumstances, too - meaning, if enough people would get angry at you saying that, it would be illegal for you to say so)
- ves 6y agoDo you know anywhere with truly unrestricted speech? The US has the freest speech that I know of (granted it’s also the only model that I’m so familiar with), and even it has plenty of restrictions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
- bhupy 6y agoThe restrictions on speech in the US are confined to “imminent lawless action”, per Brandenburg v Ohio. I think the commenter to whom you are replying might be entirely fine with Reddit’s speech policy following that precedent. And no, shouting “fire!” in a crowded theater is not illegal and is protected by the First Amendment.
- patmorgan23 6y agoBut you can't shout fire in crowed theater with the intent to cause chaos. You can shout fire in a crowded theater, if there is an actual fire.
- bhupy 6y agoYes you can! That argument was made in a SCOTUS argument that has since been unanimously overturned. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
- simplify 6y agoGreat read, thanks for posting. I had mistakenly thought this for a while too.
- tripzilch 6y agoWow. So the argument was first successfully used to jail peaceful socialists and anti-war activists, but was later overturned for benefit of the KKK.
- bhupy 6y agoYup. Today, the law benefits peaceful socialists, anti-war activists, AND the KKK — which is a big win for free speech, in my books.
- patmorgan23 6y agoThere's a difference between largely unrestricted speech legally (being free from gov censorship) and having an unmoderated online community. Moderation is a good thong when done correctly, it raises the quality of the conversion by keeping bad actors and off-topic/toxic comments /post out. There's value in both tightly moderated and loosely moderated communities/spaces.
- imperfect_blue 6y agoEarly Reddit isn't what what most would call a "bad result". Ditto for early 4chan and for a lot of smaller communities that have very little restrictions on content beyond civility and anti-spamming. The problem is that having uncensored speech doesn't scale, because eventually you'll become big enough to attract media scrutiny, which inevitably cherry-picks the worst parts of the user base. This cause 1) advertisers to pull out and 2) starts attracting more of the wrong type of users.