7 ms·

Don't prohibit speech. That's it. Repugnance is part of life. If you suppress speech, you only push it underground. Light is the best disinfectant. Daryl Davis,

Don't prohibit speech. That's it. Repugnance is part of life. If you suppress speech, you only push it underground. Light is the best disinfectant. Daryl Davis, a black musician, attends Klan rallies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw). By knowing who to speak with, he's helped people out of that racist pit. I extend speech so far to include calls to violence. Then you know who to watch and who to protect. Hiding this does nothing but make intel harder to get. You can't try to prevent radicalization, because you've pushed it so far out of the light, it might as well be a mole. They'll still eat the roots of your modern democracy, but you'll be surprised.

lifeformed 6y ago
What about spam? Scams? Child porn? Doxxing? People's very personal data? A bounty to hurt a specific person, with included address and identifying information? There's always an exception. Some amount of moderation is always necessary, and naturally there will always be gray area cases.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > What about spam? Spam filtering isn't censorship because the recipient doesn't want to receive it. Censorship is removing access to material the recipient would otherwise choose to view. > Scams? Child porn? Doxxing? People's very personal data? A bounty to hurt a specific person, with included address and identifying information? All of these things have illegal non-speech components (fraud, child abuse), so you can go arrest the perpetrators directly and leave the platforms out of it.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    But do you leave up the porn?
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      Assign the copyright to the victim. Then they can make a copyright claim.
      - joshuamorton 6y ago
        And in cases where the victim is a child (like child porn) and their guardian is involved in the abuse (which is often the case)? Then you either wait for the child to be of age to assert copyright, and force them to confront this individually, or you wait for guardianship to unwind and hope the state or foster guardian or whatever is interested in pursuing a copyright violation on behalf of a minor.
        AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        Having the minor in the custody of the abuser is by far the more serious problem, so solve that first, and if that isn't happening fast enough, fix whatever is preventing that. Then the copyright claim solves itself -- there would be lawyers lined up in front of your door for the chance to sue child pornographers on a contingent fee basis.
      - ratww 6y ago
        > Assign the copyright to the victim. Then they can make a copyright claim. Are you really saying that the way to deal with depictions of child-abuse is by assigning copyright to the victim and then asking the victim to deal with it judicially? This kind of process is onerous even for regular people in non-dire situations, let alone for children who have just been a victim of sexual abuse. By asking from action coming from the child, you are advocating something that is effectively forcing them to re-live the abuse. Imagine being rescued by the police or some other group, and then having to independently deal with lawyers in the fallout of the case just to get justice done. This is why we have prosecutors and laws for. On top of that, it doesn't even make sense from a copyright perspective. Not to mention how problematic copyright is in itself, and how nonsensical your suggestion is, since copyright can and is used as a much more powerful weapon for censorship, when used against criticism for example. The current system is much better than this. Not having someone yell "fire" and cause harm, or to have propagation of child-abuse dealt without doing more harm to the child are WAY more important than having absolute freedom of harming others (or, as you call it, freedom from censorship). To quote Joseph Welch, "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
  - rumanator 6y ago
    > All of these things have illegal non-speech components (fraud, child abuse), Do you find slander to not fit the bill? And what about calling for a military coup to persecuted anyone they see fit?
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      > Do you find slander to not fit the bill? But it's still the same thing -- what does it have to do with the platform? Go sue the actual speaker, and keep collecting damages from them as long as they keep using the platform to publish the slander. > And what about calling for a military coup to persecuted anyone they see fit? A military coup pretty obviously falls under a non-speech act which is itself illegal.
      - rumanator 6y ago
        > But it's still the same thing -- what does it have to do with the platform? The platform is the medium that's enabling slander. If Bolsonaro's minions were publishing their fake news and slanderous attacks on newspapers, the newspaper would also be held accountable for it's responsibility of wilfully spreading false information. > Go sue the actual speaker It's not an either/or thing. Similarly, ISPs are also forced to comply with cutting access to services that violate the law.
        hu3 6y ago
        > The platform is the medium that's enabling slander. That's a naive take. It's like saying roads enabled accidents and thus must be demolished. On most countries, usually the specific infriging content is ordered to be taken down, not the entire account. Read about DMCA for example. Youtube channels have specific content taken down, not the entire channel.
        rumanator 6y ago
        > That's a naive take. It's like saying roads enabled accidents and thus must be demolished. No, it's like saying that roads which are found to be repeatedly causing accidents should be fixed in order to allow everyone to drive safely. Which is what happens in real life. And you seemed to have turned a blind eye to the fact that ISPs have been for decades complying with court orders to remove access to illegal content hosted and made available by them. You don't need to resort to convoluted apples-to-oranges comparisons to understand the problem and it's solution.
fuvkthisguy 6y ago
Honestly I think this just doesn't work out this way in reality. First of all, we know that deplatforming racists/fascists does actually help to stop the spread of racist/fascist ideas. Secondly, and I think this is the more salient point, encountering racist/sexist/transphobic/whatever speech as a person who is the target of such rhetoric is immediately harmful and othering, especially when these views aren't actively challenged or disavowed by society. This doesn't even include the possibility that hearing hate speech might trigger some prior trauma experienced because of one's identity. By taking this stance, you're implicitly advocating the allowance of direct threats to other people's very existence, under the justitification that everyone will be better off that way because it's all out in the open. To me, that just sounds like you don't really understand the impact that hate speech can have on a person's ability to live with the same freedoms and opportunities that other members of society enjoy. Example: You have a job interview downtown, but you're black and the Klan has a parade scheduled that day, and you're scared of the calls for violence. You don't make the interview, so you obviously don't get the job. You were denied the opportunity to because of the 'free speech' of others. I for one would like to see more focus on Freedom of Association alongside Freedom of Speech in discussions like these - you can argue whatever you like, but nobody has to listen to you or give you a platform (and if you're a fascist, they shouldn't, and should be actively deplatforming you because your ideas are so awful/dangerous).
- controversy 6y ago
  My response is that everyone should carry. If the Klan goes nuts, the Klan gets shot. Eventually the system will react an equilibrium. I agree with your freedom of association. My only note would be that removing people from the means of financial transactions is the same as limiting speech.
  - labster 6y ago
    I tend to prefer solutions to social problems where no one gets shot.
    - controversy 6y ago
jariel 6y ago
"Don't prohibit speech. That's it. Repugnance is part of life. If you suppress speech, you only push it underground. Light is the best disinfectant." Speech is not Light In fact, it's usually the opposite. Most speech is just crude opinion, and the most popular speech has nothing to do with facts. The 'free speech' arguments are all very academic - yes, of course' freedom of thought' is important. But the 'real dimension' is not about political conscience, or the realm of ideas. 99% of people live and breathe on 'main street' not 'intellectual street' (including most of us during our daily lives) and it's not about 'ideas' it's just about bullying, sex and harassment. Unfettered, every anonymous group becomes dick and boob picks, at minimum. Do you know how the Rwandan genocide was inflamed? Talk radio. The hosts with large audience would, on a daily basis talk about how the Tutsi/Hutus were 'cockroaches' and 'subhuman' and deserved to die. The level of raw hate was on another level altogether. Then as little confrontational incidents heated up, someone flipped the switch and the radio started calling everyone to 'get out their machetes and kill the cockroaches' and so it ensued. This was mostly not a 'war' of 'soldiers and guns' - it was like a zombie uprising, people coming out of their homes with machetes and hacking up their neighbours. I am not advocating for restrictions on civil opinions etc. - in any reasonable situation, people ought to speak their mind, particularly in academia, in the press etc.. But 'in the commons' (even in so called advanced countries) - things could get out of hand very quickly. What we've witnessed over the last few years with false information about vaccines, a lot of Trump tweets, QAnon, a lot of false information about protests in every direction - is just barely scratching the surface of how bad it could get. People will believe all sorts of crazy things and the 'angrier 'it is, the easier it is to get them to believe it. Even in the US there is a small, but still very significant part of the population that would believe almost anything that Obama or Trump tweeted. If Trump decided to tell his base that 'the 2020 elections were rigged, the Army tried a coup, and you need to storm DC with your guns' there would be people who would do it, for example. Left unfettered, some really bad things could propagate, and the most popular voices would wield incredible power. 'Peace is Hard' Obama I think said, he was talking about geopolitical things, but in the commons it's just the same. People should be able to discuss ideas freely, we need to protect that, but most people are not interested in that. Consider what happens when the 'fake news' thing truly takes hold, and almost everything people read is completely fabricated. 'The Clintons leave a trail of Murder' - 'Trump secretly financed Putin's rise to power' etc.. It's a legit problem.

lifeformed 6y ago

What about spam? Scams? Child porn? Doxxing? People's very personal data? A bounty to hurt a specific person, with included address and identifying information? There's always an exception. Some amount of moderation is always necessary, and naturally there will always be gray area cases.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> What about spam? Spam filtering isn't censorship because the recipient doesn't want to receive it. Censorship is removing access to material the recipient would otherwise choose to view. > Scams? Child porn? Doxxing? People's very personal data? A bounty to hurt a specific person, with included address and identifying information? All of these things have illegal non-speech components (fraud, child abuse), so you can go arrest the perpetrators directly and leave the platforms out of it.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  But do you leave up the porn?
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Assign the copyright to the victim. Then they can make a copyright claim.
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      And in cases where the victim is a child (like child porn) and their guardian is involved in the abuse (which is often the case)? Then you either wait for the child to be of age to assert copyright, and force them to confront this individually, or you wait for guardianship to unwind and hope the state or foster guardian or whatever is interested in pursuing a copyright violation on behalf of a minor.
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        Having the minor in the custody of the abuser is by far the more serious problem, so solve that first, and if that isn't happening fast enough, fix whatever is preventing that. Then the copyright claim solves itself -- there would be lawyers lined up in front of your door for the chance to sue child pornographers on a contingent fee basis.
    - ratww 6y ago
      > Assign the copyright to the victim. Then they can make a copyright claim. Are you really saying that the way to deal with depictions of child-abuse is by assigning copyright to the victim and then asking the victim to deal with it judicially? This kind of process is onerous even for regular people in non-dire situations, let alone for children who have just been a victim of sexual abuse. By asking from action coming from the child, you are advocating something that is effectively forcing them to re-live the abuse. Imagine being rescued by the police or some other group, and then having to independently deal with lawyers in the fallout of the case just to get justice done. This is why we have prosecutors and laws for. On top of that, it doesn't even make sense from a copyright perspective. Not to mention how problematic copyright is in itself, and how nonsensical your suggestion is, since copyright can and is used as a much more powerful weapon for censorship, when used against criticism for example. The current system is much better than this. Not having someone yell "fire" and cause harm, or to have propagation of child-abuse dealt without doing more harm to the child are WAY more important than having absolute freedom of harming others (or, as you call it, freedom from censorship). To quote Joseph Welch, "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
- rumanator 6y ago
  > All of these things have illegal non-speech components (fraud, child abuse), Do you find slander to not fit the bill? And what about calling for a military coup to persecuted anyone they see fit?
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > Do you find slander to not fit the bill? But it's still the same thing -- what does it have to do with the platform? Go sue the actual speaker, and keep collecting damages from them as long as they keep using the platform to publish the slander. > And what about calling for a military coup to persecuted anyone they see fit? A military coup pretty obviously falls under a non-speech act which is itself illegal.
    - rumanator 6y ago
      > But it's still the same thing -- what does it have to do with the platform? The platform is the medium that's enabling slander. If Bolsonaro's minions were publishing their fake news and slanderous attacks on newspapers, the newspaper would also be held accountable for it's responsibility of wilfully spreading false information. > Go sue the actual speaker It's not an either/or thing. Similarly, ISPs are also forced to comply with cutting access to services that violate the law.
      - hu3 6y ago
        > The platform is the medium that's enabling slander. That's a naive take. It's like saying roads enabled accidents and thus must be demolished. On most countries, usually the specific infriging content is ordered to be taken down, not the entire account. Read about DMCA for example. Youtube channels have specific content taken down, not the entire channel.
        rumanator 6y ago
        > That's a naive take. It's like saying roads enabled accidents and thus must be demolished. No, it's like saying that roads which are found to be repeatedly causing accidents should be fixed in order to allow everyone to drive safely. Which is what happens in real life. And you seemed to have turned a blind eye to the fact that ISPs have been for decades complying with court orders to remove access to illegal content hosted and made available by them. You don't need to resort to convoluted apples-to-oranges comparisons to understand the problem and it's solution.

fuvkthisguy 6y ago

Honestly I think this just doesn't work out this way in reality. First of all, we know that deplatforming racists/fascists does actually help to stop the spread of racist/fascist ideas. Secondly, and I think this is the more salient point, encountering racist/sexist/transphobic/whatever speech as a person who is the target of such rhetoric is immediately harmful and othering, especially when these views aren't actively challenged or disavowed by society. This doesn't even include the possibility that hearing hate speech might trigger some prior trauma experienced because of one's identity. By taking this stance, you're implicitly advocating the allowance of direct threats to other people's very existence, under the justitification that everyone will be better off that way because it's all out in the open. To me, that just sounds like you don't really understand the impact that hate speech can have on a person's ability to live with the same freedoms and opportunities that other members of society enjoy. Example: You have a job interview downtown, but you're black and the Klan has a parade scheduled that day, and you're scared of the calls for violence. You don't make the interview, so you obviously don't get the job. You were denied the opportunity to because of the 'free speech' of others. I for one would like to see more focus on Freedom of Association alongside Freedom of Speech in discussions like these - you can argue whatever you like, but nobody has to listen to you or give you a platform (and if you're a fascist, they shouldn't, and should be actively deplatforming you because your ideas are so awful/dangerous).

controversy 6y ago
My response is that everyone should carry. If the Klan goes nuts, the Klan gets shot. Eventually the system will react an equilibrium. I agree with your freedom of association. My only note would be that removing people from the means of financial transactions is the same as limiting speech.
- labster 6y ago
  I tend to prefer solutions to social problems where no one gets shot.
  - controversy 6y ago

jariel 6y ago

"Don't prohibit speech. That's it. Repugnance is part of life. If you suppress speech, you only push it underground. Light is the best disinfectant." Speech is not Light In fact, it's usually the opposite. Most speech is just crude opinion, and the most popular speech has nothing to do with facts. The 'free speech' arguments are all very academic - yes, of course' freedom of thought' is important. But the 'real dimension' is not about political conscience, or the realm of ideas. 99% of people live and breathe on 'main street' not 'intellectual street' (including most of us during our daily lives) and it's not about 'ideas' it's just about bullying, sex and harassment. Unfettered, every anonymous group becomes dick and boob picks, at minimum. Do you know how the Rwandan genocide was inflamed? Talk radio. The hosts with large audience would, on a daily basis talk about how the Tutsi/Hutus were 'cockroaches' and 'subhuman' and deserved to die. The level of raw hate was on another level altogether. Then as little confrontational incidents heated up, someone flipped the switch and the radio started calling everyone to 'get out their machetes and kill the cockroaches' and so it ensued. This was mostly not a 'war' of 'soldiers and guns' - it was like a zombie uprising, people coming out of their homes with machetes and hacking up their neighbours. I am not advocating for restrictions on civil opinions etc. - in any reasonable situation, people ought to speak their mind, particularly in academia, in the press etc.. But 'in the commons' (even in so called advanced countries) - things could get out of hand very quickly. What we've witnessed over the last few years with false information about vaccines, a lot of Trump tweets, QAnon, a lot of false information about protests in every direction - is just barely scratching the surface of how bad it could get. People will believe all sorts of crazy things and the 'angrier 'it is, the easier it is to get them to believe it. Even in the US there is a small, but still very significant part of the population that would believe almost anything that Obama or Trump tweeted. If Trump decided to tell his base that 'the 2020 elections were rigged, the Army tried a coup, and you need to storm DC with your guns' there would be people who would do it, for example. Left unfettered, some really bad things could propagate, and the most popular voices would wield incredible power. 'Peace is Hard' Obama I think said, he was talking about geopolitical things, but in the commons it's just the same. People should be able to discuss ideas freely, we need to protect that, but most people are not interested in that. Consider what happens when the 'fake news' thing truly takes hold, and almost everything people read is completely fabricated. 'The Clintons leave a trail of Murder' - 'Trump secretly financed Putin's rise to power' etc.. It's a legit problem.