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> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the

> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant. What is tolerance? You can't tolerate something if you agree with it. Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree. This is an encroachment on free speech (and it's intolerant). You may believe that it's necessary -- and perhaps you're right: maybe the country will fall apart unless we censor voices outside the mainstream. But to frame this issue as you have done is nonsensical, as if, through sheer power of righteous will, you can transmute censorship into something else.

tr352 6y ago
This seems to be one of those things where the arguments pro and con have already been so endlessly hashed out that it’s simply become a matter of choice which camp you’re in.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  Have they? Because I still regularly encounter educated people who can't tell the difference between free speech and threats, harassment, etc. If you can't distinguish between free speech and coercive speech, then you don't understand the free-speech position that you purport to oppose ("He who knows only his own argument knows little of that"). I recall a thread on cancel culture a few months ago where virtually everyone on the pro-cancel-culture position were arguing that free speech ideals were meaningless because threats and harassment are also free speech ergo you can't oppose cancel culture without also opposing free speech--of course, threats and harassment aren't free speech, and this is precisely why free-speech proponents oppose cancel culture. It seems like this is one area where more debate can be genuinely enlightening.
  - drivingmenuts 6y ago
    Distinguishing between free speech and harassment requires discernment, which is what a lot of modern people are either not trained to do, don’t have time to do, are too lazy to do, or have been brainwashed against. More and more, we demand bright lines in a society increasingly filled with gray areas because we charge ahead without consideration. It’s never been easy and current social pressures make it even harder to do.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      This is why we should craft a system that doesn't depend on discerning between free speech and harassment. If we strengthen employment protections, then we don't have to litigate whether "it would be unfortunate if you were fired for this tweet..." was a thinly veiled threat or simply free speech--the employee can rest assured knowing that their livelihood, health care, etc is secure and they can freely advocate for their political beliefs.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    Definitions are a little murky. "Cancel culture" also isn't threats and harassment---it's deplatforming. It's using freedom of association to deny guilt by proxy for spreading someone else's lies, threats, and harassments.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      Cancel culture is very often concerted petitioning of someone's employer into terminating someone's employment (harassment) or the threat of the same (recall the Hispanic utility company employee who was terminated for making the 'ok' sign inadvertently or the data scientist who was terminated for Tweeting a prominent black academic's research on the efficacy of nonviolent protests or the journalist who was harassed by coworkers and nearly terminated for interviewing a black man who expressed concern about crime in his neighborhood). It's also frequently walking into a venue and disrupting the speaker such that their message can't reach the crowd. It may also look like forming a dangerous mob outside of a venue such that the venue can't cover the security costs for hosting a speaker.
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        If petitioning your employer to fire you for something you said works, maybe you said something that your employer would fire you over? That's, again, not harassment and threats, it's your employer using freedom of association to deny guilt by proxy for spreading someone else's lies, threats, and harassments.
        hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
        I mean, I'm kind of surprised after this back-and-forth that it isn't as clear cut as you seem to think it is. I mean, I've seen both of you make pretty reasoned arguments, and the fact that you still disagree I would at least think proves the point that people who disagree with your definition of free speech (or, rather, your definition of "cancel culture" and your definition of "harassment and threats") are not crazy lunatics. I mean, let's be honest: getting someone blackballed from gainful employment sure seems like harassment for any reasonable definition of the term. You just seem to believe that there are sometimes good reasons for that to occur.
  - baobabKoodaa 6y ago
    It sounds like you have a very, very specific idea of what should be considered free speech, and you seem to have very little tolerance for people who hold a different opinion on that topic. Rather than saying "we disagree on what should be considered free speech", you describe the people who disagree with you as confused and ignorant, who need to be educated with more debate. I have news for you: people can have different ideas about what should be within the limits of free speech and what should not. In fact, different countries have entirely different laws regarding what is protected as free speech and what is not. Let's consider the harassment example that you brought up: in principle I agree with you that people should not be allowed to harass each other. However, when you can quell unwanted speech by labeling it "harassment", you create an incentive for people to label more and more speech as harassment. We see this issue in practice all the time. In many places, stating facts such as "men and women have biological differences" is now considered harassment and can lead to losing your job.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      You've missed the point. Free-speech is widely understood to exclude threats and harassment, but even if it were only a niche definition used by free-speech proponents the pro-cancel-culture argument would still be nonsense because it claims that the pro-free-speech argument is inconsistent and self-refuting based on a definition of 'free-speech' that includes threats and harassment. Anyone who makes this argument plainly doesn't understand the free-speech argument.
      - baobabKoodaa 6y ago
        No, the "free-speech proponents" do not adhere to your specific definition of what should be considered free speech. The kind of speech which is often labelled "harassment" by its opponents is often labelled as "free speech" by its proponents.
        throwaway894345 6y ago
        > The kind of speech which is often labelled "harassment" by its opponents is often labelled as "free speech" by its proponents. If they are doing this, then they are contradicting themselves, but in all of the debates to which I've been a party, the free speech position has always held that coercive behavior (threats and harassment including quid pro quo harassment) are out of bounds of free speech. Once in a while you'll have a few people indulging in a little schadenfreude when a cancel-culture proponent is themselves canceled, and sometimes this stretches so far as to legitimize their canceling--rationalizing the canceling certainly goes too far and conflicts with free-speech ideals and schadenfreude while understandable is probably still not helpful.
  - openasocket 6y ago
    I'll be honest I don't understand your usage of the term "free speech" here. The way I define that term is that it's a political concept expressing the desire for people to be allowed to express themselves however they want to the largest extent possible/ethical. An example of law embodying free speech would be the 1st amendment of the US Constitution. Based on context, I think you are using free speech to mean "speech that is protected by the doctrine of free speech" in the vocabulary I described above. Though that's ambiguous, because to be able to talk concretely about whether speech is protected or not you would need to say what it is covered under. So do you mean speech that is protected under the 1st Amendment, or some other law? Presuming you mean the 1st amendment, it isn't necessarily true that threats and harassment are not protected, depending on the specifics.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      No worries. The 1st amendment is a legal right and protection from violation by the government. Free speech ideals go further and are generally the belief that problems are best overcome by more speech--if someone has an abhorrent idea, let them express it so others can refute it and let the audience make up its own mind. Free speech proponents would argue that censoring the idea will look bad to those in the audience who haven't made up their minds, and those undecided people in their curiosity will still learn about the unsavory ideas without the guidance of refutation. Free speech is about persuasion and not coercion, so while you could get away with it, "if you say $x, I will get all of my friends to call your employer and demand your termination" (threatening someone with harassment) is not considered to be "free speech" (nor is it "free speech" to carry out the threat). To distinguish between this definition and the first-amendment definition, I usually refer to this as "free speech ideals".
      - openasocket 6y ago
        OK, I think I'm following. Your notion of free speech ideals isn't bound to a specific law like the 1st amendment and is more abstract. (I'll note that it sounds like your notion of free speech here actually seems to cover less speech than the 1st amendment, since you're explicitly excluding harassment and threats which the 1st amendment may cover. Of course, that's determining what is legal and illegal while free speech ideals are more abstract, so that's kind of an apples-and-oranges comparison). And you object to Counter Culture, which you're defining as coercive actions against those who hold abhorrent or objectionable views. And you propose an alternative, which we could call Refutation Culture, where you instead seek to open up a sort of dialogue to prove those views wrong or immoral. I have a couple of follow-ups. You reject using Cancel Culture to silence those expressing abhorrent ideas. But what if someone isn't expressing a political view or ideology, but is instead performing bad actions? Like using racial slurs and insulting minorities, or shouting sexual harassment at women walking down the street? As you mentioned, threats and harassment aren't protected under the banner of free speech ideals. And, depending on the circumstances, those actions may be protected under the 1st Amendment, so are not illegal. Do you object to using Cancel Culture against those who are performing threats and harassment? If not, do you have an alternative recommendation? Because I'm not sure how Refutation Culture would apply in such a situation, there's no idea being put forward to argue against. As a follow up, what about abhorrent views being put into practice, such as the CEO of a company instituting racial segregation in their stores? Secondly, where do you draw the line between Cancel Culture and general acts of protest? If someone in a position of power publicly expresses abhorrent views, and under Refutation Culture we should voice an alternative viewpoint, can that take the form of a protest? If we march around that person's office holding picket signs refuting their viewpoint, would that be considered coercive?
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    > I still regularly encounter educated people who can't tell the difference between free speech and threats, harassment, etc. That's not what is happening. What is happening is that you and that person disagree on what a threat is.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      If cancel culture doesn’t depend on implicit threats of career repercussions, then no one should object when we pass laws to protect employees from this kind of mob-based termination. Of course, in this substantial thread, I don’t think anyone has disputed that CC is about threats and harassment and at least one CC proponent has advocated against employment protections. This is consistent with my observations in other HN and Twitter threads, but I’d be happy to be wrongness provided we protect employees from this kind of mobbing.
      - UncleMeat 6y ago
        I'd love it if free speech advocates were uniform in their attack on "cancel culture". I have two friends, each faculty members at top schools, who have been personally attacked on Fox News and called enemies of America. This has led to hundreds of people sending them death threats via email and constant calls to their department chairs demanding their firing. Not a peep from organizations like FIRE. And why is sending an email to somebody's boss saying that they are an asshole and should be fired fundamentally worse than posting on social media about how so-and-so is a secret jew who works for the new world order and literally sacrifices babies to satan?
        throwaway894345 6y ago
        > I'd love it if free speech advocates were uniform in their attack on "cancel culture". I have two friends, each faculty members at top schools, who have been personally attacked on Fox News and called enemies of America. This has led to hundreds of people sending them death threats via email and constant calls to their department chairs demanding their firing. Not a peep from organizations like FIRE. FIRE focuses on the exercise of free speech in education, so if your friends weren't fired or reprimanded for exercising their rights, FIRE probably won't weigh in. Doubly so if no one writes to FIRE on their behalf asking them to cover the case. Ultimately, FIRE can't cover every case (they're a nonprofit), so it might also just be bad luck that your friends' case wasn't selected. Hard to say. It certainly could be that FIRE is discriminating against your friends' for the content of their speech, but FIRE and Fox News are rarely aligned (indeed, FIRE got its start defending academia against conservative illiberalism). > And why is sending an email to somebody's boss saying that they are an asshole and should be fired fundamentally worse than posting on social media about how so-and-so is a secret jew who works for the new world order and literally sacrifices babies to satan? No one is making this argument.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  Perhaps, but I'll at least admit that my views on the limits of free speech have changed in the past decade or so as the toxicity and irrationality of social media has become apparent. I think there is an often unspoken assumption by free speech advocates that if enough daylight is shined on something that the truth will win out. Thus, better to limit speech as little as possible because (a) those limitations have so easily and frequently been abused by those clinging to power and (b) at the end of the day the truth will win out anyway, so better to just let crazy stuff be said. Over the past decade though, as people have seen the real, critical danger of unlimited free speech, and especially how the internet and social media has allowed free speech with few consequences to the original speaker (which did NOT exist when the ideals of free speech were first envisioned), I'm not sure these original hypotheses hold out anymore. I highly recommend The Social Dilemma - instead of showing truth to power, powerful entities have used powerful tools to "hack" human psychology to get people to believe things that are factually false. Remember Reddit back in the late 00s? It had such a strong free speech ethos it allowed things like jailbait. I don't even hear many free speech defenders supporting stuff like that anymore. And look at the mobs in Myanmar that were enabled to commit violence against the Rohingya by false Facebook posts. I still believe in the ideas of free speech, by I also now more strongly believe that unlimited free speech will lead us to a world where autocrats win and plain, 100% verifiable facts are dismissed (I mean, from the article, nearly a quarter of 18-39 year olds believe the Holocaust is a myth, exaggerated or aren't sure??!! I'm in my 40s and I have friends whose parents showed me their serial tattoos from being in concentration camps), and stuff is, for lack of a better term, "not good". So yes, I've changed my position, and I'm firmly on the side of being intolerant against speech that is demonstrably false.
- nicoffeine 6y ago
  It's an important conversation to have. Ironically, the problem is that the signal gets divided into shortened binary views which are easier to say "yes" or "no" to. The answer isn't no censorship ever or censorship is always okay. The real answer always depends on context. The problem with platforms like FB and Twitter is that anyone can say anything, and that can get amplified organically, or by state actors, or by trolls who are just saying offensive things to get attention. It's obvious that they need some form of moderation -- in most societies, you can't legally threaten to kill people for any reason, etc. I think the main problem is trolling and foreign interference because it is basically free. Trying to establish a fringe idea required a lot of effort when making pamphlets or sending out biased newspapers were the main ways of doing it. In the current digital age, people who are easily influenced are being blasted with controversial ideas by algorithms that are not trying to spread good information, but get more clicks. Foreign psyops efforts and the trolls who would not publicly support an idea, but will do so anonymously, falsely inflate its value. This is a new problem. It may need a twist on an old solution, like allowing people to choose between moderated or unmoderated news feeds, with the default being moderated. Our democracy (and dozens of others) have survived for hundreds of years with limits to free speech. In my opinion, it's reasonable and rational to trust that the generations before us were at least partially right, and save ourselves the pain of reinventing that wheel.
brianfryer 6y ago
It might be worth considering The Paradox of Tolerance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance > 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.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  The grandparent comment to yours already linked to that.
- another_sock 6y ago
  What do you think has been happening for a while now?
- hhjinks 6y ago
  > It might be worth considering The Paradox of Tolerance Or the slippery slope fallacy, as it is known in less ideological circles. The "paradox" simply asserts that a tolerant society will be usurped by intolerant actors. It is in all respects a slippery slope argument.
  - NateEag 6y ago
    Remember that "fallacy" means "argument form not guaranteed to produce true results given true inputs." Outside the context of rigorous mathematical proofs, many fallacies are legitimate, helpful tools. See for instance "post hoc ergo propter hoc": https://xkcd.com/552/ https://xkcd.com/552/
- ibeckermayer 6y ago
  How exactly is the paradox of tolerance relevant here? What precisely is “intolerant” about denying a specific historical fact?
  - majewsky 6y ago
    It's the other side that's being "intolerant" for not tolerating the holocaust deniers.
kick 6y ago
Facebook isn't a collection of books, and it isn't a collection of speech: the speech is a side effect. Facebook is a virality engine. How do you get content that's appealing to the widest variety of people shoved into their faces? The popularity of a President almost always goes up by starting a war, because the American public loves war. It's how Bush Jr. got the popular vote after losing it so miserably the first time. People love hate, so an engine aiming to do nothing but push content with the possibility of going viral, viral, will endlessly promote the most inflammatory content. It drives engagement! The speech doesn't matter at all; it could be anything. On their other popular platform, a platform with a younger population, the most popular post is literally a picture of an egg. It's more a video game than a "marketplace of ideas." Of course, the obvious solution would just be for Facebook to stop suggesting this content algorithmically rather than removing it outright, but hey, I'm not Facebook. It's not an attack on speech for a company that makes money off of suggesting content to other people to stop suggesting some variant of content, though, because again: the content never mattered.
- WC3w6pXxgGd 6y ago
  What? Um... no. Facebook is, literally, a collection of speech.
- everdrive 6y ago
  >Facebook is a virality engine. How do you get content that's appealing to the widest variety of people shoved into their faces? This is a very good way to put it. I haven't figured what the best stance would be yet, but it's clear that the old concerns about censorship are quite outdated. Almost no one can make information disappear, and instead, what modern platforms can do (as you've so well put it) is restrict or encourage virality. What is the role of old free speech absolutists when ideas still remain accessible, but the fight is simply over how how mainstream, and how viral those ideas are? I'm not really sure, however I don't worry about things being censored on facebook. Cloudflare's power, although perhaps less impactful in practical terms, seems scarier: the withholding of DDoS protections from individual websites who hold controversial views. (and to be clear, 8kun's loss is probably a net benefit for society, I'm just thinking about the modern equivalent to a free speech principle)
Dobbs 6y ago
The really quick and dirty version: I can't tolerate (neo) Nazis because they want to harm queer people, Jews, disabled people etc. The people they want to harm can't do anything to stop being targeted by (neo) Nazis. Nazis can stop being Nazis and then I'll start tolerating them. It doesn't matter if a Jew stops practising Judaism they will be targeted. It doesn't matter if a gay person is in the closet, they will be targeted. If a Nazi stops spreading Nazi rhetoric and performing Nazi actions they will be tolerated. See the difference?
- deleted 6y ago
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- throwaway568468 6y ago
  Do you mean that you wouldn't oppose harming or wanting to harm practicing muslims or christians as they could stop practicing? To be fair, I understand that your idea is mainly that there is a hierarchy in the level of intolerance. But there was some losses in explaining your idea in a quick and dirty way.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Nazis can stop being Nazis and then I'll start tolerating them. So, it's OK to harass e.g. gay people? After all they can stop having sex with men and marry a woman. How about Christians? Muslims? Democrats? All of them can stop being what they are, so it's ok to harass them? Looks like a half-thought argument.
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    That argument was specifically addressed ('it doesn't matter if a gay person is in the closet, they will be targeted'), but you're ignoring it. Also, there's a qualitative difference between harassing someone (purposeful infliction of harm on an individual) and mere dislike of their non-harmful consensual activity with others.
- names_are_hard 6y ago
  The idea that an attribute has to be involuntary to be tolerated is not a good one. In determining whether or not something should be tolerated, it being involuntary may be a contributing factor but cannot be required. If Nazis decided that they would not kill any Jews who renounced Judaism, or gay people who didn't engage in homosexual sex, how much less repulsive would their ideology be?
jamamp 6y ago
I disagree that this is an encroachment on free speech. Your free speech protections are only protected _from_ the _government_. The government is not allowed to silence you on most things you say. However, things like shouting "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater (the age-old example) are not free speech. Moreover, Facebook is not the government and does not need to allow you to say anything you want. People who would otherwise post on Facebook about Holocaust denial can go out on the streets and talk about it to their friends or others. But, they can expect a punch in the face if they do. I think that is what is happening here. People are spewing nonsense, and a non-governmental entity (Facebook) is punching them in the face (not letting them say it on their platform). Like the grandparent post said, this is intolerant. But it's following the paradox to allow more tolerance in society.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  There's a difference between "free speech" as a set of ideals and "free speech" as a legal right in the American constitution. When people criticize social network censorship, they're usually talking about the former, and they're usually not concerned about holocaust deniers in particular, but the slippery-slope precedent that these kinds of behaviors set.
- tarboreus 6y ago
  Our first amendment rights in the US restrict the government from prohibiting free speech. But that doesn't mean free speech isn't a principle that can, and should, be applied in other areas of life. When people say Facebook is violating free speech, that absolutely makes sense as a violation of a principle that many of us care strongly about, and that our society is to a great extent founded upon. Just because free speech as a right is enshrined in the first amendment doesn't mean the first amendment is where the principle of free speech begins and ends.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    But the utility of it on other areas of life is up for debate. The US considers the question settled for government intervention, not for private actions. Free speech doesn't protect my right to blare Nazi propaganda 24/7 into your living room using focused sound technology. Nor should it. In the US, it doesn't even grant a person the "right" to blare Nazi propaganda 24/7 using a licensed FM radio station. Many people seem to take as granted that free speech is a virtue that an entity like Facebook should support, but their statements assume without evidence that free speech protection is a virtue in that context.
enraged_camel 6y ago
>>What is tolerance? You can't tolerate something if you agree with it. Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree. You can disagree with opinions, but not facts. Facts are... facts. That the Holocaust happened is a fact. Denying that fact should indeed not be tolerated.
- mistermann 6y ago
  >You can disagree with opinions, but not facts. Facts are... facts. That the Holocaust happened is a fact. Denying that fact should indeed not be tolerated. What is caught in the "Holocaust denier" net does not consist solely of people who outright deny it occurred - there are many shades of grey, opinions in this realm are highly dimensional. This isn't to say that censorship in this case isn't justified or fairly optimal (in achieving gross human happiness), but if a cause is just and righteous, it shouldn't present a highly distorted representation of objective reality, or refuse to vigorously defend it's assertions. If your case is correct, "in fact", it should be defensible in the context of a non-simplified representation of reality. If proponents of an ideology (censorship, in this case) are not willing or able to do that, then I would find it more palatable if everyone was just honest and acknowledge that a very rough approximation is being done, for reasons X,Y,Z - I think a fine argument could be made, and this way no fibs are being told.
  - enraged_camel 6y ago
    >>If your case is correct, "in fact", it should be defensible in the context of a non-simplified representation of reality. The problem is that it is much easier to spread lies and misinformation than to contest and correct them. Mark Twain once said that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can even put on its shoes. This is especially true in this day and age where all it takes for something to reach massive audiences is a button click.
    - mistermann 6y ago
      This is indeed a problem, so acknowledge it as such. But do not use this problem as a justification for misrepresenting actual reality - that is dishonest. If your position is correct and righteous, misrepresenting reality should not be necessary. It is a rather sad and concerning state of affairs that there is such a widespread aversion to honesty on a site as normally clear-thinking as HN. As well, there seems to also be a very strong aversion to discussing this phenomenon (that people regularly misrepresent reality here) in the abstract. I am infinitely curious about this behavior, that is observable in large quantities. ------------------------------------------------- EDIT: FYI, I am only allowed a few posts per day here (overton window maintenance?), so I will have to put my answer to your child comment here as an edit... > Sorry, what exactly am I misrepresenting? This: >> You can disagree with opinions, but not facts. Facts are... facts. That the Holocaust happened is a fact. Denying that fact should indeed not be tolerated. The ~dispute regarding the holocaust does not consist of a simple binary of whether the event occurred, or not. There is all sorts of complexity and uncertainty (as is typically the case in reality, our recorded history of it, and alterations to that recorded history of historic events as time progresses)...and in turn, our individual perceptions of events (which we mistake for reality, as is always the case in every conversation of this type on HN, and elsewhere) are highly inconsistent with each other, as well as with that which physically occurred. So my question is: why describe it as if it is a simple binary? What is the motive for this misrepresentation? Might it be perhaps, with conscious intent or not, to persuade others to adopt your style of thinking and opinions? Just speculating of course - I am very interested in knowing the actual underlying reason of why there is such a strong aversion here on HN to discussing reality in its true, high dimensional nature. I speculate that: because we do not do this, it has real world effects similar to that which would be experienced if one wrote software on top of a specification that leaves out 3/4 of the actual complexity of the problem space. And so, I beat this same dead horse, day after day, hoping that some day one individual will be able to acknowledge that indeed, there is actually a horse in the room.
bjustin 6y ago
>What is tolerance? You can't tolerate something if you agree with it. Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree. That's an easy one. Tolerance is putting up with things other people do, except when those other people are being intolerant. You can make a comfortable place for intolerant groups, or for the people they target, but not both. Better to remove the intolerance. Removing holocaust denial is an easy win here. It will be more interesting to see if Facebook chooses to remove less obviously bad content.
- baobabKoodaa 6y ago
  Translation: tolerance means tolerating opinions that are agreeable to you personally. Opinions which are offensive to you can be labelled "intolerant", and under that guise they should be silenced.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    That isn't what bjustin said. But in practice, I fear you may be right.
seattle_spring 6y ago
Here, I'll make it easy for you: We shouldn't tolerate things that are objectively and provably false. Denying the holocaust is one of those things, and therefore we shouldn't tolerate it.
- deleted 6y ago
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- hatch_q 6y ago
  But they also removed all posts that question the number of holocaust victims - which historically changed a lot.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Because that is a common thing for holocaust deniers. The majority of them is smart enough to not deny its very existence outright. Being more subtle, they decrease numbers, sometimes a lot, deny certain atrocities. Quite often they end with comparing these new, and totally false, numbers with Stalin's atrocities. All to come to the conclusion, that the holocaust wasn't even half as bad as everyone believes. Ah yeah, and that the Wehrmacht was totally not involved in this non-existent and despicable crime against humanity.
Shish2k 6y ago
Congratulations, you’ve discovered the paradox of tolerance (which the parent helpfully linked)? There can be no stable and 100% tolerant society, because by definition that means that nothing will be done to stop intolerance from taking over. Given that 99% tolerant (with an exception for “no nazis”) is about as tolerant as it’s possible to be, most people use “99% tolerant (with an exception for no nazis)” and “tolerant” synonymously. It’s not perfect, and yes it would be clearer if every single use of the word “tolerant” was replaced with “99% tolerant” and came with an explanation of the paradox of tolerance in the footnotes, but I think most people already understand what is meant here. IMO it’s more nonsensical (and dangerous) to go the other way, using "1% intolerant” and “intolerant” synonymously - as then people start getting the impression that “banning holocaust denial content” (1% intolerant) and “gassing the Jews” (100% intolerant) are equally bad acts.
rbanffy 6y ago
> Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree. True, but it kind of crosses the line when something denies well documented fact and tries to discredit reality itself. This "gamification" of alternative realities is insanely toxic to democracy and society.
- gadders 6y ago
  But then they just look stupid, no? Like flat earthers, anti-vaxxers etc.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    Don't they already?
- UnpossibleJim 6y ago
  Does this same denial of "well documented fact and to discredit reality itself" extend to religious doctrine, also or do the corporations get to pick and choose what realities they choose to censor?
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    Ah, you strike at the contradiction embedded into the US First Amendment. It's almost like the Amendment was built as a practical tool to constrain government from actions which history showed led to people rising up and overthrowing a government, not as a holy shrine of virtues that were self-evidently virtuous.
  - asimpletune 6y ago
    Good point but I don’t think so because those ideas, religion, are not falsifiable.
    - ako 6y ago
      Do you have proof for that?
    - 6y ago
raverbashing 6y ago
Maybe techbros will only realize how damaging the "unchecked free speech" they defend is when they end up being the target of hate speech (and eventually actions)
- betwixthewires 6y ago
  Hateful actions are already illegal, and if ones aren't, nobody is claiming a right to hateful actions. I've been targeted by hateful speech before and I'm perfectly fine.
asah 6y ago
no no no no no. Please read the paradox of intolerance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  This seems an argument in favor of Facebook removing holocaust-denial content, lest the holocaust-deniers seize upon Facebook's tolerance to cause further harm with their distortion of history leading to direct harm of people by those who believe a distorted history.
freen 6y ago
You are transmuting a private organization’s choice, which is equivalent to a person kicking nazis out of their dinner party, into something only a government can do: limit free speech. Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
- mistermann 6y ago
  Not true. Rather, you (and the cartoon) are confusing the abstract general principle of free speech, for the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. If one steps back and observes this conversation from a disinterested 3rd party perspective, one might notice that these same arguments, based on falsehoods from both sides, reoccur every single time the topic comes up. And if one exercises this practice over time, across many conversations, one may notice that this same pattern is present always and everywhere. Might a reason that we never seem to move the ball forward on these conversations (or representations in physical reality) be that everyone thinks they're talking about "objective reality", but in fact, each person is actually talking about their individual snapshot (perspective, worldview) of reality? If this is what was actually happening, what might the conversations look like? Might they bear an uncanny resemblance to the conversations we see before our very eyes, year after year after year, on topic after topic after topic? Even funnier about the situation is that typically, at least here on HN, most everyone probably has enough depth in psychology to decently realize the degree to which each individual has a "unique" (to put it mildly) perspective on reality. However, if one is to then consider this, and then observe the nature of the conversations, it appears as if this knowledge is not possessed by people who are arguing over a particular, object level topic (politics, racism, sexism, sexuality, etc). But while people can realize that individual bias exists in the abstract, they seem curiously (and passionately) unwilling/unable to realize (and acknowledge) that it actually comes into play in real world conversations, like this one. "Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." - Pericles I think "politics" in the above sentence could be replaced with "reality" and it would fully retain it's truth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins Freedom of speech and expression has a long history that predates modern international human rights instruments. It is thought that the ancient Athenian democratic principle of free speech may have emerged in the late 6th or early 5th century BC. The values of the Roman Republic included freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Concepts of freedom of speech can be found in early human rights documents. England's Bill of Rights 1689 legally established the constitutional right of freedom of speech in Parliament which is still in effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_... The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which regulate an establishment of religion, or that would prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_century The 5th century is the time period from 401 to 500 Anno Domini (AD) or Common Era (CE) in the Julian calendar. The 5th century is noted for being a period of migration and political instability throughout Eurasia.
Certhas 6y ago
This is a typical slight of hand in these discussions. We are talking about deeply intolerant, bad faith actors, and you substitute this with "censoring opinions outside the mainstream". This is deeply dishonest by you. We are not talking about removing peoples right to use a platform because they are out of the mainstream and we disagree with them. That is NOT the reason. There is plenty of non-mainstream opinion around. There is plenty of things that a vast majority find disagreeable that no one is talking about removing.
- throwaway373438 6y ago
  I don't think the person you're replying to is being dishonest. You've simply listed reasons as to why this content isn't acceptable. Of course there are often reasons why content and beliefs might be rejected by mainstream thought -- "it's a pack of lies" is chief among them. There's a definition problem here. We could use "no one is talking about removing the content" as a rubric to determine whether content is truly outside of mainstream thought for example. Pointing out that there's diversity among mainstream thought is not at all the same as tolerating dissent.
  - TeaDrunk 6y ago
    I don't understand how this isn't also similar to messaging abusive language or similar is technically "diversity in mainstream thought" (as in people can and will be abusive in some populations) and also should be totally barred (such as child neglect).
    - throwaway373438 6y ago
      Well, we generally do not prohibit abusive speech. What's prohibited is targeting people with speech who do not wish to participate (or who cannot, statutorily). Plenty of adults freely choose to engage in abusive relationships with one another and of course they are free to do so provided the other party is a willing participant. The same is true of non-abusive language. Consider a simple romantic overture. The lines are drawn around consent. Not content.
- 6y ago
ManBlanket 6y ago
I'm envisioning a world where Germany won the war and Facebook finds itself removing fringe content proclaiming the war was a horrific genocide and not the triumph of free society that the mainstream accepts as factual rationality. For Facebook to outright remove this content puts them into the awkward position of policing rationality on a platform built proliferating bullshit. It seems odd they chose to go down the route of outright removing the content opposed to quietly preventing flagged topics from aggregation on its recommendation algorithms. That said it does make sense considering the status quo these days seems to be using ideas and opinions, often to which our commitment is at best lackadaisical, as a basis for esteeming ourselves above others. People are always going to have ideas which conflict with the mainstream, ideas that incite outrage and seem totally absurd. If history has anything to say about the matter it's that some of these absurd ideas have proven themselves correct despite mainstream acceptance, even outrage, to the contrary. If these ideas were silenced because they clashed with the mainstream then societies would seldom have progressed beyond dogmatic belief. What immediately comes to mind is viral FB content proclaiming masks as a panacea for Coronavirus and the government will abduct your children if you test positive. God forbid Facebook won't be removing that content though, because it doesn't clash with the mainstream zeitgeist that our reaction to the outbreak hasn't caused more long term harm than good at this point. Good grief, I never thought I'd find myself defending the existence of Holocaust denial content on the internet, but it blows my mind how in the age of the internet we STILL don't understand how to deal with trolls.
tenebrisalietum 6y ago
> This is an encroachment on free speech It's not. Using a third party service to publish posts is not equivalent to speech. It's more akin to press, but it's not quite like that either: it's equivalent to asking a publisher to put a communication of yours in their printed text. Facebook is not preventing someone from physically going to any street corner or other real public place and talking about holocaust denial. Facebook or anyone else would have every right to prevent this on their property if they wish.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> This is an encroachment on free speech As a strong-form First Amendment supporter and free speech advocate, this sort of fundamentalism is the greatest threat to free speech across the world. Nobody is arresting the groups fomenting outright violence against their fellow Americans. We aren’t even saying they can’t use the banking system to collect resources or our public spaces to share their ideas. We’re literally saying they’re limited from using a mob-inducing micro targeting tool. When that gets lumped in with vilifying speech, it gets easy to curtail both.
- tomp 6y ago
  Can't you be a holocaust denier (i.e. a strictly historical perspective) without also being pro- "outright violence"? That's like removing all of BLM just because some of them are also violently rioting...
  - TeaDrunk 6y ago
    From what I understand the violent rioting is a small minority and distinctly not the objective of the greater BLM movement. Holocaust deniers turning out to commit hate crimes, encourage violence, and going on to aim for violence towards minorities is well-documented to be a significant proportion of that group.
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    There is no strictly historical perspective that leads to denialism. It is fundamentally tied to antisemitism and providing ammunition to modern day fascists and racists.
    - tomp 6y ago
      Sure, but surely you can be a fascist without also being violent? I mean surely you can be a communist without supporting violent revolutions...
      - UncleMeat 6y ago
ako 6y ago
I would say there's a difference between tolerance of facts, and tolerance of lies. There's no need to tolerate people trying to hide facts with lies, which is the case holocaust denial.
x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
Is the government doing this, or is Facebook doing this? Free Speech is only a concern when it's the state, not when it's a private entity, no matter how much HN tries to conflate the two.
- ben_w 6y ago
  > Free Speech is only a concern when it's the state, not when it's a private entity Why? Even though FB cannot literally muzzle me, it is explicitly trying to be the singular point of online social interaction in an increasingly digital world. To the extent that it is successful, its decisions on what content is and is not acceptable affect us all, far more strongly than any government censor, regardless of how right or wrong are its determinations.
  - x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
    No one is buying the argument that because of FB's size, hate speech should be vigorously defended on it's platform.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      Including me. What did you think I was saying? Clearly I need to communicate better.

tr352 6y ago

This seems to be one of those things where the arguments pro and con have already been so endlessly hashed out that it’s simply become a matter of choice which camp you’re in.

throwaway894345 6y ago
Have they? Because I still regularly encounter educated people who can't tell the difference between free speech and threats, harassment, etc. If you can't distinguish between free speech and coercive speech, then you don't understand the free-speech position that you purport to oppose ("He who knows only his own argument knows little of that"). I recall a thread on cancel culture a few months ago where virtually everyone on the pro-cancel-culture position were arguing that free speech ideals were meaningless because threats and harassment are also free speech ergo you can't oppose cancel culture without also opposing free speech--of course, threats and harassment aren't free speech, and this is precisely why free-speech proponents oppose cancel culture. It seems like this is one area where more debate can be genuinely enlightening.
- drivingmenuts 6y ago
  Distinguishing between free speech and harassment requires discernment, which is what a lot of modern people are either not trained to do, don’t have time to do, are too lazy to do, or have been brainwashed against. More and more, we demand bright lines in a society increasingly filled with gray areas because we charge ahead without consideration. It’s never been easy and current social pressures make it even harder to do.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    This is why we should craft a system that doesn't depend on discerning between free speech and harassment. If we strengthen employment protections, then we don't have to litigate whether "it would be unfortunate if you were fired for this tweet..." was a thinly veiled threat or simply free speech--the employee can rest assured knowing that their livelihood, health care, etc is secure and they can freely advocate for their political beliefs.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  Definitions are a little murky. "Cancel culture" also isn't threats and harassment---it's deplatforming. It's using freedom of association to deny guilt by proxy for spreading someone else's lies, threats, and harassments.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    Cancel culture is very often concerted petitioning of someone's employer into terminating someone's employment (harassment) or the threat of the same (recall the Hispanic utility company employee who was terminated for making the 'ok' sign inadvertently or the data scientist who was terminated for Tweeting a prominent black academic's research on the efficacy of nonviolent protests or the journalist who was harassed by coworkers and nearly terminated for interviewing a black man who expressed concern about crime in his neighborhood). It's also frequently walking into a venue and disrupting the speaker such that their message can't reach the crowd. It may also look like forming a dangerous mob outside of a venue such that the venue can't cover the security costs for hosting a speaker.
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      If petitioning your employer to fire you for something you said works, maybe you said something that your employer would fire you over? That's, again, not harassment and threats, it's your employer using freedom of association to deny guilt by proxy for spreading someone else's lies, threats, and harassments.
      - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
        I mean, I'm kind of surprised after this back-and-forth that it isn't as clear cut as you seem to think it is. I mean, I've seen both of you make pretty reasoned arguments, and the fact that you still disagree I would at least think proves the point that people who disagree with your definition of free speech (or, rather, your definition of "cancel culture" and your definition of "harassment and threats") are not crazy lunatics. I mean, let's be honest: getting someone blackballed from gainful employment sure seems like harassment for any reasonable definition of the term. You just seem to believe that there are sometimes good reasons for that to occur.
- baobabKoodaa 6y ago
  It sounds like you have a very, very specific idea of what should be considered free speech, and you seem to have very little tolerance for people who hold a different opinion on that topic. Rather than saying "we disagree on what should be considered free speech", you describe the people who disagree with you as confused and ignorant, who need to be educated with more debate. I have news for you: people can have different ideas about what should be within the limits of free speech and what should not. In fact, different countries have entirely different laws regarding what is protected as free speech and what is not. Let's consider the harassment example that you brought up: in principle I agree with you that people should not be allowed to harass each other. However, when you can quell unwanted speech by labeling it "harassment", you create an incentive for people to label more and more speech as harassment. We see this issue in practice all the time. In many places, stating facts such as "men and women have biological differences" is now considered harassment and can lead to losing your job.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    You've missed the point. Free-speech is widely understood to exclude threats and harassment, but even if it were only a niche definition used by free-speech proponents the pro-cancel-culture argument would still be nonsense because it claims that the pro-free-speech argument is inconsistent and self-refuting based on a definition of 'free-speech' that includes threats and harassment. Anyone who makes this argument plainly doesn't understand the free-speech argument.
    - baobabKoodaa 6y ago
      No, the "free-speech proponents" do not adhere to your specific definition of what should be considered free speech. The kind of speech which is often labelled "harassment" by its opponents is often labelled as "free speech" by its proponents.
      - throwaway894345 6y ago
        > The kind of speech which is often labelled "harassment" by its opponents is often labelled as "free speech" by its proponents. If they are doing this, then they are contradicting themselves, but in all of the debates to which I've been a party, the free speech position has always held that coercive behavior (threats and harassment including quid pro quo harassment) are out of bounds of free speech. Once in a while you'll have a few people indulging in a little schadenfreude when a cancel-culture proponent is themselves canceled, and sometimes this stretches so far as to legitimize their canceling--rationalizing the canceling certainly goes too far and conflicts with free-speech ideals and schadenfreude while understandable is probably still not helpful.
- openasocket 6y ago
  I'll be honest I don't understand your usage of the term "free speech" here. The way I define that term is that it's a political concept expressing the desire for people to be allowed to express themselves however they want to the largest extent possible/ethical. An example of law embodying free speech would be the 1st amendment of the US Constitution. Based on context, I think you are using free speech to mean "speech that is protected by the doctrine of free speech" in the vocabulary I described above. Though that's ambiguous, because to be able to talk concretely about whether speech is protected or not you would need to say what it is covered under. So do you mean speech that is protected under the 1st Amendment, or some other law? Presuming you mean the 1st amendment, it isn't necessarily true that threats and harassment are not protected, depending on the specifics.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    No worries. The 1st amendment is a legal right and protection from violation by the government. Free speech ideals go further and are generally the belief that problems are best overcome by more speech--if someone has an abhorrent idea, let them express it so others can refute it and let the audience make up its own mind. Free speech proponents would argue that censoring the idea will look bad to those in the audience who haven't made up their minds, and those undecided people in their curiosity will still learn about the unsavory ideas without the guidance of refutation. Free speech is about persuasion and not coercion, so while you could get away with it, "if you say $x, I will get all of my friends to call your employer and demand your termination" (threatening someone with harassment) is not considered to be "free speech" (nor is it "free speech" to carry out the threat). To distinguish between this definition and the first-amendment definition, I usually refer to this as "free speech ideals".
    - openasocket 6y ago
      OK, I think I'm following. Your notion of free speech ideals isn't bound to a specific law like the 1st amendment and is more abstract. (I'll note that it sounds like your notion of free speech here actually seems to cover less speech than the 1st amendment, since you're explicitly excluding harassment and threats which the 1st amendment may cover. Of course, that's determining what is legal and illegal while free speech ideals are more abstract, so that's kind of an apples-and-oranges comparison). And you object to Counter Culture, which you're defining as coercive actions against those who hold abhorrent or objectionable views. And you propose an alternative, which we could call Refutation Culture, where you instead seek to open up a sort of dialogue to prove those views wrong or immoral. I have a couple of follow-ups. You reject using Cancel Culture to silence those expressing abhorrent ideas. But what if someone isn't expressing a political view or ideology, but is instead performing bad actions? Like using racial slurs and insulting minorities, or shouting sexual harassment at women walking down the street? As you mentioned, threats and harassment aren't protected under the banner of free speech ideals. And, depending on the circumstances, those actions may be protected under the 1st Amendment, so are not illegal. Do you object to using Cancel Culture against those who are performing threats and harassment? If not, do you have an alternative recommendation? Because I'm not sure how Refutation Culture would apply in such a situation, there's no idea being put forward to argue against. As a follow up, what about abhorrent views being put into practice, such as the CEO of a company instituting racial segregation in their stores? Secondly, where do you draw the line between Cancel Culture and general acts of protest? If someone in a position of power publicly expresses abhorrent views, and under Refutation Culture we should voice an alternative viewpoint, can that take the form of a protest? If we march around that person's office holding picket signs refuting their viewpoint, would that be considered coercive?
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  > I still regularly encounter educated people who can't tell the difference between free speech and threats, harassment, etc. That's not what is happening. What is happening is that you and that person disagree on what a threat is.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    If cancel culture doesn’t depend on implicit threats of career repercussions, then no one should object when we pass laws to protect employees from this kind of mob-based termination. Of course, in this substantial thread, I don’t think anyone has disputed that CC is about threats and harassment and at least one CC proponent has advocated against employment protections. This is consistent with my observations in other HN and Twitter threads, but I’d be happy to be wrongness provided we protect employees from this kind of mobbing.
    - UncleMeat 6y ago
      I'd love it if free speech advocates were uniform in their attack on "cancel culture". I have two friends, each faculty members at top schools, who have been personally attacked on Fox News and called enemies of America. This has led to hundreds of people sending them death threats via email and constant calls to their department chairs demanding their firing. Not a peep from organizations like FIRE. And why is sending an email to somebody's boss saying that they are an asshole and should be fired fundamentally worse than posting on social media about how so-and-so is a secret jew who works for the new world order and literally sacrifices babies to satan?
      - throwaway894345 6y ago
        > I'd love it if free speech advocates were uniform in their attack on "cancel culture". I have two friends, each faculty members at top schools, who have been personally attacked on Fox News and called enemies of America. This has led to hundreds of people sending them death threats via email and constant calls to their department chairs demanding their firing. Not a peep from organizations like FIRE. FIRE focuses on the exercise of free speech in education, so if your friends weren't fired or reprimanded for exercising their rights, FIRE probably won't weigh in. Doubly so if no one writes to FIRE on their behalf asking them to cover the case. Ultimately, FIRE can't cover every case (they're a nonprofit), so it might also just be bad luck that your friends' case wasn't selected. Hard to say. It certainly could be that FIRE is discriminating against your friends' for the content of their speech, but FIRE and Fox News are rarely aligned (indeed, FIRE got its start defending academia against conservative illiberalism). > And why is sending an email to somebody's boss saying that they are an asshole and should be fired fundamentally worse than posting on social media about how so-and-so is a secret jew who works for the new world order and literally sacrifices babies to satan? No one is making this argument.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
Perhaps, but I'll at least admit that my views on the limits of free speech have changed in the past decade or so as the toxicity and irrationality of social media has become apparent. I think there is an often unspoken assumption by free speech advocates that if enough daylight is shined on something that the truth will win out. Thus, better to limit speech as little as possible because (a) those limitations have so easily and frequently been abused by those clinging to power and (b) at the end of the day the truth will win out anyway, so better to just let crazy stuff be said. Over the past decade though, as people have seen the real, critical danger of unlimited free speech, and especially how the internet and social media has allowed free speech with few consequences to the original speaker (which did NOT exist when the ideals of free speech were first envisioned), I'm not sure these original hypotheses hold out anymore. I highly recommend The Social Dilemma - instead of showing truth to power, powerful entities have used powerful tools to "hack" human psychology to get people to believe things that are factually false. Remember Reddit back in the late 00s? It had such a strong free speech ethos it allowed things like jailbait. I don't even hear many free speech defenders supporting stuff like that anymore. And look at the mobs in Myanmar that were enabled to commit violence against the Rohingya by false Facebook posts. I still believe in the ideas of free speech, by I also now more strongly believe that unlimited free speech will lead us to a world where autocrats win and plain, 100% verifiable facts are dismissed (I mean, from the article, nearly a quarter of 18-39 year olds believe the Holocaust is a myth, exaggerated or aren't sure??!! I'm in my 40s and I have friends whose parents showed me their serial tattoos from being in concentration camps), and stuff is, for lack of a better term, "not good". So yes, I've changed my position, and I'm firmly on the side of being intolerant against speech that is demonstrably false.
nicoffeine 6y ago
It's an important conversation to have. Ironically, the problem is that the signal gets divided into shortened binary views which are easier to say "yes" or "no" to. The answer isn't no censorship ever or censorship is always okay. The real answer always depends on context. The problem with platforms like FB and Twitter is that anyone can say anything, and that can get amplified organically, or by state actors, or by trolls who are just saying offensive things to get attention. It's obvious that they need some form of moderation -- in most societies, you can't legally threaten to kill people for any reason, etc. I think the main problem is trolling and foreign interference because it is basically free. Trying to establish a fringe idea required a lot of effort when making pamphlets or sending out biased newspapers were the main ways of doing it. In the current digital age, people who are easily influenced are being blasted with controversial ideas by algorithms that are not trying to spread good information, but get more clicks. Foreign psyops efforts and the trolls who would not publicly support an idea, but will do so anonymously, falsely inflate its value. This is a new problem. It may need a twist on an old solution, like allowing people to choose between moderated or unmoderated news feeds, with the default being moderated. Our democracy (and dozens of others) have survived for hundreds of years with limits to free speech. In my opinion, it's reasonable and rational to trust that the generations before us were at least partially right, and save ourselves the pain of reinventing that wheel.

brianfryer 6y ago

It might be worth considering The Paradox of Tolerance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance > 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.

1123581321 6y ago
The grandparent comment to yours already linked to that.
another_sock 6y ago
What do you think has been happening for a while now?
hhjinks 6y ago
> It might be worth considering The Paradox of Tolerance Or the slippery slope fallacy, as it is known in less ideological circles. The "paradox" simply asserts that a tolerant society will be usurped by intolerant actors. It is in all respects a slippery slope argument.
- NateEag 6y ago
  Remember that "fallacy" means "argument form not guaranteed to produce true results given true inputs." Outside the context of rigorous mathematical proofs, many fallacies are legitimate, helpful tools. See for instance "post hoc ergo propter hoc": https://xkcd.com/552/ https://xkcd.com/552/
ibeckermayer 6y ago
How exactly is the paradox of tolerance relevant here? What precisely is “intolerant” about denying a specific historical fact?
- majewsky 6y ago
  It's the other side that's being "intolerant" for not tolerating the holocaust deniers.

kick 6y ago

Facebook isn't a collection of books, and it isn't a collection of speech: the speech is a side effect. Facebook is a virality engine. How do you get content that's appealing to the widest variety of people shoved into their faces? The popularity of a President almost always goes up by starting a war, because the American public loves war. It's how Bush Jr. got the popular vote after losing it so miserably the first time. People love hate, so an engine aiming to do nothing but push content with the possibility of going viral, viral, will endlessly promote the most inflammatory content. It drives engagement! The speech doesn't matter at all; it could be anything. On their other popular platform, a platform with a younger population, the most popular post is literally a picture of an egg. It's more a video game than a "marketplace of ideas." Of course, the obvious solution would just be for Facebook to stop suggesting this content algorithmically rather than removing it outright, but hey, I'm not Facebook. It's not an attack on speech for a company that makes money off of suggesting content to other people to stop suggesting some variant of content, though, because again: the content never mattered.

WC3w6pXxgGd 6y ago
What? Um... no. Facebook is, literally, a collection of speech.
everdrive 6y ago
>Facebook is a virality engine. How do you get content that's appealing to the widest variety of people shoved into their faces? This is a very good way to put it. I haven't figured what the best stance would be yet, but it's clear that the old concerns about censorship are quite outdated. Almost no one can make information disappear, and instead, what modern platforms can do (as you've so well put it) is restrict or encourage virality. What is the role of old free speech absolutists when ideas still remain accessible, but the fight is simply over how how mainstream, and how viral those ideas are? I'm not really sure, however I don't worry about things being censored on facebook. Cloudflare's power, although perhaps less impactful in practical terms, seems scarier: the withholding of DDoS protections from individual websites who hold controversial views. (and to be clear, 8kun's loss is probably a net benefit for society, I'm just thinking about the modern equivalent to a free speech principle)

Dobbs 6y ago

The really quick and dirty version: I can't tolerate (neo) Nazis because they want to harm queer people, Jews, disabled people etc. The people they want to harm can't do anything to stop being targeted by (neo) Nazis. Nazis can stop being Nazis and then I'll start tolerating them. It doesn't matter if a Jew stops practising Judaism they will be targeted. It doesn't matter if a gay person is in the closet, they will be targeted. If a Nazi stops spreading Nazi rhetoric and performing Nazi actions they will be tolerated. See the difference?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwaway568468 6y ago
Do you mean that you wouldn't oppose harming or wanting to harm practicing muslims or christians as they could stop practicing? To be fair, I understand that your idea is mainly that there is a hierarchy in the level of intolerance. But there was some losses in explaining your idea in a quick and dirty way.
coldtea 6y ago
>Nazis can stop being Nazis and then I'll start tolerating them. So, it's OK to harass e.g. gay people? After all they can stop having sex with men and marry a woman. How about Christians? Muslims? Democrats? All of them can stop being what they are, so it's ok to harass them? Looks like a half-thought argument.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  That argument was specifically addressed ('it doesn't matter if a gay person is in the closet, they will be targeted'), but you're ignoring it. Also, there's a qualitative difference between harassing someone (purposeful infliction of harm on an individual) and mere dislike of their non-harmful consensual activity with others.
names_are_hard 6y ago
The idea that an attribute has to be involuntary to be tolerated is not a good one. In determining whether or not something should be tolerated, it being involuntary may be a contributing factor but cannot be required. If Nazis decided that they would not kill any Jews who renounced Judaism, or gay people who didn't engage in homosexual sex, how much less repulsive would their ideology be?

jamamp 6y ago

I disagree that this is an encroachment on free speech. Your free speech protections are only protected _from_ the _government_. The government is not allowed to silence you on most things you say. However, things like shouting "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater (the age-old example) are not free speech. Moreover, Facebook is not the government and does not need to allow you to say anything you want. People who would otherwise post on Facebook about Holocaust denial can go out on the streets and talk about it to their friends or others. But, they can expect a punch in the face if they do. I think that is what is happening here. People are spewing nonsense, and a non-governmental entity (Facebook) is punching them in the face (not letting them say it on their platform). Like the grandparent post said, this is intolerant. But it's following the paradox to allow more tolerance in society.

throwaway894345 6y ago
There's a difference between "free speech" as a set of ideals and "free speech" as a legal right in the American constitution. When people criticize social network censorship, they're usually talking about the former, and they're usually not concerned about holocaust deniers in particular, but the slippery-slope precedent that these kinds of behaviors set.
tarboreus 6y ago
Our first amendment rights in the US restrict the government from prohibiting free speech. But that doesn't mean free speech isn't a principle that can, and should, be applied in other areas of life. When people say Facebook is violating free speech, that absolutely makes sense as a violation of a principle that many of us care strongly about, and that our society is to a great extent founded upon. Just because free speech as a right is enshrined in the first amendment doesn't mean the first amendment is where the principle of free speech begins and ends.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  But the utility of it on other areas of life is up for debate. The US considers the question settled for government intervention, not for private actions. Free speech doesn't protect my right to blare Nazi propaganda 24/7 into your living room using focused sound technology. Nor should it. In the US, it doesn't even grant a person the "right" to blare Nazi propaganda 24/7 using a licensed FM radio station. Many people seem to take as granted that free speech is a virtue that an entity like Facebook should support, but their statements assume without evidence that free speech protection is a virtue in that context.

enraged_camel 6y ago

>>What is tolerance? You can't tolerate something if you agree with it. Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree. You can disagree with opinions, but not facts. Facts are... facts. That the Holocaust happened is a fact. Denying that fact should indeed not be tolerated.

mistermann 6y ago
>You can disagree with opinions, but not facts. Facts are... facts. That the Holocaust happened is a fact. Denying that fact should indeed not be tolerated. What is caught in the "Holocaust denier" net does not consist solely of people who outright deny it occurred - there are many shades of grey, opinions in this realm are highly dimensional. This isn't to say that censorship in this case isn't justified or fairly optimal (in achieving gross human happiness), but if a cause is just and righteous, it shouldn't present a highly distorted representation of objective reality, or refuse to vigorously defend it's assertions. If your case is correct, "in fact", it should be defensible in the context of a non-simplified representation of reality. If proponents of an ideology (censorship, in this case) are not willing or able to do that, then I would find it more palatable if everyone was just honest and acknowledge that a very rough approximation is being done, for reasons X,Y,Z - I think a fine argument could be made, and this way no fibs are being told.
- enraged_camel 6y ago
  >>If your case is correct, "in fact", it should be defensible in the context of a non-simplified representation of reality. The problem is that it is much easier to spread lies and misinformation than to contest and correct them. Mark Twain once said that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can even put on its shoes. This is especially true in this day and age where all it takes for something to reach massive audiences is a button click.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    This is indeed a problem, so acknowledge it as such. But do not use this problem as a justification for misrepresenting actual reality - that is dishonest. If your position is correct and righteous, misrepresenting reality should not be necessary. It is a rather sad and concerning state of affairs that there is such a widespread aversion to honesty on a site as normally clear-thinking as HN. As well, there seems to also be a very strong aversion to discussing this phenomenon (that people regularly misrepresent reality here) in the abstract. I am infinitely curious about this behavior, that is observable in large quantities. ------------------------------------------------- EDIT: FYI, I am only allowed a few posts per day here (overton window maintenance?), so I will have to put my answer to your child comment here as an edit... > Sorry, what exactly am I misrepresenting? This: >> You can disagree with opinions, but not facts. Facts are... facts. That the Holocaust happened is a fact. Denying that fact should indeed not be tolerated. The ~dispute regarding the holocaust does not consist of a simple binary of whether the event occurred, or not. There is all sorts of complexity and uncertainty (as is typically the case in reality, our recorded history of it, and alterations to that recorded history of historic events as time progresses)...and in turn, our individual perceptions of events (which we mistake for reality, as is always the case in every conversation of this type on HN, and elsewhere) are highly inconsistent with each other, as well as with that which physically occurred. So my question is: why describe it as if it is a simple binary? What is the motive for this misrepresentation? Might it be perhaps, with conscious intent or not, to persuade others to adopt your style of thinking and opinions? Just speculating of course - I am very interested in knowing the actual underlying reason of why there is such a strong aversion here on HN to discussing reality in its true, high dimensional nature. I speculate that: because we do not do this, it has real world effects similar to that which would be experienced if one wrote software on top of a specification that leaves out 3/4 of the actual complexity of the problem space. And so, I beat this same dead horse, day after day, hoping that some day one individual will be able to acknowledge that indeed, there is actually a horse in the room.

bjustin 6y ago

>What is tolerance? You can't tolerate something if you agree with it. Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree. That's an easy one. Tolerance is putting up with things other people do, except when those other people are being intolerant. You can make a comfortable place for intolerant groups, or for the people they target, but not both. Better to remove the intolerance. Removing holocaust denial is an easy win here. It will be more interesting to see if Facebook chooses to remove less obviously bad content.

baobabKoodaa 6y ago
Translation: tolerance means tolerating opinions that are agreeable to you personally. Opinions which are offensive to you can be labelled "intolerant", and under that guise they should be silenced.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  That isn't what bjustin said. But in practice, I fear you may be right.

seattle_spring 6y ago

Here, I'll make it easy for you: We shouldn't tolerate things that are objectively and provably false. Denying the holocaust is one of those things, and therefore we shouldn't tolerate it.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hatch_q 6y ago
But they also removed all posts that question the number of holocaust victims - which historically changed a lot.
- hef19898 6y ago
  Because that is a common thing for holocaust deniers. The majority of them is smart enough to not deny its very existence outright. Being more subtle, they decrease numbers, sometimes a lot, deny certain atrocities. Quite often they end with comparing these new, and totally false, numbers with Stalin's atrocities. All to come to the conclusion, that the holocaust wasn't even half as bad as everyone believes. Ah yeah, and that the Wehrmacht was totally not involved in this non-existent and despicable crime against humanity.

Shish2k 6y ago

Congratulations, you’ve discovered the paradox of tolerance (which the parent helpfully linked)? There can be no stable and 100% tolerant society, because by definition that means that nothing will be done to stop intolerance from taking over. Given that 99% tolerant (with an exception for “no nazis”) is about as tolerant as it’s possible to be, most people use “99% tolerant (with an exception for no nazis)” and “tolerant” synonymously. It’s not perfect, and yes it would be clearer if every single use of the word “tolerant” was replaced with “99% tolerant” and came with an explanation of the paradox of tolerance in the footnotes, but I think most people already understand what is meant here. IMO it’s more nonsensical (and dangerous) to go the other way, using "1% intolerant” and “intolerant” synonymously - as then people start getting the impression that “banning holocaust denial content” (1% intolerant) and “gassing the Jews” (100% intolerant) are equally bad acts.

rbanffy 6y ago

> Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree. True, but it kind of crosses the line when something denies well documented fact and tries to discredit reality itself. This "gamification" of alternative realities is insanely toxic to democracy and society.

gadders 6y ago
But then they just look stupid, no? Like flat earthers, anti-vaxxers etc.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  Don't they already?
UnpossibleJim 6y ago
Does this same denial of "well documented fact and to discredit reality itself" extend to religious doctrine, also or do the corporations get to pick and choose what realities they choose to censor?
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  Ah, you strike at the contradiction embedded into the US First Amendment. It's almost like the Amendment was built as a practical tool to constrain government from actions which history showed led to people rising up and overthrowing a government, not as a holy shrine of virtues that were self-evidently virtuous.
- asimpletune 6y ago
  Good point but I don’t think so because those ideas, religion, are not falsifiable.
  - ako 6y ago
    Do you have proof for that?
  - 6y ago

raverbashing 6y ago

Maybe techbros will only realize how damaging the "unchecked free speech" they defend is when they end up being the target of hate speech (and eventually actions)

betwixthewires 6y ago
Hateful actions are already illegal, and if ones aren't, nobody is claiming a right to hateful actions. I've been targeted by hateful speech before and I'm perfectly fine.

asah 6y ago

no no no no no. Please read the paradox of intolerance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

shadowgovt 6y ago
This seems an argument in favor of Facebook removing holocaust-denial content, lest the holocaust-deniers seize upon Facebook's tolerance to cause further harm with their distortion of history leading to direct harm of people by those who believe a distorted history.

freen 6y ago

You are transmuting a private organization’s choice, which is equivalent to a person kicking nazis out of their dinner party, into something only a government can do: limit free speech. Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/

mistermann 6y ago
Not true. Rather, you (and the cartoon) are confusing the abstract general principle of free speech, for the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. If one steps back and observes this conversation from a disinterested 3rd party perspective, one might notice that these same arguments, based on falsehoods from both sides, reoccur every single time the topic comes up. And if one exercises this practice over time, across many conversations, one may notice that this same pattern is present always and everywhere. Might a reason that we never seem to move the ball forward on these conversations (or representations in physical reality) be that everyone thinks they're talking about "objective reality", but in fact, each person is actually talking about their individual snapshot (perspective, worldview) of reality? If this is what was actually happening, what might the conversations look like? Might they bear an uncanny resemblance to the conversations we see before our very eyes, year after year after year, on topic after topic after topic? Even funnier about the situation is that typically, at least here on HN, most everyone probably has enough depth in psychology to decently realize the degree to which each individual has a "unique" (to put it mildly) perspective on reality. However, if one is to then consider this, and then observe the nature of the conversations, it appears as if this knowledge is not possessed by people who are arguing over a particular, object level topic (politics, racism, sexism, sexuality, etc). But while people can realize that individual bias exists in the abstract, they seem curiously (and passionately) unwilling/unable to realize (and acknowledge) that it actually comes into play in real world conversations, like this one. "Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." - Pericles I think "politics" in the above sentence could be replaced with "reality" and it would fully retain it's truth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins Freedom of speech and expression has a long history that predates modern international human rights instruments. It is thought that the ancient Athenian democratic principle of free speech may have emerged in the late 6th or early 5th century BC. The values of the Roman Republic included freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Concepts of freedom of speech can be found in early human rights documents. England's Bill of Rights 1689 legally established the constitutional right of freedom of speech in Parliament which is still in effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_... The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which regulate an establishment of religion, or that would prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_century The 5th century is the time period from 401 to 500 Anno Domini (AD) or Common Era (CE) in the Julian calendar. The 5th century is noted for being a period of migration and political instability throughout Eurasia.

Certhas 6y ago

This is a typical slight of hand in these discussions. We are talking about deeply intolerant, bad faith actors, and you substitute this with "censoring opinions outside the mainstream". This is deeply dishonest by you. We are not talking about removing peoples right to use a platform because they are out of the mainstream and we disagree with them. That is NOT the reason. There is plenty of non-mainstream opinion around. There is plenty of things that a vast majority find disagreeable that no one is talking about removing.

throwaway373438 6y ago
I don't think the person you're replying to is being dishonest. You've simply listed reasons as to why this content isn't acceptable. Of course there are often reasons why content and beliefs might be rejected by mainstream thought -- "it's a pack of lies" is chief among them. There's a definition problem here. We could use "no one is talking about removing the content" as a rubric to determine whether content is truly outside of mainstream thought for example. Pointing out that there's diversity among mainstream thought is not at all the same as tolerating dissent.
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  I don't understand how this isn't also similar to messaging abusive language or similar is technically "diversity in mainstream thought" (as in people can and will be abusive in some populations) and also should be totally barred (such as child neglect).
  - throwaway373438 6y ago
    Well, we generally do not prohibit abusive speech. What's prohibited is targeting people with speech who do not wish to participate (or who cannot, statutorily). Plenty of adults freely choose to engage in abusive relationships with one another and of course they are free to do so provided the other party is a willing participant. The same is true of non-abusive language. Consider a simple romantic overture. The lines are drawn around consent. Not content.
6y ago

ManBlanket 6y ago

I'm envisioning a world where Germany won the war and Facebook finds itself removing fringe content proclaiming the war was a horrific genocide and not the triumph of free society that the mainstream accepts as factual rationality. For Facebook to outright remove this content puts them into the awkward position of policing rationality on a platform built proliferating bullshit. It seems odd they chose to go down the route of outright removing the content opposed to quietly preventing flagged topics from aggregation on its recommendation algorithms. That said it does make sense considering the status quo these days seems to be using ideas and opinions, often to which our commitment is at best lackadaisical, as a basis for esteeming ourselves above others. People are always going to have ideas which conflict with the mainstream, ideas that incite outrage and seem totally absurd. If history has anything to say about the matter it's that some of these absurd ideas have proven themselves correct despite mainstream acceptance, even outrage, to the contrary. If these ideas were silenced because they clashed with the mainstream then societies would seldom have progressed beyond dogmatic belief. What immediately comes to mind is viral FB content proclaiming masks as a panacea for Coronavirus and the government will abduct your children if you test positive. God forbid Facebook won't be removing that content though, because it doesn't clash with the mainstream zeitgeist that our reaction to the outbreak hasn't caused more long term harm than good at this point. Good grief, I never thought I'd find myself defending the existence of Holocaust denial content on the internet, but it blows my mind how in the age of the internet we STILL don't understand how to deal with trolls.

tenebrisalietum 6y ago

> This is an encroachment on free speech It's not. Using a third party service to publish posts is not equivalent to speech. It's more akin to press, but it's not quite like that either: it's equivalent to asking a publisher to put a communication of yours in their printed text. Facebook is not preventing someone from physically going to any street corner or other real public place and talking about holocaust denial. Facebook or anyone else would have every right to prevent this on their property if they wish.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> This is an encroachment on free speech As a strong-form First Amendment supporter and free speech advocate, this sort of fundamentalism is the greatest threat to free speech across the world. Nobody is arresting the groups fomenting outright violence against their fellow Americans. We aren’t even saying they can’t use the banking system to collect resources or our public spaces to share their ideas. We’re literally saying they’re limited from using a mob-inducing micro targeting tool. When that gets lumped in with vilifying speech, it gets easy to curtail both.

tomp 6y ago
Can't you be a holocaust denier (i.e. a strictly historical perspective) without also being pro- "outright violence"? That's like removing all of BLM just because some of them are also violently rioting...
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  From what I understand the violent rioting is a small minority and distinctly not the objective of the greater BLM movement. Holocaust deniers turning out to commit hate crimes, encourage violence, and going on to aim for violence towards minorities is well-documented to be a significant proportion of that group.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  There is no strictly historical perspective that leads to denialism. It is fundamentally tied to antisemitism and providing ammunition to modern day fascists and racists.
  - tomp 6y ago
    Sure, but surely you can be a fascist without also being violent? I mean surely you can be a communist without supporting violent revolutions...
    - UncleMeat 6y ago

ako 6y ago

I would say there's a difference between tolerance of facts, and tolerance of lies. There's no need to tolerate people trying to hide facts with lies, which is the case holocaust denial.

x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago

Is the government doing this, or is Facebook doing this? Free Speech is only a concern when it's the state, not when it's a private entity, no matter how much HN tries to conflate the two.

ben_w 6y ago
> Free Speech is only a concern when it's the state, not when it's a private entity Why? Even though FB cannot literally muzzle me, it is explicitly trying to be the singular point of online social interaction in an increasingly digital world. To the extent that it is successful, its decisions on what content is and is not acceptable affect us all, far more strongly than any government censor, regardless of how right or wrong are its determinations.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  No one is buying the argument that because of FB's size, hate speech should be vigorously defended on it's platform.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    Including me. What did you think I was saying? Clearly I need to communicate better.