4 ms·

Which is why interpretation of speech requires context. Yelling "fire" in an open field vs a packed cinema are obviously are easy to interpret. There's a whole

by mbesto 6y ago

Which is why interpretation of speech requires context. Yelling "fire" in an open field vs a packed cinema are obviously are easy to interpret. There's a whole bunch of grey area in the middle.

thefucnjosh 6y ago
And that grey area is admittedly harder to give context to when the medium for it is text....but since he's the president and he's been physically SAYING falsehoods that lead to this situation, he should have been banned sooner.
- disgrunt 6y ago
  So any politician that states a falsehood on Twitter should be banned? Or just U.S. presidents?
  - kennywinker 6y ago
    The amount of harm caused by a lie is proportional to the size of the audience who hears it
    - thefucnjosh 6y ago
      As well as the authority of the person spreading it. The fact that we've decided the President is above libel, slander, and felony charges is a new thing. Thank god people stopped this nonsense when he started advocating terrorism. Equality under the law, implies MORE scrutiny for the powerful. Unfortunately, up until this point we have normalized the opposite.
      - ajmurmann 6y ago
        It seems like most societies have some kind of a reflex towards monarchy. We elect our leaders but still treat them in many ways like monarchs who need to be revered rather than like people we hired to do a job for us.
  - thefucnjosh 6y ago
    Falsehoods that lead to this situation. People who post beheadings on Twitter should be banned. People who incite violence should be banned. Nothing was said about U.S. Presidents.
- kube-system 6y ago
  “Statements that are false” are an entirely different ballpark of discussion than “statement that incite violence”. Likely, some of the statements that incited these crowds weren’t even false statements at all, but imperative directions (be strong, go to capital) or predictions that turned out to be completely true. (Going to be wild!)
  - ajmurmann 6y ago
    The root of all this were the lies he has been spreading to undermine election security and this confidence in the results since long before election day.
  - tomnipotent 6y ago
    > “Statements that are false” are an entirely different ballpark of discussion than “statement that incite violence”. No they're not, instead they have a massive overlap. If I lie to my neighbor "Hey, Bob across the street has been stealing your mail", and my neighbor punches Bob in the face, my "statement that was false" led to violence and it can be argued that was my intention the whole time.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”[0] While King Henry II didn’t directly ask for the priest to be killed, it’s pretty clear that was the intention. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
syshum 6y ago
Yelling Fire is "Holmes' famous quote comes in the context of a series of early 1919 Supreme Court decisions in which he endorsed government censorship of wartime dissent — dissent that is now clearly protected by subsequent First Amendment authority." [1] Holmes would later reverse his own ruling yet this quote will never die even though it has no bearing on actual law today and in realty "yelling Fire" would likely be protected speech Remember "After Holmes' opinions in the Schenck trilogy, the law of the United States was this: you could be convicted and sentenced to prison under the Espionage Act if you criticized the war, or conscription, in a way that "obstructed" conscription, which might mean as little as convincing people to write and march and petition against it. This is the context of the "fire in a theater" quote that people so love to brandish to justify censorship." [1] That is not a position one should be supporting if they value free Speech It's Time to Stop Using the 'Fire in a Crowded Theater' Quote [2] Three Generations of a Hackneyed Apologia for Censorship Are Enough [1] [1] https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/ https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
- leetcrew 6y ago
  really discouraging to see this come up again and again. every time, someone posts this article and people ignore it to continue arguing in the other subthreads. thanks for posting the correction; I hope eventually we can stop having this conversation here.
ashtonkem 6y ago
The phrase “fire in a packed theater” in the legal context is actually based on a case where someone was jailed for peacefully protesting the draft for WW1 (Schenck v. United States). It has no relation to actual violence, and is in fact a fantastic example of how “harm” by speech can be abused by a malicious government to jail people for what should be protected speech. It’s no longer good law, thank goodness. Now we have the much narrower Brandenburg test, which requires that speech be likely to cause “imminent lawless action”.

by mbesto 6y ago

Which is why interpretation of speech requires context. Yelling "fire" in an open field vs a packed cinema are obviously are easy to interpret. There's a whole bunch of grey area in the middle.

thefucnjosh 6y ago

And that grey area is admittedly harder to give context to when the medium for it is text....but since he's the president and he's been physically SAYING falsehoods that lead to this situation, he should have been banned sooner.

disgrunt 6y ago
So any politician that states a falsehood on Twitter should be banned? Or just U.S. presidents?
- kennywinker 6y ago
  The amount of harm caused by a lie is proportional to the size of the audience who hears it
  - thefucnjosh 6y ago
    As well as the authority of the person spreading it. The fact that we've decided the President is above libel, slander, and felony charges is a new thing. Thank god people stopped this nonsense when he started advocating terrorism. Equality under the law, implies MORE scrutiny for the powerful. Unfortunately, up until this point we have normalized the opposite.
    - ajmurmann 6y ago
      It seems like most societies have some kind of a reflex towards monarchy. We elect our leaders but still treat them in many ways like monarchs who need to be revered rather than like people we hired to do a job for us.
- thefucnjosh 6y ago
  Falsehoods that lead to this situation. People who post beheadings on Twitter should be banned. People who incite violence should be banned. Nothing was said about U.S. Presidents.
kube-system 6y ago
“Statements that are false” are an entirely different ballpark of discussion than “statement that incite violence”. Likely, some of the statements that incited these crowds weren’t even false statements at all, but imperative directions (be strong, go to capital) or predictions that turned out to be completely true. (Going to be wild!)
- ajmurmann 6y ago
  The root of all this were the lies he has been spreading to undermine election security and this confidence in the results since long before election day.
- tomnipotent 6y ago
  > “Statements that are false” are an entirely different ballpark of discussion than “statement that incite violence”. No they're not, instead they have a massive overlap. If I lie to my neighbor "Hey, Bob across the street has been stealing your mail", and my neighbor punches Bob in the face, my "statement that was false" led to violence and it can be argued that was my intention the whole time.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”[0] While King Henry II didn’t directly ask for the priest to be killed, it’s pretty clear that was the intention. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...

syshum 6y ago

Yelling Fire is "Holmes' famous quote comes in the context of a series of early 1919 Supreme Court decisions in which he endorsed government censorship of wartime dissent — dissent that is now clearly protected by subsequent First Amendment authority." [1] Holmes would later reverse his own ruling yet this quote will never die even though it has no bearing on actual law today and in realty "yelling Fire" would likely be protected speech Remember "After Holmes' opinions in the Schenck trilogy, the law of the United States was this: you could be convicted and sentenced to prison under the Espionage Act if you criticized the war, or conscription, in a way that "obstructed" conscription, which might mean as little as convincing people to write and march and petition against it. This is the context of the "fire in a theater" quote that people so love to brandish to justify censorship." [1] That is not a position one should be supporting if they value free Speech It's Time to Stop Using the 'Fire in a Crowded Theater' Quote [2] Three Generations of a Hackneyed Apologia for Censorship Are Enough [1] [1] https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/ https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...

leetcrew 6y ago
really discouraging to see this come up again and again. every time, someone posts this article and people ignore it to continue arguing in the other subthreads. thanks for posting the correction; I hope eventually we can stop having this conversation here.

ashtonkem 6y ago

The phrase “fire in a packed theater” in the legal context is actually based on a case where someone was jailed for peacefully protesting the draft for WW1 (Schenck v. United States). It has no relation to actual violence, and is in fact a fantastic example of how “harm” by speech can be abused by a malicious government to jail people for what should be protected speech. It’s no longer good law, thank goodness. Now we have the much narrower Brandenburg test, which requires that speech be likely to cause “imminent lawless action”.