4 ms·

> Gab exists to promote freedom of speech, by which we mean all speech which is protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. No more, no

by dvt 6y ago

> Gab exists to promote freedom of speech, by which we mean all speech which is protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. No more, no less. I'm a free speech absolutist, but violent speech, "fighting words," insurrectionist speech, etc. are not protected under any free speech doctrine. Free speech isn't some carte blanche that allows anyone to say anything at any time. That's not how it works†. I've argued in favor of free speech here on HN (and got the downvotes to prove it) more times than I can remember. But this letter by Gab is absolutely disingenuous. Eric Coomer, a Dominion executive, for example, is not a public person. He has received death threats and is currently in a secure location due to credible threats to his family, children, and parents. At this very moment, on Gab TV, we have a live channel discussing his alleged fixing of votes (featuring Lin Wood). I mean, this is a blatant attack on a private person that has been proven to incite violence. This has nothing to do with free speech, and Gab is an absolute cesspool of delusional QAnon conspiracies, anti-vaxxers, and adjacent movements. They're going to have a hard time monetizing (just as 4chan did). † See Mill's Harm Principle.

CancelFirefox 6y ago
> Gab is an absolute cesspool of delusional QAnon conspiracies I see a lot of people say this but I've never seen anyone back it up with sources. What is the metric for "absolute cesspool of delusional QAnon conspiracies" and what makes Gab fit that metric better than Facebook or Twitter?
- iagovar 6y ago
  If I had to bet, most people who talk about Gab, never had a Gab account, and got his info from your average political commentator threads in Twitter and your average media pieces. Right-wing people has the right to exist, and should have a place to discuss their stuff. If you want to close every platform they have because you find they host people with extremist views, then close all the social media all together. If anyone here presumes that the conditions that allowed Donald Trump in office will disappear because you can deplatform such people, then good luck.
  - salawat 6y ago
    Amen. Just wait until someone who just doesn't care runs something out of a basement. (Like the Chans were for a while). Then what? Throw law enforcement at them? This is what causes radicalization to escalate. The stakes get higher and higher, and people's worldviews further and further apart, guaranteeing contradiction and misunderstanding. Call me a discordian malcontent, but good lord, these events were painted on the wall years ago. You'd have to be dead to have not felt it.
    - iagovar 6y ago
      The material conditions on which Trump was allowed in office still exists. Unless the Democratic party has some quick solution to prevent large swaths of the american population to decapitalize, lose their standard of life and become poor, the only thing that's happening is that they removed a venue where this anger and resentment can transform itself into political action. So, let's wait for what's gonna happen, because this people will not just sit quiet and wait for their families and their means of life to be destroyed. If anyone thinks this is a top-down phenomena then I invite him to review it, because that's a very narrow view.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  You've "never seen" such evidence because you didn't look for it. Search for "Gab Hate Corpus" for a meticulously labeled set of tens of thousands of Gab post and natural language analysis thereof. According to that paper, 6% of all posts on Gab contain an explicit call for violence, examples given include "The ZioJesuit cultural marxist anti-white Christian killers now working within our white governments globally should be shot for espionage and treason with their non-white invaders expelled from within our nations immediately for the sake of our future white Christian posterity. Anything else is cowardice, self-eradication & continued genocide." as well as "i hate milo because hes a degenerate faggot [N-slur] fucker. he should be deported and sent to a muzzie country and get thrown off a roof" among many others. Gab is the neo-nazi Twitter, founded and funded by those advocating for the violent overthrow of American democracy and the establishment of a white ethnostate. The people who defend Gab using 1A slippery-slope arguments are themselves sympathizers with white violence.
- orblivion 6y ago
  I mean, fwiw they explicitly welcomed QAnon once they were banned from Twitter. Granted, they spun it as "Patriots who think for themselves and do their own research" or some such.
- tw04 6y ago
  >I see a lot of people say this but I've never seen anyone back it up with sources. Well, out of the top 20 largest groups on the site, 4 of them are dedicated entirely to Q-anon, so that's not very difficult to back up: https://gab.com/groups/2043 https://gab.com/groups/2043 https://gab.com/groups/393 https://gab.com/groups/393 https://gab.com/groups/408 https://gab.com/groups/408 https://gab.com/groups/324 https://gab.com/groups/324 >what makes Gab fit that metric better than Facebook or Twitter? I would imagine the fact that Facebook banned Q-Anon entirely from the whole site for spreading conspiracy theories? https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-bans-qanon-across-its-platforms-n1242339 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-bans-qanon-a...
abernard1 6y ago
> violent speech, "fighting words," insurrectionist speech, etc. are not protected under any free speech doctrine They address this in in the letter. > Accordingly we have a zero-tolerance policy towards threats of violence and unlawful speech. As to controversial but nonetheless legal speech we believe, as Justice Brandeis did, that “sunlight is the best disinfectant, electric light the most efficient policeman.
- btown 6y ago
  This would be a reasonable policy if it were actually adhered to. In practice, as mentioned by the grandparent post, users posting threats against people like Coomer run rampant. This is an argument made in bad faith.
anonunivgrad 6y ago
Conspiracy theories that might drive someone to violence are protected speech in this country. Many “conspiracy” theories have proved true, e.g. the CIA’s insane antics in the 50s-80s. We don’t have a Committee of Truth that determines what is true and therefore legally speakable. If facts or alleged facts drive people to violence, that is the responsibility of those engaged directly in violence (or actually inciting it). Incitement in America is basically: “let’s go burn down that building right now”. “As a moral matter, someone ought to burn down that building” is protected speech.
- dvt 6y ago
  I'm not sure what you're trying to argue. Under Classical Liberalism (which I am a proponent of), if your speech violates the Harm Principle, it's not protected. Conspiracies are indeed protected speech (e.g. "CIA killed Kennedy"). If your conspiracy incites to violence ("CIA killed Kennedy, let's storm Langley" -- and people actually do it), it's no longer protected speech.
  - anonunivgrad 6y ago
    I said exactly what I meant to say. Saying that the government ought to be overthrown is a long protected American right. The book stores are full of books arguing just that. People taking you up on it is not your problem.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  >protected speech in this country. Protected from interference by the government. Private corporations are not yet the government.
  - anonunivgrad 6y ago
    Gab’s position is that they will censor no more than the law requires.
    - Karunamon 6y ago
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
Violent speech is pretty strongly protected under modern First Amendment law. Direct incitement to imminent violence isn't protected, but that's a very narrow exemption; even statements like "we need to get violent here" aren't going to be over the line. (One of the canonical free speech cases is Watts v. United States, where the defendant's statement that he'd try to shoot then-president Johnson if he were drafted was ruled to be protected speech.)
- dvt 6y ago
  > Violent speech is pretty strongly protected under modern First Amendment law I should clarify that by "violent speech" I just meant it as a colloquialism of the more technical Fighting Words Doctrine. That is, "speech is violent speech IFF it disturbs the peace."
  - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
    > That is, "speech is violent speech IFF it disturbs the peace." Disturbing peace? Isn’t that very much under the scope of the BLM associated rioting? Like we’re talking many buildings public and otherwise burned to the ground. Billions of dollars of damage.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    That's a common perception, and I tend to agree it's a moral standard we should hold people to, but the fighting words doctrine prohibits only speech which will immediately disturb the peace. There's no exception in current law for speech which will inevitably but nondeterministically cause something bad to happen.
disown 6y ago
> I'm a free speech absolutist No you are not. Why lie? A free speech absolutist means that you believe any speech is acceptable. You comments clearly show you believe in limits to speech. > but violent speech, "fighting words," insurrectionist speech, etc. are not protected under any free speech doctrine "Insurrectionist speech". You just gave yourself away. It's not "free speech doctrine" that prevents it. It's a supreme court ruling. The US was mostly free speech absolutist until the courts ruled direct threats to be illegal. In case you think america limited free speech before the 20th century... Politicians could threaten each other and duel each other... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr%E2%80%93Hamilton_duel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr%E2%80%93Hamilton_duel > I've argued in favor of free speech here on HN (and got the downvotes to prove it) more times than I can As someone who has been downvoted defending free speech, I commiserate. But you don't strike me as a free speech guy. You have the strangest way of being "in favor of free speech". > Free speech isn't some carte blanche that allows anyone to say anything at any time. But you just claimed to be a free speech absolutist. That's exactly what a free speech absolutist believe. That you can say anything anytime. > This has nothing to do with free speech, and Gab is an absolute cesspool of delusional QAnon conspiracies. But you are a free speech absolutist. No? Why do propagandists always do this? They pretend to be the other side and argue against the other side. It's like a meat eater pretending to be vegan and saying bad things about the vegan diet. And you have the gall to accuse gab of being disingenuous.
- dvt 6y ago
  Just as logical point, you can't really be a de facto "absolutist," as any kind of reductio argument would obliterate your position. But I'd say I'm as absolutist as one can get.
  - disown 6y ago
    You claimed to be an absolutist though. And yes, you can be a free speech absolutist. Take a class in philosophy and educate yourself. There are plenty of free speech absolutists who believe any speech, including direct threats, should be protected speech. That you should have the right to threaten anyone and everyone. Of course, acting out and carrying out the threats is illegal. For example, if you said "I am going to kill you", free speech absolutist believe that should be allowed. Now if you actually killed someone, then you should go to jail. Meaning there differentiate the words "I am going to kill you" with "murder". In other words, murder is illegal, but saying you will commit murder is not. There is some nuance to it, but there are free speech absolutists out there. But you are not a free speech absolutist. You lied about it. You aren't even pro-free speech. You comments clearly show that you align with the pro-censorship crowd because you use their terms and their logic. Like I said, you are a meat eater pretending to be a vegan talking shit about veganism. But why?
whatsmyusername 6y ago
This kind of response is the exact reason AWS dunked Parler. Picking that image to start with? I wouldn't even read the rest of it. 2 police and 4 citizens die, and your response is to open with something cute? That's your choice? Sure, I'm excited to see what happens next.
rendall 6y ago
> violent speech, "fighting words," insurrectionist speech, etc. are not protected under any free speech doctrine This is not true, assuming you're talking about US 1st Amendment. "fighting words" was once an exception to free speech, but the Supreme Court really has narrowed that exception in more recent decisions. It's not really a thing anymore. As for violent speech, the standard is "incitement to imminent lawless action" not just "advocates violence". Nor "insurrection speech" for that matter
- dvt 6y ago
  Citation needed here. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire is still studied in law schools as a watershed case.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words#Post-Chaplinsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words#Post-Chaplinsky
  - rendall 6y ago
    Yeah, not gonna. If you know enough to cite Chaplinsky you should know that later decisions have watered that down.
golemiprague 6y ago
Discussing someone fixing votes is not an incitement to violence against the same person, otherwise every discussion of something someone might have done is an incitement to violence.
orblivion 6y ago
Not to diminish the danger of weird rabbit holes, but it seems you moved your standard from "insurrectionist speech" to "claims that I'm very certain are so removed from reality as to lead people to insurrection if they were to believe them". What does "free speech absolutism" mean to you?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
syshum 6y ago
A "free Speech Absolutist" would never come to the conclusion that someone discussing vote fixing, even when it is completely outlandish and false is an "incitement to violence" If you are going to ban anything and everything that many case a person, or persons to react with violence then your speech codes will be VERY VERY VERY narrow indeed and no where in line with anything resembling free speech. I mean hell if that is the standard than all religions in the world are instantly banned, just for starters.
happytoexplain 6y ago
You are not a free speech absolutist, and that's a complement. Absolutism is poison in (almost) all forms.

by dvt 6y ago

CancelFirefox 6y ago

> Gab is an absolute cesspool of delusional QAnon conspiracies I see a lot of people say this but I've never seen anyone back it up with sources. What is the metric for "absolute cesspool of delusional QAnon conspiracies" and what makes Gab fit that metric better than Facebook or Twitter?

iagovar 6y ago
If I had to bet, most people who talk about Gab, never had a Gab account, and got his info from your average political commentator threads in Twitter and your average media pieces. Right-wing people has the right to exist, and should have a place to discuss their stuff. If you want to close every platform they have because you find they host people with extremist views, then close all the social media all together. If anyone here presumes that the conditions that allowed Donald Trump in office will disappear because you can deplatform such people, then good luck.
- salawat 6y ago
  Amen. Just wait until someone who just doesn't care runs something out of a basement. (Like the Chans were for a while). Then what? Throw law enforcement at them? This is what causes radicalization to escalate. The stakes get higher and higher, and people's worldviews further and further apart, guaranteeing contradiction and misunderstanding. Call me a discordian malcontent, but good lord, these events were painted on the wall years ago. You'd have to be dead to have not felt it.
  - iagovar 6y ago
    The material conditions on which Trump was allowed in office still exists. Unless the Democratic party has some quick solution to prevent large swaths of the american population to decapitalize, lose their standard of life and become poor, the only thing that's happening is that they removed a venue where this anger and resentment can transform itself into political action. So, let's wait for what's gonna happen, because this people will not just sit quiet and wait for their families and their means of life to be destroyed. If anyone thinks this is a top-down phenomena then I invite him to review it, because that's a very narrow view.
jeffbee 6y ago
You've "never seen" such evidence because you didn't look for it. Search for "Gab Hate Corpus" for a meticulously labeled set of tens of thousands of Gab post and natural language analysis thereof. According to that paper, 6% of all posts on Gab contain an explicit call for violence, examples given include "The ZioJesuit cultural marxist anti-white Christian killers now working within our white governments globally should be shot for espionage and treason with their non-white invaders expelled from within our nations immediately for the sake of our future white Christian posterity. Anything else is cowardice, self-eradication & continued genocide." as well as "i hate milo because hes a degenerate faggot [N-slur] fucker. he should be deported and sent to a muzzie country and get thrown off a roof" among many others. Gab is the neo-nazi Twitter, founded and funded by those advocating for the violent overthrow of American democracy and the establishment of a white ethnostate. The people who defend Gab using 1A slippery-slope arguments are themselves sympathizers with white violence.
orblivion 6y ago
I mean, fwiw they explicitly welcomed QAnon once they were banned from Twitter. Granted, they spun it as "Patriots who think for themselves and do their own research" or some such.
tw04 6y ago
>I see a lot of people say this but I've never seen anyone back it up with sources. Well, out of the top 20 largest groups on the site, 4 of them are dedicated entirely to Q-anon, so that's not very difficult to back up: https://gab.com/groups/2043 https://gab.com/groups/2043 https://gab.com/groups/393 https://gab.com/groups/393 https://gab.com/groups/408 https://gab.com/groups/408 https://gab.com/groups/324 https://gab.com/groups/324 >what makes Gab fit that metric better than Facebook or Twitter? I would imagine the fact that Facebook banned Q-Anon entirely from the whole site for spreading conspiracy theories? https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-bans-qanon-across-its-platforms-n1242339 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-bans-qanon-a...

abernard1 6y ago

> violent speech, "fighting words," insurrectionist speech, etc. are not protected under any free speech doctrine They address this in in the letter. > Accordingly we have a zero-tolerance policy towards threats of violence and unlawful speech. As to controversial but nonetheless legal speech we believe, as Justice Brandeis did, that “sunlight is the best disinfectant, electric light the most efficient policeman.

btown 6y ago
This would be a reasonable policy if it were actually adhered to. In practice, as mentioned by the grandparent post, users posting threats against people like Coomer run rampant. This is an argument made in bad faith.

anonunivgrad 6y ago

Conspiracy theories that might drive someone to violence are protected speech in this country. Many “conspiracy” theories have proved true, e.g. the CIA’s insane antics in the 50s-80s. We don’t have a Committee of Truth that determines what is true and therefore legally speakable. If facts or alleged facts drive people to violence, that is the responsibility of those engaged directly in violence (or actually inciting it). Incitement in America is basically: “let’s go burn down that building right now”. “As a moral matter, someone ought to burn down that building” is protected speech.

dvt 6y ago
I'm not sure what you're trying to argue. Under Classical Liberalism (which I am a proponent of), if your speech violates the Harm Principle, it's not protected. Conspiracies are indeed protected speech (e.g. "CIA killed Kennedy"). If your conspiracy incites to violence ("CIA killed Kennedy, let's storm Langley" -- and people actually do it), it's no longer protected speech.
- anonunivgrad 6y ago
  I said exactly what I meant to say. Saying that the government ought to be overthrown is a long protected American right. The book stores are full of books arguing just that. People taking you up on it is not your problem.
marcinzm 6y ago
>protected speech in this country. Protected from interference by the government. Private corporations are not yet the government.
- anonunivgrad 6y ago
  Gab’s position is that they will censor no more than the law requires.
  - Karunamon 6y ago

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

Violent speech is pretty strongly protected under modern First Amendment law. Direct incitement to imminent violence isn't protected, but that's a very narrow exemption; even statements like "we need to get violent here" aren't going to be over the line. (One of the canonical free speech cases is Watts v. United States, where the defendant's statement that he'd try to shoot then-president Johnson if he were drafted was ruled to be protected speech.)

dvt 6y ago
> Violent speech is pretty strongly protected under modern First Amendment law I should clarify that by "violent speech" I just meant it as a colloquialism of the more technical Fighting Words Doctrine. That is, "speech is violent speech IFF it disturbs the peace."
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  > That is, "speech is violent speech IFF it disturbs the peace." Disturbing peace? Isn’t that very much under the scope of the BLM associated rioting? Like we’re talking many buildings public and otherwise burned to the ground. Billions of dollars of damage.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  That's a common perception, and I tend to agree it's a moral standard we should hold people to, but the fighting words doctrine prohibits only speech which will immediately disturb the peace. There's no exception in current law for speech which will inevitably but nondeterministically cause something bad to happen.

disown 6y ago

> I'm a free speech absolutist No you are not. Why lie? A free speech absolutist means that you believe any speech is acceptable. You comments clearly show you believe in limits to speech. > but violent speech, "fighting words," insurrectionist speech, etc. are not protected under any free speech doctrine "Insurrectionist speech". You just gave yourself away. It's not "free speech doctrine" that prevents it. It's a supreme court ruling. The US was mostly free speech absolutist until the courts ruled direct threats to be illegal. In case you think america limited free speech before the 20th century... Politicians could threaten each other and duel each other... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr%E2%80%93Hamilton_duel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr%E2%80%93Hamilton_duel > I've argued in favor of free speech here on HN (and got the downvotes to prove it) more times than I can As someone who has been downvoted defending free speech, I commiserate. But you don't strike me as a free speech guy. You have the strangest way of being "in favor of free speech". > Free speech isn't some carte blanche that allows anyone to say anything at any time. But you just claimed to be a free speech absolutist. That's exactly what a free speech absolutist believe. That you can say anything anytime. > This has nothing to do with free speech, and Gab is an absolute cesspool of delusional QAnon conspiracies. But you are a free speech absolutist. No? Why do propagandists always do this? They pretend to be the other side and argue against the other side. It's like a meat eater pretending to be vegan and saying bad things about the vegan diet. And you have the gall to accuse gab of being disingenuous.

dvt 6y ago
Just as logical point, you can't really be a de facto "absolutist," as any kind of reductio argument would obliterate your position. But I'd say I'm as absolutist as one can get.
- disown 6y ago
  You claimed to be an absolutist though. And yes, you can be a free speech absolutist. Take a class in philosophy and educate yourself. There are plenty of free speech absolutists who believe any speech, including direct threats, should be protected speech. That you should have the right to threaten anyone and everyone. Of course, acting out and carrying out the threats is illegal. For example, if you said "I am going to kill you", free speech absolutist believe that should be allowed. Now if you actually killed someone, then you should go to jail. Meaning there differentiate the words "I am going to kill you" with "murder". In other words, murder is illegal, but saying you will commit murder is not. There is some nuance to it, but there are free speech absolutists out there. But you are not a free speech absolutist. You lied about it. You aren't even pro-free speech. You comments clearly show that you align with the pro-censorship crowd because you use their terms and their logic. Like I said, you are a meat eater pretending to be a vegan talking shit about veganism. But why?

whatsmyusername 6y ago

This kind of response is the exact reason AWS dunked Parler. Picking that image to start with? I wouldn't even read the rest of it. 2 police and 4 citizens die, and your response is to open with something cute? That's your choice? Sure, I'm excited to see what happens next.

rendall 6y ago

> violent speech, "fighting words," insurrectionist speech, etc. are not protected under any free speech doctrine This is not true, assuming you're talking about US 1st Amendment. "fighting words" was once an exception to free speech, but the Supreme Court really has narrowed that exception in more recent decisions. It's not really a thing anymore. As for violent speech, the standard is "incitement to imminent lawless action" not just "advocates violence". Nor "insurrection speech" for that matter

dvt 6y ago
Citation needed here. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire is still studied in law schools as a watershed case.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words#Post-Chaplinsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words#Post-Chaplinsky
- rendall 6y ago
  Yeah, not gonna. If you know enough to cite Chaplinsky you should know that later decisions have watered that down.

golemiprague 6y ago

Discussing someone fixing votes is not an incitement to violence against the same person, otherwise every discussion of something someone might have done is an incitement to violence.

orblivion 6y ago

Not to diminish the danger of weird rabbit holes, but it seems you moved your standard from "insurrectionist speech" to "claims that I'm very certain are so removed from reality as to lead people to insurrection if they were to believe them". What does "free speech absolutism" mean to you?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

syshum 6y ago

A "free Speech Absolutist" would never come to the conclusion that someone discussing vote fixing, even when it is completely outlandish and false is an "incitement to violence" If you are going to ban anything and everything that many case a person, or persons to react with violence then your speech codes will be VERY VERY VERY narrow indeed and no where in line with anything resembling free speech. I mean hell if that is the standard than all religions in the world are instantly banned, just for starters.

happytoexplain 6y ago

You are not a free speech absolutist, and that's a complement. Absolutism is poison in (almost) all forms.