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"Brainwashed" is not a very honest way to frame this discussion. You can be convinced of something without being brainwashed. I genuinely believe that free spe

by simias 6y ago

"Brainwashed" is not a very honest way to frame this discussion. You can be convinced of something without being brainwashed. I genuinely believe that free speech should have limits in order to maintain the cohesion of our societies and protect people from mobs. I don't think I've been brainwashed into it, I've just seen what unbridled and unchecked hate speech can lead to. Of course there's the problem of where the line should be drawn and who should draw it, but in order to have this discussion we need to move away from these strawmen (strawpersons?) and accept that maybe people just have convictions they haven't been brainwashed into. After all, I'm sure you wouldn't be very happy if I erected billboards along the highway featuring hardcore pedopornography with your faced photoshopped in. One way or an other we all have limits to what we consider acceptable expression, it's all about figuring out how this should be codified and enforced. And I want to add that having taboo topics and forms of expression is probably a good thing overall. For our lives to have meaning we need "sacred" things to protect, things to fight against, things to think about. We need to be able to shock, we need to be able to be transgressive, to make revolutions and counter-revolutions, to express frustration.

etangent 6y ago
> I genuinely believe that free speech should have limits in order to maintain the cohesion of our societies and protect people from mob Imagine saying this in June 2020
- _vertigo 6y ago
  Could you explain what you mean by this?
  - jacobolus 6y ago
    The implication is that the nationwide (and worldwide) Black Lives Matter protest marches in wake of George Floyd's death should have been prevented and their communications shut down, because the grandparent poster thinks that protesting police brutality and murder is illegitimate, but storming the US Capitol with the stated goal of overthrowing the government and extrajudicially executing the Vice President is just fine.
    - watwut 6y ago
      Conservative groups still exist outside Parler. And they can and do coordinate there. The same platforms were closing accounts calling for violence and preparing it during BLM protests. The difference is that while people on Parler claim that violent subgroups don't represent all Trump supporters, platforms that don't allow calls for violence are not good for them.
  - j_walter 6y ago
    Protesting anything is fine. It's how far you take that protest that is the problem. When does a protest become a riot? When you block traffic? When you enter a secured space? When you break into a federal building? When you set fire to a federal building? When you set fire to cop cars? When you break windows of local businesses? When you loot local businesses? When you spray paint hate speech? When you threaten cops families with death? When you throw fireworks at people? When you throw Molotov cocktails at people? These all occurred in large numbers during between the death of George Floyd and the Capitol Riot. How many times did big tech step and and stop the coordinating efforts for those protests/riots?
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      Hm. I think a lot of people reasonably draw the line on speech somewhere after the protests & property damage that happened during 2020, but before action coordinated to take control of the seat of government/potentially kidnap or kill elected representatives.
      - neuland 6y ago
        Or, people are just inconsistent and not thinking about things beyond their politics. People will praise the Arab Spring organizing on Twitter without considering the implications for the events at the Capital on Jan 6th. People are fine with Parler getting banned by all their vendors for not moderating violence and threats. But people would loose their minds if the same thing happened to Facebook for their failure to moderate violence around the Rohingyan genocide.
        caseysoftware 6y ago
        > People will praise the Arab Spring organizing on Twitter without considering the implications for the events at the Capital on Jan 6th. This is a great point. It's also key to consider that some of the groups that praised the Arab Spring were the Obama State Department which was led by Hillary Clinton at the time. It appears the threshold is "support violent insurrection in other countries but stamp out the discussion of it here".
  - jokethrowaway 6y ago
    Parent was obviously referring to the 34 deaths, theft, forcing people to comply with the requests (raise your first or face the mob) and millions of damage in private property, due to the BLM rioting. Still, it's not relevant because they weren't exercising freedom of speech, just incitement of violence. Same as the people at the Capitol.
    - jacobolus 6y ago
      Your numbers are not reliable, and you should discount whatever source you got them from. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/aug/07/facebook-posts/no-proof-black-lives-matter-killed-36-people-injur/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/aug/07/facebook-p... The large Black Lives Matter protests all over the country were overwhelmingly lawful and peaceful. The main exceptions were the scenes in many places of cops beating the shit out of people, etc. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/style/police-protests-video.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/style/police-protests-vid... In various cities a small number of people acted violently. These were opportunists without apparent link to the Black Lives Matter organizers who took advantage of the situation to smash things up. Some were likely sympathetic to the BLM message, but others have been identified as far-right agitators. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/22/who-caused-violence-protests-its-not-antifa/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/22/who-cause... https://www.justsecurity.org/70497/far-right-infiltrators-and-agitators-in-george-floyd-protests-indicators-of-white-supremacists/ https://www.justsecurity.org/70497/far-right-infiltrators-an...
      - jokethrowaway 6y ago
        The only number I brought up is number of deaths which I thought it was 34 from memory. I don't mind the people protesting peacefully, I'm talking about the violent ones. Your fact checker doesn't report a number, some people counted 36. Wikipedia reports 19+ deaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_during_the_George_Floyd_protests#Events_within_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_dur... It's irrelevant. There was looting from stores, burning of buildings and killings, surrounding people in restaurants and forcing them to comply. You can call it a peaceful protest as much as you want and you can link biased sources all day, but you won't change facts.
- simias 6y ago
  I'm not American and I don't have a strong opinion on the events you refer to (I actually had to read the replies to understand what you were getting at), so I definitely would've told you exactly the same thing in June of 2020. Feel free to ask me again whenever you see fit.
jokethrowaway 6y ago
Free speech doesn't need limits. Inciting violence, endangering someone with false speech, committing fraud: they're already a crime and they're not covered by free speech.
- hctaw 6y ago
  Those are examples of limiting of free speech edit: it seems people have misunderstood my comment to take a position. I' m taking issue with the idea that "free speech doesn't need limits" followed by a listing of limits applied to free speech. If we can't agree that there even exists such limits and that perhaps they're necessary any discussion below is fruitless.
  - option 6y ago
    no it is not. Saying “covid is a hoax” should be protected by free speech because it is an expression of (stupidly false) opinion. Saying “we storm Capiton at 8:00am on Jan 6” is a call to violent action, not an idea, thought, or opinion and obviously must be taken down ASAP
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > no it is not. Saying “covid is a hoax” should be protected by free speech because it is an expression of (stupidly false) opinion. But I shouldn't be obligated to let someone put a sign saying that on my lawn, nor should I be obligated to remain friends with someone who is pushing that lie. Most of the people who are complaining about free speech being limited are really arguing for things like the above.
      - foolinaround 6y ago
        yes, but then you don't get covered under section 230, because you are actively making judgement calls, and therefore, should be liable for those.
        6y ago
bitstan 6y ago
> it's all about figuring out how this should be codified and enforced. Democratically maybe? Don't we have an entire police state apparatus to monitor the public and snoop on bad hombres? Why should Silicon Valley play the roll of unelected police-state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_center Brainwashed is the perfect term to describe the cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics required to adopt authoritarian and undemocratic ideals to "combat fascism". > For our lives to have meaning we need "sacred" things to protect, things to fight against, things to think about Like blasphemy laws? Brain. Washed.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Democratically maybe? But...we did that. And the answer arrived out through representative democracy thus far is: (1) For matters where no legal liability, or only civil liability (except for sex trafficking, and copyright law which has its own special rules) would be involved, mostly leave it up to the free discretion of each online provider to determine and address unwelcome content. (2) a whole bunch of crime-specific rules in criminal law, including (relevant to recent events) an absolute prohibition against knowingly providing any good or service (with narrow medical and religious exceptions) that will be used in “terrorism” offenses.
- simondw 6y ago
  > Why should Silicon Valley play the roll of unelected police-state. Since when is a corporation deciding not to do business with someone equivalent to throwing them in prison?
- pkulak 6y ago
  > mental gymnastics required to adopt authoritarian and undemocratic ideals to "combat fascism". It is a paradox, after all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
gyudin 6y ago
Not American per se, but free speech has limits. People breaking the law should be prosecuted in courts.
adrian_b 6y ago
The belief that free speech must have limits is necessarily equivalent with the belief that a large part of the people are stupid and they must be protected by the smart people by preventing them to hear anything that might influence their feeble minds and make them act in a wrong way. Maybe this belief about most people being stupid is correct, therefore free speech must indeed be limited, but I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free speech having the courage to tell what they really think in the face of those whom they want to protect.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > Maybe this belief about most people being stupid is correct, therefore free speech must indeed be limited, but I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free speech having the courage to tell what they really think in the face of those whom they want to protect. I don't know about this part. the narrative seems to be more about protecting the vulnerable from the stupid, not so much protecting the stupid from themselves.
  - adrian_b 6y ago
    Nobody can be so vulnerable to the words of other people that they will do obviously bad things, unless they are stupid. Normal people are vulnerable to lies only in the sense that when presented with deliberately false information that they cannot verify immediately, they may trust the liar and make a wrong decision to do something that they cannot know yet whether it is right or wrong, e.g. buying something cheap for a high price or being the victim for another kind of fraud. Only someone stupid will beat someone or burn a house because of some false accusations. All the arguments for these deplatforming actions were that the people, who would have heard the propaganda of those to whom the access is denied now, would have been easily convinced to do stupid things.
- offby37years 6y ago
  This is correct. You can't have democracy without free speech. If you don't trust your fellow citizens to be able to deduce the truth, you shouldn't trust them to cast their own vote.
rsync 6y ago
"Of course there's the problem of where the line should be drawn and who should draw it" That's not "a problem", that's the only problem. Of course hatred and bigotry and false scientific claims and calls to violence, etc., are negative and of course we wish they would vanish. But a Ministry of Truth would be worse. I am willing to build and maintain mental, emotional and psychological armor against very negative, harmful speech if it helps avoid erecting a Ministry of Truth.

by simias 6y ago

etangent 6y ago

> I genuinely believe that free speech should have limits in order to maintain the cohesion of our societies and protect people from mob Imagine saying this in June 2020

_vertigo 6y ago
Could you explain what you mean by this?
- jacobolus 6y ago
  The implication is that the nationwide (and worldwide) Black Lives Matter protest marches in wake of George Floyd's death should have been prevented and their communications shut down, because the grandparent poster thinks that protesting police brutality and murder is illegitimate, but storming the US Capitol with the stated goal of overthrowing the government and extrajudicially executing the Vice President is just fine.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Conservative groups still exist outside Parler. And they can and do coordinate there. The same platforms were closing accounts calling for violence and preparing it during BLM protests. The difference is that while people on Parler claim that violent subgroups don't represent all Trump supporters, platforms that don't allow calls for violence are not good for them.
- j_walter 6y ago
  Protesting anything is fine. It's how far you take that protest that is the problem. When does a protest become a riot? When you block traffic? When you enter a secured space? When you break into a federal building? When you set fire to a federal building? When you set fire to cop cars? When you break windows of local businesses? When you loot local businesses? When you spray paint hate speech? When you threaten cops families with death? When you throw fireworks at people? When you throw Molotov cocktails at people? These all occurred in large numbers during between the death of George Floyd and the Capitol Riot. How many times did big tech step and and stop the coordinating efforts for those protests/riots?
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Hm. I think a lot of people reasonably draw the line on speech somewhere after the protests & property damage that happened during 2020, but before action coordinated to take control of the seat of government/potentially kidnap or kill elected representatives.
    - neuland 6y ago
      Or, people are just inconsistent and not thinking about things beyond their politics. People will praise the Arab Spring organizing on Twitter without considering the implications for the events at the Capital on Jan 6th. People are fine with Parler getting banned by all their vendors for not moderating violence and threats. But people would loose their minds if the same thing happened to Facebook for their failure to moderate violence around the Rohingyan genocide.
      - caseysoftware 6y ago
        > People will praise the Arab Spring organizing on Twitter without considering the implications for the events at the Capital on Jan 6th. This is a great point. It's also key to consider that some of the groups that praised the Arab Spring were the Obama State Department which was led by Hillary Clinton at the time. It appears the threshold is "support violent insurrection in other countries but stamp out the discussion of it here".
- jokethrowaway 6y ago
  Parent was obviously referring to the 34 deaths, theft, forcing people to comply with the requests (raise your first or face the mob) and millions of damage in private property, due to the BLM rioting. Still, it's not relevant because they weren't exercising freedom of speech, just incitement of violence. Same as the people at the Capitol.
  - jacobolus 6y ago
    Your numbers are not reliable, and you should discount whatever source you got them from. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/aug/07/facebook-posts/no-proof-black-lives-matter-killed-36-people-injur/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/aug/07/facebook-p... The large Black Lives Matter protests all over the country were overwhelmingly lawful and peaceful. The main exceptions were the scenes in many places of cops beating the shit out of people, etc. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/style/police-protests-video.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/style/police-protests-vid... In various cities a small number of people acted violently. These were opportunists without apparent link to the Black Lives Matter organizers who took advantage of the situation to smash things up. Some were likely sympathetic to the BLM message, but others have been identified as far-right agitators. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/22/who-caused-violence-protests-its-not-antifa/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/22/who-cause... https://www.justsecurity.org/70497/far-right-infiltrators-and-agitators-in-george-floyd-protests-indicators-of-white-supremacists/ https://www.justsecurity.org/70497/far-right-infiltrators-an...
    - jokethrowaway 6y ago
      The only number I brought up is number of deaths which I thought it was 34 from memory. I don't mind the people protesting peacefully, I'm talking about the violent ones. Your fact checker doesn't report a number, some people counted 36. Wikipedia reports 19+ deaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_during_the_George_Floyd_protests#Events_within_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_dur... It's irrelevant. There was looting from stores, burning of buildings and killings, surrounding people in restaurants and forcing them to comply. You can call it a peaceful protest as much as you want and you can link biased sources all day, but you won't change facts.
simias 6y ago
I'm not American and I don't have a strong opinion on the events you refer to (I actually had to read the replies to understand what you were getting at), so I definitely would've told you exactly the same thing in June of 2020. Feel free to ask me again whenever you see fit.

jokethrowaway 6y ago

Free speech doesn't need limits. Inciting violence, endangering someone with false speech, committing fraud: they're already a crime and they're not covered by free speech.

hctaw 6y ago
Those are examples of limiting of free speech edit: it seems people have misunderstood my comment to take a position. I' m taking issue with the idea that "free speech doesn't need limits" followed by a listing of limits applied to free speech. If we can't agree that there even exists such limits and that perhaps they're necessary any discussion below is fruitless.
- option 6y ago
  no it is not. Saying “covid is a hoax” should be protected by free speech because it is an expression of (stupidly false) opinion. Saying “we storm Capiton at 8:00am on Jan 6” is a call to violent action, not an idea, thought, or opinion and obviously must be taken down ASAP
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > no it is not. Saying “covid is a hoax” should be protected by free speech because it is an expression of (stupidly false) opinion. But I shouldn't be obligated to let someone put a sign saying that on my lawn, nor should I be obligated to remain friends with someone who is pushing that lie. Most of the people who are complaining about free speech being limited are really arguing for things like the above.
    - foolinaround 6y ago
      yes, but then you don't get covered under section 230, because you are actively making judgement calls, and therefore, should be liable for those.
      - 6y ago

bitstan 6y ago

> it's all about figuring out how this should be codified and enforced. Democratically maybe? Don't we have an entire police state apparatus to monitor the public and snoop on bad hombres? Why should Silicon Valley play the roll of unelected police-state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_center Brainwashed is the perfect term to describe the cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics required to adopt authoritarian and undemocratic ideals to "combat fascism". > For our lives to have meaning we need "sacred" things to protect, things to fight against, things to think about Like blasphemy laws? Brain. Washed.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Democratically maybe? But...we did that. And the answer arrived out through representative democracy thus far is: (1) For matters where no legal liability, or only civil liability (except for sex trafficking, and copyright law which has its own special rules) would be involved, mostly leave it up to the free discretion of each online provider to determine and address unwelcome content. (2) a whole bunch of crime-specific rules in criminal law, including (relevant to recent events) an absolute prohibition against knowingly providing any good or service (with narrow medical and religious exceptions) that will be used in “terrorism” offenses.
simondw 6y ago
> Why should Silicon Valley play the roll of unelected police-state. Since when is a corporation deciding not to do business with someone equivalent to throwing them in prison?
pkulak 6y ago
> mental gymnastics required to adopt authoritarian and undemocratic ideals to "combat fascism". It is a paradox, after all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

gyudin 6y ago

Not American per se, but free speech has limits. People breaking the law should be prosecuted in courts.

adrian_b 6y ago

The belief that free speech must have limits is necessarily equivalent with the belief that a large part of the people are stupid and they must be protected by the smart people by preventing them to hear anything that might influence their feeble minds and make them act in a wrong way. Maybe this belief about most people being stupid is correct, therefore free speech must indeed be limited, but I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free speech having the courage to tell what they really think in the face of those whom they want to protect.

leetcrew 6y ago
> Maybe this belief about most people being stupid is correct, therefore free speech must indeed be limited, but I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free speech having the courage to tell what they really think in the face of those whom they want to protect. I don't know about this part. the narrative seems to be more about protecting the vulnerable from the stupid, not so much protecting the stupid from themselves.
- adrian_b 6y ago
  Nobody can be so vulnerable to the words of other people that they will do obviously bad things, unless they are stupid. Normal people are vulnerable to lies only in the sense that when presented with deliberately false information that they cannot verify immediately, they may trust the liar and make a wrong decision to do something that they cannot know yet whether it is right or wrong, e.g. buying something cheap for a high price or being the victim for another kind of fraud. Only someone stupid will beat someone or burn a house because of some false accusations. All the arguments for these deplatforming actions were that the people, who would have heard the propaganda of those to whom the access is denied now, would have been easily convinced to do stupid things.
offby37years 6y ago
This is correct. You can't have democracy without free speech. If you don't trust your fellow citizens to be able to deduce the truth, you shouldn't trust them to cast their own vote.

rsync 6y ago

"Of course there's the problem of where the line should be drawn and who should draw it" That's not "a problem", that's the only problem. Of course hatred and bigotry and false scientific claims and calls to violence, etc., are negative and of course we wish they would vanish. But a Ministry of Truth would be worse. I am willing to build and maintain mental, emotional and psychological armor against very negative, harmful speech if it helps avoid erecting a Ministry of Truth.