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I think free speech ends at specific threats or calls to violence. Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Either by

I think free speech ends at specific threats or calls to violence. Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Either by the police or by me. I think free speech is necessary, but not free speech to harass or threaten violence. Free speech including the vile and negative won't make the world a better place. Arguing against the bad ideas will. But I do not think it's the burden of society to court speech that falls in the category or harassment or threats of violence.

tenebrisalietum 6y ago
What do you do when people simply want to spew emotional tirades and mindlessly copy memes, and won't argue in good or any faith? What is that worth really?
- millzlane 6y ago
  You bring up a good point. I don't engage with folks like that. I assume they're already indoctrinated or an influencer from outside of the country or a troll. If I'm feeling empathetic I might try to appeal to the human in them. Edit: If you're asking me as if I were the host of the free speech platform. I guess I would allow everything except anything that violated criminal law. And would keep a law firm on retainer to field complaints and give the final say to our legal department. It's a tough question.
  - jariel 6y ago
    It doesn't matter who you engage with. If 10% of Americans are convinced that QAnon is behind the scenes running the show, and they believe that, and act on it in a variety of ways, then it's a huge problem. I suggest with the election, COVID and QAnon together we are probably already feeling the results of mass misinformation. It's an ugly problem because none of us really want to suppress people for saying something not technically true. I mean, who doesn't like a good alien conspiracy theory? Until it gets out of hand ...
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      QAnon is as successful as it is because it is tapping into the cognitive dissonance created by things like federal mishandling of the Epstein case (slow walking allegations made since the 90s, the 2007 sweetheart deal which granted immunity to any unnamed co-conspirators, not having raided Epstein's New Mexico ranch to this day, etc), as well as the fact that wealthy and powerful elites continued to associate with him long past the point his predations had become an open secret, and they have suffered no professional or legal repercussions whatsoever. The mainstream media says "he killed himself and was a one-off and all these rich people just wanted to solicit charitable donations and there's nothing more to see here," and anyone with two skeptical brain cells to rub together can see that's a lie and (if they are actually moved by the horrendous circumstances of the Epstein case to find out the truth) they go searching for alternative sources of information, at which point they're often easy game for disinfo merchants of various stripes who gain a foothold simply by not insisting they're crazy for even asking the questions in the first place. The insistence that this is purely a problem of "mass misinformation" seems almost belligerently blinkered to the broader context and reasons why our society's institutions have lost credibility and trust.
      - Applejinx 6y ago
        It's as successful as it is because it is KNOWINGLY tapping into the cognitive dissonance, for the purpose of inciting domestic terrorism and the collapse of Western society. Basically, look at the things you cited as the reason such an attack could be effective, even unanswerable. If the rich people, etc etc, behaved better and weren't awful, it would be a lot harder to mount such an attack. But it was made easy to do, and for that reason the whole 'freedom of speech' thing is nothing more than an attack vector at this point. We've lost that. There is no way it's sustainable the way some people would like it to be sustainable. There are powerful interests, state actors, weaponizing every little shred of freedom to destroy Western society, and I don't see any good answers at this point. It was a weakness. We could have freedom of speech as long as it wasn't being weaponized on a massive scale against us. We could have freedom of speech so long as massive calculated lying wasn't a primary tactic, so long as people could be taken at face value. That's simply not true anymore.
- jennyyang 6y ago
  That's their right to spew whatever they want. Just because it's worthless doesn't mean we should stop it. I personally think every single conversation in Twitter is absolutely worthless, maybe even has negative value. Does that give me the right to shut down Twitter? No. I value free speech so if people want to waste their time spewing nonsense, that is their right.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    No, it's twitter's right to carry it or not. AFAICT there's no right to tweet.
  - ipsocannibal 6y ago
    I think this point of view neglects the emergent properties of a society where millions of people can spew nonsense all at once, at the speed of light, using AI assisted audience targeting. Crackpots and liars have existed since the beginning of time but never before has a technology been designed to so readily amplify and reenforce their nonsense. Never before has a technology been so adept at hiding from you that the speaker is a crackpot or liar.
    - netizen-9748 6y ago
      I think the issue is rather the visibility of the nonsense, as a global species we are still adapting to this new communication medium
      - meheleventyone 6y ago
        It’s not even just the visibility, it’s the direct harm the actions of these people cause. Whether it’s to their own personal relationships or nation states. QAnon should make a lot of people nervous about the state of unfettered free speech and the idea that the counter to bad ideas is more speech.
      - kiba 6y ago
        This is because we use 'votes' and 'likes' along with non-transparent algorithms to amplify certain voices over other. Nothing to do with the medium, but how we structure social media.
lisper 6y ago
> Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Are you actually black? Because if you were I would think that you of all people would understand that calling someone (let's not mince words here) a nigger is threatening their life. The problem is not so much if I call you a nigger as if I say to my friend bubba, "Hey, what do you think we oughtta do 'bout that uppity nigger over there?"
- raarts 6y ago
  I'm not convinced calling someone the n-word is the same as threatening his life for that reason. So MAGA fan would be the same as the n-word, because I can tell my Bubba hey what are we going to do about the MAGA fanboy over there. Is that threatening his life too?
ipsocannibal 6y ago
In this instance I don't think calls to violence are really the problem at hand. Specifically, what is the difference between getting on a box on a street corner and calling for the death of so and so and saying the same thing on the internet? The difference is the speed at which the message propagates and the breadth and targeting of the audience that hears it. The technology and its unregulated use are the problem not primarily the speech it facilitates. Facebook and Twitter in how they are designed are the problem. They are the equivalent of giving everyone an information machine gun with infinite advertising backed ammo and then asking everyone to abide by the honor system. We don't do this in the physical space and we shouldn't in the digital space. We are currently in the process of learning all of the old lessons of society building the hard way when it comes to the internet. Thats because Twitter and Facebook didn't intend to build societies they intended to make money. They did both but only really cared about the latter.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ardy42 6y ago
> I think free speech ends at specific threats or calls to violence. Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Either by the police or by me. Then what about lies? The real problem of the last few years is that really blatant lies have been remarkably successful in the "marketplace of ideas" and quite hard to effectively argue against (if you disagree, try using facts and reason to convince a QAnon believer that the world isn't run by Satan-worshipping pedophile Democrats who Trump & Muller are secretly preparing to defeat in a blaze of glory). Those lies are fuel for those "specific threats or calls to violence." I think a lot of the conventional beliefs around free speech make assumptions that may not be as true now as they were in the past (e.g. most of the participants will act in good faith (or at least have some shame) and act reasonably, and that any participants that don't will be quickly identified and ostracized). The error is sort of like classical economics theories incorrectly assuming people will be rational economic actors when they often aren't.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jmull 6y ago
  We do have some limits on lies. There are libel/slander laws. These limits are usually very weak, though. They vary from place to place, but tend to have a high bar, are expensive to pursue, and have many exceptions.
  - glogla 6y ago
    Those don't cover other dangerous types of lies, like telling people drinking bleach will protect them from COVID, or telling them COVID is a hoax and they shouldn't wear masks, or the whole antivax thing.
  - slg 6y ago
    Furthermore these laws almost exclusively apply when speaking about specific people. QAnon people can be sued if they say "Hillary Clinton drinks the blood of children". However they are safe saying "Democrats drink the blood of children." I don't understand why these two should be treated differently from a moral, ethical, or legal perspective. Also these are largely viewed as civil issues and not criminal so Hillary Clinton needs to take them to court and not the State. These two issues combined basically give Americans free rein to make up whatever lies they want about whatever group they wish to defame.
spamizbad 6y ago
In the United States we’ve always understood free speech does has its limits: slander/libel, “yelling fire in a crowded theater” — I feel like calls for violence and genocide already fall well out of our boundaries of free speech. But it’s always been understood political speech is unrestricted. I do think people have cynically exploited this understanding by trying to classify calls for political violence as merely political speech, arguing that as long as the calls for violence have a political angle it’s free speech. And arguing moderating such things censorship.
trident5000 6y ago
Do you mean like when Kathy Griffin was holding up the presidents bloody head with no recourse? Or the summer riots which were heavily coordinated on Twitter? Twitter is still in the app stores. Extremism is on Twitter, Facebook, and all platforms, yet they came together like a mob and eliminated the one they didnt like.
- pstuart 6y ago
  It was a stupid gesture on her part and she paid a step price for that act, so it wasn't so free. When talking about the riots that happened it important to acknowledge all the players. Most of the protesters against police brutality were peaceful and exercising first amendment rights of the first degree -- complaining about government abuses. There are recorded cases of agents provocateur, e.g., https://www.startribune.com/police-umbrella-man-was-a-white-supremacist-trying-to-incite-floyd-rioting/571932272/ https://www.startribune.com/police-umbrella-man-was-a-white-... And the police themselves were not passive in these regards, at least in the case when the protesters were not about white nationalism.
  - trident5000 6y ago
    No platform recourse and they didnt even ban the material, even today. You could say the capital protestors were “mostly peaceful” as well as the vast majority did not storm the building. Even those on the capital steps were a tiny minority of who showed up. Im really not here to argue case by case and combat mental gymnastics for why one sides extremism is ok but the others is not. Im simply pointing out that all platforms have extremism and calls for violence but only one was banned swiftly.
    - pstuart 6y ago
      So you're saying that she didn't have a right to post that picture at all? Again, what she did was stupid and tasteless, but if you think that it was intended as a call for violence then you're venturing into Rorschach test territory. The capitol "protest" was designed to lead to the attack on the house. Perhaps many present were just there to just "speak up" but the breach itself was no accident.
cm2187 6y ago
In the world of micro-aggressions, there needs to be a very strict definition of what we mean by violence.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  I hope this is sarcasm...

tenebrisalietum 6y ago

What do you do when people simply want to spew emotional tirades and mindlessly copy memes, and won't argue in good or any faith? What is that worth really?

millzlane 6y ago
You bring up a good point. I don't engage with folks like that. I assume they're already indoctrinated or an influencer from outside of the country or a troll. If I'm feeling empathetic I might try to appeal to the human in them. Edit: If you're asking me as if I were the host of the free speech platform. I guess I would allow everything except anything that violated criminal law. And would keep a law firm on retainer to field complaints and give the final say to our legal department. It's a tough question.
- jariel 6y ago
  It doesn't matter who you engage with. If 10% of Americans are convinced that QAnon is behind the scenes running the show, and they believe that, and act on it in a variety of ways, then it's a huge problem. I suggest with the election, COVID and QAnon together we are probably already feeling the results of mass misinformation. It's an ugly problem because none of us really want to suppress people for saying something not technically true. I mean, who doesn't like a good alien conspiracy theory? Until it gets out of hand ...
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    QAnon is as successful as it is because it is tapping into the cognitive dissonance created by things like federal mishandling of the Epstein case (slow walking allegations made since the 90s, the 2007 sweetheart deal which granted immunity to any unnamed co-conspirators, not having raided Epstein's New Mexico ranch to this day, etc), as well as the fact that wealthy and powerful elites continued to associate with him long past the point his predations had become an open secret, and they have suffered no professional or legal repercussions whatsoever. The mainstream media says "he killed himself and was a one-off and all these rich people just wanted to solicit charitable donations and there's nothing more to see here," and anyone with two skeptical brain cells to rub together can see that's a lie and (if they are actually moved by the horrendous circumstances of the Epstein case to find out the truth) they go searching for alternative sources of information, at which point they're often easy game for disinfo merchants of various stripes who gain a foothold simply by not insisting they're crazy for even asking the questions in the first place. The insistence that this is purely a problem of "mass misinformation" seems almost belligerently blinkered to the broader context and reasons why our society's institutions have lost credibility and trust.
    - Applejinx 6y ago
      It's as successful as it is because it is KNOWINGLY tapping into the cognitive dissonance, for the purpose of inciting domestic terrorism and the collapse of Western society. Basically, look at the things you cited as the reason such an attack could be effective, even unanswerable. If the rich people, etc etc, behaved better and weren't awful, it would be a lot harder to mount such an attack. But it was made easy to do, and for that reason the whole 'freedom of speech' thing is nothing more than an attack vector at this point. We've lost that. There is no way it's sustainable the way some people would like it to be sustainable. There are powerful interests, state actors, weaponizing every little shred of freedom to destroy Western society, and I don't see any good answers at this point. It was a weakness. We could have freedom of speech as long as it wasn't being weaponized on a massive scale against us. We could have freedom of speech so long as massive calculated lying wasn't a primary tactic, so long as people could be taken at face value. That's simply not true anymore.
jennyyang 6y ago
That's their right to spew whatever they want. Just because it's worthless doesn't mean we should stop it. I personally think every single conversation in Twitter is absolutely worthless, maybe even has negative value. Does that give me the right to shut down Twitter? No. I value free speech so if people want to waste their time spewing nonsense, that is their right.
- Nursie 6y ago
  No, it's twitter's right to carry it or not. AFAICT there's no right to tweet.
- ipsocannibal 6y ago
  I think this point of view neglects the emergent properties of a society where millions of people can spew nonsense all at once, at the speed of light, using AI assisted audience targeting. Crackpots and liars have existed since the beginning of time but never before has a technology been designed to so readily amplify and reenforce their nonsense. Never before has a technology been so adept at hiding from you that the speaker is a crackpot or liar.
  - netizen-9748 6y ago
    I think the issue is rather the visibility of the nonsense, as a global species we are still adapting to this new communication medium
    - meheleventyone 6y ago
      It’s not even just the visibility, it’s the direct harm the actions of these people cause. Whether it’s to their own personal relationships or nation states. QAnon should make a lot of people nervous about the state of unfettered free speech and the idea that the counter to bad ideas is more speech.
    - kiba 6y ago
      This is because we use 'votes' and 'likes' along with non-transparent algorithms to amplify certain voices over other. Nothing to do with the medium, but how we structure social media.

lisper 6y ago

> Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Are you actually black? Because if you were I would think that you of all people would understand that calling someone (let's not mince words here) a nigger is threatening their life. The problem is not so much if I call you a nigger as if I say to my friend bubba, "Hey, what do you think we oughtta do 'bout that uppity nigger over there?"

raarts 6y ago
I'm not convinced calling someone the n-word is the same as threatening his life for that reason. So MAGA fan would be the same as the n-word, because I can tell my Bubba hey what are we going to do about the MAGA fanboy over there. Is that threatening his life too?

ipsocannibal 6y ago

In this instance I don't think calls to violence are really the problem at hand. Specifically, what is the difference between getting on a box on a street corner and calling for the death of so and so and saying the same thing on the internet? The difference is the speed at which the message propagates and the breadth and targeting of the audience that hears it. The technology and its unregulated use are the problem not primarily the speech it facilitates. Facebook and Twitter in how they are designed are the problem. They are the equivalent of giving everyone an information machine gun with infinite advertising backed ammo and then asking everyone to abide by the honor system. We don't do this in the physical space and we shouldn't in the digital space. We are currently in the process of learning all of the old lessons of society building the hard way when it comes to the internet. Thats because Twitter and Facebook didn't intend to build societies they intended to make money. They did both but only really cared about the latter.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ardy42 6y ago

> I think free speech ends at specific threats or calls to violence. Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Either by the police or by me. Then what about lies? The real problem of the last few years is that really blatant lies have been remarkably successful in the "marketplace of ideas" and quite hard to effectively argue against (if you disagree, try using facts and reason to convince a QAnon believer that the world isn't run by Satan-worshipping pedophile Democrats who Trump & Muller are secretly preparing to defeat in a blaze of glory). Those lies are fuel for those "specific threats or calls to violence." I think a lot of the conventional beliefs around free speech make assumptions that may not be as true now as they were in the past (e.g. most of the participants will act in good faith (or at least have some shame) and act reasonably, and that any participants that don't will be quickly identified and ostracized). The error is sort of like classical economics theories incorrectly assuming people will be rational economic actors when they often aren't.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jmull 6y ago
We do have some limits on lies. There are libel/slander laws. These limits are usually very weak, though. They vary from place to place, but tend to have a high bar, are expensive to pursue, and have many exceptions.
- glogla 6y ago
  Those don't cover other dangerous types of lies, like telling people drinking bleach will protect them from COVID, or telling them COVID is a hoax and they shouldn't wear masks, or the whole antivax thing.
- slg 6y ago
  Furthermore these laws almost exclusively apply when speaking about specific people. QAnon people can be sued if they say "Hillary Clinton drinks the blood of children". However they are safe saying "Democrats drink the blood of children." I don't understand why these two should be treated differently from a moral, ethical, or legal perspective. Also these are largely viewed as civil issues and not criminal so Hillary Clinton needs to take them to court and not the State. These two issues combined basically give Americans free rein to make up whatever lies they want about whatever group they wish to defame.

spamizbad 6y ago

In the United States we’ve always understood free speech does has its limits: slander/libel, “yelling fire in a crowded theater” — I feel like calls for violence and genocide already fall well out of our boundaries of free speech. But it’s always been understood political speech is unrestricted. I do think people have cynically exploited this understanding by trying to classify calls for political violence as merely political speech, arguing that as long as the calls for violence have a political angle it’s free speech. And arguing moderating such things censorship.

trident5000 6y ago

Do you mean like when Kathy Griffin was holding up the presidents bloody head with no recourse? Or the summer riots which were heavily coordinated on Twitter? Twitter is still in the app stores. Extremism is on Twitter, Facebook, and all platforms, yet they came together like a mob and eliminated the one they didnt like.

pstuart 6y ago
It was a stupid gesture on her part and she paid a step price for that act, so it wasn't so free. When talking about the riots that happened it important to acknowledge all the players. Most of the protesters against police brutality were peaceful and exercising first amendment rights of the first degree -- complaining about government abuses. There are recorded cases of agents provocateur, e.g., https://www.startribune.com/police-umbrella-man-was-a-white-supremacist-trying-to-incite-floyd-rioting/571932272/ https://www.startribune.com/police-umbrella-man-was-a-white-... And the police themselves were not passive in these regards, at least in the case when the protesters were not about white nationalism.
- trident5000 6y ago
  No platform recourse and they didnt even ban the material, even today. You could say the capital protestors were “mostly peaceful” as well as the vast majority did not storm the building. Even those on the capital steps were a tiny minority of who showed up. Im really not here to argue case by case and combat mental gymnastics for why one sides extremism is ok but the others is not. Im simply pointing out that all platforms have extremism and calls for violence but only one was banned swiftly.
  - pstuart 6y ago
    So you're saying that she didn't have a right to post that picture at all? Again, what she did was stupid and tasteless, but if you think that it was intended as a call for violence then you're venturing into Rorschach test territory. The capitol "protest" was designed to lead to the attack on the house. Perhaps many present were just there to just "speak up" but the breach itself was no accident.

cm2187 6y ago

In the world of micro-aggressions, there needs to be a very strict definition of what we mean by violence.

stjohnswarts 6y ago
I hope this is sarcasm...