7 ms·

These goings-on make me very aware of the fact that I'm still not settled on the matter of free speech. I used to be very pro-free-speech, but on the other hand

These goings-on make me very aware of the fact that I'm still not settled on the matter of free speech. I used to be very pro-free-speech, but on the other hand, I'm anti-fascism, and I don't know what's worse: Giving fascists a platform to spew hate, or set a precedent for potentially limiting my own speech down the line? It's nowhere near clear-cut, and I'd like to hear some opinions on this.

chroem- 6y ago
If fascism is defined as the merger of corporation and state, does a dominant political party allying with major corporations to suppress a political opponent not ring alarm bells for fascism?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  Fascism is when racism becomes state policy. Nearly always accompanied by a violent dictator. The US narrowly avoided devolving into a permanent fascist state. Now people who at least support human rights and democracy are in power.
  - 1MachineElf 6y ago
    I sincerely wonder if your comments here are all inflammatory and accelerationist because you are attempting to satirize the weak arguments of so-called anti-facists.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - tatersolid 6y ago
    > The US narrowly avoided devolving into a permanent fascist state. This is a huge exaggeration. As looney as things got in early January, I am still certain the FBI or if necessary US military would have removed Trump from office if he refused to leave office or attempted to declare martial law. They are sworn to defend the constitution, not the sitting President. America is not truly defined by its right-or-left fringe elements, despite the clickbait you see on the web and in the 24/7 TV news cycle. 90% of Americans don’t spew vitriol on Twitter or hate the political opposition. Most people get along. But old-fashioned democracy, compromise and pragmatic centrism doesn’t get clicks or sell ads.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > If fascism is defined as the merger of corporation and state It's not. And it would be silly if it were, since corporations are exercises of state power ab initio; there is nothing separate to merge.
  - chroem- 6y ago
    Benito Mussolini, the inventor of fascism, described his ideology as the merger of corporate and state power. He occasionally referred to it as "corporatism."
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      Corporatism as a political ideal, and the sense of “corporate power” relevant to it, is a concept much older than fascism (and broader; most historical supporters of corporatism weren't anything like fascists) and not related to corporations except that the words descend from the latin word for body.
- hluska 6y ago
  In high school, I got involved in a Shadowrun campaign that dealt with these ideas. We were young but focused on the idea that corporations and politicians need to be better to avoid this kind of stuff. Parler didn’t run a particularly good service. Some of their technical decisions are baffling and/or painful. Consequently, it was easy to remove them view. Donald Trump made it way too easy to de-platform him. Hell, if he would have used his Twitter account to spread facts and science, it would have been much harder. But over the last six weeks, his account went from vaguely funny to deeply concerning.
babelfish 6y ago
Yeah, the only “free speech” Parler allows for that Facebook/Twitter don’t is racist bigotry + insurrectionist content, so I’m pretty much entirely on the side of “wipe them off the web”
- g6587yd 6y ago
  Is that content authentic, or is it made by good old provocateurs?
  - wtallis 6y ago
    I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say here. Are you intending to insinuate that much of the most objectionable content on Parler has been posted by users who are trying to get Parler in trouble with the end goal of reducing the amount of content of that nature that is online? Because that sounds like an overly-complex theory, and doesn't explain any content on Parler that was posted more than two weeks ago, when the idea of getting Parler off the Internet actually became plausible.
    - 1MachineElf 6y ago
      >Are you intending to insinuate that much of the most objectionable content on Parler has been posted by users who are trying to get Parler in trouble with the end goal of reducing the amount of content of that nature that is online? Correct The Record used this exact technique to get posts, pages, and groups banned across Facebook and Reddit during the 2016 election: https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-trolling-20160506-snap-htmlstory.html https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-troll... The campaign has been given credit by Sanders loyalists, however, for all manner of things that it has had nothing to do with, including posting pornography on pro-Sanders Facebook pages which resulted in them being temporarily taken down. (The pages went down as a result of a Facebook software glitch). This "glitch" dismissal given in the article is open to scrutiny when WikiLeaks showed us DKIM-verified messages indicating collaboration between Hillary campaign manager John Podesta and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg: http://www.departmentofmemes.com/news/wikileaks-proves-zuckerberg-lied-leaks-email-facebooks-coo-hillarys-staff/ http://www.departmentofmemes.com/news/wikileaks-proves-zucke...
CyberRabbi 6y ago
If you only allowed the speech you didn’t have a problem with, then you wouldn’t need the concept of free speech. On the other hand I hate all fascists too and they are violent terrorists so there is no point in pondering philosophy for their sake.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  > If you only allowed the speech you didn’t have a problem with, then you wouldn’t need the concept of free speech. Well that's exactly the question: Is free speech more societally useful than disallowing the kinds of speech I disagree with?
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    Yes free speech is useful but not for fascists and their allies. Fascist speech is never okay. The philosophers of the enlightenment didn’t foresee that freedom of speech would be exploited by racists for the purposes of promoting hate in a tolerant society. Freedom of speech is an outdated concept.
    - g6587yd 6y ago
      Freedom of speech is freedom.
- g6587yd 6y ago
  > X is fascist and terrorist Sounds like a good excuse the real fascists would use. Yesterday in that balcony there where a number of world-class terrorists and psychopats received with fanfares. One bombed Irak, the other bombed Lybia, the other bombed Syria, etc.
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    Maybe but at least they support democracy and they aren’t racist. Two party system isn’t ideal.
- wellthisisgreat 6y ago
lawnchair_larry 6y ago
My opinion is that you just described Twitter way more than you described Parler, but the narrative is dead set on convincing you otherwise.
g6587yd 6y ago
Not letting others speak IS fascism.
- gruez 6y ago
  Can I put up some "TRUMP LOST DEAL WITH IT"[1] signs on your front lawn? No? Then you're being a facist because you're not letting me speak. [1] or if you're on the other side of the ideological spectrum, a "ABORTION IS MURDER" sign with pictures of bloody fetuses.
  - g6587yd 6y ago
    Can't you? If not, then your laws suck.
    - gruez 6y ago
      I'm not talking about my lawn, I'm talking about your lawn.
- rodgerd 6y ago
  Give me money so I can quit my job and write full time. No? You fucking fascist. Rupert Murdoch won't put Chomsky on prime-time Fox News? Fucking fascist. Won't force Geology students to listen to flat earthers? Fucking fascist!
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Bear in mind that there was never anything on Parler that wasn't on Twitter or Facebook. Cory Doctorow: https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/09/the-old-crow-is-getting-slow/#deplatforming https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/09/the-old-crow-is-getting-s... > It's reasonable to say that Parler should use a mix of automated tools and human judgment to block unlawful speech and/or hate speech - but it's NOT the reason that Appl/Goog have removed it. Both companies have made it clear in their public communications that Parler must install an effective hate-speech filter to qualify for inclusion in their stores. > I hope we can all agree that "effective hate-speech filter" is a nonexistent technology, and that therefore none of the existing services whose apps appear in either app store have such a technology in place.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Sure, but, as I like to say, "defaults matter", and having to search long and hard to find the unpalatable content you want is much different than someone serving it to you on a plate.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Let's review what happened with Parler. It started off as a small irrelevant site, as they all do. Twitter and Facebook then started labeling content on their site with "fact check" labels. This is naturally fraught with scandal because doing this at scale involves a lot of mistake making and then you can find arbitrarily many examples of them authoritatively declaring something as false or "disputed" when it wasn't. There was a strong perception on the right that these tags were being attached to things on a partisan basis. A number of people didn't like this and started looking to alternatives, so Parler started gaining users. Then those jackasses stormed the capitol. Note that this was planned, openly, predominantly on Facebook. The response is Something Must Be Done, so there is a mass banning of accounts, including the then-President of the United States. Doing this was even more controversial, there were questions about whether all of them deserved it, and a lot of people -- the vast majority them people who hadn't been banned -- started moving to Parler in protest. They hit ten million users. This was now a moral panic because Parler is owned by right-leaning people instead of left-leaning people and the whole deplatforming system is based on the targets not having anywhere to go. So then regardless of who they really are, they now have to be demonized in order to justify their destruction, because they're getting too popular. Note that popularity and extremism are anti-correlated because extremists are by definition at the fringe, so the more people you have, the more diluted the extremists get. The logic was backwards if the real problem was what they claimed. But people find a list of malicious posts on Parler to paint the entire site as that. These exist everywhere so of course they found them. Made all the easier by the fact that they were undergoing rapid growth and at that specific moment in time their moderation system was overwhelmed. Also, point to moderation features designed to promote stability and exclude extremism by limiting what new users can do and claim that they do the opposite under the unproven assumption that the site is already dominated by extremists and the same features would then be excluding non-extremists. I'm sure 80% of Parler is crap, because 80% of everything is crap. But then how are we distinguishing it from Twitter? None of the evidence used to "prove" that they weren't moderating when they claimed to be couldn't be used to prove the same thing of their competitors. It's an isolated demand for rigor.
wellthisisgreat 6y ago
wouldn't something along the lines of categorical imperative work here? I.e. "if that speech became actions would you want those actions to be universally accepted [where you live]" or even just "applicable to everyone indiscriminately including you and your family"? In that case "line up the firing squads" "Pence goes first" is a clear-cut scenario. Parler absolutely endorsed and supported all that and how anyone can defend them at this point is frankly baffling. Unless all those people are ok taking Pence's place in front of the firing squads? Even if they are then it is not sustainable to have that as a universal law because at some point we will run out of people to make firing squads of (they will all be shot).
D13Fd 6y ago
Free speech means that the government cannot interfere with your speech (with certain exceptions). It's an essential right to any free democracy. But it absolutely does not mean that other people have to like you, listen to you, sell goods to you, or allow you to use their platform.
- gillytech 6y ago
  Except for when governments pressure private companies to do those things that they can't do directly. Pretty sure there's a law against that but I can't remember the name.
- beerandt 6y ago
  It also means government can't encourage or incentivize a unconstitutional action or violation on its behalf, which includes waiving private party liability. (Which is the real, misunderstood issue with Sec 230.) This includes arrangements with no formal or even informal agreement. Imagine a law waiving criminal and civil liability for lynch mobs, and then government claiming due process isn't violated because it isn't a "government" action, and due process doesn't apply to individuals.
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    My understanding is that section 230 doesn’t waive liability, it assigns liability to the content creator rather than publisher, and only for civil, not criminal cases. You believe this is unconstitutional? Is there discussion of this you can point me to?
    - D13Fd 6y ago
      It seems that some people's problem with § 230 is that it permits a publisher to filter content without also risking liability for the content. "Get rid of § 230" is a backwards way to solve the problem that they have. They don't actually want publishers to be liable for the content on their sites (which would, if anything, lead to greatly increased censorship and filtering). They want to STOP companies from censoring what the companies deem misinformation or otherwise offensive content. In other words, they want the law to be "if you control a channel for speech, you are not permitted to censor or filter out what you view as misinformation, incitements to violence, or otherwise offensive content." Again, this has no support in the free speech rights of the first amendment. In fact, it could be viewed as contrary to free speech, since the government would be forcing people and corporations to carry content on their websites that those people or corporations do not agree with and/or find offensive.
hluska 6y ago
The Capitol riots are an interesting example of this dichotomy. On one hand, the riots were planned on hate filled platforms. On the other, those same platforms seem to have been a treasure trove of evidence for prosecutors. It’s incredibly complicated and I have no idea what side I’m on now either. Hell, I don’t even know whether we can call this a win or a loss for free speech.
- wtallis 6y ago
  > On the other, those same platforms seem to have been a treasure trove of evidence for prosecutors. It should be pretty obvious that this is merely a mitigating factor, and could never outweigh the initial damage done.
  - hluska 6y ago
    History says that you’re likely correct. But I’m going to be optimistic and hope that genuine good comes out of all of this. If this shows US military/police that they have a problem with extremists in their ranks, it might turn out to be a very good thing for the country. Again, you’re likely right and I’m likely naive. It’s not like that’s a new thing and nobody has learned it in the last century...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hedora 6y ago
The thing with antifa (the “anti fascists”) is that their techniques are indistinguishable from fascism: If you say one thing out of line publicly, they hound you for the rest of your life. Like deplatforming, the goal is to deprive people of their right to speech. That’s fundamentally anti-democracy. Its sad that Antifa became the thing they hate; if the big internet providers follow suit, it’ll be a disaster.
- AshWolfy 6y ago
  I love when people say this, while on the left we are having debates about if we place too much of an emphasis on deradicalizing and rehabilitating the far right
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > The thing with antifa (the “anti fascists”) is that their techniques are indistinguishable from fascism: If you say one thing out of line publicly, they hound you for the rest of your life. I see no evidence of that being true in any substantive way. I’d be surprised if there aren't some people somewhere who fit that description and identify with the antifascist movement, which is a big, diverse, decentralized movement. But I don't see it happening in any significant degree. > Like deplatforming, the goal is to deprive people of their right to speech. No, it's to get other people to exercise their right to free speech to not amplify harmful voices.
  - hedora 6y ago
    Here’s a description of the history of Antifa from the Anti-Defamation League. Note that Antifa is an specific group of self-identifying people, not just everyone that’s against fascism. They have a flag. They’ve been around since the 80’s. Some are violent, some just harass. This is according to the anti-defamation league. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has also condemned Antifa in the past: https://www.adl.org/antifa https://www.adl.org/antifa The people you are describing probably are more closely aligned, ideologically with SPLC and ADL (unless they spend their evenings doxing neo-nazis, and shopping for equipment for their next violent counterprotest). I have been donating to and referring people to non-violent anti-fascist groups for years. That’s very different than supporting militant extremists. (Trump designated Antifa a terrorist organization, and I refuse to use that word to describe them.) > No, it’s to get other people to exercise their right to free speech to not amplify harmful voices. So, compelling speech is better than silencing people? Where will it end? Surely the criteria isn’t Republican vs. Democrat. Lets go with “supports violence” Violent far left militants definitely exist, and are “harmful”. Shall we silence them? The ADL and SPLC condemn them, but are also clearly sympathetic. Shall we silence them too? If not, perhaps we should stop them from supporting harmful protests. Antifa could use this map to physically attack lawful groups on the right: https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map Perhaps it should be taken down, at least? I donated money to help create the map. Should I be put on a list and prevented from getting a job?
gillytech 6y ago
Fascists crush dissent. Sensible people welcome it so it can be refuted in social discourse. Think about that for a minute.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Spoken like someone who's never had to argue with a right-winger, or someone who is one.
  - gillytech 6y ago
    From the community guidelines: > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Among other pertinent points.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      That was a reply to the argument.
      - gillytech 6y ago
        It sounds more like an ad hominem jab to me. Was there any response to the substance of my comment?
        StavrosK 6y ago
        Let me break it down for you: Welcoming dissent so it can be refuted does not work with far-right people, because they cannot be debated or convinced otherwise.
im3w1l 6y ago
People are saying that questioning an election result is instigating violence and even terrorism. If you ever want to question an election result in the future you should be worried sick.

chroem- 6y ago

If fascism is defined as the merger of corporation and state, does a dominant political party allying with major corporations to suppress a political opponent not ring alarm bells for fascism?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
CyberRabbi 6y ago
Fascism is when racism becomes state policy. Nearly always accompanied by a violent dictator. The US narrowly avoided devolving into a permanent fascist state. Now people who at least support human rights and democracy are in power.
- 1MachineElf 6y ago
  I sincerely wonder if your comments here are all inflammatory and accelerationist because you are attempting to satirize the weak arguments of so-called anti-facists.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tatersolid 6y ago
  > The US narrowly avoided devolving into a permanent fascist state. This is a huge exaggeration. As looney as things got in early January, I am still certain the FBI or if necessary US military would have removed Trump from office if he refused to leave office or attempted to declare martial law. They are sworn to defend the constitution, not the sitting President. America is not truly defined by its right-or-left fringe elements, despite the clickbait you see on the web and in the 24/7 TV news cycle. 90% of Americans don’t spew vitriol on Twitter or hate the political opposition. Most people get along. But old-fashioned democracy, compromise and pragmatic centrism doesn’t get clicks or sell ads.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> If fascism is defined as the merger of corporation and state It's not. And it would be silly if it were, since corporations are exercises of state power ab initio; there is nothing separate to merge.
- chroem- 6y ago
  Benito Mussolini, the inventor of fascism, described his ideology as the merger of corporate and state power. He occasionally referred to it as "corporatism."
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    Corporatism as a political ideal, and the sense of “corporate power” relevant to it, is a concept much older than fascism (and broader; most historical supporters of corporatism weren't anything like fascists) and not related to corporations except that the words descend from the latin word for body.
hluska 6y ago
In high school, I got involved in a Shadowrun campaign that dealt with these ideas. We were young but focused on the idea that corporations and politicians need to be better to avoid this kind of stuff. Parler didn’t run a particularly good service. Some of their technical decisions are baffling and/or painful. Consequently, it was easy to remove them view. Donald Trump made it way too easy to de-platform him. Hell, if he would have used his Twitter account to spread facts and science, it would have been much harder. But over the last six weeks, his account went from vaguely funny to deeply concerning.

babelfish 6y ago

Yeah, the only “free speech” Parler allows for that Facebook/Twitter don’t is racist bigotry + insurrectionist content, so I’m pretty much entirely on the side of “wipe them off the web”

g6587yd 6y ago
Is that content authentic, or is it made by good old provocateurs?
- wtallis 6y ago
  I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say here. Are you intending to insinuate that much of the most objectionable content on Parler has been posted by users who are trying to get Parler in trouble with the end goal of reducing the amount of content of that nature that is online? Because that sounds like an overly-complex theory, and doesn't explain any content on Parler that was posted more than two weeks ago, when the idea of getting Parler off the Internet actually became plausible.
  - 1MachineElf 6y ago
    >Are you intending to insinuate that much of the most objectionable content on Parler has been posted by users who are trying to get Parler in trouble with the end goal of reducing the amount of content of that nature that is online? Correct The Record used this exact technique to get posts, pages, and groups banned across Facebook and Reddit during the 2016 election: https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-trolling-20160506-snap-htmlstory.html https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-troll... The campaign has been given credit by Sanders loyalists, however, for all manner of things that it has had nothing to do with, including posting pornography on pro-Sanders Facebook pages which resulted in them being temporarily taken down. (The pages went down as a result of a Facebook software glitch). This "glitch" dismissal given in the article is open to scrutiny when WikiLeaks showed us DKIM-verified messages indicating collaboration between Hillary campaign manager John Podesta and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg: http://www.departmentofmemes.com/news/wikileaks-proves-zuckerberg-lied-leaks-email-facebooks-coo-hillarys-staff/ http://www.departmentofmemes.com/news/wikileaks-proves-zucke...

CyberRabbi 6y ago

If you only allowed the speech you didn’t have a problem with, then you wouldn’t need the concept of free speech. On the other hand I hate all fascists too and they are violent terrorists so there is no point in pondering philosophy for their sake.

StavrosK 6y ago
> If you only allowed the speech you didn’t have a problem with, then you wouldn’t need the concept of free speech. Well that's exactly the question: Is free speech more societally useful than disallowing the kinds of speech I disagree with?
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  Yes free speech is useful but not for fascists and their allies. Fascist speech is never okay. The philosophers of the enlightenment didn’t foresee that freedom of speech would be exploited by racists for the purposes of promoting hate in a tolerant society. Freedom of speech is an outdated concept.
  - g6587yd 6y ago
    Freedom of speech is freedom.
g6587yd 6y ago
> X is fascist and terrorist Sounds like a good excuse the real fascists would use. Yesterday in that balcony there where a number of world-class terrorists and psychopats received with fanfares. One bombed Irak, the other bombed Lybia, the other bombed Syria, etc.
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  Maybe but at least they support democracy and they aren’t racist. Two party system isn’t ideal.
wellthisisgreat 6y ago

lawnchair_larry 6y ago

My opinion is that you just described Twitter way more than you described Parler, but the narrative is dead set on convincing you otherwise.

g6587yd 6y ago

Not letting others speak IS fascism.

gruez 6y ago
Can I put up some "TRUMP LOST DEAL WITH IT"[1] signs on your front lawn? No? Then you're being a facist because you're not letting me speak. [1] or if you're on the other side of the ideological spectrum, a "ABORTION IS MURDER" sign with pictures of bloody fetuses.
- g6587yd 6y ago
  Can't you? If not, then your laws suck.
  - gruez 6y ago
    I'm not talking about my lawn, I'm talking about your lawn.
rodgerd 6y ago
Give me money so I can quit my job and write full time. No? You fucking fascist. Rupert Murdoch won't put Chomsky on prime-time Fox News? Fucking fascist. Won't force Geology students to listen to flat earthers? Fucking fascist!

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

Bear in mind that there was never anything on Parler that wasn't on Twitter or Facebook. Cory Doctorow: https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/09/the-old-crow-is-getting-slow/#deplatforming https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/09/the-old-crow-is-getting-s... > It's reasonable to say that Parler should use a mix of automated tools and human judgment to block unlawful speech and/or hate speech - but it's NOT the reason that Appl/Goog have removed it. Both companies have made it clear in their public communications that Parler must install an effective hate-speech filter to qualify for inclusion in their stores. > I hope we can all agree that "effective hate-speech filter" is a nonexistent technology, and that therefore none of the existing services whose apps appear in either app store have such a technology in place.

StavrosK 6y ago
Sure, but, as I like to say, "defaults matter", and having to search long and hard to find the unpalatable content you want is much different than someone serving it to you on a plate.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Let's review what happened with Parler. It started off as a small irrelevant site, as they all do. Twitter and Facebook then started labeling content on their site with "fact check" labels. This is naturally fraught with scandal because doing this at scale involves a lot of mistake making and then you can find arbitrarily many examples of them authoritatively declaring something as false or "disputed" when it wasn't. There was a strong perception on the right that these tags were being attached to things on a partisan basis. A number of people didn't like this and started looking to alternatives, so Parler started gaining users. Then those jackasses stormed the capitol. Note that this was planned, openly, predominantly on Facebook. The response is Something Must Be Done, so there is a mass banning of accounts, including the then-President of the United States. Doing this was even more controversial, there were questions about whether all of them deserved it, and a lot of people -- the vast majority them people who hadn't been banned -- started moving to Parler in protest. They hit ten million users. This was now a moral panic because Parler is owned by right-leaning people instead of left-leaning people and the whole deplatforming system is based on the targets not having anywhere to go. So then regardless of who they really are, they now have to be demonized in order to justify their destruction, because they're getting too popular. Note that popularity and extremism are anti-correlated because extremists are by definition at the fringe, so the more people you have, the more diluted the extremists get. The logic was backwards if the real problem was what they claimed. But people find a list of malicious posts on Parler to paint the entire site as that. These exist everywhere so of course they found them. Made all the easier by the fact that they were undergoing rapid growth and at that specific moment in time their moderation system was overwhelmed. Also, point to moderation features designed to promote stability and exclude extremism by limiting what new users can do and claim that they do the opposite under the unproven assumption that the site is already dominated by extremists and the same features would then be excluding non-extremists. I'm sure 80% of Parler is crap, because 80% of everything is crap. But then how are we distinguishing it from Twitter? None of the evidence used to "prove" that they weren't moderating when they claimed to be couldn't be used to prove the same thing of their competitors. It's an isolated demand for rigor.

wellthisisgreat 6y ago

wouldn't something along the lines of categorical imperative work here? I.e. "if that speech became actions would you want those actions to be universally accepted [where you live]" or even just "applicable to everyone indiscriminately including you and your family"? In that case "line up the firing squads" "Pence goes first" is a clear-cut scenario. Parler absolutely endorsed and supported all that and how anyone can defend them at this point is frankly baffling. Unless all those people are ok taking Pence's place in front of the firing squads? Even if they are then it is not sustainable to have that as a universal law because at some point we will run out of people to make firing squads of (they will all be shot).

D13Fd 6y ago

Free speech means that the government cannot interfere with your speech (with certain exceptions). It's an essential right to any free democracy. But it absolutely does not mean that other people have to like you, listen to you, sell goods to you, or allow you to use their platform.

gillytech 6y ago
Except for when governments pressure private companies to do those things that they can't do directly. Pretty sure there's a law against that but I can't remember the name.
beerandt 6y ago
It also means government can't encourage or incentivize a unconstitutional action or violation on its behalf, which includes waiving private party liability. (Which is the real, misunderstood issue with Sec 230.) This includes arrangements with no formal or even informal agreement. Imagine a law waiving criminal and civil liability for lynch mobs, and then government claiming due process isn't violated because it isn't a "government" action, and due process doesn't apply to individuals.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  My understanding is that section 230 doesn’t waive liability, it assigns liability to the content creator rather than publisher, and only for civil, not criminal cases. You believe this is unconstitutional? Is there discussion of this you can point me to?
  - D13Fd 6y ago
    It seems that some people's problem with § 230 is that it permits a publisher to filter content without also risking liability for the content. "Get rid of § 230" is a backwards way to solve the problem that they have. They don't actually want publishers to be liable for the content on their sites (which would, if anything, lead to greatly increased censorship and filtering). They want to STOP companies from censoring what the companies deem misinformation or otherwise offensive content. In other words, they want the law to be "if you control a channel for speech, you are not permitted to censor or filter out what you view as misinformation, incitements to violence, or otherwise offensive content." Again, this has no support in the free speech rights of the first amendment. In fact, it could be viewed as contrary to free speech, since the government would be forcing people and corporations to carry content on their websites that those people or corporations do not agree with and/or find offensive.

hluska 6y ago

The Capitol riots are an interesting example of this dichotomy. On one hand, the riots were planned on hate filled platforms. On the other, those same platforms seem to have been a treasure trove of evidence for prosecutors. It’s incredibly complicated and I have no idea what side I’m on now either. Hell, I don’t even know whether we can call this a win or a loss for free speech.

wtallis 6y ago
> On the other, those same platforms seem to have been a treasure trove of evidence for prosecutors. It should be pretty obvious that this is merely a mitigating factor, and could never outweigh the initial damage done.
- hluska 6y ago
  History says that you’re likely correct. But I’m going to be optimistic and hope that genuine good comes out of all of this. If this shows US military/police that they have a problem with extremists in their ranks, it might turn out to be a very good thing for the country. Again, you’re likely right and I’m likely naive. It’s not like that’s a new thing and nobody has learned it in the last century...

deleted 6y ago

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hedora 6y ago

The thing with antifa (the “anti fascists”) is that their techniques are indistinguishable from fascism: If you say one thing out of line publicly, they hound you for the rest of your life. Like deplatforming, the goal is to deprive people of their right to speech. That’s fundamentally anti-democracy. Its sad that Antifa became the thing they hate; if the big internet providers follow suit, it’ll be a disaster.

AshWolfy 6y ago
I love when people say this, while on the left we are having debates about if we place too much of an emphasis on deradicalizing and rehabilitating the far right
dragonwriter 6y ago
> The thing with antifa (the “anti fascists”) is that their techniques are indistinguishable from fascism: If you say one thing out of line publicly, they hound you for the rest of your life. I see no evidence of that being true in any substantive way. I’d be surprised if there aren't some people somewhere who fit that description and identify with the antifascist movement, which is a big, diverse, decentralized movement. But I don't see it happening in any significant degree. > Like deplatforming, the goal is to deprive people of their right to speech. No, it's to get other people to exercise their right to free speech to not amplify harmful voices.
- hedora 6y ago
  Here’s a description of the history of Antifa from the Anti-Defamation League. Note that Antifa is an specific group of self-identifying people, not just everyone that’s against fascism. They have a flag. They’ve been around since the 80’s. Some are violent, some just harass. This is according to the anti-defamation league. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has also condemned Antifa in the past: https://www.adl.org/antifa https://www.adl.org/antifa The people you are describing probably are more closely aligned, ideologically with SPLC and ADL (unless they spend their evenings doxing neo-nazis, and shopping for equipment for their next violent counterprotest). I have been donating to and referring people to non-violent anti-fascist groups for years. That’s very different than supporting militant extremists. (Trump designated Antifa a terrorist organization, and I refuse to use that word to describe them.) > No, it’s to get other people to exercise their right to free speech to not amplify harmful voices. So, compelling speech is better than silencing people? Where will it end? Surely the criteria isn’t Republican vs. Democrat. Lets go with “supports violence” Violent far left militants definitely exist, and are “harmful”. Shall we silence them? The ADL and SPLC condemn them, but are also clearly sympathetic. Shall we silence them too? If not, perhaps we should stop them from supporting harmful protests. Antifa could use this map to physically attack lawful groups on the right: https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map Perhaps it should be taken down, at least? I donated money to help create the map. Should I be put on a list and prevented from getting a job?

gillytech 6y ago

Fascists crush dissent. Sensible people welcome it so it can be refuted in social discourse. Think about that for a minute.

StavrosK 6y ago
Spoken like someone who's never had to argue with a right-winger, or someone who is one.
- gillytech 6y ago
  From the community guidelines: > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Among other pertinent points.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    That was a reply to the argument.
    - gillytech 6y ago
      It sounds more like an ad hominem jab to me. Was there any response to the substance of my comment?
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        Let me break it down for you: Welcoming dissent so it can be refuted does not work with far-right people, because they cannot be debated or convinced otherwise.

im3w1l 6y ago

People are saying that questioning an election result is instigating violence and even terrorism. If you ever want to question an election result in the future you should be worried sick.