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> It’s incredible that supporting free speech is considered to be only important enough to the “far right” now to be worth marketing to. > Free speech used to

> It’s incredible that supporting free speech is considered to be only important enough to the “far right” now to be worth marketing to. > Free speech used to be something all Americans supported and defended. It's not that most Americans don't care about free speech. It's that most Americans understand that constitutional free speech means the government can't infringe on your speech, except in limited circumstances (like extortion, inciting violence, inciting panic, divulging classified material, etc). The reason companies like Gab and Parler market 'free speech' to the far right, is because the far right often engages in trolling, harassment, incitement to violence, disinformation, and bigotry in social media. As such, they run into the moderation policies of those platforms and at some point start running into bans. Not to say other parts of the political spectrum don't run into moderation and bans too, but it's a bigger problem right now for the far right. There's a debate to be had about the power social media giants have over public discourse and whether internet service providers should be able to blacklist companies like they did to Parler. But that still doesn't fall under the umbrella of constitutional free speech. Businesses usually have wide latitude to refuse service to customers, particularly for toxic behavior.

naniwaduni 6y ago
Before taking "constitutional" free speech for a concept, we have to understand that free speech is a prescriptive social norm. It happens to have a constitutional instantiation. That instantiation happens to be expressed as a restriction on the government's chartered power; this is an artifact of the process by which it was drafted, i.e. as part of a collection of proposed restraints on the powers federal government. No reasonable person should confuse the very limited constitutional guarantee given to free speech with the norm itself.
- enraged_camel 6y ago
  "Free speech" has never, ever meant "say whatever you want without any consequences whatsoever." That's what conservatives seem to be demanding these days. And when they don't get it, they whine about "cancel culture."
- GVIrish 6y ago
  Is it really a social norm though? Before social media were people angry that publications chose to selectively print letters to the editor? Or that a business could kick you out for being verbally abusive? Or that if you wrote a nasty gram to your superiors that you could be fired? It's only now that social media has come along and has democratized publication of text, images, and video that free speech as it relates to private businesses is becoming an issue. Maybe in the future a majority of people will decide that social media is the proverbial public square and change the law to reflect that. But the prevailing paradigm to this point has been that a company has a right (and some responsibilities) to make rules about what people post on their platform.
  - naniwaduni 6y ago
    There are at least three fairly distinct ideas being conflated, I think: - Was the "free speech" norm ever widely followed? This is the one I think you're objecting to, and indeed society as a whole has never exactly been accepting of all speech. On the other hand, there are plenty of social norms that people generally believe in but frequently don't quite live up to, like presumption of innocence, or "honour your father and your mother". I don't really think this criterion invalidates conduct prescriptions as social norms. - Was the "free speech" ideal ever widely accepted? This one seems kind of tricky if you just look at the current state of affairs, but then if you look just a few years back at the way people danced around the "hate speech dilemma" even up through 2016, I think it's pretty clear that people generally did, or at least expected others to, accept free speech as an ideal. - What kind of social obligation is the "free speech" rule conceived as? And this is one I wanted to make a point on, specifically that the constitutional instantiation of it is not primary. It is not the understanding that, given that the constitutional guarantee exists, there is only a restriction on Congress and e.g. everything is all peachy with a president instructing the IRS to engage in punitive auditing against Vietnam War dissidents. It is dangerously disingenuous to frame the constitutional protection on freedom of speech as the full extent of Americans' understanding of free speech.
- xenadu02 6y ago
  Free speech as a "prescriptive social norm" has never been unlimited or free of consequences though. Discourse within the "acceptable" range has been true free speech certainly, but step outside those boundaries and throughout US history there have been serious repercussions. Common law courts have long recognized that if you walk up to someone on the street and scream obscenities at them you have no recourse when you get punched in the face - the concept of "fighting words". Even today no one bats an eye when a restaurant doesn't allow a patron to dine there when they don't meet the restaurant's arbitrary dress code or if the patron has an "offensive" t-shirt slogan. Various forms of ostracism have been used against people speaking out against what is acceptable since human society has existed. State Governments have punished speech they don't as well. For example in the South pre-Civil War many southern states made it illegal to publish anti-slavery books, newspaper articles, and speeches. You could literally be arrested for speaking against slavery in any form. I think the actual social norm you're talking about is acceptance of conservative political discourse and opinion. Certain kinds of political discourse have been verboten in the US (eg people were fired and blacklisted for communism) so that's not new as a concept, but this is the first time in US history there is strong pushback against conservatism. To some degree I see this social pressure as being weaponized because so much of the US is gerrymandered and tiled in the favor of conservatives*. Despite being a minority party Republicans control a majority of state legislatures. CA gets two senators. A group of 11 rural conservative states representing the same population gets 22 senators. When a rump party that represents a strict minority of the population gets to continuously impose its will, change voting rules, pack the Supreme Court, and so forth are you truly surprised when a lot of people get angry? When some people are no longer willing to be polite about politics? When the normal relief valve - elections having consequences - gets subverted for decades that pressure must find relief somewhere. The pressure is even more intense now that the major conservative party in the US is openly embracing nationalism and at least some are openly advocating for ending democracy: whether you agree with it or not the Republican party has declared war on the majority of the US population. Some people are going to see that as an existential threat and respond accordingly. * I know the pedants will want to divert discussion to how the US is arranged into separate states deliberately, federalism, etc. I am well aware of those arguments, there is no need to re-hash them. Much like calling universal healthcare and worker protections "socialism", or trying to fine/punish people and take down their video clips due to "copyright claims" all you are doing is teaching the upcoming generations that socialism is better at solving problems, copyright should be abolished, and federalism sucks. Proceed at your own peril.

naniwaduni 6y ago

Before taking "constitutional" free speech for a concept, we have to understand that free speech is a prescriptive social norm. It happens to have a constitutional instantiation. That instantiation happens to be expressed as a restriction on the government's chartered power; this is an artifact of the process by which it was drafted, i.e. as part of a collection of proposed restraints on the powers federal government. No reasonable person should confuse the very limited constitutional guarantee given to free speech with the norm itself.

enraged_camel 6y ago
"Free speech" has never, ever meant "say whatever you want without any consequences whatsoever." That's what conservatives seem to be demanding these days. And when they don't get it, they whine about "cancel culture."
GVIrish 6y ago
Is it really a social norm though? Before social media were people angry that publications chose to selectively print letters to the editor? Or that a business could kick you out for being verbally abusive? Or that if you wrote a nasty gram to your superiors that you could be fired? It's only now that social media has come along and has democratized publication of text, images, and video that free speech as it relates to private businesses is becoming an issue. Maybe in the future a majority of people will decide that social media is the proverbial public square and change the law to reflect that. But the prevailing paradigm to this point has been that a company has a right (and some responsibilities) to make rules about what people post on their platform.
- naniwaduni 6y ago
  There are at least three fairly distinct ideas being conflated, I think: - Was the "free speech" norm ever widely followed? This is the one I think you're objecting to, and indeed society as a whole has never exactly been accepting of all speech. On the other hand, there are plenty of social norms that people generally believe in but frequently don't quite live up to, like presumption of innocence, or "honour your father and your mother". I don't really think this criterion invalidates conduct prescriptions as social norms. - Was the "free speech" ideal ever widely accepted? This one seems kind of tricky if you just look at the current state of affairs, but then if you look just a few years back at the way people danced around the "hate speech dilemma" even up through 2016, I think it's pretty clear that people generally did, or at least expected others to, accept free speech as an ideal. - What kind of social obligation is the "free speech" rule conceived as? And this is one I wanted to make a point on, specifically that the constitutional instantiation of it is not primary. It is not the understanding that, given that the constitutional guarantee exists, there is only a restriction on Congress and e.g. everything is all peachy with a president instructing the IRS to engage in punitive auditing against Vietnam War dissidents. It is dangerously disingenuous to frame the constitutional protection on freedom of speech as the full extent of Americans' understanding of free speech.
xenadu02 6y ago
Free speech as a "prescriptive social norm" has never been unlimited or free of consequences though. Discourse within the "acceptable" range has been true free speech certainly, but step outside those boundaries and throughout US history there have been serious repercussions. Common law courts have long recognized that if you walk up to someone on the street and scream obscenities at them you have no recourse when you get punched in the face - the concept of "fighting words". Even today no one bats an eye when a restaurant doesn't allow a patron to dine there when they don't meet the restaurant's arbitrary dress code or if the patron has an "offensive" t-shirt slogan. Various forms of ostracism have been used against people speaking out against what is acceptable since human society has existed. State Governments have punished speech they don't as well. For example in the South pre-Civil War many southern states made it illegal to publish anti-slavery books, newspaper articles, and speeches. You could literally be arrested for speaking against slavery in any form. I think the actual social norm you're talking about is acceptance of conservative political discourse and opinion. Certain kinds of political discourse have been verboten in the US (eg people were fired and blacklisted for communism) so that's not new as a concept, but this is the first time in US history there is strong pushback against conservatism. To some degree I see this social pressure as being weaponized because so much of the US is gerrymandered and tiled in the favor of conservatives*. Despite being a minority party Republicans control a majority of state legislatures. CA gets two senators. A group of 11 rural conservative states representing the same population gets 22 senators. When a rump party that represents a strict minority of the population gets to continuously impose its will, change voting rules, pack the Supreme Court, and so forth are you truly surprised when a lot of people get angry? When some people are no longer willing to be polite about politics? When the normal relief valve - elections having consequences - gets subverted for decades that pressure must find relief somewhere. The pressure is even more intense now that the major conservative party in the US is openly embracing nationalism and at least some are openly advocating for ending democracy: whether you agree with it or not the Republican party has declared war on the majority of the US population. Some people are going to see that as an existential threat and respond accordingly. * I know the pedants will want to divert discussion to how the US is arranged into separate states deliberately, federalism, etc. I am well aware of those arguments, there is no need to re-hash them. Much like calling universal healthcare and worker protections "socialism", or trying to fine/punish people and take down their video clips due to "copyright claims" all you are doing is teaching the upcoming generations that socialism is better at solving problems, copyright should be abolished, and federalism sucks. Proceed at your own peril.