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Free speech is table stakes for a free society. Those claiming otherwise are playing with fire.
by slowmovintarget 5y ago
Free speech is table stakes for a free society. Those claiming otherwise are playing with fire.
- jacobsenscott 5y agoThere has never been a society where this is true. Certainly where I live, in the US, free speech is code for "white men are allowed to say whatever they want" while the speech of other groups can be violently repressed without consequence.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dmitrygr 5y agoIF you are right, that just means we need MORE free speech for those who don't have it, NOT less for those who do!
- yhoneycomb 5y agoIronic that there are so many deleted comments on a post about free speech
- Applejinx 5y agoNot at all: functionally, there's a meta-gaming thing that goes on where 'free speech' is treated as sort of antifa Kryptonite. It's not being argued in good faith at all. It's a tactic. You'll find that the same people making a big noise about 'free speech' will do everything they possibly can to suppress and conceal the speech of those who are calling 'em out for arguing in bad faith… because they are arguing in bad faith, because they have absolutely no intention of furthering free speech. It is purely a tactic.
- akarma 5y agoIf you're conspiratorial about everybody who supports free speech not really supporting free speech, and instead just saying it in bad faith(?), you're going to have a tough time with meaningful debate and enjoying HN. One of the core tenets is a belief in the principle of charity — assume the strongest interpretation of the commenter's argument, not the weakest.
- Applejinx 5y agoOh, this doesn't happen at all times on all subjects. There are a few more or less Nazi-adjacent topics where it's gonna happen. Could be worse, on Reddit it happens in a coordinated fashion, here it's a bit more organic. You are invoking exploitable core tenets. If one is arguing in bad faith the FIRST thing you'll do is invoke free speech, invoke the principle of charity, call for the strongest possible interpretation and insist that good faith MUST be assumed. For instance: I neither said nor meant that 'everybody' who supports free speech was doing this. That's half the trouble: it's protective coloration among people who are acting in earnest. I'm stating unequivocally that SOME folks in this camp are acting in bad faith: not just hypocrisy, but pursuing calculated behaviors akin to people coaching their peers to 'not reveal their power level' so as to better influence the communities they're operating on. I don't know how many of 'em there are, but I find it a catastrophic failure of a community's intentions to assume charity. It's nothing more than an exploit, and there are some topics, political topics, that bring this out.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y agoWhile there is a component of free speech advocates who are doing so because of partisan interests, there is another component who are sincere. (The way to tell is to ask whether they would accept censorship of their ideological foes.) > where 'free speech' is treated as sort of antifa Kryptonite I'm a bit confused by this. Whether or not free speech is repelent/harmful to antifa isn't an argument against free speech. If free speech harms a movement, then so be it. If it allows a movement to prosper, then so be it. On the object level, I've seen a lot of allegations that antifa attack people who film them (and one of their movement sucker punched a journalist on air.) This gave me the impression that antifa is at least as interested in controlling speech as their opposition.
- eli_gottlieb 5y ago>To which David Cole, the national legal director of the A.C.L.U., rejoined in an interview: “Everything that Black Lives Matter does is possible because of the First Amendment.”
- ttt0 5y agoOnly if "allowed to say whatever they want" is code for "fired" and "violently repressed" is code for "promoted by corporations and media". I've gotta say, very interesting perspective nonetheless.
- TrispusAttucks 5y agoYet here you are. Using your free speech to spread your anti-white message. Your voice is very repressed indeed. Shame you can't just say what you really want.
- tpmx 5y agoWell, now it's flagged so much that it actually is removed. I can only read "[flagged]". I really dislike this particular HN design decision. Reddit handles this case much better.
- ttt0 5y agoYou can show dead or flagged posts by turning on showdead in settings.
- tpmx 5y agoWow. It actually works, too. Makes me think of the "Beware of the Leopard" Douglas Adams quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on-display-on-display-i-eventually https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on... Still, it's removed for the vast majority of readers, by design. That's how defaults work, particularly when the settings page is so vague.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- briandear 5y agoExcept that isn’t true. The only people being violently repressed at the moment are Capitol protestors who have been held in solitary confinement for months without even being charged. And many of them are white.
- dv_dt 5y agoI think many a BLM protester was violently repressed even as most of the were peaceful and well within excercise their free speech rights. For both the 1/6 protesters and BLM protesters there were some subgroup that destroyed property and exceeded what many would consider reasonable speech boundaries - but that is something where it make take some time to fully understand how it plays out individually in legal cases.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- digianarchist 5y agoMost societies function perfectly fine without a constitutional protection for speech. In fact a few countries rank better than the United States on press freedom without it.
- slowmovintarget 5y agoThat's the "trains run on time" argument, though.
- tolbish 5y agoIn terms of countries, what are some examples of free societies that fully embrace free speech?
- barry-cotter 5y agoThis isn’t an argument about how good political scientists think journalists have it. The dispute is about free speech rights. For the people, plebeians of no special importance, not a priestly class with graduate degrees who have been anointed journalists by getting their Masters from the right J school, or getting an Ivy League degree.
- SahAssar 5y agoSo what would you choose as a measurement of how free speech is in a country? Usually the press is chosen since it's job in a functioning free country is to scrutinize the state and other powers. So if the press is free and it is free to distribute it's voice unimpeded by corporate or state influence then it is considered a more free state.
- mnouquet 5y agoThe 1st Amendment is a hell of a lot more than freedom of the press.
- pochamago 5y agoThe press freedom index places Burkina Faso, a country that bans journalists from visiting displacement camps, higher than the US, so I'm a little skeptical of its findings
- hayst4ck 5y agoLet's substitute into your sentence, a statement I feel is equivalent (please let me know if you think it's an unfair characterization): "Any government regulation of speech or published material is destructive to free society." Hopefully you immediately think of exceptions: illicit pornography, fire in a theater, ingredient labels/active ingredient listings, directly false marketing, misrepresenting contracts, direct physical threats/"fighting words," convincing someone to commit suicide, intellectual property related speech, advertisements to kids, speech in the military, speech under NDA's, security clearance related information, publicly accusing someone of a crime they didn't commit. Maybe you might think speech is different whether it's from a citizen or non citizen. Maybe it's different from a corporation and a person. Maybe it's different if speech is done in good faith (because a person honestly believes their words) or bad faith (because someone wants to manipulate somebody). Maybe the mode of speech matters, whether it's internet, radio, spoken word, telephone, or otherwise. Referring to free speech in indirect terms creates a problem, because it denies the grey. Free speech arguments are all about determining the correct gradient of grey for society. Being able to identify and understand grey area is a strong signal of being informed. The grey area is why people who are knowledgeable are unsure and people who know nothing are confident. One sees complexities, the other is blind to them. Every person on the planet being able to publish a message that can be read by every human (twitter) is something the human race has never had to face before. Facebook can choose to promote hateful speech with algorithms and incite hatred through doing so, gaining them engagement (addiction) in the process. Is that healthy for society? Is fox news healthy? On the other side is CNN (fake news?) healthy? Should China/Russia be able to purchase American airtime? Should American celebrities and businesses be protected from having their speech coerced by foreign powers? Reasonable people can come to different conclusions on what it means for speech to be "free", what counts as speech, what context around the speech matters, and what entities should get "free speech" protection.
- oogabooga123 5y ago> Reasonable people can come to different conclusions on what it means for speech to be "free", what counts as speech, what context around the speech matters, and what entities should get "free speech" protection. This is why it is encoded as an absolute, so that one’s perspective on what is reasonable or not is irrelevant. If speech causes harm that person can be sued for harm in a civil case. But the government shall not make any law infringing on the right to free speech.
- tenebrisalietum 5y agoDevil's Advocate: If I could trade quality UBI for some restrictions on speech I'd probably take the deal. The ability to tell a bad employer to go fuck himself/herself without the threat of homelessness, decent healthcare without bankruptcy, or a guarantee of affordable housing, is worth far more to me than the ability to spew racist or conspiratorial crap on forums, for example.
- lr4444lr 5y agoUsually the trade off is criticizing the agency of your UBI, not the person being taxed for it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- devman0 5y agoTrue, but there is also the Paradox of Tolerance to contend with where defending certain types of free speech may be undermining support for other civil liberties. I honestly think this rift is just the organization trying to figure out which side of the paradox of tolerance they are on and I don't think there is a single correct answer to it.
- alfl 5y agoThe "Paradox of Tolerance" is an example of the slippery slope fallacy.
- missedthecue 5y agoThe slippery slope isn't a fallacy. It's another term for Overton Window. In other words, if the baseline of what is societally acceptable is moved, things that were previously considered extreme are more likely to be seriously considered.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoParadoxical, isn't it?
- Qwertious 5y agoNonsense.