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I have never downvoted anyone on HN; whatever miniscule benefit there may be to having a downvote feature is more than offset by the chilling effect and perceiv

I have never downvoted anyone on HN; whatever miniscule benefit there may be to having a downvote feature is more than offset by the chilling effect and perceived nastiness. We are beginning to see that all these years we thought it was our constitutional right to free speech that was the major thing. Yes, it would be and will be if the government takes a turn for the worst, but really what we're seeing in the US is an erosion in the ethos of free speech, an attitude that in our society you are welcome to say something that I heartily disagree with.

StevenRayOrr 5y ago
> We are beginning to see that all these years we thought it was our constitutional right to free speech that was the major thing. Yes, it would be and will be if the government takes a turn for the worst, but really what we're seeing in the US is an erosion in the ethos of free speech, an attitude that in our society you are welcome to say something that I heartily disagree with. When did American society have an 'ethos' of free speech (let alone an ethos of universal free speech)?
- pmdulaney 5y ago
  The '70's, '80's? Of course this is a matter of opinion, and yours is different from mine. Would you at least agree that there is less of a free speech ethos than there was 10 years ago? If not, it may just be an issue of whose ox is being gored, if you follow me.
carapace 5y ago
> an attitude that in our society you are welcome to say something that I heartily disagree with. That's not the ethos of free speech, the ethos is the recognition that we don't have the right to silence the other fellow. You've got to keep in mind the context of the formation of the country and the writing of the Constitution: we had just ditched the King, eh? (And by "we" I mean the wealthy land-owning (and in some cases slave-owning!) ex-Englishmen who were in the room at the time.) We decided that we didn't have the right to abridge the freedom of speech of each other. So it's not that we welcome speech we disagree with, (e.g. see the reception of Abolition or Women's Suffrage), it's that we mustn't use the force of law to silence those we disagree with. These days, with the rise of social media, people are communicating en mass with each other over systems that are privately owned and built in such a way that the owners feel the need to moderate and even censor some speech. That puts us in a weird situation, one that didn't tend to apply to ostensibly private communication (mail, phones). (But radio and TV and movies have always been moderated (George Carlin - "Seven Words You Can't Say On TV" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyBH5oNQOS0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyBH5oNQOS0 ). Heck, comic books used to be moderated!)
- pmdulaney 5y ago
  > So it's not that we welcome speech we disagree with, (e.g. see the reception of Abolition or Women's Suffrage), it's that we mustn't use the force of law to silence those we disagree with. We mustn't use the force of law to silence those we disagree with? Is that all? If we didn't in our heart of hearts welcome speech we disagreed with, I think we at least acted as though we did. In my view the idea that freedom of speech just means that we can't or won't prosecute you for what you say is a sad declension from how Americans at their best thought about free speech. I won't prosecute you, but I will rile up my friends online and get you fired for what you said? That is the very attitude that I think violates the historic ethos of free speech in America.
  - carapace 5y ago
    > We mustn't use the force of law to silence those we disagree with? Is that all? Isn't that enough? (Not to get ahead of myself, but no, I don't think it is anymore.) > If we didn't in our heart of hearts welcome speech we disagreed with, I think we at least acted as though we did. It was Voltaire who said, "I wholly disapprove of what you say — and will defend to the death your right to say it." (Actually it was Evelyn Beatrice Hall writing as S. G. Tallentyre who put those words in Mssr. François-Marie Arouet's mouth. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/ What a world!) But I feel it's not really how most people have behaved in practice over the years (or else why would that right need to be enshrined in the Constitution, eh?) > ...I will rile up my friends online and get you fired for what you said? As I alluded to above, it seems to me that the rise of online speech and social media puts us into a strange new world. I find twitter hate mobs and the ilk frankly terrifying. It used to be pretty difficult to get "forbidden" knowledge or opinions in front of a massive crowd. Mass media has pretty much been effectively moderated and even censored from early times. (Movies, Radio, and TV all had their gatekeepers.) Nowadays if you do something stupid or reprehensible (e.g. Lisa Alexander or Amy Cooper) it can rebound on you magnified a million times in a matter of hours. Is that a violation of the ethos of free speech?
    - pmdulaney 5y ago

StevenRayOrr 5y ago

> We are beginning to see that all these years we thought it was our constitutional right to free speech that was the major thing. Yes, it would be and will be if the government takes a turn for the worst, but really what we're seeing in the US is an erosion in the ethos of free speech, an attitude that in our society you are welcome to say something that I heartily disagree with. When did American society have an 'ethos' of free speech (let alone an ethos of universal free speech)?

pmdulaney 5y ago
The '70's, '80's? Of course this is a matter of opinion, and yours is different from mine. Would you at least agree that there is less of a free speech ethos than there was 10 years ago? If not, it may just be an issue of whose ox is being gored, if you follow me.

carapace 5y ago

> an attitude that in our society you are welcome to say something that I heartily disagree with. That's not the ethos of free speech, the ethos is the recognition that we don't have the right to silence the other fellow. You've got to keep in mind the context of the formation of the country and the writing of the Constitution: we had just ditched the King, eh? (And by "we" I mean the wealthy land-owning (and in some cases slave-owning!) ex-Englishmen who were in the room at the time.) We decided that we didn't have the right to abridge the freedom of speech of each other. So it's not that we welcome speech we disagree with, (e.g. see the reception of Abolition or Women's Suffrage), it's that we mustn't use the force of law to silence those we disagree with. These days, with the rise of social media, people are communicating en mass with each other over systems that are privately owned and built in such a way that the owners feel the need to moderate and even censor some speech. That puts us in a weird situation, one that didn't tend to apply to ostensibly private communication (mail, phones). (But radio and TV and movies have always been moderated (George Carlin - "Seven Words You Can't Say On TV" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyBH5oNQOS0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyBH5oNQOS0 ). Heck, comic books used to be moderated!)

pmdulaney 5y ago
> So it's not that we welcome speech we disagree with, (e.g. see the reception of Abolition or Women's Suffrage), it's that we mustn't use the force of law to silence those we disagree with. We mustn't use the force of law to silence those we disagree with? Is that all? If we didn't in our heart of hearts welcome speech we disagreed with, I think we at least acted as though we did. In my view the idea that freedom of speech just means that we can't or won't prosecute you for what you say is a sad declension from how Americans at their best thought about free speech. I won't prosecute you, but I will rile up my friends online and get you fired for what you said? That is the very attitude that I think violates the historic ethos of free speech in America.
- carapace 5y ago
  > We mustn't use the force of law to silence those we disagree with? Is that all? Isn't that enough? (Not to get ahead of myself, but no, I don't think it is anymore.) > If we didn't in our heart of hearts welcome speech we disagreed with, I think we at least acted as though we did. It was Voltaire who said, "I wholly disapprove of what you say — and will defend to the death your right to say it." (Actually it was Evelyn Beatrice Hall writing as S. G. Tallentyre who put those words in Mssr. François-Marie Arouet's mouth. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/ What a world!) But I feel it's not really how most people have behaved in practice over the years (or else why would that right need to be enshrined in the Constitution, eh?) > ...I will rile up my friends online and get you fired for what you said? As I alluded to above, it seems to me that the rise of online speech and social media puts us into a strange new world. I find twitter hate mobs and the ilk frankly terrifying. It used to be pretty difficult to get "forbidden" knowledge or opinions in front of a massive crowd. Mass media has pretty much been effectively moderated and even censored from early times. (Movies, Radio, and TV all had their gatekeepers.) Nowadays if you do something stupid or reprehensible (e.g. Lisa Alexander or Amy Cooper) it can rebound on you magnified a million times in a matter of hours. Is that a violation of the ethos of free speech?
  - pmdulaney 5y ago