5 ms·
I am reminded of a quote I just ran into from the Canadian Supreme Court on free speech in R v. Zundel. Setting aside any legal questions, I found it interesti
by retrac 5y ago
I am reminded of a quote I just ran into from the Canadian Supreme Court on free speech in R v. Zundel. Setting aside any legal questions, I found it interesting for its emphasis on the potential expressive value to disinformation.
> The first difficulty results from the premise that deliberate lies can never have value. Exaggeration -- even clear falsification -- may arguably serve useful social purposes linked to the values underlying freedom of expression. A person fighting cruelty against animals may knowingly cite false statistics in pursuit of his or her beliefs and with the purpose of communicating a more fundamental message, e.g., `cruelty to animals is increasing and must be stopped'. A doctor, in order to persuade people to be inoculated against a burgeoning epidemic, may exaggerate the number or geographical location of persons potentially infected with the virus. An artist, for artistic purposes, may make a statement that a particular society considers both an assertion of fact and a manifestly deliberate lie; consider the case of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, viewed by many Muslim societies as perpetrating deliberate lies against the Prophet.
- tragictrash 5y agoAnd I'd like to point out that a majority of comments to this post are about how 'they' are censoring 'us'. It is censorship but not for the reasons most commenters want. Its medical disinfo about covid being removed. They are not being opressed, as much as the commenters want it to be that. You want exaggerated expression? I got one for you: Freedumb.
- jeegsy 5y agoThe speed at which we have embraced censorship with the attendant rationalizations has been amazing.
- tragictrash 5y agoWho is doing the censoring here? It's YouTube. They have a right to remove content from their platform as they see fit, in accordance with their TOS. There is no right to post YouTube videos in the constitution. Your not being oppressed. Get over it.
- retrac 5y agoI refer you back to my original comment. I quoted the Canadian Supreme Court in part to separate the legal question from the deeper one. As a non-American, the legal question is honestly pretty boring. The deeper issue of what constitutes a healthy society with free debate and expression, however, is interesting to me. Because free speech is a societal and cultural value, as much as a legal one. A commune of religious weirdos with no laws at all could be highly tolerant or intolerant of dissent. It could embrace or reject free speech, just socially based on whether they ostracize the dissenters. Similarly, a nation of publishers where every publisher refuses to publish anything controversial, dissident or offensive may have no First Amendment issues, but it's not one that takes the principles and values of free speech very seriously.
- tragictrash 5y agoThere is no question here other than the legal one. End of story. These people have their free speech. If that artist wanted to, they could host their own website and serve that video all day long. It seems like you are confusing real life with some fantasy world you live in. Welcome to late stage capitalism. It's not fair.
- jeegsy 5y agoAs I said, rationalizations. What is also amazing is that people think that repeating the obvious in vaguely sassy fashion is somehow an argument. In any case, Youtube's "rights" as you call them would be more palatable if they did not enjoy section 230 immunity. Furthermore, I'm sure there is a legal case to be made regarding the Government employing private actors in a manner that violates the first amendment.
- tragictrash 5y agoSo you want to limit free speech then? Who gets to have free speech in your opinion? It is sad I have to repeat myself so you can understand that private companies can do as they please.