8 ms·
Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech Hate speech and organizing to harass and other IRL hate acts is not ‘free speech’.
by donohoe 4y ago
Private companies should not be
the de facto moderators
of free speech
Hate speech and organizing to harass and other IRL hate acts is not ‘free speech’. That was the major point.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> Hate speech and organizing to harass and other IRL gate acts is not free speech “Free speech” is a philosophy. It makes no sense to describe a particular expression of speech as free or not. Hate speech is speech. Whether one should be free to make it is another question.
- Spivak 4y agoI think it’s easier than that, hate speech just isn’t speech, it’s an act of violence that happens to use your mouth, pen, or keyboard — 1A as it’s currently interpreted is way too broad, the court seems to find other forms of violence, even those done for political expression, as not protected, but gives exception here for some naive “sticks and stones” argument.
- ThrowawayTestr 4y agoKF has a very explicit policy to not interact with subjects of a thread. Discussions about harassing them will get you banned.
- millzlane 4y agoSpreading rumors about them and interacting with friends, family, and known associates is fair game. Also posting their public contact information is also fair game.
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
- robocat 4y agoI presume users on kiwifarms (KF) use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction techniques to publish private information elsewhere (such as private addresses) so that the information can then legally be reposted on KF. Coordination-of-information has an accomplice role in some of the illegal activities "reported" by KF.
- charcircuit 4y ago>private addresses Addresses aren't private information.
- Spivak 4y agoOh yes they are, what you’re arguing is that they aren’t secret.
- charcircuit 4y agoI think you are confusing private and personal. Someone's name is personal information, but it is also public information.
- bb010g 4y agoI see that policy works extremely well in cases like <https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566153033586810885 https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566153033586810885>. As long as you give all the information necessary for someone interested to interact in a harmful way, it's fine, but you have to frame it in a way that doesn't suggest harassment. Just speculate about all the locations they could possibly be having lunch, and trust that nobody will harass them.
- KerrAvon 4y agoThis strategy will not ultimately survive contact with law enforcement. They need to stop doxxing.
- Icathian 4y agoI do think, if there was competent legal governance in this space, that's the conclusion they would have reached. I think you understand my larger point, regardless.
- cowtools 4y ago>Hate speech in the United States cannot be directly regulated by the government due to the fundamental right to freedom of speech protected by the Constitution. While "hate speech" is not a legal term in the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that most of what would qualify as hate speech in other western countries is legally protected free speech under the First Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat...
- schleck8 4y ago[flagged]
- unethical_ban 4y agoWe tolerate it legally, but a majority of society certainly does not tolerate it morally nor agree with the content.
- Spivak 4y agoWhich is how we end up here with a thread full of people morally outraged that a group decided to not tolerate hate speech, harassment, stalking, and driving people to suicide. I think you’re right that a majority doesn’t agree with the content but a majority certainly tolerates it.
- spoils19 4y ago
- lovich 4y agoThe EU has a similar population size, wide censorship laws for this kinda of conduct, and a similar economy size. China has a similar economy and much stricter speech laws. The US isn't economically special because of free speech Edit: fixed a typo, changed a “must” to “much”
- spacephysics 4y agoWhat is hate speech?
- Hamuko 4y agoYes it is. Freedom of speech is the principle of being able to express your ideas and opinions. And hate speech is just that. Obviously no country has absolute freedom of speech, but for example the First Amendment has no hate speech exemptions.
- anigbrowl 4y agoHate speech is often about saying other people ought not be able to express their ideas and opinions, and that the most effective way to bring about this result is for them to not be not alive any more. Eliminationist rhetoric is a subset of hate speech overall, but it certainly exists and is trivially easy to discover. It's odd to me that none of the self-professed 'free speech absolutists' ever seems to engage with this point.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Banana699 4y agoAll of this is irrelevant and besides the point, 'hate speech' is not a magical word you say when mean people on the internet say things you don't like. If you can't prove material damage in a court, it should be allowed.
- anigbrowl 4y agoYou're welcome to just ignore the narrow and technical point, which did not include any discussion of what was allowable or not.
- topynate 4y agoMost eliminationist rhetoric is still protected in the States under current precedent. It advocates unlawful action but without "imminency". It could have been forbidden under the old "clear and present danger" standard. Forbidden eliminationist rhetoric is quite rare and would be something like the "cockroach" broadcasts in Rwanda.
- google234123 4y agoTo be fair, there is the entire concept of cancel culture which basically is all about organizing to harass people and is basically supported by every large platform.
- lovich 4y agocanceling someone is about their professional or political connections. Kiwifarms eggs people on to kill their targets. They are not equivalent
- topynate 4y agoIt is in America, for the most part. You can absolutely organize to harass people if the harassment is in the form of verbal abuse, for instance. Cloudflare is saying that something happened in the last few days on KF that was a genuine "emergency". I don't think this is just an excuse, actually – Prince seems unusually committed to honesty about this sort of thing. I presume people were organizing specific violent acts on KF, which is not "free speech" even in America.
- nostrebored 4y agoCompletely conjecture. Why do you assume good will from companies?
- topynate 4y agoI don't. I'm going on what I think about Matthew Prince, who wrote the post we're talking about.
- halostatue 4y agoNot conjecture. Documented evidence of KF users doxxing and making threats against people: https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1565798252670238722 https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/15657982526702387...
- XorNot 4y ago
- happyopossum 4y agoYour second item isn’t even close to an illegal threat in the USA, it’s the loser equivalent of saying “mine is 12 inches”. It’s not true, never happened, and nobody believed them.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> second item isn’t even close to an illegal threat in the USA They said they called people to "plant bombs" where the woman was going and had posted "armed men...waiting" for her. That sounds an awful lot like "the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual" [1]. [1] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/538/343/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/538/343/
- oldgradstudent 4y agoIf hate speech is not free speech, then they who define what is hate speech, define what you can or cannot say. If there's defamation, harassment, or incitement to violence, we should deal with that in an open court with juries of our peers, not in some dark board room.
- noasaservice 4y agoThat's easy. Are they calling for illegal actions against people? That's a pretty easy litmus test. As a colloary, it's akin to comparing "I don't like the president" vs "Let's go kill the president" (this is a comparison of allowed vs unallowed speech in the USA, not a call to). Advocating voting against is 100% legal. Advocation of killing is 100% ILLEGAL. Kiwifarms was doing the latter, up to and including actions threatening violence, "assisted" suicide, and murder. Those were never 1fa protected actions.
- oldgradstudent 4y ago> That's a pretty easy litmus test. Then a proceeding in open court will be simple and fast. A proceeding where the accused has the right to cross examine and present evidence in their defense. I prefer that to a corporate decision done in secrecy in response to bad PR.
- Spivak 4y agoSame, there’s no contradiction here. The same political group that is pressuring the companies that currently hold the real power to take down this hate is also pushing for a national hate speech law. Where I’m sure the disagreement lies is whether or not you find it morally okay to protect the current victims by less than ideal means.
- jchw 4y agoThe problem isn't that nobody understands that free speech is not limitless, the problem is that literally nobody wants to be in the business of defining the exact boundaries of allowed speech and how to enforce it; there is no perfect answer. Cloudflare was taking the position that it's not their job, and they're not alone as far as internet services go. There are, in fact, other hosts that do basically the same thing, see Nearlyfreespeech for example. My point isn't to weigh in on this specific decision, but I want the rhetoric around this stuff to evolve away from pretending that defining the boundaries of what speech should be protected is super easy and objective. It's really not, and it never will be.
- pixl97 4y ago
- jchw 4y agoThis is a nice platitude, but I'm not seeing the relation. Service providers that follow the law will in fact, stop tolerating a client when law enforcement tells them to do so.
- rajin444 4y agoI don't understand trying to hide behind an argument other than "my tribe is in power here so you submit to our rules". The post you linked falls apart with how you define various concepts (how you define the terms of peace, etc.). The argument is eventually settled (like nearly all of them these days) by who is in power. They'll define the terms of peace and in a way that paints their causes as good and their enemies as evil.
- Spivak 4y agoIf this is how you view someone using their weight to protect people from literally being stalked, harassed, and driven to suicide for fun then gods help us all if that ever stops being the case and the next tribe decides that it’s fine. This act is evil and morally wrong in all political reference frames. Anyone who’s arguing that it’s partisan or woke is focusing too hard on the victims, trans women, and not hard enough on the perpetrators.
- hn2017 4y agoMost libertarians here don't understand free speech in the US legal system.
- Banana699 4y agoActually, yes it is. Just because you made up a new word to describe opinions you don't like doesn't mean those opinons aren't covered by free speech.
- jdasdf 4y agoYes it is.
- dart200 4y agoyes it is. free speech as a philosophy is about allowing all speech, cause other it's just mostly free speech. you're just using the words to act like you have a moral high ground you don't actually have.
- ceejayoz 4y ago> free speech as a philosophy is about allowing all speech, cause other it's just mostly free speech Then that's a philosophy virtually no one actually holds. Very few people think death threats, fraud, etc. fall under free speech. If you do your speech at 3am with a loudspeaker in a residential neighborhood, you're probably getting dinged for "disturbing the peace", because other people have rights too, and society winds up having to resolve the conflicts. In this case, a similarly important right - freedom of association - also applies.
- dart200 4y ago> Then that's a philosophy virtually no one actually holds. correct. most people don't hold a free speech philosophy. people just like taking a high moral ground they don't actually have. > Very few people think death threats, fraud, etc. fall under free speech us govt can't prosecute death threats unless they can prove intent beyond you just saying it, they can't also arbitrarily prosecute for lying > If you do your speech at 3am with a loudspeaker in a residential neighborhood, you're probably getting dinged for "disturbing the peace", because other people have rights too, and society winds up having to resolve the conflicts. if you said the same thing at a much lower volume, no one would care. the problem there is noise pollution, not the content of the speech said.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]