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I believe that free speech, as a doctrine, is an intrinsic good. It is that simple. I think the late Aaron Swartz describes my stance on free speech as a doctr

I believe that free speech, as a doctrine, is an intrinsic good. It is that simple. I think the late Aaron Swartz describes my stance on free speech as a doctrine and moral principle: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/becausewecan http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/becausewecan The status of the law has no influence on my stance on morality. Legality neither sufficient nor necessary for morality. The existence of slavery was once legal, was that sufficient to make it moral? It is obviously the case that the law is backed by moral principles and not the other way around, and that we should lead ourselves chiefly by moral principles and not legal ones.

bastardoperator 4y ago
You believe I should be able to engage in hate speech and harass people and that CF has an obligation to help me in that endeavor? Bruh...
Volundr 4y ago
People have the freedom to say awful things. That's part of free speech. But shunning then for saying these awful things is also part of my free speech. Calling on others to shun them for saying these awful things is also part of my free speech. You cannot have free speech without also allowing people to be ostracized (even in organized campaigns) for how they use it.
- cowtools 4y ago
  Sure, but the internet's centralized nature breaks this dynamic because the "public square" is being privatized. Imagine if you couldn't print political flyers without active participation from the paper company, or if you couldn't host meetups without the wholesale endorsement of the phone company. What we are seeing is not a shunning by society at large. What we're seeing is a fight between two radical (and generally unhinged) groups of individuals on the internet. The real problem is that these technical problems devolve into bureaucratic social problems due to the design of the internet. If there is a silver lining here, it's that more people will be encouraged to learn about censorship-resistant networks like Tor. I think a return to voluntary communication on a peer-to-peer basis may one day return sanity to the network, because direct-messaging retains much of the IRL social characteristics you've described.
  - Volundr 4y ago
    > Imagine if you couldn't print political flyers without active participation from the paper company, or if you couldn't host meetups without the wholesale endorsement of the phone company. Except, Cloudflare isn't required to run a website. If you are printing 100s or even 1000s of flyers your home printer might be fine. If you are printing millions your probably going to need to make a significant investment or work with a professional printer. The same is true for Cloudflare in this scenario. It doesn't enable running the site, it just helps scale it for cheaper. If the professional printers/cloudflare's of the world decide to shun you, yeah you'll have a harder time getting your message out, but I see that as a feature, not a bug. If I shun someone I don't want someone else handing them a megaphone to scream in my ear.
    - Dalewyn 4y ago
      >Except, Cloudflare isn't required to run a website. A sizable CDN, which Cloudflare is one example of, is practically required to serve a website seeing any significant traffic in this day and age. And therein lies the problem. The internet was founded on a philosophy of decentralization, the fucking thing was designed to withstand all the destructive forces of a nuclear war. If one part of the network is damaged or otherwise inaccessible, the rest of the network will route around the damage to reestablish connections. But that's not the state of the internet today. The internet today is heavily centralized around a small handful of key players. Cloudflare is one such player. Without the blessings of such players, you have no ability to access or do anything on the internet. For now the vast majority of people receive and enjoy the blessings and thus aren't compelled to do anything about this fucking gigantic elephant in the room. But those blessings aren't guaranteed, and the fact we must rely on such frivolous blessings is by itself preposterous. >If you are printing millions your probably going to need to make a significant investment or work with a professional printer. What we're seeing here is a professional printer refusing services because he doesn't like what's being printed, with no basis on legality which is the only grounds upon which any business may refuse to render services. Anyone who claims to support free speech shouldn't be happy about any of this turn of events. You don't spread free speech by censoring speech, the results are quite the opposite every single time and these will all add up to come crashing down eventually. And especially to those celebrating or ecstatic this happened: Be careful what you wish for, because when your turn to get cancelled comes up, nobody might be around to help you. The whole point of free speech is to protect and guarantee the expression of disagreeable speech, because nobody's going to censor speech they like or agree with.
jhanschoo 4y ago
> believe that free speech, as a doctrine, is an intrinsic good. I don't believe so. For example, hate speech and verbal abuse against a mentally vulnerable person, privately communicated, with only the intent to harm that person is clearly morally bad. It then follows that if we can identify exactly when this occurs and limit it without further externalities, then that would be morally good. Another example: there is a fire, and you give firefighters misinformation with the intent to prevent people from being saved. That is a moral bad, externalities notwithstanding, and it is a moral good if we could prevent exactly such acts. If you accept these, then the discussion is no longer that free speech is always good, but that what forms of speech in what contexts are acceptable, and what limits on enforcement on free speech is acceptable. I suppose that most people accept these, as opposed to having an absolute stance as yours, and people with varied experiences have different positions on this complicated issue, hence the constant conversation and reappraisal.

bastardoperator 4y ago

You believe I should be able to engage in hate speech and harass people and that CF has an obligation to help me in that endeavor? Bruh...

Volundr 4y ago

People have the freedom to say awful things. That's part of free speech. But shunning then for saying these awful things is also part of my free speech. Calling on others to shun them for saying these awful things is also part of my free speech. You cannot have free speech without also allowing people to be ostracized (even in organized campaigns) for how they use it.

cowtools 4y ago
Sure, but the internet's centralized nature breaks this dynamic because the "public square" is being privatized. Imagine if you couldn't print political flyers without active participation from the paper company, or if you couldn't host meetups without the wholesale endorsement of the phone company. What we are seeing is not a shunning by society at large. What we're seeing is a fight between two radical (and generally unhinged) groups of individuals on the internet. The real problem is that these technical problems devolve into bureaucratic social problems due to the design of the internet. If there is a silver lining here, it's that more people will be encouraged to learn about censorship-resistant networks like Tor. I think a return to voluntary communication on a peer-to-peer basis may one day return sanity to the network, because direct-messaging retains much of the IRL social characteristics you've described.
- Volundr 4y ago
  > Imagine if you couldn't print political flyers without active participation from the paper company, or if you couldn't host meetups without the wholesale endorsement of the phone company. Except, Cloudflare isn't required to run a website. If you are printing 100s or even 1000s of flyers your home printer might be fine. If you are printing millions your probably going to need to make a significant investment or work with a professional printer. The same is true for Cloudflare in this scenario. It doesn't enable running the site, it just helps scale it for cheaper. If the professional printers/cloudflare's of the world decide to shun you, yeah you'll have a harder time getting your message out, but I see that as a feature, not a bug. If I shun someone I don't want someone else handing them a megaphone to scream in my ear.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    >Except, Cloudflare isn't required to run a website. A sizable CDN, which Cloudflare is one example of, is practically required to serve a website seeing any significant traffic in this day and age. And therein lies the problem. The internet was founded on a philosophy of decentralization, the fucking thing was designed to withstand all the destructive forces of a nuclear war. If one part of the network is damaged or otherwise inaccessible, the rest of the network will route around the damage to reestablish connections. But that's not the state of the internet today. The internet today is heavily centralized around a small handful of key players. Cloudflare is one such player. Without the blessings of such players, you have no ability to access or do anything on the internet. For now the vast majority of people receive and enjoy the blessings and thus aren't compelled to do anything about this fucking gigantic elephant in the room. But those blessings aren't guaranteed, and the fact we must rely on such frivolous blessings is by itself preposterous. >If you are printing millions your probably going to need to make a significant investment or work with a professional printer. What we're seeing here is a professional printer refusing services because he doesn't like what's being printed, with no basis on legality which is the only grounds upon which any business may refuse to render services. Anyone who claims to support free speech shouldn't be happy about any of this turn of events. You don't spread free speech by censoring speech, the results are quite the opposite every single time and these will all add up to come crashing down eventually. And especially to those celebrating or ecstatic this happened: Be careful what you wish for, because when your turn to get cancelled comes up, nobody might be around to help you. The whole point of free speech is to protect and guarantee the expression of disagreeable speech, because nobody's going to censor speech they like or agree with.

jhanschoo 4y ago

> believe that free speech, as a doctrine, is an intrinsic good. I don't believe so. For example, hate speech and verbal abuse against a mentally vulnerable person, privately communicated, with only the intent to harm that person is clearly morally bad. It then follows that if we can identify exactly when this occurs and limit it without further externalities, then that would be morally good. Another example: there is a fire, and you give firefighters misinformation with the intent to prevent people from being saved. That is a moral bad, externalities notwithstanding, and it is a moral good if we could prevent exactly such acts. If you accept these, then the discussion is no longer that free speech is always good, but that what forms of speech in what contexts are acceptable, and what limits on enforcement on free speech is acceptable. I suppose that most people accept these, as opposed to having an absolute stance as yours, and people with varied experiences have different positions on this complicated issue, hence the constant conversation and reappraisal.