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There appears to be a recent shift on HackerNews no longer support freedom of speech. I don't know that its just HackerNews either - it seems like its 'interne

• seydor 4y ago
  according to the study, a valid hypothesis is that hn became more stupid more seriously, the shift is not just HN it is everywhere. We have generations of people who have been grown up to self-censor at every step, so by natural extension freedom of speech is not a priority. Urbanization and the evergreen/growth/globalist agenda that comes with it is also in favor of restrictions that maintain the cohesion of large congregations
  • nurettin 4y ago
  • colordrops 4y ago
    Your comment may be facetious, but I believe that's the most common rationale for censorship - the public is not intelligent enough to handle the barrage of online information.
    • whoooooo123 4y ago
      People who advocate censorship are usually part of "the public". "People who aren't me aren't intelligent enough to be allowed unfettered access to information. Only I am noble enough." - That's the real rationale.
  • illuminerdy 4y ago
    Somewhere along the line, we stopped teaching children that everybody doesn't have to agree with you. And now those children have grown into adults who want only those opinions of which they approve to be heard. No free and open society can survive with that kind of thinking.
    • neonsunset 4y ago
      The adults are kids with elaborate excuses for their behavior.
  • throwawayacc2 4y ago
    I don’t think it’s urbanisation. In the west, the twentieth century had urbanisation and was far more open to free speech while many parts on the world didn’t and were more censorship prone. In fact, in the middle east for example, one could argue in the middle of the twentieth century there was less urbanisation but more openness to western ideas and less religious oppression than it is now. I think the shift away from free speech we are seeing is the result of decades of indoctrination and people being goaded into emotional reactions via social media. I genuinely don’t see any functional difference between so called “social justice activists” railing people up and fanatical preachers delivering fire and brimstone sermons. It’s the same phenomenon manifested in different forms. I will also add, most censorship prone people tend to accuse their opponents of lacking “critical thinking”. While at the same time, missing the point that is precisely what opposition does. You look at the other side, you criticise it’s premises, you criticise it’s assumptions, you criticise it’s goals, you look if the stated goals align with the actual results and criticise the discrepancy. You really can’t have critical thinking if you can’t, you know, criticise. I think we had more free speech, and more critical thinking in the past because criticism was allowed. Nowadays, if you criticise anything that goes against what some would term The Cathedral, you will suffer severe consequences.
• bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
  It is sad that people who believe in real free speech now have to clarify that they are free speech absolutists. When it comes down to it, I don’t think any of those people you are mentioning ever actually supported free speech - just the idea of it before it came to a head.
  • cratermoon 4y ago
    How is free speech absolutism more "real" than a more nuanced approached to speech?
  • faeriechangling 4y ago
    Absolute free speech is more of a thought experiment than something that's possible, so I don't really see it as sad that people are only referring to American-style free speech (No libel, fraud, fighting words, calls to imminent lawlessness) when they say "free speech", I see it as practical. Absolute free speech would imply even a lack of self-censorship. I think if you deeply analyse communication you sort of realise that it's fundamentally built on censorship. Censorship is a core communication filter function. Getting rid of censorship absolutely is actually absurd.
    • Bloating 4y ago
      There's a difference b/w having a filter, social consequences for lack of filter, and government restrictions
      • faeriechangling 4y ago
        Yeah but the existence of self-censorship implies a fear of social sanction, so if people are still doing it society is still being censored for fear of social sanction. Remember we're talking about absolutism here, obviously we shouldn't actually be concerned with self-censorship, but it is an obstacle to ABSOLUTE free speech.
  • 8ytecoder 4y ago
    I think Free speech, Freedom from prosecution for speech and speech without any consequences are all confused with each other. To me, the freedoms to oppose some speech, by way of boycotting, protesting, shunning and shaming is also speech. There’s also the difference between beheading for speech and getting your Twitter account suspended. If someone says absolutely nutty stuff in a town square and the local folks drown him out or threaten to not patronize the shops in the town square for allowing the speech, is that considered suppression of speech? It seems to me that people are asking for tolerance of speech at all costs. I don’t know if Free Speech ever came with that built in.
• Bloating 4y ago
  don't beleive everything you read. Only the stuff you hear, on the news channels.
• kgwxd 4y ago
  Internet residents aren't government. They can't arrest people, lock anyone up, or sentence anyone to death for anything, let alone for saying something. There's nothing there for speech to be free from.
  • OrangeMonkey 4y ago
    I respectfully disagree. Internet residents can, quite successfully, remove people from the internet and silence their speech on the internet. Consider Kiwifarms. I am purposefully NOT going to talk about if something is deserved or not. I am not touching that one again. I am tired of it. That said, internet outrage of a minority led to misinformation (both for and against it) and ultimately resulted in the DDOS protection vendor no longer protecting it. Once that was done, to noones surprise, someone ddos'ed it and removed the ability of others to see it. Its not that internet residents are trying to stop from hearing certain things - in some cases, they are purposefully stopping anyone else from hearing certain things also. I don't know that I believe this fully but it seems, some days, the internet itself is a country.
  • seydor 4y ago
    what about monetization. i.e. livelihood, the thing that keeps people from starving etc
    • wpietri 4y ago
      That's not new in the digital realm. Speech has always had social consequences: https://www.popehat.com/2013/09/10/speech-and-consequences/ https://www.popehat.com/2013/09/10/speech-and-consequences/
      • seydor 4y ago
        it did not have the legal consequence of depriving one of their money.
        • wpietri 4y ago
• kybernetyk 4y ago
  >I'm not sure how to interpret this. The normie masses joined the internet. Simple as that.
  • impossiblefork 4y ago
    I don't think that was at all what happened. I'm a Swede, so I'm slightly disconnected from American politics-- to me the people that are shocking or must be loved or anything else in American discourse are much less shocking or to be loved, basically, everything I feel about American politics is very strongly muted; and in the past I haven't had any conflicts with the Americans I know-- they were all pro-free speech, I think. Certainly, the idea of them supporting large-scale censorship by gatekeepers controlled by powerful individuals like billionaires or the political establishment would have been unthinkable. However, in the years after the 2016 election they all flipped completely. From my point of view they became dogmatic, insane and willing to do things that I saw as long-term self harm, or at least creating a situation where they made themselves helpless to protect themselves in the long term. They also ended up very strongly anti-Assange because of a feeling that Assange had helped Trump, even though they from their previous views would have been likely to support what he did. I have a vague feeling that there's been some kind of major propaganda effort whereby only official views are to be regarded as acceptable and that's it's related to the big internet companies. There is some public information on efforts in this direction in the context of preventing spread of non-official views-- called things like efforts at 'anti-disinformation'.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• hotpotamus 4y ago
  If you really want to scramble your noodle, look at the recent spate of state laws placing restrictions on speech and notice the lean of the parties that control those states.
  • illuminerdy 4y ago
    Can you give some examples? Is it actually speech that's being restricted, or actions, or access to certain types of speech/content (e.g. age restrictions)?
    • hotpotamus 4y ago
      It’s probably easier to assume it’s the restrictions on speech that you agree with. I usually prefer the easy way myself.
    • Twistyfiasco 4y ago
      Well, for awhile there was lots of talk about CRT. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/12/02/texas-critical-race-theory-law/#:~:text=Republican%20bill%20that%20limits%20how,public%20policy%20or%20social%20affairs.%E2%80%9D https://www.texastribune.org/2021/12/02/texas-critical-race-...
      • hotpotamus 4y ago
        https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/lawmakers-push-to-ban-1619-project-from-schools/2021/02 https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/lawmakers-push-to-b... Don’t forget the 1619 Project.
        • OrvalWintermute 4y ago
          The 1619 project has been widely lambasted as unhistorical political educating. https://www.city-journal.org/1619-project-conspiracy-theory https://www.city-journal.org/1619-project-conspiracy-theory
          • 4y ago
• ibejoeb 4y ago
  I don't think we know the true feelings of each individual, but certainly the major employers in the field here find it in their interests to control the information. So even if the general population wants freedom of speech, that needs to be balanced against the duties of job. If you're set up at FAANG, the risk/reward ratio might not favor one's ideals.
• wpietri 4y ago
  I can't speak to all of HN, but over the years I've gone from a free speech absolutist to seeing rights as balanced against one another. And also to consider what motivates me to be for free speech. For example, one reason I think free speech is vital is that I want everybody to have a say. Another is that think society works best when we hear from a wide variety of perspectives. However, there are some people who use "free speech" as a reason that they should be allowed to be abusive. Note, for example, the way that Kiwi Farms was waving the free speech banner. You'll see the same thing being done by people who advocate for exterminating Jews and returning Black people to slavery. In practice, a platform like Twitter has to choose between hosting abusive Nazis and hosting the people who the Nazis would try to drive off the platform. Personally, I am more concerned about Jews feeling safe to speak freely than I am about Nazis wanting to use their free speech to abuse them. So although my 20-year-old self might have been shocked that I am no longer a free-speech absolutist, I am fine with him being shocked, because I have come to value net, long-term practical outcomes more than the isolated ideals that I now see as valuable heuristics, not articles of faith.
  • throwawayacc2 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • wpietri 4y ago
      > > people who advocate for exterminating Jews and returning Black people to slavery > Literally no one does that. You are imagining things. You are obviously not a serious participant here. These people exist. They existed before the internet, and the internet has, to my great disappointment, only enabled their spread. There's a ton you could read, but maybe start with Neiwert's "God's Country" and "Alt-America", which document the pre- and post-Internet versions of America's white supremacist movement. > Abusive is a relative and in this context meaningless word. That is also embarrassingly ignorant. If you'd like to learn something, maybe try Citron's "Hate Crimes in Cyberspace", Warren's "Targeted and Trolled", Jeong's "The Internet of Garbage", and Bancroft's "Why Does He Do That".
      • 4y ago
• bigbasedwolf 4y ago
  Not sure when you think this shift happened. HN intellectuals migrated from here almost 10 years ago. I don’t think the atmosphere has changed it’s always been a young loudmouth group. Dang is a recent entry in the compendium. HN has never really been a highly intellectual place simply because a number of key subjects, viewpoints are off limits. Inability to at will gracefully discuss sensitive subjects basically means we are all pretending to believe what we say. I don’t know what cognitive ability research says about people being able to separate their identity and worldview from what they say, but there you have it.
  • OrangeMonkey 4y ago
    Where did the intellectuals from 10 years ago migrate to?
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • bigbasedwolf 4y ago
      Not sure. We had a period of “goodbye HN” posts. You can hopefully find them in the search results unless they got purged somehow. Those have stopped, haven’t seen one in many years. Basically people could sense they were in an unhealthy bubble and decided to cut ties. Good for them. That fellow who would regularly post graphs of HN traffic/topic patterns at us to disprove peoples theories hasn’t posted it in many, many years. I guess he either woke up to reality or shrugged and moved on. A few old timers remain here and there. I think we just got tired and fatigued of the bullshit.
• nano9 4y ago
  One interpretation I've been entertaining: In the modern world, we have recently realized that speech is more complicated than people exchanging ideas in a civil manner, and that speech has the power to influence consensus reality through second order and higher effects. (Think: phenomena such as "self-radicalization"). This leads to decisions to simply restrict speech rather than deal with the complexity. I am not entirely convinced that restricting speech is the right move. I think if anything it creates division. Either way, we'll most likely see how it works out in the next few years.
• loopdoend 4y ago
  If I wanted to manipulate public opinion and had infinite resources like the Chinese government does I certainly know how I'd go about it.
• swatcoder 4y ago
  It’s not 1993 any more. The arrival of a globally ubiquitous internet, and the subsequent introduction of social network feeds that insist Helen and Walter encounter five pages of engagement bait if they want to get updates on their granddaughter, have made the consequences of “free speech” less obvious to many people. Speech has qualitatively different impact than it did 50, 100, or 200 years ago. So people are stepping back and considering whether the same thinking that applied to local marches, print journalism, and cable news still makes sense in the same way for what appears to be a different landscape. Maybe you think that’s a dumb question, or maybe you already made up your mind about it, but when context seems to change dramatically, people are bound to revisit old conclusions. You can be frustrated about that, but you can’t avoid it. If your own conclusion is important to you, you’ll do the best job advocating for it by understanding why reasonable people are revisiting the matter, helping them see why free speech is still vital rather than shaming them for being reflective.
  • colordrops 4y ago
    I don't see any judgment or shaming in the comment you replied to.
• kmeisthax 4y ago
  I bet you if you questioned those people on things tangentially related to free speech or with indirect questions they would still score as a supporter of it to some degree. Historically, hacker culture has couched free speech as a technical problem - i.e. the same as a network outage. This is where we get the catchy-but-wrong canard of "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it". This leads people to assume that "unrestrained publication" and "free speech" are synonyms, and that all we need are faster and better printing presses that are harder to shut down. DDoS attacks, doxing & unmasking, harassment, spam, and so on are all ways to reduce free speech online without having the technical ability to restrain publication of some content. If you take the "censorship is network damage" approach to free speech then it's hard to argue against these things that have clear censorious effects. Mocking someone on Twitter is the same as posting someone's home address under this definition. If you take free speech as a sociopolitical problem - i.e. where censorship is any kind of violence directed at someone for speaking their mind - then these things are obviously censorship, even if they are shaped like speech. The people involved in these kinds of censorship have, of course, appropriated the language of free speech. This is tragic, because it means free-speech liberals are pushed to drop that language, because it virtue-signals that you actually support censorship with extra steps. You instead talk about online harassment and marginalized groups - i.e. the people currently being censored - rather than the underlying principle of not censoring people.
• QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
  It's complicated because the most serious threat to free speech in the US right now is cancel culture, but most aspects of cancel culture are explicitly protected under the first amendment: "...or abridging the freedom of speech [private corporations choosing what to host on their websites, calling someone's employer and requesting that they be fired for what they said], or of the press [this garbage https://parade.com/news/simu-liu-under-fire-joke-batgirl-cancellation]; https://parade.com/news/simu-liu-under-fire-joke-batgirl-can... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble [twitter mobs, unless you count their speech as violence in which case we are back to square one], and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances [here, demanding that a government employee be fired https://www.change.org/p/ucla-fire-ucla-professor-gordon-klein https://www.change.org/p/ucla-fire-ucla-professor-gordon-kle...].
  • jen20 4y ago
    > the most serious threat to free speech in the US right now is cancel culture Surely you cannot be serious?
    • tstrimple 4y ago
      I'm sure they are being completely genuine. They completely miss the irony that they are essentially saying "the most serious threat to free speech in the US right now is the free speech of people I disagree with".