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I grew up in the US being told that freedom of speech was a virtue, something that our country did very well and I always thought that it was a shared value. I

• rhexs 4y ago
  How many immigrants do you think grew up the same way? Hint: almost none, as the United States is the only country that enshrines true freedom of speech as an unalienable and fundamental right. This is probably considered "hate-speech" in this day and age, but immigration, shockingly, has cons as well.
  • swampthing 4y ago
    How do you get from your first paragraph to your second? Many immigrants I know are, if anything, more zealous about freedom of speech than other Americans. It was one of the reasons why they went through the trouble of immigrating here.
  • jen20 4y ago
    If you look beyond your short-sighted screed, you will typically find that most immigrants to the US value American ideals more than many Americans. In some cases that is caused by idealism, and in others it's having experienced governments which are actually oppressive.
  • Georgelemental 4y ago
    "I know no country in which, generally speaking, there is less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion than in America." - Alexis de Tocqueville
    • sejje 4y ago
      Said in 1835, almost 200 years ago. I really can't think it's relevant in a thread steeped in talk about Twitter and deplatforming on social media.
  • dotnet00 4y ago
    To be fair, well-integrated immigrants are also more likely to fervently value American freedoms much more than born Americans since they know what it's like to not have those freedoms and because people don't just go through the difficult immigration process without having some ideological affinity for the US. If it were just about quality of life, Canada, much of Europe, Australia etc are not that different and usually have easier immigration.
• x0hm 4y ago
  I think the internet has caused an uptick in people who make free speech seem like a bad idea tbh
• OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Attributed to Voltaire but actually from SG Tallentyre 1906. I think the desire to restrict other peoples speech is relatively new because the internet was relatively new. 50 years ago, you didn't see corporations able to effectively silence people as much as you do now. A more accurate quote for todays crowd may be "I disapprove of what you say, and I will fight to the death to stop others from hearing you say it."
  • naasking 4y ago
    > 50 years ago, you didn't see corporations able to effectively silence people as much as you do now. The government was always trying to silence people though, see McCarythism and Vietnam war protests.
  • TuringNYC 4y ago
    >>> I think the desire to restrict other peoples speech is relatively new because the internet was relatively new. 50 years ago, you didn't see corporations able to effectively silence people as much as you do now. 50yrs ago, corporations and narrow slivers of the US who controlled their editorial boards (e.g., those in NYC or LA, to some extent DC) were the only ones with free speech. They didn't "silence" anyone, they just didn't give them a platform at all. A stark example is police brutality and BLM movement -- this is not a new phenomenon. Except the media (including liberal media) chose never to cover it in a way where real change could happen. The extent of police brutality only entered the realm as a serious issue once the other half had sufficient freedom of speech to talk about it, gather around it, and bring it to light in a serious way. This is the success of "the hashtag" and new media in Silicon Valley.
  • stormbrew 4y ago
    > 50 years ago, you didn't see corporations able to effectively silence people as much as you do now. 50 years ago nearly all broad platforms for spreading ideas were owned by corporations run by very few individual people. Lacking a platform was the default, the vast majority of people were "silenced" in the sense meant by the modern "free speech" (really compulsory association) movememt.
• marcopolo3333 4y ago
  It still is a virtue and a right in the US. Freedom of speech is not about giving every idea and every person and equal platform to spread their ideas. It's not about forcing others to host/spread ideas they disagree with. I think the internet has given people a warped sense about what freedom of speech is. We have no less freedom of speech now than we did before social media/internet.
  • Xeoncross 4y ago
    On a related note, litigation has increased. If you do express an opinion that isn't supported by pop culture then you are threatened with serious economic impacts and civil action to a greater extent than what I remember pre-internet. Then again, less people knew you held some alternative view back then. Nowadays it's popular to shout across all the media so everyone in the US knows about that kooky view the old guy in Montana has or that violent group in the middle east holds.
    • marcopolo3333 4y ago
      I would offer that the solution to increased litigation is reforming our civil courts to prevent their abuses.
      • sseagull 4y ago
        This is correct. Everyone should support anti-SLAPP laws. These make such frivolous lawsuits very expensive if they do infringe on clearly-protected speech. SLAPP = strategic lawsuit against public participation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...)
  • jimbokun 4y ago
    In practice, this means a small number of tech companies having final say over what ideas do or don't get spread.
    • 4y ago
• californiadreem 4y ago
  "And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way. "You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined. "Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair." -- They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, Milton Mayer
• TuringNYC 4y ago
  >>> Is it the internet that has caused this uptick in the number of people who think free speech is a bad idea? Or is has it always been like that? I grew up in the USA in this era also. Except half of society knew free speech only for the other half. Look at movies, leadership, or school curriculums and you notice how limited free speech actually was. The only ones with freedom of speech were narrow slivers of society who held the microphone and got to decide what constituted free speech. The internet changed this, now everyone has a voice and can participate. Not everyone likes that.
  • sejje 4y ago
    I don't like it. I mean, I like the principle of it. I'm glad everyone gets to say what they want. I don't think we should change that. What I think is stupid is when we have someone with a literal Forrest Gump IQ debating facts with experts on the internet. I'm not sure how big of an effect it has on the world, but I'm sure of a couple of things: it makes the internet suck a lot worse for me (and probably anyone who is here for discussions/chats/forums), and we definitely don't want those people leading/creating our policy. Still, don't want to take away their voice.
• whimsicalism 4y ago
  In terms of actual exposure to ideas from others, I think free speech today has probably never been greater. That is what is causing the backlash.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• cortesoft 4y ago
  I have not heard any group calling for free speech to be blocked. Who is calling for people to be arrested for what they say? Or to be blocked from being able to say it out loud? I think what you mean is that people are calling for internet platforms to kick out certain groups. This is in no way a call against freedom of speech. I am not sure why people suddenly believe that being for 'free speech' means that other people have to provide private infrastructure for those people to spread their speech. Did people complain that newspapers wouldn't allow the KKK to print opinion essays whenever they wanted? Did they get upset when a convention hall wouldn't let certain groups rent out their space? Free Speech was never about requiring private citizens to provide a platform for any speech someone wanted to make. It is about not using the law to stop the speech. That belief is still strong in the United States.
  • rmatt2000 4y ago
    You should spend some time on a college campus. Shouting down speakers and deplatforming non-progressives is more common than one might think.
    • xenospn 4y ago
      Maybe if they’d done so sooner we wouldn’t have had the KKK.
    • coeneedell 4y ago
      I don’t see how this is inconsistent with what they’re saying. These people are asking their colleges to not provide a platform, not that the speakers should not be allowed to speak anywhere.
      • OrangeMonkey 4y ago
        Colleges are public locations that have historically allowed free speech. Court cases have been tried and lost trying to restrict this free speech. I think then you see the issue - "These people are asking their colleges to break the law and restrict the speech of others." You can argue that the laws should be changed to stop the current concept of free speech though.
• ErikVandeWater 4y ago
  The news media are decidedly less pro-free speech than before. They could afford to promote free speech back when they had a monopoly on people's attention when it came to news. Now that Google can direct you to any number of independent sources, the news media feels threatened and wants to censor unapproved views so they can maintain the Overton Window. Noam Chomsky: "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."
  • whimsicalism 4y ago
    I think it's a mixed bag. The media also knows that articles about "censorship"/"woke culture" in college campuses get a ton of engagement so they are also driving a lot of the ire there.
  • wincy 4y ago
    My wife is part of a focus group for public radio and she’s an avowed anarcho capitalist. She says things like “I suspect in 50 years the US will either not exist or be a much looser organization where the states rule” and the focus group woman says “that’s not going to happen!”, dismisses her out of hand, and refuses to write it down then moves on to the next person. I think at a certain point the Midwest will have had enough of the stuff going on on the East and West coasts and it’s probably going to be a really bad time. Probably ultimately worse for the conservative parts but not after a very unstable and possibly violent period. I hope I’m wrong though.
    • daniel-cussen 4y ago
      Flyover Country Revolution. Flyover no more. Charge toll for overflying it. Why shouldn't private jets pay you up directly?
      • kelseyfrog 4y ago
• afarrell 4y ago
  The right to free speech also imposes an unenforced responsibility to use that speech wisely. The internet and smartphones enabled people to easily and quickly: - Send true threats to people, which were always illegal. - Publish things that are legal, but far more uselessly divisive and stress-inducing than if they'd needed to take time to edit it. - Wake up and immediately read ambiguous language uncharitably as a threat. the rise in the irresponsible publishing and uncharitable reading of speech has led more people to decide that we can no longer have nice things.
• lossolo 4y ago
  Things changed with internet, there was never a true free speech for everyone before internet period, you had gatekeepers of what could be said in newspapers and TV that filtered content that didn't conform to norms/standards. Now you have total free speech, anyone, anywhere in the world can say whatever they want and we have social platforms to broadcast it to the rest of the world, which use algorithms that automatically make the most radical views to be promoted the most because they are the most engaging, and suddenly people do not like that kind of freedom anymore.
• deleted 4y ago
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• akomtu 4y ago
  The strong want freedom, the weak want safety, that's how I'd explain it. The internet has forced the weak onto the big arena where they have to defend their views, and unable to do that, they've demanded to put everyone into cages.
• deleted 4y ago
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• kzrdude 4y ago
  I always think there needs to be a discussion about what "free" means. And just like for markets, what kind of regulation needs to be removed or added to meet the "freedom" goals? Taking away some rights for one person might give space for another, and it's a balance.
  • amadeuspagel 4y ago
    To balance different rights itself requires freedom of speech.
• ellen364 4y ago
  Two theories of change: (1) An increasing number of Americans see free speech as a positive rather than negative right. In other words, “Facebook must host whatever I want to say”, not just “The government can’t arrest me for insulting the president.” That’s a controversial expansion of the right to free speech, creating a lot of debate and disagreement. (2) The internet means Americans are more exposed to non-Americans. At least some of those people come from countries where free speech is seen as a right that should be balanced against other rights, like privacy. That makes it seem like fewer people support free speech than in the past.
  • junofan 4y ago
    That is not an expansion. Founders understood freedom of speech to be a “natural” right, not a “positive” or “negative” right.
    • ellen364 4y ago
      My understanding is the founding fathers believed in a combination of “natural” and “positive” rights. In that context, “positive” rights were things the government had to provide, like a jury trial. “Natural” rights were things you could do without a government, like speaking and writing, but that could still be limited by law. As an example, the 1798 Sedition Act restricted criticism of the government. That was just 7 years after the ratification of the First Amendment.
• jpeloquin 4y ago
  It seems like people in the US still agree that free speech is a good thing. 91% of Americans say that free speech is very or extremely important to them, and the rest say it's moderately important or just skipped the question (like below). No significant fraction of the respondents were against free speech. When split by subgroups, a common theme is that each group believes _other_ people have an easier time exercising free speech. So maybe there's more perception of a change than a real change. https://knightfoundation.org/reports/free-expression-in-america-post-2020/ https://knightfoundation.org/reports/free-expression-in-amer... Edit: Reading more, I guess there is some change in attitude, using respondent age as a proxy for time. Teens prefer feeling safe online over being able to speak their minds online, moreso than adults. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/08/30/more-so-than-adults-u-s-teens-value-people-feeling-safe-online-over-being-able-to-speak-freely/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/08/30/more-so-tha...
• stjohnswarts 4y ago
  You have to learn one thing about the internet, it's full of loud mouthed polarized trolls. Most people feel like you.
• thejammahimself 4y ago
  I can only speak for my own education (in the UK) where free speech wasn't really drilled into me as a valuable right, and as such I can understand why people don't understand its importance. Topics like this fall into what in the UK is categorised as PSHE (Personal, social, health, and economic). Unlike other subjects, it was not a GCSE meaning that there was no exam to be taken, and you would not receive a qualification at the end. As such, it was often given the minimum amount of time the school could possibly allocate on the timetable. There were no specialist teachers for the subject; teachers of other subjects would have to teach it. And come to think of it, I was seldom taught about some of our most valuable rights like our right to free speech, our right to a fair trial, and our right to vote. When it comes to free speech, many hear speech they deem to be abhorrent, and thus their reaction is that it ought not to be legal to say. And this feeling is understandable but perhaps demonstrates that the individual has not been educated on why to value freedom of speech. They often do not understand how dangerous it can be to allow someone to decide which speech can, and can't be allowed. Additionally, I have been reading the book Fake Law, and what I have found striking is that large parts of the public are completely uneducated about the law, and why access to justice is important, and I myself learnt new things from the book. But the book also demonstrates how the media, and in turn politicians exploit this lack of education to slowly take away our rights, and restrict our access to justice. And this makes me reflect on my own education, and I now wonder whether that was intentional.
• bee_rider 4y ago
  In the past and in the present endorsing certain ideas would make people less likely to want to associate with you. The mix of ideas that will make people less likely to want to associate with you has changed, and as such the need to self-police is falling on populations that haven't felt it before, but we'd have to really get into the weeds to work out if the number of "off limits for polite society" topics has really grown. Some things that have changed. First, many social interactions have shifted to the online space, and we've failed miserably to provide a public square online. There mostly isn't one, only the online equivalent to shopping malls and private clubs (albeit with permissive entrance requirements). These shopping malls and private clubs have become so ubiquitous that only people with opinions too extreme for them are looking for alternatives. As a result, the few public spaces that somehow pop up in the cracks become the host of concentrated extreme speech, which is not really a viable foundation for a community. Second, the current online platforms record everything posted on them in perpetuity. Many of them make this content infinitely searchable. To some extent this is just the nature of digital communications, they are inherently easy to archive. So, us smallfolk have lost the benefit of ephemeral communications. This is a big deal -- I think lots of us who grew up in the pre-internet era have some memory of saying something that's in retrospect pretty embarrassing, but is now lost to time. It is one thing to say something in front of friends and get called out by people you have real relationships with, and another thing entirely to fall under the wrath of the open internet. In fact, I think this is quite bad for public discourse, as a number of people have just been shamed into silence, and others have figured "I've been banished by everyone but the bigots at this point, may as well fit in with them." Finally, most of the platforms optimize for engagement. Extreme opinions drive engagement. Can you imagine a club where the proprietor placed microphones on every table, selected conversations to amplify? Ok, now imagine the proprietor has a very poor grasp of the local language, and mostly evaluates which conversations are interesting by how large a crowd they've already drawn and how loud the argument is. That's the environment that most online discussions take place in. It wouldn't be that surprising for a large number of the patrons to ask for strict admissions requirements. The only surprising thing is that we put up with this bizarre business model in the first place. Ah but the drink are free since the whole affair is sponsored by companies and foreign intelligence agencies. All the paid clubs couldn't compete with free.
• WalterBright 4y ago
  Free speech is the lynch pin of all our other rights. Without it, the other rights all disappear. For example, if one is not allowed to publish information about other rights being violated, it is impossible to organize an effort to protect those other rights. Be very, very careful about abrogating the right to free speech.
• lynndotpy 4y ago
  I'd argue free speech is in a historically relatively good place (from my perspective in the US at least). In recent history within the US, there were times that film was not considered protected speech, comedians were arrested for saying simple swear words, and like a zillion different times protesters and laborers were killed for their speech. Protesters are killed far less often today. Plus, with the internet, people have platforms they haven't had before to reach others. You can get a message out far more effectively. I'd also be careful not to conflate "people who think free speech is a bad idea" and "people who want limitations on speech." "Limitations on speech" sounds bad, but that includes things like "child pornography is illegal", "you can't advertise your MLM during my physics lecture so please leave", "you can't spam your cryptocurrency here", and other basic moderation. Being a "free speech absolutist" would require rejecting even thsse limitations. If you're on Hacker News, you're participating in a very very heavily moderated platform. This is also true of StackExchange. I think HackerNews and StackExchange are better for the strict limitations on speech on their platform. (If you turn "showdead" on, you'll see some pretty horrible comments on HackerNews, sometimes calling for deaths of groups or individuals, that are community-moderated away, i.e. censored.) I would reject the claim that there's an uptick in people who are against free-speech. I don't see anything to substantiate that. I think instead there are disagreements on where to draw the line. "Free speech" is also a buzzword that is used in bad faith, usually divorced from any serious conversation about free speech, which complicates things. If anything, I think it's a good sign that more people are educated about free-speech (both in terms of ideals and in terms of legal implications where it's a protected right), about censorship, and are having serious conversations about it.
  • nyolfen 4y ago
    >I'd also be careful not to conflate "people who think free speech is a bad idea" and "people who want limitations on speech." sorry, 'free speech except for special pleading for the ideas i don't like' is not free speech.
    • lynndotpy 4y ago
      Cool quote out of context, but did you read the rest? I have difficulty believing you're arguing in good faith. If you are arguing in good faith, why are you on HackerNews? Censorship is built-in to the platform with votes and flags, and this is one of the most strictly moderated (censored) social media sites. This isn't special pleading, it's simple nuance. I don't think it's worthwhile to explain why StackExchange would be worse if they allowed porn, or why HackerNews would be worse if we could compare it disfavorably to Reddit (something you're not allowed to say here.)
• hintymad 4y ago
  > It's very surprising to me to see that change in such a short span History shows that people were pretty willing to give up freedom or liberty in the name of social justice or righteousness.