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>In other words, the First Amendment recognizes that the government cannot regulate “hate speech” without inevitably silencing the dissent and dialogue that dem

>In other words, the First Amendment recognizes that the government cannot regulate “hate speech” without inevitably silencing the dissent and dialogue that democracy requires While I'm all for debates about the pros and cons of more or less permissive speech policies, sentences like this always betray the quasi religious nature of American speech attitudes. Many of the oldest democracies in the world work perfectly fine and do not follow this line of thinking. It would probably be worthwhile to have a much more empirical approach, trying to actually measure what the impact of prohibiting certain speech is. How many people are unduly silenced, how much intended harm is prevented, and so on. Because statements like: "It is quite clear that the perceived benefits of censoring psychically harmful hate speech are far outweighed by the costs of such suppression." aren't clear at all. We often don't know because these are really not evidence driven claims. In our information age there should be a rigorous science on how moderation of speech impacts networks and it deserves fairly high priority.

yucky 4y ago
> It would probably be worthwhile to have a much more empirical approach, trying to actually measure what the impact of prohibiting certain speech is. Who gets to do the measuring? Same people that get to define (and redefine when politically convenient) what hate speech is.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  Sure, but that's nothing special. Any measuring, any science is done by people with the usual biases, that's hardly a reason against doing science and acting on empirical results. In medicine, law, economics there's always heavy political biases but that doesn't mean making judgements based on data is worse than making no decsisions or just making our preferred conclusions up. This rhetoric is exactly what I meant when I said free speech has quasi religious status. A perfectly normal, obvious fact, that measurements and decisions are made by biased people is presented as an argument to put free speech beyond questioning or a science based approach.
  - yucky 4y ago
    > that's hardly a reason against doing science Determining what people should be allowed to say is not scientific by any measure, and trying to pretend it is completely discredits the argument. What should be acceptable to say is centered around feelings which shift with the winds. That is not science, it is pseudoscience by definition. If you have a better argument, feel free to make it. If not, this line of thought can be dismissed out of hand.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Agreed. From the outside of the United States, it truly seems surreal, the way this is often framed in almost theological, fundamentalist, language. Free speech as the right to dissent in a democracy, almost every reasonable person in the western world can get behind this. Free speech as the right to march in the streets demanding the destruction of democracy and the physical harassment and denial of rights to minority groups, advocating the use of political violence, the removal of democratically elected figures, the alteration of elections, and even the overthrow of the state; this is a place that most of the rest of the western world won't follow. And -- in the actual history of the United States -- when this kind of political speech was made by the left wing in the form of the communist movement, it was heavily opposed and censored in brutal fashion. The United States spied on, jailed, censored, etc far left wing activists for decades both abroad and domestically. The intelligence agencies as they exist in the US were almost exclusively set up for this purpose. This was policy advocated for and enacted by politicians on both the liberal and conservative side of the fence. There's maybe less of it now, but that's because there's almost no far left present in the US anymore. But there seems to be a blind spot by many libertarians of various stripes in the United States when we are talking about this kind of speech from the far right. The organized Far Right is the biggest actual material threat to democracy in the western world right now -- not a few instances of maybe-censorship. The meaningful discussion is to when and how and if we (as a society) intervene around the organization of these groups. I think it should be clear from what happened on January 6th that there are explicit and concrete and measurable costs to democracy and an open society itself to not intervening at all.
- batmansmom1 4y ago
  I think most of the world can agree that Jan 6th was evidence of a problem in need of a solution. I wonder if there is another solution that doesn't involve censorship/intervening in free speech. Perhaps there are societal efforts we should be taking that prevent the need for these groups to form in the first place. I think most in the free speech camp would say that intervening to prevent these groups from organizing just kicks the can down the street a bit and isn't a solution to the problems that cause riots like Jan 6th from occurring

yucky 4y ago

> It would probably be worthwhile to have a much more empirical approach, trying to actually measure what the impact of prohibiting certain speech is. Who gets to do the measuring? Same people that get to define (and redefine when politically convenient) what hate speech is.

Barrin92 4y ago
Sure, but that's nothing special. Any measuring, any science is done by people with the usual biases, that's hardly a reason against doing science and acting on empirical results. In medicine, law, economics there's always heavy political biases but that doesn't mean making judgements based on data is worse than making no decsisions or just making our preferred conclusions up. This rhetoric is exactly what I meant when I said free speech has quasi religious status. A perfectly normal, obvious fact, that measurements and decisions are made by biased people is presented as an argument to put free speech beyond questioning or a science based approach.
- yucky 4y ago
  > that's hardly a reason against doing science Determining what people should be allowed to say is not scientific by any measure, and trying to pretend it is completely discredits the argument. What should be acceptable to say is centered around feelings which shift with the winds. That is not science, it is pseudoscience by definition. If you have a better argument, feel free to make it. If not, this line of thought can be dismissed out of hand.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

Agreed. From the outside of the United States, it truly seems surreal, the way this is often framed in almost theological, fundamentalist, language. Free speech as the right to dissent in a democracy, almost every reasonable person in the western world can get behind this. Free speech as the right to march in the streets demanding the destruction of democracy and the physical harassment and denial of rights to minority groups, advocating the use of political violence, the removal of democratically elected figures, the alteration of elections, and even the overthrow of the state; this is a place that most of the rest of the western world won't follow. And -- in the actual history of the United States -- when this kind of political speech was made by the left wing in the form of the communist movement, it was heavily opposed and censored in brutal fashion. The United States spied on, jailed, censored, etc far left wing activists for decades both abroad and domestically. The intelligence agencies as they exist in the US were almost exclusively set up for this purpose. This was policy advocated for and enacted by politicians on both the liberal and conservative side of the fence. There's maybe less of it now, but that's because there's almost no far left present in the US anymore. But there seems to be a blind spot by many libertarians of various stripes in the United States when we are talking about this kind of speech from the far right. The organized Far Right is the biggest actual material threat to democracy in the western world right now -- not a few instances of maybe-censorship. The meaningful discussion is to when and how and if we (as a society) intervene around the organization of these groups. I think it should be clear from what happened on January 6th that there are explicit and concrete and measurable costs to democracy and an open society itself to not intervening at all.

batmansmom1 4y ago
I think most of the world can agree that Jan 6th was evidence of a problem in need of a solution. I wonder if there is another solution that doesn't involve censorship/intervening in free speech. Perhaps there are societal efforts we should be taking that prevent the need for these groups to form in the first place. I think most in the free speech camp would say that intervening to prevent these groups from organizing just kicks the can down the street a bit and isn't a solution to the problems that cause riots like Jan 6th from occurring