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I, on the contrary, believe that free speech absolutism is morally and intellectually lazy, naive, and wrong. Banning some speech is in fact necessary to preser

by brazzy 4y ago

I, on the contrary, believe that free speech absolutism is morally and intellectually lazy, naive, and wrong. Banning some speech is in fact necessary to preserve freedom. Speech has real consequences, otherwise why would you consider it important to defend? Hate speech is a real problem. It is poisonous to society and results in real people getting killed for real. And no, the "marketplace of ideas" where you offer your own opinion to disprove lies is a hopelessly naive concept. That's not how the world works. In reality, people prefer to stay in echo chambers. And fascists laugh about how you're working towards making it easier for them to abolish all freedoms. > When our enemies say: well, we gave you the freedom of opinion back then- yeah, you gave it to us, that's in no way evidence that we should return the favor! Your stupidity shall not be contagious! That you granted it to us is evidence of how dumb you are! -- Joseph Goebbels, 1935 And no, there is no slippery slope here. Many European countries have well-designed, robust hate speech bans that have worked well for decades to protect freedom against those who would destroy it.

silisili 4y ago
How does one definite hate speech? Who gets to decide? That's my entire problem with this philosophy. Some one or some group feel holy enough to be the arbiters. A lot of religious texts, beliefs, and/or sermons would probably be considered hate speech to a not insignificant number of people.
- Zetice 4y ago
  I don’t think, “it’s hard” is a justifiable reason for an idea to be wrong, so I’m not sure the fact that having a fair way of discerning hate speech is hard means that we shouldn’t discern hate speech.
  - silisili 4y ago
    It's not hard, it's quite literally impossible. If there's a person who believes God is real, and the Bible is real, and homosexuals are sinners... and another person who is homosexual and doesn't believe in God, where can there be compromise? I'm neither, just looking at this from above. The best you can do is disenfranchising anything less than the majority's opinion. I think the current US model works well. Free speech, unless it's going to lead to immediate harm and such. Anything more than that is a step into authoritarianism, and where I fear we're headed. The private sector has already tried to be said arbiters, so it's interesting to see where this ends up.
    - brazzy 4y ago
      What you claim to be impossible is in fact routinely and successfuly done. Because the point of hate speech bans is not at all to police opinions, it's about making sure everyone can live in peace no matter what opinion anyone holds. Looking at your example for the point of view of the German criminal code, section 130 (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1368 https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_st...): * believing that God is real, and the Bible is real, and homosexuals are sinners is completely outside the scope of the law, since it only concerns speech, not beliefs. * saying "God is real, and the Bible is real, and homosexuals are sinners" is also not affected (this is dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, frequently stated in public) because no matter whether you believe it to be true or not, it does not imply anyone should do anything in particular, and thus does not affect the public peace. * saying "God hates homosexuals and they will burn in hell", still the same, what God does in hell is outside the scope of the law. * saying "Every god-fearing man should do god's will and kill homosexuals on sight" in public in front of a crowd - BEEEP, BEEP, BEEP, we got ourselves a statement suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace, go to jail for between three months and five years. * saying "People should not let homosexuals into their homes" - not affected, whom people let into your private homes is not a matter of public peace. * saying "Companies should not employ homosexuals" - again not affected for the same reason, although companies who actually refuse to employ homosexuals would be in violation of an entirely different (anti-discrimination) law. So you see: it's not actually that difficult. > I think the current US model works well. Free speech, unless it's going to lead to immediate harm and such. Anything more than that is a step into authoritarianism This is a lovely example of status quo bias.
      - fennecfoxy 4y ago
        Yeah but all of those things said that you say are apparently okay can lead to declining mental health in gay individuals, who eventually kill themselves after years or decades of mental abuse.
        brazzy 4y ago
        I'm not saying those things are "okay", they are just not something that's appropriate to handle via criminal law.
- mehwoot 4y ago
  How does one definite hate speech? Who gets to decide? That's my entire problem with this philosophy. Some one or some group feel holy enough to be the arbiters. Yes, real life is hard and complicated and there's no easy way to decide it. We collectively do the best we can and keep trying to improve. That's just reality. That's why free speech absolutism is naïve- it appeals to our desire for one, simple, always enforceable rule but it's not the way the world works that one simple rule is always the best outcome.
  - Georgelemental 4y ago
    The issue is, that collectively deciding what speech to ban, in a democratic manner, requires discussing that speech openly and publicly. But if the speech is illegal, that discussion can't happen. It's a Catch-22; censorship is incompatible with democracy!
    - brazzy 4y ago
      No, that problem is quite simple to solve by designing the laws appropriately. For example, in the German criminal code, the first basic prerequisite for the applicability of the hate speech ban is that it occurs "in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace", which does not apply when talking about it in legal debates.
    - lm28469 4y ago
      > But if the speech is illegal, that discussion can't happen. What kind of argument is that ? How do you think they trial people for hate speech ? Murder is illegal you can still talk about it just don't plot an assassination. Being a nazi is illegal in germany, you can still talk about nazis and nazism It's not a banned list fo words that immediately put you in jail for uttering them
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - fennecfoxy 4y ago
    Exactly. Everyone acting like we have to have the perfect, be-all-end-all solution to everything or nothing. Our society evolves over time, slowly getting better (and hopefully not regressing).
- kgwxd 4y ago
  A lot of religious texts, beliefs, and/or sermons are hate speech.
- brazzy 4y ago
  >How does one definite hate speech? Who gets to decide? Parliaments and courts. See the battle-tested European hate speech laws I mentioned, e.g. section 130 of the criminal code of Germany: "Whoever, in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace, 1. incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origin, against sections of the population or individuals on account of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or sections of the population, or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them or 2. violates the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning or defaming one of the aforementioned groups, sections of the population or individuals on account of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or sections of the population" Note especially how the first sentence is a pretty tight restriction. Private speech cannot be affected. Academic texts are pretty safe. Anything arguing for moderation and careful consideration of facts is easily defensible.
  - catiopatio 4y ago
    Those laws you have the temerity to call “battle-tested” regularly lead to the violation of individual right by way of both arrest and prosecution for harmless and necessary speech.
    - ttfkam 4y ago
      What does a Daily Mail (already suspect source) article about a UK musician in the UK have to do with the statute as written in Germany as it applies to Germans? Right? The previous comment was talking about German law and jurisprudence and its effect (or lack thereof) on free speech? As for the Daily Mail, you should be cautious in your commitment to its veracity and its applicability to an American audience. For example, the word “arrest” does not mean what you think it does in UK English. I think you are confusing it with the word used in the scenario you expected: “charged”. An arrest simply means that the police have started asking questions, and are notifying the subject that their questions and any answers can be admissible in court. British police reality is not the same as in a US TV series.
      - 4y ago
- lm28469 4y ago
  Who decide what's legal anyways right ? Who decide murder is wrong? Or rape? Or theft? See how dumb that sounds ?
shrimp_emoji 4y ago
>Joseph Goebbels, 1935 So be like the Nazis (because that worked so well for them).
- cocacola1 4y ago
  I think it's more the fact that treating the Nazi's well and trying to avoid a violent conflict didn't mean that they would try to avoid it on their end. Cede them an inch and they'll commit genocide.
  - bentley 4y ago
    What you describe is not really an accurate description of the political situation that resulted in 1930s Germany.
    - brazzy 4y ago
      It is in fact a very accurate description. Goebbels spelled it out quite explicitly. Another quote from him in 1928: "We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem. [...] We are coming neither as friends or neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf attacks the sheep, so come we. You are not among your friends any longer. You will not enjoy having us among you."
      - bentley 4y ago
        Goebbels is an unreliable narrator who had strong incentive to promote the idea that freedom of speech makes a nation weak. The problem is not that the Nazis were allowed to speak (in fact, hate speech against Jews was often punishable under German law and Goebbels was imprisoned twice for it), but that they were allowed to be violent with no real consequences. Hitler only served eight months for his violent coup attempt in 1923.
nxm 4y ago
And how do you define hate speech? Speech that you don’t like? That offends you? It’s an extremely slippery slope until you don’t get to say what you want because someone with more power than you decided it’d be “hate speech”
- brazzy 4y ago
  Did you overlook my last paragraph? See also my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=brazzy#34950806 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=brazzy#34950806 No, it is really not at all a slippery slope. Even if you just look at the term, it's pretty damn obvious that it has nothing yo do with "Speech that you don’t like? That offends you?"
  - qu4z-2 4y ago
    If you look at the term, one thing is obvious. If you look at the way it is applied, another thing is obvious. In general, just looking at terms might give you a very flawed understanding of such things as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
41amxn41 4y ago
[flagged]
- brazzy 4y ago
  I suggest you inform yourself about the meaning of that term.
  - 41amxn41 4y ago
    [dead]
redeeman 4y ago
> Many European countries have well-designed, robust hate speech bans that have worked well for decades to protect freedom against those who would destroy it. And we know this because we stopped anyone who disagreed with the system from talking... oh wait lets try again: And we know this because anyone who disagrees is a lousy criminal thats in jail or silencing themselves for fear of such
- brazzy 4y ago
  >And we know this because we stopped anyone who disagreed with the system from talking... No, we didn't. That is a particularly silly and ignorant example of a slippery slope argument.
  - redeeman 4y ago
    I very strongly think that you do not know what you are talking about. And this is because the regimes around Europe is lying at all times. We are the good guys, we would NEVER abuse, NEVER EVER.
super256 4y ago
> And no, there is no slippery slope here. Many European countries have well-designed, robust hate speech bans that have worked well for decades to protect freedom against those who would destroy it. The country where I live only banned hate speech in 2017, and I think the world was fine before it. The issue is not that we need more laws to ban any kind of speech, but we need to actually enforce the existing laws instead. Before 2017 we only had a law for “instigation of the people”, which worked fine and did not ban "hate speech" per se.
Georgelemental 4y ago
> Many European countries have well-designed, robust hate speech bans that have worked well for decades ... to attack democratic debate and suppress those who dare oppose the powers that be with endless SLAPP lawsuits.
- brazzy 4y ago
  Wrong. That is absolutely not what is happening with those laws.
jimbokun 4y ago
> It is poisonous to society and results in real people getting killed for real. On the contrary, Twitter is full of people claiming this or that speech is getting people killed, with absolutely no evidence. There are a growing number of people who truly and deeply believe exposure to opinions they disagree with, or even empirical data, is "violence" against them or even "genocide". Making these claims is a great strategy for forcibly silencing anyone who disagrees with you.
- brazzy 4y ago
  > Twitter is full of people claiming this or that speech is getting people killed, with absolutely no evidence. There is in fact a fuckton of evidence: https://news.yahoo.com/all-25-us-extremism-related-murders-last-year-were-linked-to-right-wing-extremists-212259479.html https://news.yahoo.com/all-25-us-extremism-related-murders-l...
  - jimbokun 4y ago
    I was too unequivocal in my claim, point taken. Clearly there is some speech that makes violence more likely. I still believe that claims of harm and violence are commonly made against speech that is not promoting harm or violence, in an attempt to censor that speech. The proportion of each I don't know, just that I firmly believe both exist.
    - brazzy 4y ago
      I will agree with you on that.
  - redeeman 4y ago
    but what kind of logic would be employed then? by this line of reasoning, what would happen if a group of hardcore communists decided that merely talking about how free markets for AI research is a good thing is something that they cannot tolerate, and begin killing people. Do we now forbid this speech too, as CLEARLY it is getting people killed?

by brazzy 4y ago

silisili 4y ago

How does one definite hate speech? Who gets to decide? That's my entire problem with this philosophy. Some one or some group feel holy enough to be the arbiters. A lot of religious texts, beliefs, and/or sermons would probably be considered hate speech to a not insignificant number of people.

Zetice 4y ago
I don’t think, “it’s hard” is a justifiable reason for an idea to be wrong, so I’m not sure the fact that having a fair way of discerning hate speech is hard means that we shouldn’t discern hate speech.
- silisili 4y ago
  It's not hard, it's quite literally impossible. If there's a person who believes God is real, and the Bible is real, and homosexuals are sinners... and another person who is homosexual and doesn't believe in God, where can there be compromise? I'm neither, just looking at this from above. The best you can do is disenfranchising anything less than the majority's opinion. I think the current US model works well. Free speech, unless it's going to lead to immediate harm and such. Anything more than that is a step into authoritarianism, and where I fear we're headed. The private sector has already tried to be said arbiters, so it's interesting to see where this ends up.
  - brazzy 4y ago
    What you claim to be impossible is in fact routinely and successfuly done. Because the point of hate speech bans is not at all to police opinions, it's about making sure everyone can live in peace no matter what opinion anyone holds. Looking at your example for the point of view of the German criminal code, section 130 (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1368 https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_st...): * believing that God is real, and the Bible is real, and homosexuals are sinners is completely outside the scope of the law, since it only concerns speech, not beliefs. * saying "God is real, and the Bible is real, and homosexuals are sinners" is also not affected (this is dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, frequently stated in public) because no matter whether you believe it to be true or not, it does not imply anyone should do anything in particular, and thus does not affect the public peace. * saying "God hates homosexuals and they will burn in hell", still the same, what God does in hell is outside the scope of the law. * saying "Every god-fearing man should do god's will and kill homosexuals on sight" in public in front of a crowd - BEEEP, BEEP, BEEP, we got ourselves a statement suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace, go to jail for between three months and five years. * saying "People should not let homosexuals into their homes" - not affected, whom people let into your private homes is not a matter of public peace. * saying "Companies should not employ homosexuals" - again not affected for the same reason, although companies who actually refuse to employ homosexuals would be in violation of an entirely different (anti-discrimination) law. So you see: it's not actually that difficult. > I think the current US model works well. Free speech, unless it's going to lead to immediate harm and such. Anything more than that is a step into authoritarianism This is a lovely example of status quo bias.
    - fennecfoxy 4y ago
      Yeah but all of those things said that you say are apparently okay can lead to declining mental health in gay individuals, who eventually kill themselves after years or decades of mental abuse.
      - brazzy 4y ago
        I'm not saying those things are "okay", they are just not something that's appropriate to handle via criminal law.
mehwoot 4y ago
How does one definite hate speech? Who gets to decide? That's my entire problem with this philosophy. Some one or some group feel holy enough to be the arbiters. Yes, real life is hard and complicated and there's no easy way to decide it. We collectively do the best we can and keep trying to improve. That's just reality. That's why free speech absolutism is naïve- it appeals to our desire for one, simple, always enforceable rule but it's not the way the world works that one simple rule is always the best outcome.
- Georgelemental 4y ago
  The issue is, that collectively deciding what speech to ban, in a democratic manner, requires discussing that speech openly and publicly. But if the speech is illegal, that discussion can't happen. It's a Catch-22; censorship is incompatible with democracy!
  - brazzy 4y ago
    No, that problem is quite simple to solve by designing the laws appropriately. For example, in the German criminal code, the first basic prerequisite for the applicability of the hate speech ban is that it occurs "in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace", which does not apply when talking about it in legal debates.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    > But if the speech is illegal, that discussion can't happen. What kind of argument is that ? How do you think they trial people for hate speech ? Murder is illegal you can still talk about it just don't plot an assassination. Being a nazi is illegal in germany, you can still talk about nazis and nazism It's not a banned list fo words that immediately put you in jail for uttering them
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- fennecfoxy 4y ago
  Exactly. Everyone acting like we have to have the perfect, be-all-end-all solution to everything or nothing. Our society evolves over time, slowly getting better (and hopefully not regressing).
kgwxd 4y ago
A lot of religious texts, beliefs, and/or sermons are hate speech.
brazzy 4y ago
>How does one definite hate speech? Who gets to decide? Parliaments and courts. See the battle-tested European hate speech laws I mentioned, e.g. section 130 of the criminal code of Germany: "Whoever, in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace, 1. incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origin, against sections of the population or individuals on account of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or sections of the population, or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them or 2. violates the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning or defaming one of the aforementioned groups, sections of the population or individuals on account of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or sections of the population" Note especially how the first sentence is a pretty tight restriction. Private speech cannot be affected. Academic texts are pretty safe. Anything arguing for moderation and careful consideration of facts is easily defensible.
- catiopatio 4y ago
  Those laws you have the temerity to call “battle-tested” regularly lead to the violation of individual right by way of both arrest and prosecution for harmless and necessary speech.
  - ttfkam 4y ago
    What does a Daily Mail (already suspect source) article about a UK musician in the UK have to do with the statute as written in Germany as it applies to Germans? Right? The previous comment was talking about German law and jurisprudence and its effect (or lack thereof) on free speech? As for the Daily Mail, you should be cautious in your commitment to its veracity and its applicability to an American audience. For example, the word “arrest” does not mean what you think it does in UK English. I think you are confusing it with the word used in the scenario you expected: “charged”. An arrest simply means that the police have started asking questions, and are notifying the subject that their questions and any answers can be admissible in court. British police reality is not the same as in a US TV series.
    - 4y ago
lm28469 4y ago
Who decide what's legal anyways right ? Who decide murder is wrong? Or rape? Or theft? See how dumb that sounds ?

shrimp_emoji 4y ago

>Joseph Goebbels, 1935 So be like the Nazis (because that worked so well for them).

cocacola1 4y ago
I think it's more the fact that treating the Nazi's well and trying to avoid a violent conflict didn't mean that they would try to avoid it on their end. Cede them an inch and they'll commit genocide.
- bentley 4y ago
  What you describe is not really an accurate description of the political situation that resulted in 1930s Germany.
  - brazzy 4y ago
    It is in fact a very accurate description. Goebbels spelled it out quite explicitly. Another quote from him in 1928: "We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem. [...] We are coming neither as friends or neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf attacks the sheep, so come we. You are not among your friends any longer. You will not enjoy having us among you."
    - bentley 4y ago
      Goebbels is an unreliable narrator who had strong incentive to promote the idea that freedom of speech makes a nation weak. The problem is not that the Nazis were allowed to speak (in fact, hate speech against Jews was often punishable under German law and Goebbels was imprisoned twice for it), but that they were allowed to be violent with no real consequences. Hitler only served eight months for his violent coup attempt in 1923.

nxm 4y ago

And how do you define hate speech? Speech that you don’t like? That offends you? It’s an extremely slippery slope until you don’t get to say what you want because someone with more power than you decided it’d be “hate speech”

brazzy 4y ago
Did you overlook my last paragraph? See also my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=brazzy#34950806 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=brazzy#34950806 No, it is really not at all a slippery slope. Even if you just look at the term, it's pretty damn obvious that it has nothing yo do with "Speech that you don’t like? That offends you?"
- qu4z-2 4y ago
  If you look at the term, one thing is obvious. If you look at the way it is applied, another thing is obvious. In general, just looking at terms might give you a very flawed understanding of such things as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

41amxn41 4y ago

[flagged]

brazzy 4y ago
I suggest you inform yourself about the meaning of that term.
- 41amxn41 4y ago
  [dead]

redeeman 4y ago

> Many European countries have well-designed, robust hate speech bans that have worked well for decades to protect freedom against those who would destroy it. And we know this because we stopped anyone who disagreed with the system from talking... oh wait lets try again: And we know this because anyone who disagrees is a lousy criminal thats in jail or silencing themselves for fear of such

brazzy 4y ago
>And we know this because we stopped anyone who disagreed with the system from talking... No, we didn't. That is a particularly silly and ignorant example of a slippery slope argument.
- redeeman 4y ago
  I very strongly think that you do not know what you are talking about. And this is because the regimes around Europe is lying at all times. We are the good guys, we would NEVER abuse, NEVER EVER.

super256 4y ago

> And no, there is no slippery slope here. Many European countries have well-designed, robust hate speech bans that have worked well for decades to protect freedom against those who would destroy it. The country where I live only banned hate speech in 2017, and I think the world was fine before it. The issue is not that we need more laws to ban any kind of speech, but we need to actually enforce the existing laws instead. Before 2017 we only had a law for “instigation of the people”, which worked fine and did not ban "hate speech" per se.

Georgelemental 4y ago

> Many European countries have well-designed, robust hate speech bans that have worked well for decades ... to attack democratic debate and suppress those who dare oppose the powers that be with endless SLAPP lawsuits.

brazzy 4y ago
Wrong. That is absolutely not what is happening with those laws.

jimbokun 4y ago

> It is poisonous to society and results in real people getting killed for real. On the contrary, Twitter is full of people claiming this or that speech is getting people killed, with absolutely no evidence. There are a growing number of people who truly and deeply believe exposure to opinions they disagree with, or even empirical data, is "violence" against them or even "genocide". Making these claims is a great strategy for forcibly silencing anyone who disagrees with you.

brazzy 4y ago
> Twitter is full of people claiming this or that speech is getting people killed, with absolutely no evidence. There is in fact a fuckton of evidence: https://news.yahoo.com/all-25-us-extremism-related-murders-last-year-were-linked-to-right-wing-extremists-212259479.html https://news.yahoo.com/all-25-us-extremism-related-murders-l...
- jimbokun 4y ago
  I was too unequivocal in my claim, point taken. Clearly there is some speech that makes violence more likely. I still believe that claims of harm and violence are commonly made against speech that is not promoting harm or violence, in an attempt to censor that speech. The proportion of each I don't know, just that I firmly believe both exist.
  - brazzy 4y ago
    I will agree with you on that.
- redeeman 4y ago
  but what kind of logic would be employed then? by this line of reasoning, what would happen if a group of hardcore communists decided that merely talking about how free markets for AI research is a good thing is something that they cannot tolerate, and begin killing people. Do we now forbid this speech too, as CLEARLY it is getting people killed?