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> You can classify speech. It’s not terribly difficult to classify when something is an outright call for racial warfare. We already have laws against speech t

> You can classify speech. It’s not terribly difficult to classify when something is an outright call for racial warfare. We already have laws against speech that incites violence and you might be surprised how contested the lines themselves are. There are a lot of people these days who outright state that speech itself == violence and should carry the same consequences. I'm not a free speech absolutist. When pressed, I don't think very many people are. I just think we need to be extremely careful when it comes to expanding those boundaries and that we're better off to err on the side of freedom because of the importance of what we stand to lose.

Spivak 3y ago
> speech itself == violence What's the argument against? Folks have been driven to suicide by targeted harassment and doxxing labeled "speech." The whole reason we have laws about public accommodation is because in a society you can drive someone to ruin by everyone collectively refusing to do business with them which was (and still is for the gays) backed by 1A. The threat of violence is violence, speech that is an implicit threat of violence is violence. Speech that makes people feel unsafe due that implicit threat is violence (say a neighborhood where every house had a flag with a black man hung by a noose). Verbal abuse is still abuse. Everyone who's ever been to school knows that bullying doesn't actually require anyone lay a hand on you to make you live in constant fear and that dynamic doesn't just go away when you become an adult. Sure, we could coin a term like "diet violence" to mean actions that cause in people the behave as if they were under the threat of violence but which doesn't cause bodily harm but what would be the point? Legally it makes sense to do that to discourage escalation but to the victim the only difference is usually but not always the severity. I'm sympathetic to folks when their messaging or iconography becomes recognized as an implicit threat of violence due to it being co-opted by others when they didn't mean it that way but if a bunch of people started flying communist flags and lynching people I would take mine down even if I was just really pro-workers rights. To me speech is about the content, the ideas, not any particular expression. In opposite world where "we're here we're queer" was a line that caused people to hide in their homes in fear I would be like yeah that's violence if I used that phrase in a speech. I can't separate cause and effect. I can still express my totally fine idea that queer folks do and will always exist, just using different words.
- bollockss 3y ago
  > What's the argument against? Folks have been driven to suicide by targeted harassment and doxxing labeled "speech." No they haven't, not on Kiwi Farms anyhow. This is a deliberate smear intended to justify any extrajudical action taken against the forum. The reality is that it's just a bunch of assholes gossiping about other assholes, and one asshole in particular is doing everything he can to eradicate the site because it has documented, amongst other horrible things, his confession of rape.
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  - autoexec 3y ago
    > The reality is that it's just a bunch of assholes gossiping about other assholes Kiwi Farms has been more than just gossip. It's been used by people to harass people in the real world. People there have taken things way too far in the past, and that behavior has been encouraged and supported by the culture of the site. I don't think the forum should be silenced, but it's simply not accurate to say that it's nothing more than online gossip. It has at times been the source of outright harassment and abuse. I think we'd agree that it's an issue that needs to be handled with moderation and the law, but it's also a real problem.
afavour 3y ago
I don’t deny that there are difficult areas, blurred lines and so on when it comes to free speech. But that doesn’t mean all speech is one and the same. The OP’s assertion was that if I oppose censoring Stormfront then I shouldn’t be surprised when I find myself censored. But of course I would: the speech I (and the vast majority of the population) engage in is nowhere near as inflammatory.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > the speech I (and the vast majority of the population) engage in is nowhere near as inflammatory. According to who? History shows us that what people generally find acceptable or inflammatory has changed wildly over time. I think people should be able to love and marry any consenting adult they can convince to agree to it. That kind of talk would have had me crucified under McCarthyism. You can't know what the prevailing opinion on the views you hold today will be even 5-10 years from now. People in recent times have been surprised to find themselves in very difficult situations because of that reality. In the US, our culture and values are less stable now than they've been in a long time. If you weaken free speech, as a right or an ideal, just to make yourself more comfortable today you might very well be surprised to find yourself censored or worse tomorrow.
  - chonkerz 3y ago
    You're describing a victimless situation which is substantially different from the matter at hand.
seanhunter 3y ago
Well for example the definition often used in the UK is from Elizabeth Stanko[1] and is ‘any form of behaviour by an individual that intentionally threatens to or does cause physical, sexual or psychological harm to others or themselves’. Which comes from "Counting the costs"[2]. Under that definition, threats of harm are explicitly defined as a form of violence. The definition of a crime of violence[2] in the US also explicitly includes threats as a form of violence. "The term 'crime of violence' means—... (a) an offense that has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another, or (b) any other offense that is a felony and that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense." (18 USC § 16 my emphasis) [1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/E-Stanko https://www.researchgate.net/profile/E-Stanko [2] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/E-Stanko/publication/242620090_ESTIMATING_THE_IMPACT_OF_DOMESTIC_VIOLENCE_IN_THE_LONDON_BOROUGH_OF_HACKNEY/links/54d8fb4d0cf25013d040b77f/ESTIMATING-THE-IMPACT-OF-DOMESTIC-VIOLENCE-IN-THE-LONDON-BOROUGH-OF-HACKNEY.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/E-Stanko/publication/24... [3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/16 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/16

Spivak 3y ago

> speech itself == violence What's the argument against? Folks have been driven to suicide by targeted harassment and doxxing labeled "speech." The whole reason we have laws about public accommodation is because in a society you can drive someone to ruin by everyone collectively refusing to do business with them which was (and still is for the gays) backed by 1A. The threat of violence is violence, speech that is an implicit threat of violence is violence. Speech that makes people feel unsafe due that implicit threat is violence (say a neighborhood where every house had a flag with a black man hung by a noose). Verbal abuse is still abuse. Everyone who's ever been to school knows that bullying doesn't actually require anyone lay a hand on you to make you live in constant fear and that dynamic doesn't just go away when you become an adult. Sure, we could coin a term like "diet violence" to mean actions that cause in people the behave as if they were under the threat of violence but which doesn't cause bodily harm but what would be the point? Legally it makes sense to do that to discourage escalation but to the victim the only difference is usually but not always the severity. I'm sympathetic to folks when their messaging or iconography becomes recognized as an implicit threat of violence due to it being co-opted by others when they didn't mean it that way but if a bunch of people started flying communist flags and lynching people I would take mine down even if I was just really pro-workers rights. To me speech is about the content, the ideas, not any particular expression. In opposite world where "we're here we're queer" was a line that caused people to hide in their homes in fear I would be like yeah that's violence if I used that phrase in a speech. I can't separate cause and effect. I can still express my totally fine idea that queer folks do and will always exist, just using different words.

bollockss 3y ago
> What's the argument against? Folks have been driven to suicide by targeted harassment and doxxing labeled "speech." No they haven't, not on Kiwi Farms anyhow. This is a deliberate smear intended to justify any extrajudical action taken against the forum. The reality is that it's just a bunch of assholes gossiping about other assholes, and one asshole in particular is doing everything he can to eradicate the site because it has documented, amongst other horrible things, his confession of rape.
- TylerE 3y ago
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- autoexec 3y ago
  > The reality is that it's just a bunch of assholes gossiping about other assholes Kiwi Farms has been more than just gossip. It's been used by people to harass people in the real world. People there have taken things way too far in the past, and that behavior has been encouraged and supported by the culture of the site. I don't think the forum should be silenced, but it's simply not accurate to say that it's nothing more than online gossip. It has at times been the source of outright harassment and abuse. I think we'd agree that it's an issue that needs to be handled with moderation and the law, but it's also a real problem.

afavour 3y ago

I don’t deny that there are difficult areas, blurred lines and so on when it comes to free speech. But that doesn’t mean all speech is one and the same. The OP’s assertion was that if I oppose censoring Stormfront then I shouldn’t be surprised when I find myself censored. But of course I would: the speech I (and the vast majority of the population) engage in is nowhere near as inflammatory.

autoexec 3y ago
> the speech I (and the vast majority of the population) engage in is nowhere near as inflammatory. According to who? History shows us that what people generally find acceptable or inflammatory has changed wildly over time. I think people should be able to love and marry any consenting adult they can convince to agree to it. That kind of talk would have had me crucified under McCarthyism. You can't know what the prevailing opinion on the views you hold today will be even 5-10 years from now. People in recent times have been surprised to find themselves in very difficult situations because of that reality. In the US, our culture and values are less stable now than they've been in a long time. If you weaken free speech, as a right or an ideal, just to make yourself more comfortable today you might very well be surprised to find yourself censored or worse tomorrow.
- chonkerz 3y ago
  You're describing a victimless situation which is substantially different from the matter at hand.

seanhunter 3y ago

Well for example the definition often used in the UK is from Elizabeth Stanko[1] and is ‘any form of behaviour by an individual that intentionally threatens to or does cause physical, sexual or psychological harm to others or themselves’. Which comes from "Counting the costs"[2]. Under that definition, threats of harm are explicitly defined as a form of violence. The definition of a crime of violence[2] in the US also explicitly includes threats as a form of violence. "The term 'crime of violence' means—... (a) an offense that has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another, or (b) any other offense that is a felony and that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense." (18 USC § 16 my emphasis) [1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/E-Stanko https://www.researchgate.net/profile/E-Stanko [2] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/E-Stanko/publication/242620090_ESTIMATING_THE_IMPACT_OF_DOMESTIC_VIOLENCE_IN_THE_LONDON_BOROUGH_OF_HACKNEY/links/54d8fb4d0cf25013d040b77f/ESTIMATING-THE-IMPACT-OF-DOMESTIC-VIOLENCE-IN-THE-LONDON-BOROUGH-OF-HACKNEY.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/E-Stanko/publication/24... [3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/16 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/16