6 ms·

I'm not sure this "freedom of speech" absolutism is such a good idea. A society needs to put limits on behavior of its individuals to be sane. I support that pe

I'm not sure this "freedom of speech" absolutism is such a good idea. A society needs to put limits on behavior of its individuals to be sane. I support that people can express whatever opinion they have, but not in any way they want.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
I think one issue is that on the internet it's becoming impossible to know anything. You can't know that those thousands of accounts are trolls or neighbors. Does freedom of speech grant you the right to use a troll/bot army to spread misinformation? I suppose if each troll/bot were labeled I would be fine with it but they aren't, they pollute these online spaces. Whose speech is being protected?
- acdha 3y ago
  Also there’s less accountability at the same time that the costs have never been lower. A lot of free speech assumptions are based on relative ratios and implicit social pressure to discourage abuse. There just aren’t that many people who are going to stand around screaming insults or lies in a public space, and there’s no equivalent for one guy pretending to be hundreds of people or, especially, for 10 people in a different country to pretend to be part of an entire political movement on another continent.
  - frumper 3y ago
    So are we banning bots or what the bots are saying? One guy can say the same thing and that is what appears to be targeted.
    - acdha 3y ago
      Probably both and neither - for example, rather than outright banning things requiring them to be linked to a verified owner would potentially allow some speech without the negatives. A historic comparison might be the way Americans making political donations are required to affirm that they are using their own money without reimbursement to add a legal risk to paying people to flood public debate. I don’t claim to have the answers, but was just pointing out that the world has changed and we will need different policies.
      - frumper 3y ago
        Media has always been filled with lies and propaganda. That isn't new. The folk traveling from out of town brought slanted news and biased stories to the watering hole. Songs manipulate your feelings on various topics. Broadsheets brought you the vile things the bad guys are doing, whether accurate or not. The newspapers, radio, and tv media have been filled with propaganda since their inceptions. I'm not sure that anything has changed except there is now another medium people need to learn to filter through. It's coming at us from more directions at once, but we have to open the door for those voices to come in.
        petsfed 3y ago
        So, since it was always in principle possible that the streets of every city, town, and village could be flooded by millions of newsies, all hocking editions of a variety of newspapers that had all just began publishing that day, we should do nothing now that it is actually possible in practice? I'm not saying I know what the solution actually is, but denying that there even is a problem, or that the existing guidelines were designed with the above scenario in mind, is just preposterous to me.
        frumper 3y ago
        I don't deny there is a problem. I am saying the problem is as old as time.
        acdha 3y ago
        Again, think of scale and cost. Newspapers needed to be written, printed, and required a distribution network – all of which require money, time, and infrastructure. That doesn’t mean that they were perfect but they developed reputations and because they needed to pay those bills there was some moderating influence for not scaring off readers or advertisers — that’s not perfect but it’s why you had stories which only ran in tabloids because the owners of the bigger papers didn’t want to lose business or get sued (physical presence means assets at risk!) by someone they slandered. Governments often had rules about foreign ownership of media outlets, registration or permitting requirements for journalists, etc. Again, I’m not saying that everything was perfect before but that the rules and norms from the past need to be adjusted for the present. The way we handled hundreds of television stations can’t scale to millions of websites or social media accounts, especially since you no longer have anchors like geographic proximity or business identities.
- kurthr 3y ago
  The goal of much disinfo is exactly this, to remove the idea of objective reality, facts, or truth. It is common and useful to do this in authoritarian regimes. It goes along with depoliticization where the population comes to believe that they have no control and should desire no control over politics or government. https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  The idea of automated bot armies manipulating public discourse is largely a fantasy. The claims about such bots (usually on Twitter) never hold up to close inspection. Go do your own research (the thing that anti-free speech people often hate the most) and you'll discover many of the accounts labelled as bots by media and academia are humans.
houseatrielah 3y ago
You say "society", but in practice its a group of unelected bureaucrats engaging in political censorship and regulatory capture.
- malermeister 3y ago
  Who exactly is unelected?
  - perceptronas 3y ago
    European Commission fits here. Head of commission is approved by parliament as far I know, but commissars are not elected, just suggested by each state governments. Also, all EU laws can only be proposed by European Commission. Others can suggest them, but only they can bring them to parliament. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
    - bmurphy1976 3y ago
      Are the EU state governments not elected? Last I checked they were. Lots of bureaucratic and political positions are appointed by other elected representatives. We can't elect everybody, that would be too much. So is that really a problem here? I am not that up to speed on the intricacies of EU governance at this level so I really don't know if this is a real problem or not.
      - stvltvs 3y ago
        This is more like the way we used to elect Senators in the US. The state legislatures used to select Senators until we amended the Constitution to require direct election by the people. Personally, I would prefer direct accountability of top government officials like the European Commission to the public.
    - malermeister 3y ago
      Isn't this the same as like a secretary in the US, appointed by an elected government official?
threatofrain 3y ago
No nation has pure freedom of speech anyway; we're all just shades of gray with Europe opting for a little more color over the US.
- Gud 3y ago
  With more censorship it would be less color, I guess?
2356234562537 3y ago
I don't think anywhere is actually absolutist. Even America has restrictions they just are primarily things like shouting fire in a theatre to use the common example. I wonder, aside from offending good taste though, what harm is actually caused by the American approach that the Europeans can say they don't have to deal with. Unlike comparing gun violence, where I can easily just point out there's fewer civilians shooting civilians in Europe, I can't say that I've seen Europe's more restrictive speech laws to have much of an impact on the peace of the people there. Usually when I see critics in any country arguing for censorship it's primarily because "the other team" was being persuasive in some shady manner and that gets presented as the end all be all reason for why the other group is compelling at all.
- bdzr 3y ago
  Fire in a theater usually is legal, see https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/shouting-fire-crowded-theater-speech-regulation/621151/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/shouting-f....
jiscariot 3y ago
When anyone says 'Yes, I believe in free speech, but …,' I stop listening. ~ Salman Rushdie.
bwanab 3y ago
Absolutism isn't the point. We all know that there are limits - the classic example of yelling fire in a crowed theater. And as somebody below pointed out, no country has full freedom of speech and while that is true the US does have freedom of speech enshrined in its founding documents as the first amendment. For most other countries, it's not a clear "right" except by common practice and legislation that could be easily revised. But, the point is, we should always have the presumption of freedom of speech. As a matter of course that means we also must have certain responsibilities for the consequences of exercising that freedom. This last point often gets overlooked.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  How does that works with your initial comment though?
- bdzr 3y ago
  FWIW, fire in a crowded theater usually is legal. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/shouting-fire-crowded-theater-speech-regulation/621151/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/shouting-f...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ethbr1 3y ago
  The limits in the US are essentially action. You can say whatever you want. But when you take an illegal action (or, grey area, compel someone else to take an action) then you lose free speech protections. "Fire" in a movie theater is the classic example of the court deciding what sort of speech consitutes compelling action. This in contrast to other many other countries, where there is no guarantee that speech-that-does-not-compel-action will always be free. To me, speech vs action is a critical distinction, because it prevents anyone in power from monopolizing the marketplace of ideas by banning an idea itself. While simultaneously preventing the worst societal consequences from actions. Or, in other words... neo Nazis should be allowed to march peacefully... but so should everyone else. And the latter should massively outweigh the former. (That said, nothing prevents keeping a much closer eye on violence-espousing neo Nazis)
RestlessMind 3y ago
> A society needs to put limits on behavior of its individuals to be sane Just look at how Indian politicians abuse hate speech laws. A classic example: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/media/india-bbc-office-raid-third-day-thursday-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/media/india-bbc-office-raid-t... "Officials had spent three days raiding the spaces following the country’s ban on a BBC documentary that was critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in deadly riots more than 20 years ago. " "Now ranked between Turkey and Sudan, India dropped eight places to 150 out of 180 nations in last year’s World Press Freedom Index published by the Paris-based group, Reporters Without Borders. "
- StopTheWorld 3y ago
  Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy gave a speech 13 years ago saying Kashmir was never an integral part of India, and New Delhi just announced she is going to be prosecuted for her speech https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/booker-winner-arundhati-roy-facing-prosecution-in-india-media https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/booker-winner-a...
  - rangerelf 3y ago
    Please don't conflate issues. Retroactively applying laws to target your political enemies has nothing to do with censorship laws (except using them as an excuse) and everything to do with corruption and authoritarianism. Donald Trump promised to prosecute everyone he holds a grudge against if he was elected president again, and the USA has constitutionally enshrined free speech laws.
    - pauldenton 3y ago
      Donald Trump talked about "locking her up". Joe Biden is actually "locking him up" and is using lawfare as an alternative to campaigning as a way to win
      - scarface_74 3y ago
nvm0n2 3y ago
> I support that people can express whatever opinion they have, but not in any way they want. This is a contradiction and makes no sense. > A society needs to put limits on behavior of its individuals to be sane But lack of free speech and free politics drives societies insane. Look at all the crazy stuff the USSR and PRC have done in their histories, relative to the free speech and very much not insane USA.
- malermeister 3y ago
  > very much not insane USA. Is that supposed to be a joke or does it just reflect your extreme bias? You had a failed coup attempt in January 2021; your speaker of the house was just toppled by a few right-wing extremists in congress; government is on the edge of a default every few months; lots of important leaders (Biden, Trump, Pelosi, McConnell, to name a few, not to mention ones that straight up died of old age in office like RBG and Feinstein) are old to the point where one questions their mental acuity, a gerontocracy reminiscent of the last decades of the Soviet Union.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    What's this "you" business. I'm not American and don't live there. Get back to this thread when the USA has killed millions of its own citizens through enforcing insane policies on them in defiance of basic common sense e.g. the Great Leap Forward or Holomodor. That's what counts as insanity here, not politicians being outside your preferred age range.
    - malermeister 3y ago
      It was a bit earlier, so scale is somewhat smaller in absolute (but not necessarily in relative) terms, but there's obviously this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_removal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_removal

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

I think one issue is that on the internet it's becoming impossible to know anything. You can't know that those thousands of accounts are trolls or neighbors. Does freedom of speech grant you the right to use a troll/bot army to spread misinformation? I suppose if each troll/bot were labeled I would be fine with it but they aren't, they pollute these online spaces. Whose speech is being protected?

acdha 3y ago
Also there’s less accountability at the same time that the costs have never been lower. A lot of free speech assumptions are based on relative ratios and implicit social pressure to discourage abuse. There just aren’t that many people who are going to stand around screaming insults or lies in a public space, and there’s no equivalent for one guy pretending to be hundreds of people or, especially, for 10 people in a different country to pretend to be part of an entire political movement on another continent.
- frumper 3y ago
  So are we banning bots or what the bots are saying? One guy can say the same thing and that is what appears to be targeted.
  - acdha 3y ago
    Probably both and neither - for example, rather than outright banning things requiring them to be linked to a verified owner would potentially allow some speech without the negatives. A historic comparison might be the way Americans making political donations are required to affirm that they are using their own money without reimbursement to add a legal risk to paying people to flood public debate. I don’t claim to have the answers, but was just pointing out that the world has changed and we will need different policies.
    - frumper 3y ago
      Media has always been filled with lies and propaganda. That isn't new. The folk traveling from out of town brought slanted news and biased stories to the watering hole. Songs manipulate your feelings on various topics. Broadsheets brought you the vile things the bad guys are doing, whether accurate or not. The newspapers, radio, and tv media have been filled with propaganda since their inceptions. I'm not sure that anything has changed except there is now another medium people need to learn to filter through. It's coming at us from more directions at once, but we have to open the door for those voices to come in.
      - petsfed 3y ago
        So, since it was always in principle possible that the streets of every city, town, and village could be flooded by millions of newsies, all hocking editions of a variety of newspapers that had all just began publishing that day, we should do nothing now that it is actually possible in practice? I'm not saying I know what the solution actually is, but denying that there even is a problem, or that the existing guidelines were designed with the above scenario in mind, is just preposterous to me.
        frumper 3y ago
        I don't deny there is a problem. I am saying the problem is as old as time.
      - acdha 3y ago
        Again, think of scale and cost. Newspapers needed to be written, printed, and required a distribution network – all of which require money, time, and infrastructure. That doesn’t mean that they were perfect but they developed reputations and because they needed to pay those bills there was some moderating influence for not scaring off readers or advertisers — that’s not perfect but it’s why you had stories which only ran in tabloids because the owners of the bigger papers didn’t want to lose business or get sued (physical presence means assets at risk!) by someone they slandered. Governments often had rules about foreign ownership of media outlets, registration or permitting requirements for journalists, etc. Again, I’m not saying that everything was perfect before but that the rules and norms from the past need to be adjusted for the present. The way we handled hundreds of television stations can’t scale to millions of websites or social media accounts, especially since you no longer have anchors like geographic proximity or business identities.
kurthr 3y ago
The goal of much disinfo is exactly this, to remove the idea of objective reality, facts, or truth. It is common and useful to do this in authoritarian regimes. It goes along with depoliticization where the population comes to believe that they have no control and should desire no control over politics or government. https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
nvm0n2 3y ago
The idea of automated bot armies manipulating public discourse is largely a fantasy. The claims about such bots (usually on Twitter) never hold up to close inspection. Go do your own research (the thing that anti-free speech people often hate the most) and you'll discover many of the accounts labelled as bots by media and academia are humans.

houseatrielah 3y ago

You say "society", but in practice its a group of unelected bureaucrats engaging in political censorship and regulatory capture.

malermeister 3y ago
Who exactly is unelected?
- perceptronas 3y ago
  European Commission fits here. Head of commission is approved by parliament as far I know, but commissars are not elected, just suggested by each state governments. Also, all EU laws can only be proposed by European Commission. Others can suggest them, but only they can bring them to parliament. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
  - bmurphy1976 3y ago
    Are the EU state governments not elected? Last I checked they were. Lots of bureaucratic and political positions are appointed by other elected representatives. We can't elect everybody, that would be too much. So is that really a problem here? I am not that up to speed on the intricacies of EU governance at this level so I really don't know if this is a real problem or not.
    - stvltvs 3y ago
      This is more like the way we used to elect Senators in the US. The state legislatures used to select Senators until we amended the Constitution to require direct election by the people. Personally, I would prefer direct accountability of top government officials like the European Commission to the public.
  - malermeister 3y ago
    Isn't this the same as like a secretary in the US, appointed by an elected government official?

threatofrain 3y ago

No nation has pure freedom of speech anyway; we're all just shades of gray with Europe opting for a little more color over the US.

Gud 3y ago
With more censorship it would be less color, I guess?

2356234562537 3y ago

I don't think anywhere is actually absolutist. Even America has restrictions they just are primarily things like shouting fire in a theatre to use the common example. I wonder, aside from offending good taste though, what harm is actually caused by the American approach that the Europeans can say they don't have to deal with. Unlike comparing gun violence, where I can easily just point out there's fewer civilians shooting civilians in Europe, I can't say that I've seen Europe's more restrictive speech laws to have much of an impact on the peace of the people there. Usually when I see critics in any country arguing for censorship it's primarily because "the other team" was being persuasive in some shady manner and that gets presented as the end all be all reason for why the other group is compelling at all.

bdzr 3y ago
Fire in a theater usually is legal, see https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/shouting-fire-crowded-theater-speech-regulation/621151/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/shouting-f....

jiscariot 3y ago

When anyone says 'Yes, I believe in free speech, but …,' I stop listening. ~ Salman Rushdie.

bwanab 3y ago

Absolutism isn't the point. We all know that there are limits - the classic example of yelling fire in a crowed theater. And as somebody below pointed out, no country has full freedom of speech and while that is true the US does have freedom of speech enshrined in its founding documents as the first amendment. For most other countries, it's not a clear "right" except by common practice and legislation that could be easily revised. But, the point is, we should always have the presumption of freedom of speech. As a matter of course that means we also must have certain responsibilities for the consequences of exercising that freedom. This last point often gets overlooked.

littlestymaar 3y ago
How does that works with your initial comment though?
bdzr 3y ago
FWIW, fire in a crowded theater usually is legal. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/shouting-fire-crowded-theater-speech-regulation/621151/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/shouting-f...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ethbr1 3y ago
The limits in the US are essentially action. You can say whatever you want. But when you take an illegal action (or, grey area, compel someone else to take an action) then you lose free speech protections. "Fire" in a movie theater is the classic example of the court deciding what sort of speech consitutes compelling action. This in contrast to other many other countries, where there is no guarantee that speech-that-does-not-compel-action will always be free. To me, speech vs action is a critical distinction, because it prevents anyone in power from monopolizing the marketplace of ideas by banning an idea itself. While simultaneously preventing the worst societal consequences from actions. Or, in other words... neo Nazis should be allowed to march peacefully... but so should everyone else. And the latter should massively outweigh the former. (That said, nothing prevents keeping a much closer eye on violence-espousing neo Nazis)

RestlessMind 3y ago

> A society needs to put limits on behavior of its individuals to be sane Just look at how Indian politicians abuse hate speech laws. A classic example: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/media/india-bbc-office-raid-third-day-thursday-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/media/india-bbc-office-raid-t... "Officials had spent three days raiding the spaces following the country’s ban on a BBC documentary that was critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in deadly riots more than 20 years ago. " "Now ranked between Turkey and Sudan, India dropped eight places to 150 out of 180 nations in last year’s World Press Freedom Index published by the Paris-based group, Reporters Without Borders. "

StopTheWorld 3y ago
Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy gave a speech 13 years ago saying Kashmir was never an integral part of India, and New Delhi just announced she is going to be prosecuted for her speech https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/booker-winner-arundhati-roy-facing-prosecution-in-india-media https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/booker-winner-a...
- rangerelf 3y ago
  Please don't conflate issues. Retroactively applying laws to target your political enemies has nothing to do with censorship laws (except using them as an excuse) and everything to do with corruption and authoritarianism. Donald Trump promised to prosecute everyone he holds a grudge against if he was elected president again, and the USA has constitutionally enshrined free speech laws.
  - pauldenton 3y ago
    Donald Trump talked about "locking her up". Joe Biden is actually "locking him up" and is using lawfare as an alternative to campaigning as a way to win
    - scarface_74 3y ago

nvm0n2 3y ago

> I support that people can express whatever opinion they have, but not in any way they want. This is a contradiction and makes no sense. > A society needs to put limits on behavior of its individuals to be sane But lack of free speech and free politics drives societies insane. Look at all the crazy stuff the USSR and PRC have done in their histories, relative to the free speech and very much not insane USA.

malermeister 3y ago
> very much not insane USA. Is that supposed to be a joke or does it just reflect your extreme bias? You had a failed coup attempt in January 2021; your speaker of the house was just toppled by a few right-wing extremists in congress; government is on the edge of a default every few months; lots of important leaders (Biden, Trump, Pelosi, McConnell, to name a few, not to mention ones that straight up died of old age in office like RBG and Feinstein) are old to the point where one questions their mental acuity, a gerontocracy reminiscent of the last decades of the Soviet Union.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  What's this "you" business. I'm not American and don't live there. Get back to this thread when the USA has killed millions of its own citizens through enforcing insane policies on them in defiance of basic common sense e.g. the Great Leap Forward or Holomodor. That's what counts as insanity here, not politicians being outside your preferred age range.
  - malermeister 3y ago
    It was a bit earlier, so scale is somewhat smaller in absolute (but not necessarily in relative) terms, but there's obviously this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_removal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_removal