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I would have a lot more respect for this if they at least tried to recognize that the genuine concerns about unlimited free speech. Almost every government reco

I would have a lot more respect for this if they at least tried to recognize that the genuine concerns about unlimited free speech. Almost every government recognizes threats as not being protected. Libel and slander are also generally not allowed. Some kinds of pornography are considered by large numbers as beyond the pale. Making universal declarations is easy but not very useful. Real work is done by grappling with the actual limitations. I'd have a lot more respect for a maximalist position that at least understood why some people legitimately reject that position, and not just because they're stinky meanie snowflake boo-boos. Without that I expect governments to say "thank you for your unrealistic statement, we'll now ignore it and implement whatever we feel like because you're not saying anything to engage with."

toyg 3y ago
You still need some maximalism to signpost an Overton window wide enough for a fair compromise to emerge. Otherwise all you're doing is hopeless damage limitation, with the window sliding further and further towards the opposite maximalist position until it's the law of the land.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  This nonsense attitude of "the good result is always in the middle of the two arguments" is one the worst failings of modern political attitudes.
  - uoaei 3y ago
    It is largely a product of Americo-centric modes of reasoning about politics, especially since an overwhelming part of Americans' engagement with political issues is predicated on how the Ds and Rs act and react to each other.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    "This nonsense attitude of "the good result is always in the middle of the two arguments" is one the worst failings of modern political attitudes." I don't read this in the previous argument. I read an appeal not to narrow the Overton window too much. Accidentally, what do you mean when you talk about a "good result"? Good from which perspective? Conforming to a certain ladder of values, or achievable without bloodshed or further deepening of already bad polarization? Precisely because the society cannot usually unify on what counts as "good", compromises are, at least, somewhat useful in placating the worst conflicts.
    - jfengel 3y ago
      I think we already know where the Overton window's extreme ends are. We don't learn anything by having a bunch of famous people endorse one end of it.
  - toyg 3y ago
    I didn't say "good", I said "fair"; and by that, I mean fair to the majority of people. Whether that's "good" or not, depends largely on one's view of the world.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
With or without that I expect governments to say "thank you for your unrealistic statement, we'll now ignore it and implement whatever we feel like. The standard of debate and progress of the UK Online Safety Bill offered ample evidence of an era in which complex, reasonable and nuanced debate, and appeal to the reasonability of governments, is over. Which is what this is all about really. Post classical democracy it's all about power, and who shouts the loudest. The voices in this impressive list of academics extolling the noble fight for Truth through free-speech seem like "the wind in dry grass". they, and yourself, are appealing to modes of argument and disputation the enemy no longer recognises. Already "censorship" seems too narrow a take of what's happening. It's about shaping the narrative, about shutting up your voice, and making sure the "right" ones get heard. The digital technological landscape is the battleground for this new epistemology. Truth, if it has a future, will either have to find a way outside the digital realm, or learn to celebrate its illegitimacy within it.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  > Post classical democracy it's all about power, and who shouts the loudest. As opposed to previous eras of democracy?
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    Previous eras of democracy often had some limitations on suffrage, and no round-the-clock media cycle that reached into every household. Under those circumstances, political debate was less sensitive to the loudness of the mob, and more sensitive to longform argument published and read among intellectuals. If you look at nascent American or European democracy, it is remarkable how much its tensions were negotiated by texts that seem emotionally balanced and complex indeed in the modern era of television, radio, and internet.
    - cedilla 3y ago
      Yeah, no. There was a lot of political violence in proto-democracies, especially around the topic of suffrage. If we just look at "limitation" of women's right to vote - Suffragettes would be called domestic terrorists today. It's not much more than nostalgia to think that in the good old times pens were mightier than sword. The nascent American democracy fought two wars to settle its tensions despite all the wise prose the elite wrote.
mcpackieh 3y ago
You can prosecute people for criminal threats without creating technical apparatuses for shaping and controlling narratives. Prosecuting people for speech that's illegal isn't incompatible with forums that allow people to speak their minds freely and unfiltered. For instance, the US Postal System does not run my mail through content classifiers and filters to determine whether my mail should be suppressed or passed through. If I mail a death threat, the postal system will dutifully deliver it. Despite this, the government may still prosecute me for it. The government's ability to prosecute me for mailing illegal things is not contingent on the postal system having some nanny AI that reads my mail and shadow-bans me when it disapproves. Having laws that restrict speech does not necessitate creating automatic censorship systems. And "..but with computers" doesn't change this.
pdonis 3y ago
> Almost every government recognizes threats as not being protected. Libel and slander are also generally not allowed. And the common factor in all of these is that the problem with them is not speech. It's something going beyond speech. A threat is a threat--it's not protected because it's a threat of harm, not because it expresses something someone disagrees with or thinks is "misinformation". Libel and slander aren't protected because of the effects of false information on someone's reputation and ability to make a living, not because they don't meet someone's fact-checking standards. In other words, these are not problems with "unlimited free speech". They are problems with particular acts that, in addition to being "speech", are also something else, and it's the "something else" that is the problem. What this declaration is against, OTOH, is limiting speech that is just speech--it doesn't fall into any of the categories described above (or other exceptions like "yelling fire in a crowded theater" that have the same issues)--but happens to express opinions or views that some people disagree with or find offensive. That kind of speech should be unlimited.
- jmye 3y ago
  Isn’t this just shifting the issue? I like your reasoning w/r/t threats of violence. But let’s say we’re talking about, I dunno, polio vaccinations. John posts that the vaccine is dangerous and will turn your children into frogs. Jane thinks that posts that decrease the chances all children will receive a vaccination that shows provable efficacy in preventing polio are, in essence, threatening society (say, by putting people unable to receive the vaccine at hugely greater risk). You might argue that John’s speech isn’t a direct issue and is a matter of political opinion and should be unlimited. Jane might argue that the speech is directly dangerous. Your framing doesn’t solve this issue - it just adjusts the point at which we adjudicate it, doesn’t it?
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    One of the practical problems you run into is that not even China or Iran can efficiently suppress unwanted speech. Taboo topics still get discussed, only somewhere out of sight. Anti-vax ideology needs to be fought with better arguments, not with sheer suppression, which will only drive some distrustful people towards the "hey, why are THEY trying to ban this information" position. At the end of the day, the problem is one of trust, and you don't gain any trust by treating other people's opinions heavy-handedly.
vivekd 3y ago
Did you get the idea they were maximalists, the article seemed to restrict itself to talking about political speech which I understand is supposed to have the highest levels of constitutional protections because it seems obviously important to democracy They are asking for gov to abide by UDHR which is limited to politically motivated censorship

toyg 3y ago

You still need some maximalism to signpost an Overton window wide enough for a fair compromise to emerge. Otherwise all you're doing is hopeless damage limitation, with the window sliding further and further towards the opposite maximalist position until it's the law of the land.

crooked-v 3y ago
This nonsense attitude of "the good result is always in the middle of the two arguments" is one the worst failings of modern political attitudes.
- uoaei 3y ago
  It is largely a product of Americo-centric modes of reasoning about politics, especially since an overwhelming part of Americans' engagement with political issues is predicated on how the Ds and Rs act and react to each other.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  "This nonsense attitude of "the good result is always in the middle of the two arguments" is one the worst failings of modern political attitudes." I don't read this in the previous argument. I read an appeal not to narrow the Overton window too much. Accidentally, what do you mean when you talk about a "good result"? Good from which perspective? Conforming to a certain ladder of values, or achievable without bloodshed or further deepening of already bad polarization? Precisely because the society cannot usually unify on what counts as "good", compromises are, at least, somewhat useful in placating the worst conflicts.
  - jfengel 3y ago
    I think we already know where the Overton window's extreme ends are. We don't learn anything by having a bunch of famous people endorse one end of it.
- toyg 3y ago
  I didn't say "good", I said "fair"; and by that, I mean fair to the majority of people. Whether that's "good" or not, depends largely on one's view of the world.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

With or without that I expect governments to say "thank you for your unrealistic statement, we'll now ignore it and implement whatever we feel like. The standard of debate and progress of the UK Online Safety Bill offered ample evidence of an era in which complex, reasonable and nuanced debate, and appeal to the reasonability of governments, is over. Which is what this is all about really. Post classical democracy it's all about power, and who shouts the loudest. The voices in this impressive list of academics extolling the noble fight for Truth through free-speech seem like "the wind in dry grass". they, and yourself, are appealing to modes of argument and disputation the enemy no longer recognises. Already "censorship" seems too narrow a take of what's happening. It's about shaping the narrative, about shutting up your voice, and making sure the "right" ones get heard. The digital technological landscape is the battleground for this new epistemology. Truth, if it has a future, will either have to find a way outside the digital realm, or learn to celebrate its illegitimacy within it.

shadowgovt 3y ago
> Post classical democracy it's all about power, and who shouts the loudest. As opposed to previous eras of democracy?
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  Previous eras of democracy often had some limitations on suffrage, and no round-the-clock media cycle that reached into every household. Under those circumstances, political debate was less sensitive to the loudness of the mob, and more sensitive to longform argument published and read among intellectuals. If you look at nascent American or European democracy, it is remarkable how much its tensions were negotiated by texts that seem emotionally balanced and complex indeed in the modern era of television, radio, and internet.
  - cedilla 3y ago
    Yeah, no. There was a lot of political violence in proto-democracies, especially around the topic of suffrage. If we just look at "limitation" of women's right to vote - Suffragettes would be called domestic terrorists today. It's not much more than nostalgia to think that in the good old times pens were mightier than sword. The nascent American democracy fought two wars to settle its tensions despite all the wise prose the elite wrote.

mcpackieh 3y ago

You can prosecute people for criminal threats without creating technical apparatuses for shaping and controlling narratives. Prosecuting people for speech that's illegal isn't incompatible with forums that allow people to speak their minds freely and unfiltered. For instance, the US Postal System does not run my mail through content classifiers and filters to determine whether my mail should be suppressed or passed through. If I mail a death threat, the postal system will dutifully deliver it. Despite this, the government may still prosecute me for it. The government's ability to prosecute me for mailing illegal things is not contingent on the postal system having some nanny AI that reads my mail and shadow-bans me when it disapproves. Having laws that restrict speech does not necessitate creating automatic censorship systems. And "..but with computers" doesn't change this.

pdonis 3y ago

> Almost every government recognizes threats as not being protected. Libel and slander are also generally not allowed. And the common factor in all of these is that the problem with them is not speech. It's something going beyond speech. A threat is a threat--it's not protected because it's a threat of harm, not because it expresses something someone disagrees with or thinks is "misinformation". Libel and slander aren't protected because of the effects of false information on someone's reputation and ability to make a living, not because they don't meet someone's fact-checking standards. In other words, these are not problems with "unlimited free speech". They are problems with particular acts that, in addition to being "speech", are also something else, and it's the "something else" that is the problem. What this declaration is against, OTOH, is limiting speech that is just speech--it doesn't fall into any of the categories described above (or other exceptions like "yelling fire in a crowded theater" that have the same issues)--but happens to express opinions or views that some people disagree with or find offensive. That kind of speech should be unlimited.

jmye 3y ago
Isn’t this just shifting the issue? I like your reasoning w/r/t threats of violence. But let’s say we’re talking about, I dunno, polio vaccinations. John posts that the vaccine is dangerous and will turn your children into frogs. Jane thinks that posts that decrease the chances all children will receive a vaccination that shows provable efficacy in preventing polio are, in essence, threatening society (say, by putting people unable to receive the vaccine at hugely greater risk). You might argue that John’s speech isn’t a direct issue and is a matter of political opinion and should be unlimited. Jane might argue that the speech is directly dangerous. Your framing doesn’t solve this issue - it just adjusts the point at which we adjudicate it, doesn’t it?
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  One of the practical problems you run into is that not even China or Iran can efficiently suppress unwanted speech. Taboo topics still get discussed, only somewhere out of sight. Anti-vax ideology needs to be fought with better arguments, not with sheer suppression, which will only drive some distrustful people towards the "hey, why are THEY trying to ban this information" position. At the end of the day, the problem is one of trust, and you don't gain any trust by treating other people's opinions heavy-handedly.

vivekd 3y ago

Did you get the idea they were maximalists, the article seemed to restrict itself to talking about political speech which I understand is supposed to have the highest levels of constitutional protections because it seems obviously important to democracy They are asking for gov to abide by UDHR which is limited to politically motivated censorship