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Free Speech Is in Trouble

• narinxas 3y ago
  this speech, now recorded as a podcast, or otherwise published in a digital medium is now become a revenue source. it all hinges on the impossibility of freely copying this (or that) content. If you want it, you must pay the content creator through the platform (which takes a cut) using payment-processor (which takes a cut) which causes taxes (the government's cut) this in my weird stranged mind is deeply tied to this situation: that we won't own the place we live in, or that we will only be able to rent it (housing as a subscription service) is part of this. because what we will be permitted to own are these "digital asssets" we create using social-media-cretaion tools (e.g. instagram, tiktok). free as in beer? free as in liberty?? these are secondary concerns to the logic of the networked marketplaces and the aggregator platforms. some more "examples": your meme that you made went viral in "touristic destination" so now you can afford a visit to there! or a more dysptoic "reach 100 views to afford chicken dinner. reach 1000 views! and you'll get a kobe beef deluxe dinner!!" I sure hope this remains an ellusive dystopic idea that never actually comes to pass
• rezmason 3y ago
  It's wrong to equate people abandoning free speech with people not wanting to host people with specific stances at a venue. Free speech isn't about flinging the door open to everyone. It's about not incarcerating them, and not preventing them from speaking at all. In my opinion, the people who blast "cancel culture" are often the people who tacitly assume that they are welcome everywhere by default. That's not anyone's right. And you don't infringe on someone's right to say what they want just because you won't sell them a megaphone. What we're seeing is a young generation of left-leaning people who are motivated to shift the Overton window back from the cliff, because they no longer assume (as older generations have) that adults can wield a megaphone responsibly.
  • xeckr 3y ago
    So... who then gets to have a megaphone?
    • rezmason 3y ago
      Generally, the people who get one are: - the ones who buy one - the ones who borrow one - the ones who find one - the ones who make one And if you hurt someone with a megaphone, you should expect to lose it. In other words, a megaphone is just like every other thing on the planet.
    • sanderjd 3y ago
      There are many ways to acquire a megaphone in 2023. Far more than ever before. But it is not one size fits all. The thing that remains the most common thing to do is to petition an established platform with an established reputation to lend you one of theirs, eg. by applying for a job at a media network of some kind, or creating an account under the terms of service of a platform. Another way is to build your own megaphone that only requires abiding by the much looser terms of service of an ISP or the email providers of subscribers or even just the mail system, but these require building your own audience from scratch. And yes, the uber-wealthy can just buy a megaphone outright, which is definitely lame. Most people will fail to acquire a megaphone in any of these ways, which is not surprising. It would be (is...) way too noisy with everyone having a megaphone screaming at one another, trying to be heard above the cacophony.
    • diob 3y ago
      Reminds me of my history teacher in 2008 telling me about the free speech zones that already existed to squash meaningful speech / protest. And regardless, the feds would bus you up and force you to leave cause what are rights. Just literally drop you hundreds of miles away cause what are you gonna do about it.
    • jasonlotito 3y ago
      Everyone has a megaphone already. The better question is: why do you feel it's okay for me to force you to listen to my megaphone?
  • roflyear 3y ago
    Correct, free speech doesn't mean you should give everyone a free platform, especially at a school that you pay to attend!
    • seiferteric 3y ago
      Sure but inviting controversial speakers used to be seen as valuable to challenge ones beliefs on the off chance you might actually be wrong about something. Now it seems that thought never crosses their minds.
      • mrguyorama 3y ago
        >valuable to challenge ones beliefs Did US colleges bring in a lot of Pro-vietnam speakers? If you want a marketplace of ideas, you have to be willing to accept that the market sometimes rejects ideas, good or not, for the right reasons or not. Any market can warp, for any length of time. That's like a fundamental flaw of markets. In financial markets we try to regulate away the negative and flawed parts of market theory, occasionally succeeding. Should we regulate the free marketplace of ideas? Free speech doesn't mean everyone listens to you. Free speech means the government doesn't put you in jail for saying something. There's this weird claim that you can somehow define "free speech" to be more applicable than just limiting government, but if you limit my right to react to speech in any way, how is that freedom? If I react by never associating with you ever again, and telling all my friends that you are an asshole, and should be avoided at all costs, and they listen and tell their friends because they trust my opinion, and on and on until nobody likes you and nobody wants to listen to your speech, who's rights were violated? "Freedom of speech" should not mean "I owe you attention"
        • seiferteric 3y ago
          > Free speech doesn't mean everyone listens to you. The article is mainly about speakers on campuses. No one is forcing you to attend a speech. The issue is that people show up anyway to try and shut it down. That is a problem. I am struggling to understand who is forcing anyone to listen to anything?
      • 3y ago
  • Nasrudith 3y ago
    That at the end is a highly dangerous and paternalistic assumption. Deciding that adults "can't be using their rights responsibly". Seriously it is downright stereotypical CCP justification for shooting and torturing protesters. That said dissent is intrinsically "irresponsible" because of the "potential damage" to the "harmony" of the state.
    • rezmason 3y ago
      The megaphone isn't your right. You're confusing it, again and again, with speech. The megaphone isn't speech, and you aren't entitled to it.
      • sophistsworld 3y ago
        I think it's very interesting that you keep mentioning megaphones when one manifestation of whats said in TFA is left wing activists literally shouting down speakers that had been invited to speak at their universities.
        • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
          What does that have to do with their mention of megaphones?
          • sophistsworld 3y ago
            Because they are using megaphones to do so.
      • Nasrudith 3y ago
        Then I guess the Supreme Court has been very confused for centuries of case law. Because they have had press and speech as synonymous.
        • Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
          I think you have it confused. You have the right to publish almost whatever you want. But nobody is required to give you a platform. Whether that platform is a social media site or a stage and a microphone.
  • ofslidingfeet 3y ago
    If that's the argument, we should pull public funding then. More generally, I actually sincerely support the concept of free speech, so I want people to have free speech. Since that is my position, it's hard for me to see much use in figuring out all the times I should be allowed to restrict someone's speech.
    • atoav 3y ago
      You pretend here that the public has no interest OR isn't allowed to have any. That is false. It is e.g. in the public interest to sustain our democratic free order so we can remain to live in a free society, where no wannabe dictator controls the markets or applies the laws as he pleases. It is also in our interest that the truth gets more stage than lies and fearmongering. Now maybe you can draw the conclusion yourself why supporting and showcasing opinions that threaten said democratic free order don't have to be supported by the public. If the public does support that, it is merely a courtesy or a misunderstood idea of tolerance. But collectively as a society we live under a set of rules and are given a set of freedoms, all of which you can like or scoff at. But what you cannot do is demand the freedoms to then spout opinions about abolishing the very freedoms that enabled you to speak. No free society for example has to support the spread of the ideas of the likes of ISIS. In fact there have been multiple nations that even went into armed conflicts precisely on those grounds (if we ignore other geopolitical interests for a moment). That being said, what if in the West there was something akin to ISIS? Should we invest our public money into having their speech amplified? Just because their speech needs to be heard?
    • campbel 3y ago
      Are you suggesting not providing a platform is the same as restricting someones free speech?
  • sophistsworld 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • rezmason 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • moribvndvs 3y ago
        They aren’t a mod, it’s a brand new account they made 18 minutes ago to shitpost you.
        • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
          > to try and flame you More generously, they just have an opinion they don't want tied to their possibly-public-identity main account.
        • sophistsworld 3y ago
          Why is it a shitpost?
      • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
        > Edit: I may misunderstand what a green name on Hacker News means. Are you a moderator, or a VIP? Account less than 2 weeks old.
      • sophistsworld 3y ago
        Very few people on the pro free speech side are saying they should be given soap boxes for free. On the other hand the "protected right to our thoughts and words" is under major assault as my examples show. Redirecting the debate from the later to the former could be confusion born out of ignorance or be bad faith.
        • etchalon 3y ago
          The majority of the "pro-free speech"'s concerns seem related to their entitlement to a consequence free soap box. De-platforming, shadow-banning, moderation etc. are the heart of their current fight.
  • jrh3 3y ago
    Freedom requires tolerance. We've lost a lot of that and what I think the author is going for.
    • roflyear 3y ago
      How about the paradox of tolerance? Should you tolerate intolerant views?
      • repelsteeltje 3y ago
        The question implies that I can affect intolerant views by choosing between being tolerant or not. :-)
      • lightlyused 3y ago
        The intolerant have violated the social contract that binds our views on tolerance, so no we do not have to tolerate them.
      • canadiantim 3y ago
        Yes, absolutely yes. It’s not the popular views that need to be defended, it’s the unpopular speech that does
        • bryanlarsen 3y ago
          Unpopular speech needs to be defended, but not intolerant speech that infringes upon the rights of others to their own speech. Intolerant and unpopular aren't synonyms.
          • Georgelemental 3y ago
            How can speech infringe on the rights of others? Can you give an example?
            • ericfrazier 3y ago
  • tootie 3y ago
    Especially asking college students about their college hosting speakers. That's literally their tuition money paying for it not to mention an indirect connection to their reputations.
    • rtsil 3y ago
      Agreed. Left-leaning students might not be so much against Free Speech than against being associated with controversial ideas (including some that they share). Twenty years ago, nobody outside the campus knew who the speakers were and what the guest lecture was about. Today, anything controversial will be on social media that very same day, and social reputation matters. Do they really want to deplatform those ideas, or simply not share the same platform?
    • Georgelemental 3y ago
      It might be a student group paying for it on their own dime.
  • smsm42 3y ago
    You know perfectly well it's not about "selling them a megaphone". It's about shutting them up. We witnessed it with Parler - the whole network infrastructure was mobilized to not let them exist, in any way, in any form. And that's not the only case - spaces hosting dissenting views are constantly attacked with the aim to shut them down, permanently, forever. It's not about being "welcome everywhere", it's about not being able to exist anywhere. > because they no longer assume (as older generations have) that adults can wield a megaphone responsibly. No, because they assume they are entitled to decide who gets to speak and who doesn't, because they are good people and anybody who disagrees with them is evil and must be stomped into the ground (if necessary, physically).
    • Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
      > dissenting views This has strong "oh you know the ones" energy. https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1050391663552671744 https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174... Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes? Con: LOL no...no not those views Me: So....deregulation? Con: Haha no not those views either Me: Which views, exactly? Con: Oh, you know the ones
      • smsm42 3y ago
        You know perfectly well that there are many views beyond "lower taxes" that are or were getting censored on large platforms. For example: origin of COVID, efficiency of masks and COVID mRNA vaccines, side effects of the above, necessity of lockdowns and vaccine mandates, election integrity, modern gender theory, gun rights (or anything related to guns), criticism of certain religions, and many others. You know, "the ones" that the government wants suppressed today - "the ones" that they get suppressed today. Your pretending that only something so heinous that ever their proponents do not dare to speak openly about it is getting censored is plain false, and I suspect you know it's false, you just like to pretend it's not because it allows you to cheaply dismiss all the concerns of your opponents as "the ones" and censor them while basking in your own moral superiority.
  • ashton314 3y ago
    > It's wrong to equate people abandoning free speech with people not wanting to host people with specific stances at a venue. I agree. There's a problem, though, when the venue is a university. Universities are where the search for truth should be the foremost objective. Dogmatic politics should not govern what is true or not true—that is born out by evidence, discussion, and persuasion. Consequently, we need opposing viewpoints at universities. If someone says something that you think is wrong then you should refute it, not silence it. If your position truly is more correct, then it will win in a contest of argument, testing, and persuasion. The problem we're having is a growing imbalance in viewpoints present on campus. People are afraid of speaking their mind because of disproportionate wrath and consequences for exploring ideas deemed "taboo" by popular movements that are so certain they're right. I just finished reading The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch, and I recommend it to everyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Rauch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Rauch
    • finite_depth 3y ago
      [dead]
    • saghm 3y ago
      > Universities are where the search for truth should be the foremost objective. Dogmatic politics should not govern what is true or not true—that is born out by evidence, discussion, and persuasion. So why aren't the people who are angry at Harvard students for "cancelling" views equally outraged at the lack of pro-choice and LGBT views at Christian universities? If we're trying to avoid getting stuck due to dogma and search for the truth, I'd like to be given the opportunity to make the argument that claiming that any sort of social policy should be based on the belief that the omnipotent being who created the universe thousands of years ago told some people to write some stuff down lacks evidence, is unpersuasive, and impossible to have any reasonable discussion about.
  • the_snooze 3y ago
    There are cases where one group of students invites a speaker, and another group shows up to crash the event. That happened earlier this year at Stanford when their Federalist Society invited a Trump-appointed judge [1]. For all the justifiable problems with FedSoc, don't those students still have a right to host such an event in peace? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/us/stanford-law-free-speech.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/us/stanford-law-free-spee...
    • etchalon 3y ago
      Those students have a right to host the event and the other students have a right to protest the event. Behold, free speech.
      • the_snooze 3y ago
        >Duncan, who has defended Louisiana’s gay-marriage ban and a North Carolina law restricting transgender people from using their preferred bathrooms, was repeatedly heckled by students and couldn’t speak more than a few words without interruption. Would you consider this fair protest? It's a legally tricky issue [1], but I'm of the view that normalizing this leads to a dangerous social environment (e.g., shouting down LGBT speakers at their events). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler's_veto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler's_veto
        • etchalon 3y ago
          I don't think there is such a thing as a "fair protest". Protests are, by their nature, disruptive.
  • saghm 3y ago
    What's ironic to me is that requiring colleges or websites or whatever to give literally anyone a platform seems like it's infringing on _their_ speech. The argument seems to be that "speech" includes "access to a platform to amplify one's view", but if that's true, then doesn't the owner of the platform have freedom over that "speech" as well? Forcing someone to use their power of speech to say things for others sounds much more like a violation of "freedom of speech" to me.
    • Georgelemental 3y ago
      Would your view be affected by whether… - the university itself is hosting the speaker, versus a student group? - the university receives taxpayer funding?
      • saghm 3y ago
        > the university receives taxpayer funding? No more than the fact that most households in the US received stimulus checks doesn't give me the right to demand time to pontificate to their family about whatever I want.
    • threatofrain 3y ago
      It depends. Ought a society be able to create a policy to allow an exception to speech liability to encourage the growth of platform companies? Or, when YT hosts a pirated version of Naruto, are they responsible? Because then, in some sense, what's hosted on YT is not YT speaking. But in another confusing sense, society sometimes sees it that way, so if YT becomes known for hosting unpleasant things it will damage their reputation overall.
      • saghm 3y ago
        You're conflating several different things here: civil liability, intellectual property, and a constitutional right to free speech without government interference. If you say something damaging to someone else (or violate their IP, I guess), and they successfully sue for damages, that's not the government limiting your speech, it's the government protecting the rights of someone else, because your rights don't trump anyone else's. Not being allowed to speak at a university isn't the same because you don't have a fundamental right to speak on other's property; in the same way that "freedom of speech" doesn't give you blanket protections for infringing IP, freedom of assembly doesn't give you blanket protections for trespassing. In both cases, the key point is that you have the right to say _what_ you want, but _where_ you can say it still needs to avoid infringing on others rights.
  • insickness 3y ago
    This is a purposeful misinterpretation of the question asked. They didn't ask whether a venue should or should not host people with a specific stance. They asked: > should your school ALLOW or NOT ALLOW a speaker on campus who previously expressed the following idea
    • finite_depth 3y ago
      [dead]
    • rezmason 3y ago
      I'm not misinterpreting the FIRE survey, because I'm not interpreting the FIRE survey— I'm interpreting Nate Silver's stance in his article. After all, he's framing this as the left abandoning free speech. Also, when you say "This is a purposeful misinterpretation", you're making an assumption that's disrespectful. What if I had misinterpreted the FIRE survey, as you suggest? Why do you believe I would do so purposefully? If you think I'm attacking something you're defending, I believe you've misjudged me.
  • ars 3y ago
    > It's wrong to equate people abandoning free speech with people not wanting to host people with specific stances at a venue. So instead the title should be Conservatives are more willing to host people they disagree with? I'm not really sure your argument helps your case very much.
  • chrismcb 3y ago
    Very little of "cancel culture"has you do with being "welcome anywhere by default." The problem with cancel culture is the punishment outweighs the "crime." Some people who have been "cancelled" (cancelled meaning they lost their job, or a gig, or something similar) a guy sitting in a company vehicle, cracking his knuckles. A drink singer talking to his best friend in an empty alley in the middle of the night. Other people who have said something on social media (now, or ten years ago)
    • nerdix 3y ago
      I'm not sure about the specific examples mentioned. But there used to be an adage about mixing religion and politics with business. That adage exists because there has always been the risk of ostracization when sharing political and religious opinions publicly. Contrary to popular belief, that is not some new phenomenon. It's just that social media made it more likely that someone will see your political opinions (thus increasing the chances of ostracization..you are broadcasting your opinions to the world after all) and made the consequences more visible (so you hear about that guy that was fired for saying the wrong thing today whereas 30 years ago you would not have).
    • threatofrain 3y ago
      I think the disagreement is on whether something even deserves to be considered a moral crime, and not whether the punishment fits any crime.
  • Georgelemental 3y ago
    There is a difference between: - A private organization deciding not to invest its private resources into hosting a particular speaker - A university that receives a fortune in government funding forbidding a student group from independently inviting a speaker to campus
  • tlogan 3y ago
    And this is how freedom dies.
  • alienicecream 3y ago
    Oh good, young left leaning people anyways have the answers, and they're always the right answers.
  • belorn 3y ago
    > In my opinion, the people who blast "cancel culture" are often the people who tacitly assume that they are welcome everywhere by default. That's not anyone's right. I would say that a very large part of both modern society and praised historical rebellion against oppression has been about making everyone welcome everywhere by default. Religion, culture, and political views have all been central battlegrounds where people tried multiple times to keep people separated and then when that failed institutionalize rules where people must be welcome everywhere by default. US law is a bit fixated on making free speech about federal law, but individual states have even there illustrated that anti-discrimination do also apply to people outside of government. The US-specific legal trick is here to define specific speech to be directly associated with "protected classes". That is a nice trick, but is in practice indistinguishable from just extending free speech to areas outside of government. Other places like the EU don't go that route and simply define free speech as a human right with the specifics of enforcement given to each country to mostly define for themselves.
• progne 3y ago
  I think it's a simple power inversion. Conservatives banned liberal speech so liberals advocated free speech. Now liberals ban conservative speech so conservatives advocate free speech. Does it have to be more complicated than that? Sure it's hypocrisy, but it's also simple self preservation to prefer more freedom when out of power and more control when in power. I don't know of evidence that this effect is stronger for one side or the other.
  • etchalon 3y ago
    I generally agree that tolerance of "free speech" is a highly-dependent thing, on either side, with hyporcites too numerous to name. And that, much like "states rights!", it's a battle-cry embraced when one side is losing some larger cultural or legislative fight. However, there are more state-level laws aimed at curbing speech coming from Republican-controlled legislatures than Democratic ones, and that does seem to be a difference in kind.
    • Georgelemental 3y ago
      > state-level laws aimed at curbing speech coming from Republican-controlled legislatures than Democratic ones Examples?
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • etchalon 3y ago
        https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/871/billtext/html/SB00005I.htm https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/871/billtext/html/SB00005I... http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0500-0599/0501/Sections/0501.2041.html http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Displ...
• kieranmaine 3y ago
  This Lex Fridman interview with Greg Lukianoff, the CEO of FIRE organisation mentioned in the article, provides more useful information on the subject matter: https://lexfridman.com/greg-lukianoff/ https://lexfridman.com/greg-lukianoff/
  • runako 3y ago
    > provides more useful information I should hope so, it's nearly 3 hours long. I hope this trend passes where people don't make any effort to edit their interviews, or even prioritize their questions. Arguably more effort is required to do an excellent 45-minute interview than a 3-hour podcast, but that extra effort is rewarded by increased reach. I hope that lesson doesn't get lost to history.
    • karmakurtisaani 3y ago
      We could start by not just providing a 3 hour interview as a reference, but actually summarize a key point or two from it.
      • shthed 3y ago
        https://lexfridman.com/greg-lukianoff-transcript https://lexfridman.com/greg-lukianoff-transcript at least he provides a full transcript with subject titles and timestamps, feel free to search for relevant parts
        • runako 3y ago
          I mean that still puts all the effort on the reader vs the interviewer. Part of the point of a good interview is it's not just a brain dump, it's a curated conversation that helps enlighten the listener. > feel free to search for relevant parts Part of the value of an interview done well is that it helps enlighten me about what I might find relevant. How would I possibly know what parts are relevant before listening, unless I were going in with an agenda or trying to research a specific item? He interviews really powerful people; searching through their thoughts seems like the worst possible way to consume this information. A transcript like this might be useful for researchers, but will still have limited reach because few people have the luxury of being able to read a transcript of a 3-hour interview.
• _ea1k 3y ago
  I wish that the survey had gone deeper into the "why". It seems that some of these responses may have been because of expectations of useless conflict and needless inflammatory speech. That the participants were censoring people who presumably agree with them seems to hint very strongly at that.
  • hotnfresh 3y ago
    I wonder if larger profiles on the speakers might have made a difference. With just those statements to go on (plus the fact that they're attempting to have a speaking event on a campus), I'd rate it as highly likely that all three of the "conservative" ones are just professional shit-stirrers whose speaking is unlikely to benefit anyone, including being unlikely to provide an interesting presentation of their views, but of course that's not necessarily true. [EDIT] Actually, is there a widespread liberal version of that? It seems like a lot of the conservative sorts who go around having speaking events mainly function as trolls, and make their living on it—maybe an outgrowth of AM radio culture, whose brand of, uh, presentation hasn't been popular on the left. Like I'm sure there are a few liberal examples, but are there in fact lots of them that I'm not aware of, staging events to get confrontational sound-bytes for their Youtube channel or radio program, or in service of shitty documentaries? I mean, Michale Moore did the latter a bit, but how prominent is he these days?
    • Kye 3y ago
      They exist on the center/center-left of things, but they tend to couch their BS in enough social justice language with enough deftness to stay hidden through an entire career. Tend to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_King#Fundraising_activities_and_disputes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_King#Fundraising_activit... Michael Moore can be insufferable, but I can't think of an instance where he was actually wrong. I think we need to make a distinction between showmanship and grifting. Many prominent assholes on the right are outright grifters. Prominent assholes on the left missed their chance to be a theater kid and make up for it every day.
      • hotnfresh 3y ago
• torginus 3y ago
  Is it just me or is the 'culture war' sort of winding down, as in most people have moved on and are no longer that invested in 'sticking it to the other side'?
  • dumpsterdiver 3y ago
    I think many people have indeed grown exhausted from it, and no longer participate. Anecdotally, while I will still respond to especially egregious takes, more often these days I just roll my eyes and tell myself it’s not worth feeding the trolls.
  • Nasrudith 3y ago
    I don't know if I'd call it a culture war winding down. There are still plenty of channels putting out their talking points incessantly. But there is willful bubbling going on in response to it. Not because of the standard any bupkis evil big tech boosting engagement narrative. Hell, the opposite is happening these days as you find the people paying for unreportable youtube ads are political ads who would immediately be flagged into oblivion as misinformation if they could. No, the bubbling is personal and deliberately engaged in due to lack of interest. They have already heard the same old talking points and dismissed it as absolute crap repeatedly and found nobody pays attention to the emperor's nudity despite its obviousness and the number of times they pointed it out.
  • HerbMcM 3y ago
    Wouldn't that be even more worrying rather than less? Your comment brings to mind a picture of people in a dinner table discussing where to draw secession border lines over food and drink, since the 'culture war' phase is over.
  • jujube3 3y ago
    It's just you.
• PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  > College students aren’t very enthusiastic about free speech. In particular, that’s true for liberal or left-wing students, who are at best inconsistent in their support of free speech and have very little tolerance for controversial speech they disagree with. First, citations needed, second, talk about ad-homs. People simply don't want to see hate-speech, and they are allowed to not want to see bigotry and vitriol. People understand that "free speech" that devolves into hate-speech results in stochastic terrorism as well. If only somebody could do about those [bad] leftists! The biggest irony of all, is that all proponents of free speech only care about their capacity to exercise judgement and have access to the megaphone. See Elon banning speech that insults/humiliates or otherwise disagrees with. See truth-social banning all speech regarding abortions/RvW, etc. Free-speech is to protect you from the government. That doesn't mean we, the people should have to see, accept, or entertain vitriol and hate-speech. We the people are passing our judgement, and we the people don't want to see it. If you break the social contract, you pay the consequences. If you can't behave like an adult and decide to break the social contract, you face the consequences. It's time to grow up.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • LeafItAlone 3y ago
    > First, citations needed This article was Nate’s examination of data which (in his analysis) resulted in this idea. The article is literally the “citation”.
    • PartiallyTyped 3y ago
      Please, the questions are ridiculous, the "liberal" ones are ridiculously mild, whereas the Conservative ones are borderline insane; a) trans ppl are cray-cray (refuted by science), b) country wide abortion ban and thus a ban on bodily autonomy (so much for personal-freedoms) We also know that what one expresses, and what one does are two different things. Expressing you'd be okay with someone expressing things that go against your beliefs doesn't mean you actually support them. E.g analogous to claiming you have a free-speech focused social media website, let's call it pravda.social, and at the same time you ban criticism of topic. (s/pravda/truth, s/topic/abortion). That's not sufficient to draw a conclusion imho.
• morelisp 3y ago
  Students aren't dumb. They know when FIRE comes around asking "Do you support free speech?" they don't really mean a robust set of first amendment rights but "Should your lecture halls be flooded by C-tier conservative talking heads fighting for Thiel bucks?"
  • etchalon 3y ago
    FIRE generally defends free speech on either side of the political spectrum, and while they used to be more focused on right-leaning speech, they're far more balanced now and much closer to what I used to feel the ACLU was. (disclaimer, I designed/developed their website like a decade ago)
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
• steego 3y ago
  Here’s my counter argument: Since the popularization of the internet, we have experienced unprecedented levels of free speech that’s never been enjoyed throughout all history and the ability to broadcast the most offensive and unpopular ideas is still magnitudes more free than it was pre-internet. Make no mistake, as much as people loved to talk about how they championed free speech in the 80s and early 90s, the reality was that ideas that would hardly be considered offensive today got you cancelled back then. Sinead O’Conner tore up a picture of the pope and was shunned. Absolute free speech has never been accepted in mainstream venues and I would argue the only thing that has changed over time is what type of speech is considered fashionable. Honestly, I think the younger generation is not as protective of free speech simply because they have lived in a world where free speech has thrived to the point to where they’re sick of it. Not only has it thrived, it’s boosted by ad-driven social media companies to antagonize engagement. Back in my day the saying was, “if bleeds it leads”. We should update it to: “If it enrages, it engages.” Am I off the mark? Am I missing a more important angle? Does anyone really think we have less free speech today?
  • throwaway_08932 3y ago
    Also, many of them have experienced abuse masquerading as "free speech." Or, generously, they've been influenced by those who experienced it, and are holding the same stance even if they potentially suffered less from it.
  • campbel 3y ago
    I agree. The value of free speech when I was younger was purposeful, subjecting ideas to open critique so only the best could survive. Now the "marketplace of ideas" seems to be full of the high calorie, low nutrient variety. Do I need to endure people like Milo Yiannopoulos or Ben Shipiro so I can be seen as supporting free speech?
  • Kye 3y ago
    >> "Not only has it thrived, it’s boosted by ad-driven social media companies to antagonize engagement." The love and vociferous defense of "quote dunking" on Twitter, and now Bluesky, is I think the strongest evidence that free speech is alive and well on the center and left. If they wanted to silence someone, they certainly wouldn't drag them in front of all their followers.
• mempko 3y ago
  Nate Silver is maybe not aware about the left's view on this. The left recognizes the Paradox of Tolerance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance I would argue this survey shows evidence of the opposite, that there is more support for free speech on the left. It's fairly clear that the right is not genuine about free speech because in reality it's the right that is actually banning books and access to information in the US right now, not the left. Basic principle of the Paradox of Tolerance is simple. If you let bigots talk, you will get more bigotry and in the end a less free society. The iron of the right talking against 'cancel culture' is that the decisions to actually not let people speak, or get people to lose their jobs are done by right-leaning people. Those that run the large institutions that are doing cancelling, like corporations, are run largely by right leaning, business minded, people. They wanted extreme private property rights, well that's how you get 'cancel culture'. Truly ironic that when businesses respond to markets (again run by right-minded folks), it's the right that is complaining today.
  • honkkong420 3y ago
    Hardly, the left platforms anti-white bigots all the time. It's clear that censoring anti-White bigots would make it safer to be White in America, but the left won't lift a finger because it wants more dead white people.
    • mempko 3y ago
      We found one folks.
  • waterheater 3y ago
    >If you let bigots talk, you will get more bigotry and in the end a less free society. By definition, a bigot is "a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices" [1]. There are bigots on both the left and the right. No one is saying there aren't bigots on the right. What the survey is saying that the majority of the people obstinately devoted to their own opinions are on the left. For some reason, many people on the left become obstinate when anyone (even a self-identifying liberal) makes that observation. >They wanted extreme private property rights, well that's how you get 'cancel culture'. Nope, "extreme private property rights" have existed in the US for hundreds of years. Also, cancel culture is about cancelling people who espouse a particular idea. I refer you to copyright and patent law enforcement to see how attempts to enforce property rights on an idea has played out across history. There are many reasonable and unreasonable ways to do so. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bigot https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bigot
• roflyear 3y ago
  I have two issues with this: first, not wanting certain people on your college campus giving speeches, where you go to learn in a comfortable environment, doesn't mean you don't support free speech, it means you don't want them there. Second, freedom of speech is not freedom of getting a platform to speak. You're not entitled to a platform: you're entitled to use the platform you have to speak your views. This is the equity/equality argument, in my view.
  • Georgelemental 3y ago
    > learn in a comfortable environment College campuses should be a place where people can be challenged by contrary, uncomfortable ideas. Safe from physical violence and danger, but not free of contentious debate. > You're not entitled to a platform The college itself isn't obligated to invest resources to support your presence. But a student group is free to invite who they want, no? Colleges pretty much universally receive plenty of government funds, so have an obligation of some level of neutrality
    • roflyear 3y ago
      They are free to invite who they want, but someone pointed out here a great example: can you find many examples of pro-war speakers at college in the 60s? Probably not :)
• Kye 3y ago
  >> "C1. Transgender people have a mental disorder." >> "C2. Abortion should be completely illegal." >> "C3. Black Lives Matter is a hate group." I really don't understand people whose idea of free speech is "tolerating" yet another repeat of the same damned argument we've heard a million times over. We heard you. We weren't convinced. Free speech is intact, we just want to move on. Try literally any other argument. Come up on stage and say something novel or you're wasting the students' time and the platform. You're not a bold defender of free speech saying this stuff. You're a hack. You're no different from the street preacher screaming lines from Leviticus at me as I pass by.
  • hotnfresh 3y ago
    I posted more about this elsewhere in the thread, but I wonder how much of the poll response isn't about wanting to silence opposing views, but about perceptions of the motivations and likely quality of speakers with those views. Maybe it's more about perceived likelihood that the speaker's just going to be a professional IRL troll. I wonder if adding context that reduced the perceived likelihood of that, while leaving those statements intact, would change the results significantly.
    • Kye 3y ago
      I would not be surprised if a blind taste test of sorts were devised to compare the past free speech people long for to the free speech of people pushing intellectualized bigotry, the classics would win every time. >> "I wonder if adding context that reduced the perceived likelihood of that, while leaving those statements intact, would change the results significantly." I've taken a lot of research surveys that play with wording and context to test bias. It's interesting to look back at my own answers to see how framing around the questions affects the response.
  • Georgelemental 3y ago
    If you are not interested in listening to a speaker that a group on campus invited, feel free not to attend the event. Nobody is forcing it on you.
  • keyboard_slap 3y ago
• wolframhempel 3y ago
  I find, most discussions on "wokeism" stay too much on the surface level. There is a really interesting postmodern bit of epistemological philosophy underpinning the whole intellectual edifice. Bear with me for a second: Imagine I’m holding an apple in front of you. What do you see? “An Apple” - you answer. But how do you know? Seeing is just the act of light reflecting off an object and hitting the receptors at the back of your eyes. From there, your optical nerve transports a blurry and upside down set of individual RGB information. The rest is up to your brain. And your brain is doing much more than just putting the pixels together into a shape.. It identifies that shape as “apple”. And it knows things about apples. They’re good for you. They are a common fruit. They’re inexpensive. But here’s the thing: You didn’t invent the word “apple”. You didn’t discover that they’re healthy, common or cheap. Instead, someone told you. By teaching you the context to an apple, that person, school, institution or culture wields power. A power to shape your thinking and thereby your world view. And that power is what much of the culture war is about. That’s why so much of it is focused on speech. Speech is violence. (And so is silence). Speech is dangerous (boy, is it ever). Speech has to be controlled. You may disagree with the content the left wishes to fill the speech with. (I certainly do in many instances). But I believe they are fundamentally right about the underlying premise - and the leverage gained by winning the struggle about contextualisation.
  • ashton314 3y ago
    > Speech is violence. No it isn't. Speech can be refuted by other speech. If you offend me, I can decide how to internalize it. If you do real physical violence to me, I don't have a choice. Yes, there are dangerous ideas, but I don't want to trust anyone to tell me (or worse, the public at large) what I can and cannot say or think. I want good ideas to win out by persuading me and others, not by being handed down from on high as dogma.
    • mrguyorama 3y ago
      >If you offend me, I can decide how to internalize it. No you can't. Millions of emotional abusers have caused harm strictly through speech. You can't "control" how a hunk of fat doing a bunch of chemistry reacts to sound waves because that hunk of fat explicitly evolved to react to sound waves in physiological ways! Trauma is a real thing. People can be harmed in medically discernible ways through nothing more than words. Those words represent a thought in the head of whoever spoke them, and your brain knows that. Your brain knows words are more than "just words" and reacts accordingly.
• zingababba 3y ago
  Privileged kids gonna privilege
• jzb 3y ago
  Oh, awesome - Nate is tackling the fact that Republicans are banning books and trying to re-write history / forbid the teaching of history in schools. <reads article> oh. Guess not.
  • LeafItAlone 3y ago
    Arguably sensationalist title aside, Nate is providing his analysis on the results of one survey.
• waterheater 3y ago
  The multicultural element of American universities is a major background element and will shape the long-term outlook on free speech in academia. In aggregate, I've seen and heard far more clearly racist comments from foreign students toward Black Americans than from American students. These attitudes will not dissipate overnight. In my wholly personal opinion, the distinct issue with "White liberal American" students and free speech stems from self-segregation. A human being is the product of their environment. In dichotomous contrast to their antiracist stances, "White liberal" parents tend to live among and socialize almost exclusively with other White liberals, which causes kids to prefer an in-group, tribal mentality and never develop the personality skills to exist outside your ideological tribe. If kids are raised in such an environment, conflict among other groups will create significant discomfort for them. There are many ways to raise your kids to have a liberal mentality without turning them into a shadow-scared ideologue.
• teddyh 3y ago
  Disclaimer: I am not a US citizen or resident, and I am only idly pontificating. As I see it, free speech is – and has always been – one of the simple rallying calls of the underdog, and has therefore not really been part of older civilizations, and those civilizations which are still ruled by the same old class/rules/traditions still do not emphasize free speech as something important. But I think most countries at some point had a somewhat clean divide where older traditional regimes gave way to modern more-or-less democratic ones, and since the democratic factions were the underdogs, free speech was incorporated into the new founding principles of those countries. This was especially clear in the USA, but has evolved further there. The conservative US citizens – the “right” – have, since then, had free speech as one of their Important Core Tenets, and since they were in power for much of US history, it was cemented. Especially, since the opposition, the “left” (being the underdog) also liked free speech (since they want to criticize the ruling powers), free speech was a very popular and politically safe position for everybody, no matter what side. (This can be contrasted to other countries where a democratic revolution has happened, but where free speech was not (for whatever reason) very strongly incorporated into its new founding principles. This allowed conservatives of those countries to mostly be skeptical of free speech, and the oppositions being only mostly in favor of it.) But something odd then happened in the US. The left, having been pushed too far by something or other (Trump being the usual cited example), began to reason that since the “right” had free speech as a value, the “left” were free to oppose it. This is where I believe the new trend of what has been called “cancel culture” comes from. The “right”, seeing this, and since the ”right” was in power (de jure or de facto), saw no reason to keep free speech as a core value, since free speech is, as I said, mostly a tool for the underdog. Therefore, US “right” also began dropping free speech as a core value. And therefore nobody in the US today really values free speech. This is a complete reversal from the US of some – not very long – time ago. Another way to view this is that both the “right” and the “left” today have changed from seeing themselves as underdogs, and now see themselves as “temporarily embarrassed rulers” (to paraphrase a famous saying commonly attributed to John Steinbeck), and so both sides feel free to call for censorship, believing that they will never (at least for long) be on the losing side. (Some ”right”-minded people try to square the incongruity (of still having free speech as a written core value) by painting themselves as underdogs, thus allowing themselves to value free speech. But since the ”right” are also conservatives, which by definition stands for old traditional power, this rarely looks plausible. The “left”-minded people who do the same merely look old-fashioned, but those people are not very influential anymore.)
• beepbooptheory 3y ago
  > While I’ve somehow made it this far without using the words “Israel” or “Palestine”, recent international events have uncovered instances of hypocrisy too. I have no interest in refereeing every incident, but cases like this — in which editor-in-chief Michael Eisen was fired from the life sciences journal eLife for retweeting an Onion article that expressed sympathy with Palestinians — fall under any definition of “cancel culture”. I appreciate the focus of the essay, but extremely strange to merely equate the current events at Harvard et al with "cancel culture". When a train runs over my leg, it falls under any definition of an "oopsie", but that doesn't mean an "oopsie" quite exhausts the force and meaning of it. Sure students are intolerant of certain speakers, but we at least got to square that with the apparent fact that when students (and teachers) find themselves on the "wrong" side of an event, they arent merely canceled, or barred from speaking, but harassed, threatened, arrested, and doxxed with apparently no recourse at all. I think these students will certainly learn a lesson, but perhaps not the one Nate has in mind.
• tchock23 3y ago
  I'd like to see a qualitative component that digs into the "why" behind some of the survey results referenced in the post. For example, there could be "other" reasons why a student wouldn't want a controversial figure on campus like, "it's disruptive to my studies." I'd also like to know where the survey question options came from. Not to dismiss the results by nitpicking, but with survey research findings the devil is in the details of how the data was collected. I've seen too many organizations use biased surveys to produce inflammatory headlines that they know will get them clicks/funding. (Source: 20+ years experience in the research industry).
• lispisok 3y ago
  Most of his points are about young people and universities. I dont think there has been a change in the intrinsic properties to those groups as he mentions. What has happened, and people are gonna think I'm a crazy Fox News boomer for saying, and gonna get downvoted by very left learning HN for...is the left is now the mainstream and the right is now the counterculture. We're basically in the inverse of 2003 America. I am not making political judgements I am stating facts. Look at how every large organization boasts about their commitment to diversity and supporting LGTBQ+. Every big corp, including ones like Lockheed Martin, K-12 education, higher education, the military even. I know people are going to try and counter bringing up recent anti-abortion legislation and other laws but having a majority in some local legislation is not enough to be the mainstream. You have to control more than that and the left controls just about everything else. Most discussions around free speech talk about deplatfomring and "canceling". Those two strategies are only effective for the side that controls the platforms which is the mainstream. The counterculture cannot deplatform somebody because they do not have control over the platform. It's always the counterculture that complain about lack of free speech and the mainstream who say things like "you are not entitled to a megaphone" and "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences" Universities and college students used to be hotbeds of counterculture because the right was the mainstream and college students are overwhelmingly left leaning. Today college students are all about deplatforming because they are on the side that gets to deplatform people instead of the side that struggles for megaphone access.
• apienx 3y ago
  Globally, free speech is alive and kicking. Free speech is improving in China, India, Africa, etc. Slowly but surely. In Europe, there are setbacks. Burn enough embassies and the pragmatic Scandinavians will eventually ask you to stop burning a certain book. For the US, it’s well protected by the first amendment to the constitution. The youth is just particularly sensitive to accusations of racism and such. College students have taboo topics because they’re not very sophisticated (yet). It’s easy - even for Ivy-educated folks - to conflate an ethnic group with a religious one. Or a “race” with a culture. Their views will hopefully change with time. The real threat to freedoms is the appetite for security. And the best way to protect it is to stop being so easily terrorised.
• sigmar 3y ago
  "Free speech" seems pretty nebulous and ill-defined here. It'd be nice to see some objective measures be analyzed rather than the only data be student surveys (maybe a measurement of speaker viewpoint diversity over time?). and these survey are about what speakers should be allowed to make speeches hosted by the school... seems like a very specific aspect of campus speech. For a different measure of how much free expression is allowed- maybe look at often people are killed for expressing controversial views. I'd invite anyone to contrast Nate's article with the story of the Kent State students in the 1970s who were summarily executed by the US army for peaceful protests[1], is FIRE and Nate Silver really going to argue modern campuses "free speech" is in trouble now more than back then? Public protest seems like it should be much more protected (and relevant to the term 'free speech') than who-gets-what speaking fees. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
• verve_rat 3y ago
  The whole article is premised on the idea that students should want to debate ideas in the great intellectual marketplace. But that's not what universities are for anymore. We spent the last 30 or more years turning universities into vocational schools and act surprised that students don't want to spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of their money to engage in exhausting controversy? I'd assume most students want to get a degree and start getting paid. No matter if you are left or right leaning, a culture war in your back garden is a distraction from that.
  • mrguyorama 3y ago
    There's also the much more important fact that "The left" believes these ideas have already been sufficiently litigated. Would a church congregation happily bring in speakers to talk about why allowing abortion is necessary medical care? They probably would be unhappy if a church did that more than a few times, since most american christian faiths claim to have a "definitive" answer on things. Or should Universities also be expected to platform people who would openly advocate for reintroducing slavery to the US? Would people really be happy with that? Or advocating to remove the voting rights of women? Some republican politicians openly tweet that women's suffrage is a bad thing. Would you, as a university student, be happy if your university brought in someone who gives a two hour speech about how 2+2=5? What if that same person was adamant that anyone who doesn't believe 2+2=5 is the "enemy" and wants to hurt america? What about that time a bunch of kids in South Africa (I think) held a "Safe space" group activity and decided to talk about how math and science is colonialist? Should we encourage such useless discussion at our colleges? Remember, these are the same colleges saying there's no money to give to better or more professors, so if they are the ones putting up the speaking fee, that feels pretty fucked up as a student.
• feoren 3y ago
  An alternative hypothesis is that C1 and C3, and to a lesser extent C2, are essentially untenable positions that are only ever espoused in bad-faith by trolls and people with ulterior motives. Nate Silver says they seem "slightly spicier", to him, but perhaps what he's really detecting is that they are simply not evidence-based positions that anyone debates in good-faith. The idea that C1 and C3 are simply untenable positions, never held in good faith, certainly resonates with me; C2 less so, but I could understand why people think that. Meanwhile, L1 through L3 do not have that flavor at all; they sound like arguments that could actually be debated with facts. If that were true, we have a rather simpler story: about 60% to 70% of people would happily invite debate about whatever, as long as it is in good faith. Liberals essentially do not believe C1 through C3 are good-faith arguments, while conservatives do. Even this 60% to 70% number is a bit lower than I'd like to see, but perhaps 30% of people don't think Universities should play the role of public forum at all? I just don't think you can draw strong conclusions from this without actually analyzing the content of C1 - C3 and L1 - L3, and my intuition about them suggests a very different interpretation. C1 and C3 both have a strong flavor of a certain group of people essentially having no right to exist, or at least deserving of a lesser existence. Asking transgender people to debate whether or not they have a mental disorder, in the name of free speech, is essentially stating that they constantly must argue for their right to exist. Rejecting C1 as a valid argument is essentially stating that transgender people do have an unequivocal right to exist, and do not need to constantly argue for their own existence until the end of time. Nate Silver does not even mention the possibility that the Cs are inherently more flawed positions than the Ls, and that is a mistake.
• pie_flavor 3y ago
  Part of the problem is that nobody knows what they believe. You learn in school three facts: free speech is "liberal", free speech is "good", and the Democratic Party is "liberal" (Nate avoids this word for exactly that reason, and notes as much in TFA). So, a lot of people (subconsciously, without realizing it) make the following computations: "I am good." + "Free speech is good." = "I am pro-free-speech." "Democrats are liberal." + "Free speech is liberal." = "Democrats are pro-free-speech.", + "I am a Democrat." = "I am pro-free-speech." And then never actually check, internally, "do I support the idea of people I disagree with speaking their honest opinions out loud?" or whether they identify with that famous quote "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". There's various strategies of retreat, from misidentifying particular ideas as "intolerance" so one can misapply Popper's quote about the paradox of tolerance (see also "hate speech"), to being legalistic about it and denying that it's nothing without social norms too, to talking about deplatforming speakers as a form of free speech too (still forcibly silencing rather than counterarguing!), and you can see a dozen examples right on this page. All of them, I believe, have the same root: genuinely believing oneself to be pro-free-speech, caused by saturation of an American society that values being pro-free-speech, but without ever actually being convinced of the merits of free speech. And I think it has spread precisely because it's invisible unless poked; you don't need to convince someone of the merits of free speech if they already believe it, and so a lot less convincing has gone on than needs to.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• tamimio 3y ago
  There’s nothing as “free speech”, it will always be limited by laws that made by some lobbyists, ironically, the biggest threat to democracy is democracy itself.
• MaineFreeSpeech 3y ago
  Donors to universities have way too much power. I went to do a free speech at my university and it ended with the university administrator reaching out to the major university donor. Ultimately, I'm facing a threatened SLAPP suit. I would appreciate it if people would sign and share my petition because I hope FIRE wins and I can continue to exercise my free speech. https://www.change.org/p/good-healthcare-workers-need-your-help https://www.change.org/p/good-healthcare-workers-need-your-h...
• jrh3 3y ago
  An article about free speech was "flagged" and hidden seems weird.