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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 th

• 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?
    • xeckr 3y ago
      I will plug my ears if you're just generating noise with it. But if we're in public, especially at a place which ostensibly exists for the purpose of exchanging ideas, then I will begin by assuming that you are trying to make some kind of point, and that you judged that this point is important enough to overcome the embarrassment of shouting through a megaphone to an audience that on average preferred you didn't.
  • atoav 3y ago
    You can give yours to whom you like, I can give mine to whom I like. If you seem reasonable and can talk about your idea of how the world should be without making up things and putting down people, I might just do it. Karl Popper coind the term »paradox of intolerance«. A free society has (in order to remain free) to be intolerant towards intolerant people, otherwise those intolerant people will use the tolerance you give them to abolish the free society and therefore all tolerance. So e.g. I would not give my megaphone to any faction that issues death threats to all their political enemies, especially not if their political enemies are chosen by culture, gender, race, political stance alone. This in my eyes is not only a reasonable stance to take, but one that anybody who knows about the history of democracy around the world will find reasonable as well. No I can assure you that the enemies of the free society also wouldn't give their megaphone to anybody. They just won't be honest about why. They will make up reasons why it is always the person of color, the women, the kid, the gay person, etc. whose books they need to burn. So maybe as a liberal European I don't understand the whole US freedom of speech thing, but if one side decidesnot to give the megaphone to a screaming hateful holocaust denier and the other side literally sweeps school libraries to BURN BOOKS I don't have a hard time deciding which side is worse.
  • smsm42 3y ago
    Good people, obviously. Or, whoever the mob on the closest college campus prefers to.
  • tootie 3y ago
    Whoever grabs it? Nobody has a right to a 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
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  • 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.