4 ms·

What is the purpose of free speech? It allows for the undisturbed transmission of ideas, criticism of the government, and engagement with politics and political

What is the purpose of free speech? It allows for the undisturbed transmission of ideas, criticism of the government, and engagement with politics and political leaders. Widely distributing fake porn using somebody's likeness without their permission is absolutely not providing any sort of social good and is damn far from the key forms of speech that are important for a healthy social system. This isn't a backdoor to attack your constitutional rights. Not even close.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
It also allows the spread of enjoyable pastimes and a whole host of other non-political speech that some may find objectionable. There are a whole host of interesting pre-Code Hollywood films for instance, that aren't pornographic, but still had important or humorous messages.
- UncleMeat 3y ago
  Sure, we can expand the values of free speech as far as you want. Making and distributing porn of somebody using their likeness without their consent is unethical behavior that is not some pillar of any social good derived from the broad principle of free speech. If you want to fight for free speech there's plenty of other actually useful battles. I'm serious. Just once, I'd love a free speech absolutist in these situations to talk about all the work they are doing to prevent retaliatory arrest or expand the speech rights of students or try to get Thomas (who wants to overturn Tinker) or Alito (who voted by himself in Snyder v Phelps) kicked off the bench.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    >Making and distributing porn of somebody using their likeness without their consent is unethical behavior I suspect not everyone agrees with that. Are you willing to trade away some of the things you think should be permitted but they don't for the ban?
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      First we should see whether it's possible to outlaw non-consensual distribution of deepfake porn on it's own. If that's possible then we don't have to consider the alternative of a more general ban.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        Why is your opinion of what should be allowed more important than theirs? And do you really want to make everything unethical illegal?
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        > Why is your opinion of what should be allowed more important than theirs? Least harm. > And do you really want to make everything unethical illegal? By definition, YES! Or at least actionable civil torts. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/unethical https://www.dictionary.com/browse/unethical : lacking moral principles; unwilling to adhere to proper rules of conduct. : not in accord with the standards of a profession
        thfuran 3y ago
        Have you ever eaten pork or beef or perhaps chicken parmesann or even an omelette? There are many who would say that any one of those acts shows a lack of moral principles. You want all of these things to be illegal?
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        It's arguable, but at this point I'm just going to state that you are going out of your way for a "gotcha" on a reduction to the absurd. When you mentioned "ethics" as opposed to "morality" I naively assumed interhuman behaviors such as business ethics and the like. So yes, I believe that anything that can harm a fellow human (and many things that can harm other life) should be civilly actionable. We can argue about some of the edge cases, but non-consensual deepfake porn is not one of those edge cases to me.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    There must be more behind this social good metric that you keep bringing up, care to cite where that comes into play? What merits social good, and who decides it? For example, if I go to a train station and tell people horses have purple hair, is that not free speech? I wouldn't consider that ridiculous statement a social good, it really serves no value and doesn't better society. Am I breaking a law or ethical standard if I do this?
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    > Making and distributing porn of somebody using their likeness without their consent is unethical behavior How do you propose we define likeness here? Sure if its shared and claims to be of a named celebrity that must meet the bar, but how much alike the original person must it look like to become unethical? If a person finds a celebrity attractive and bases a fictitious character on them, is that a problem? What if the haircut is the same, or the eyes and nose are similar? If it goes to court, how personal can the defendant get to show discrepancies between the fake porn and the actual person? Don't get me wrong I really wish people wouldn't use tech for this kind of stupid shit. I just don't think we will ever be able to draw clear and predictable lines around what does and does not break the law.
    - allturtles 3y ago
      What you're describing is just how law works. It's all written in natural language terms that are inherently ambiguous. It's not computer code. Courts decide the boundary cases. Laws around "likeness," in particular are nothing new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
      - _heimdall 3y ago
        And you don't have any problem with laws being ambiguous enough that you can't tell beforehand whether you're breaking the law? In my experience with jury cases the jury is given as little room to interpret law as possible. In this example prosecutors would say "here is what 'likeness' means" and that would be that. Jurors would be expected and instructed to use that definition when determining if the defendant broke the law. To say that its expected and even a good thing for our elected officials to pass ambiguous laws and our unelected courts to determine what that should mean with little to no input from the public is very confusing IMO. The government is there to work for us, not to define rules and enforce punishment in ways that are completely outside our democratic process of elections and representation.
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
jrm4 3y ago
I agree with you in theory, but at the end of it all -- which is to say, this looks like this could be a question of "what are we willing to spend resources to enforce?" It's really hard for me to see the utility in going after THIS vs. letting people say garbage like "If I see a black man flying a plane I'm going to worry." with near complete impunity. Edit: And I don't think we should necessarily spend resources to go after the latter either, I'm just saying, as a black man, if I had to pick...yeah.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  It might be informative talking to your black sisters.
  - jrm4 3y ago
    Weird of you to assume I don't? What precisely are you suggesting here?
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      I meant "sisters" in the metaphorical sense. I'm suggesting asking black women which one they'd prioritize. Deepfake porn impacts women a whole lot more than it impacts men. Just as racist assumptions of violence or danger impacts men a whole lot more than it impacts women. Edit to add: If something prevents or inhibits someone from engaging in the public sphere to the extent of cutting back on their employment and employment opportunities, or their consumption and consumption opportunities, for instance, then there is also a cost in not policing that something.
cwillu 3y ago
And yet the law will be written that refers to obscene materials, and then later someone will find a graphic criticism of someone else's religion or favourite politician to be obscene. It will happen, because it always happens. It doesn't (only) matter what the intent of the law is, any more than it matters what the intent of strcpy is. It (also) matters what purposes the law can be twisted to.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  al_borland (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39167506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39167506 ) posted this link earlier. It looks like the laws are being appropriately tailored not to "obscene" materials but toward "intimate" materials (where "intimate" supposes a right of privacy, regardless of whether fake or not). https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/sharing-deepfake-could-lead-to-lengthy-prison-time-under-proposed-law/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/sharing-deepfake... : the “Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act,” which seeks to "prohibit the non-consensual disclosure of digitally altered intimate images." Under the proposed law, anyone sharing deepfake pornography without an individual's consent risks damages that could go as high as $150,000 and imprisonment of up to 10 years if sharing the images facilitates violence or impacts the proceedings of a government agency.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    "Obscene" versus "intimate" both fall into the same trap of requiring more clear definition. In the first case one has to make a judgement call on whether they personally perceive something as obscene, and whether that means the other party was at fault for creating it. In the case of intimate, you have to define the word clearly and draw a line between what would and would not be considered intimate. For example, if a fake porn image was made to include a scene of the act happening in a large gathering or public place, does that dodge the word "intimate"? And can the viewer of the image decide whether it is intimate, or would that distinction depend on the feelings of the image's subject at the time it was taken? If the latter, how can that exist when the image was entirely generated and had no living subjects to question?
_heimdall 3y ago
Your initial definition doesn't mention social good, though you follow it up with an assumption that social good is some kind of check on where free speech ends. Where does this come from? I know it isn't in the constitution, but is there some legal precedent set that more clearly defines this line? > This isn't a backdoor to attack your constitutional rights. Not even close. I'd be really curious to hear more here. My specific question and proposed backdoor was specifically in response to the idea that free speech may somehow be limited based on a measure of how easily current technology allows said speech to be distributed. What did I miss there and how is it not a backdoor?
oceanplexian 3y ago
We don’t measure Freedom of Speech by some test of how much Social Good is created by various types of speech. These rights were enumerated in a time when people distributed pamphlets that led to a bloody revolutionary war. War is a hell of a lot worse for the social fabric than “some fake nudes got distributed on the Internet”.
- UncleMeat 3y ago
  The founders passed the Alien and Sedition Acts and various other laws that we'd now consider extreme limitations on political speech. Whatever free speech means today, it isn't derived from the core beliefs of the founders.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

It also allows the spread of enjoyable pastimes and a whole host of other non-political speech that some may find objectionable. There are a whole host of interesting pre-Code Hollywood films for instance, that aren't pornographic, but still had important or humorous messages.

UncleMeat 3y ago
Sure, we can expand the values of free speech as far as you want. Making and distributing porn of somebody using their likeness without their consent is unethical behavior that is not some pillar of any social good derived from the broad principle of free speech. If you want to fight for free speech there's plenty of other actually useful battles. I'm serious. Just once, I'd love a free speech absolutist in these situations to talk about all the work they are doing to prevent retaliatory arrest or expand the speech rights of students or try to get Thomas (who wants to overturn Tinker) or Alito (who voted by himself in Snyder v Phelps) kicked off the bench.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >Making and distributing porn of somebody using their likeness without their consent is unethical behavior I suspect not everyone agrees with that. Are you willing to trade away some of the things you think should be permitted but they don't for the ban?
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    First we should see whether it's possible to outlaw non-consensual distribution of deepfake porn on it's own. If that's possible then we don't have to consider the alternative of a more general ban.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      Why is your opinion of what should be allowed more important than theirs? And do you really want to make everything unethical illegal?
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        > Why is your opinion of what should be allowed more important than theirs? Least harm. > And do you really want to make everything unethical illegal? By definition, YES! Or at least actionable civil torts. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/unethical https://www.dictionary.com/browse/unethical : lacking moral principles; unwilling to adhere to proper rules of conduct. : not in accord with the standards of a profession
        thfuran 3y ago
        Have you ever eaten pork or beef or perhaps chicken parmesann or even an omelette? There are many who would say that any one of those acts shows a lack of moral principles. You want all of these things to be illegal?
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        It's arguable, but at this point I'm just going to state that you are going out of your way for a "gotcha" on a reduction to the absurd. When you mentioned "ethics" as opposed to "morality" I naively assumed interhuman behaviors such as business ethics and the like. So yes, I believe that anything that can harm a fellow human (and many things that can harm other life) should be civilly actionable. We can argue about some of the edge cases, but non-consensual deepfake porn is not one of those edge cases to me.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  There must be more behind this social good metric that you keep bringing up, care to cite where that comes into play? What merits social good, and who decides it? For example, if I go to a train station and tell people horses have purple hair, is that not free speech? I wouldn't consider that ridiculous statement a social good, it really serves no value and doesn't better society. Am I breaking a law or ethical standard if I do this?
- _heimdall 3y ago
  > Making and distributing porn of somebody using their likeness without their consent is unethical behavior How do you propose we define likeness here? Sure if its shared and claims to be of a named celebrity that must meet the bar, but how much alike the original person must it look like to become unethical? If a person finds a celebrity attractive and bases a fictitious character on them, is that a problem? What if the haircut is the same, or the eyes and nose are similar? If it goes to court, how personal can the defendant get to show discrepancies between the fake porn and the actual person? Don't get me wrong I really wish people wouldn't use tech for this kind of stupid shit. I just don't think we will ever be able to draw clear and predictable lines around what does and does not break the law.
  - allturtles 3y ago
    What you're describing is just how law works. It's all written in natural language terms that are inherently ambiguous. It's not computer code. Courts decide the boundary cases. Laws around "likeness," in particular are nothing new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
    - _heimdall 3y ago
      And you don't have any problem with laws being ambiguous enough that you can't tell beforehand whether you're breaking the law? In my experience with jury cases the jury is given as little room to interpret law as possible. In this example prosecutors would say "here is what 'likeness' means" and that would be that. Jurors would be expected and instructed to use that definition when determining if the defendant broke the law. To say that its expected and even a good thing for our elected officials to pass ambiguous laws and our unelected courts to determine what that should mean with little to no input from the public is very confusing IMO. The government is there to work for us, not to define rules and enforce punishment in ways that are completely outside our democratic process of elections and representation.
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago

jrm4 3y ago

I agree with you in theory, but at the end of it all -- which is to say, this looks like this could be a question of "what are we willing to spend resources to enforce?" It's really hard for me to see the utility in going after THIS vs. letting people say garbage like "If I see a black man flying a plane I'm going to worry." with near complete impunity. Edit: And I don't think we should necessarily spend resources to go after the latter either, I'm just saying, as a black man, if I had to pick...yeah.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
It might be informative talking to your black sisters.
- jrm4 3y ago
  Weird of you to assume I don't? What precisely are you suggesting here?
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    I meant "sisters" in the metaphorical sense. I'm suggesting asking black women which one they'd prioritize. Deepfake porn impacts women a whole lot more than it impacts men. Just as racist assumptions of violence or danger impacts men a whole lot more than it impacts women. Edit to add: If something prevents or inhibits someone from engaging in the public sphere to the extent of cutting back on their employment and employment opportunities, or their consumption and consumption opportunities, for instance, then there is also a cost in not policing that something.

cwillu 3y ago

And yet the law will be written that refers to obscene materials, and then later someone will find a graphic criticism of someone else's religion or favourite politician to be obscene. It will happen, because it always happens. It doesn't (only) matter what the intent of the law is, any more than it matters what the intent of strcpy is. It (also) matters what purposes the law can be twisted to.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
al_borland (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39167506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39167506 ) posted this link earlier. It looks like the laws are being appropriately tailored not to "obscene" materials but toward "intimate" materials (where "intimate" supposes a right of privacy, regardless of whether fake or not). https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/sharing-deepfake-could-lead-to-lengthy-prison-time-under-proposed-law/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/sharing-deepfake... : the “Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act,” which seeks to "prohibit the non-consensual disclosure of digitally altered intimate images." Under the proposed law, anyone sharing deepfake pornography without an individual's consent risks damages that could go as high as $150,000 and imprisonment of up to 10 years if sharing the images facilitates violence or impacts the proceedings of a government agency.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  "Obscene" versus "intimate" both fall into the same trap of requiring more clear definition. In the first case one has to make a judgement call on whether they personally perceive something as obscene, and whether that means the other party was at fault for creating it. In the case of intimate, you have to define the word clearly and draw a line between what would and would not be considered intimate. For example, if a fake porn image was made to include a scene of the act happening in a large gathering or public place, does that dodge the word "intimate"? And can the viewer of the image decide whether it is intimate, or would that distinction depend on the feelings of the image's subject at the time it was taken? If the latter, how can that exist when the image was entirely generated and had no living subjects to question?

_heimdall 3y ago

Your initial definition doesn't mention social good, though you follow it up with an assumption that social good is some kind of check on where free speech ends. Where does this come from? I know it isn't in the constitution, but is there some legal precedent set that more clearly defines this line? > This isn't a backdoor to attack your constitutional rights. Not even close. I'd be really curious to hear more here. My specific question and proposed backdoor was specifically in response to the idea that free speech may somehow be limited based on a measure of how easily current technology allows said speech to be distributed. What did I miss there and how is it not a backdoor?

oceanplexian 3y ago

We don’t measure Freedom of Speech by some test of how much Social Good is created by various types of speech. These rights were enumerated in a time when people distributed pamphlets that led to a bloody revolutionary war. War is a hell of a lot worse for the social fabric than “some fake nudes got distributed on the Internet”.

UncleMeat 3y ago
The founders passed the Alien and Sedition Acts and various other laws that we'd now consider extreme limitations on political speech. Whatever free speech means today, it isn't derived from the core beliefs of the founders.