5 ms·

Anti-hate speech got you? What were you trying to say exactly? One can go on X right now and spew any hate speech that one wants. How about just political opin

Anti-hate speech got you? What were you trying to say exactly? One can go on X right now and spew any hate speech that one wants. How about just political opinions? How quickly we forgot "free speech zones." This is the government actually limiting public speech in the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone BTW, I am not for this regulation in any way. I just don't see the connection to hate speech.

dauertewigkeit 2y ago
Hate speech accusations are a bit like being accused of rape. Once it happens you automatically get tainted and it is very hard to defend yourself in the public sphere, even if the accusations are totally unfounded. This is of course abused by evil people. Moreover, what counts as hate speech can very suddenly alter depending on whoever is in charge, and even if the public don't go along with it, it can still be used to silence people.
- consumer451 2y ago
  I am not directing this at you, or anyone here, truly. However, this XKCD always come to mind whenever I hear the topics of hate speech and free speech mentioned within proximity of each other: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
  - sickofparadox 2y ago
    This XKCD sucks and is essentially a thought-terminating cliche. https://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-speech/index.html https://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-speech/in...
  - dauertewigkeit 2y ago
    I have an example in mind, a very recent one, in which case it was indeed the government abusing hate speech laws to silence critics. Ask Greta Thunberg.
    - lomase 2y ago
      Ask Greta Thunberg? The level is very low here. This kind of comments are not what I come to HN.
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    Free speech does not mean the first amendment. I have a feeling people here would be a bit upset if the local mosque started executing people for blasphemy: look ma no government involved!
  - brigandish 2y ago
    That XKCD, ironically but not intentionally ironically, starts off by claiming the opponent (the "asshole") is conflating the first amendment with free speech rights, then goes on to conflate the first amendment with free speech rights in service of limiting someone's speech. Maybe it's easier to see if you're not American and thus aren't covered by the first amendment.
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    That is mainly relevant in a U.S. context, whereas we’re talking about the EU in this thread. Unlike the U.S., several EU countries do indeed make it a crime to express certain opinions.
  - seoulmetro 2y ago
    This is poorly done. If you're banned from doing something for a long time for unfair reasons, then the unfair reasons are rectified and you can actually do it, people will still feel brainwashed to treat you as before even though they never actually wanted to. To just think that a bunch of people not liking something means that something is inherently bad is missing the context for why those people think something is bad, and who told them to think that. If a billion people think you're an asshole for no objective reason, then you are just doing something they are emotional about.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Social control, 'showing the door', is abused to silence dissidents. Plenty of methaforical ideological death marches on different topics could have been avoided by social gatekeepers not having the social power to silence their friends or party co-members. Pretending the question is really about someone being rude is patronizing by XKCD. The concept of 'showing the door' is fine for practical reasons but the other present at the party need to follow in protest on any just so slightly transgression of power. So now when authoritarianism and racism are in fashion again in ”the West”, those political movements that oppose it are in a quite bad spot, since freedom of thought and expression have been turned down to do a shortsighted delay of the shift in the first place.
  - account42 2y ago
    This kind of attitude is of course why the government is more than happy to have megacorporations in control of our public square who they can then push to implement the censorship they want. Of course unless you are trying to win an internet argumet about free speech with a gotcha that makes you feel smart then you will realize that free speech doesn't just mean preventing the government from directly interfering with your speech but is a much broader concept.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > it can still be used to silence people Really because all the people I've seen who bitch about both the lack of their freedom to speak and of being accused of hate speech never shut up, in fact it's seemingly their entire career now to make public appearances at venues and complain about how silenced they are, into hot microphones, for an audience.
Dig1t 2y ago
OP specified “culturally”, ie people who stand up for free speech regardless of its content are painted as alt-right bigots, even if they only care about preserving the right to speak freely. I’m also in this camp and have been down-voted into oblivion many times for just saying something like “I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. It’s not fun to be a defender of truly free speech because you get painted into the same camp as the bad guys.
- consumer451 2y ago
  I don't believe that anyone is truly for absolute free speech, it's just some theoretical utopia which sounds great, until you actually dive into details. Would you defend my right to call your little brother or sister terrible disgusting names? Threaten you or your family's lives? Say that your entire ethnicity doesn't deserve to exist? Because that would be absolute free speech. I don't think anybody should have the right to do that. I mean they can try, but if it happened in real life, they'd find out real quick that it wasn't a good idea. If you disagree with me on major issues, I will defend your right to state that. But if I find myself in a place full of hate, be they nazis, or tankies, or whatever, I leave and don't come back.
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    The U.S. might not be a free speech utopia but it’s pretty close. > Would you defend my right to call your little brother or sister terrible disgusting names? Threaten you or your family's lives? Say that your entire ethnicity doesn't deserve to exist? Out of these three examples, the first and third are totally legal in the U.S.
    - consumer451 2y ago
      Legal yes, IRL not very good for one's health though.
  - Dig1t 2y ago
    I know I sound like a horrible evil person, but yes I truly would like to live in a world where you can say any of those examples. As another commenter said, 2/3 of those are already legal to say anyway, and I am so glad that I live in a place that has that freedom. I don’t agree with or like any of the things you say but I would rather live in a world where you can say them instead of being arrested.
hot_gril 2y ago
It's illegal in a lot of countries.
Spivak 2y ago
Free Speech Absolutism was/is connected with hate speech because sites that hold up such an ideal end up being the landing pad for the very worst people who were banned everywhere else. There aren't enough normal people who vote with their money/time/engagement to reach critical mass on those platforms. And turns out very few people want actually free speech. We're in a forum with strong moderation and the discussion is better for it. Most communities self-enforce norms even without central moderation. There's no easy answers when you have to reckon with the real effects speech has. Germany wasn't special, they weren't even alone at the time. What folks call "fascism" naturally precipitates under the right conditions and I can't think of any time in history where it's been dealt with by the socratic method and not violence of a kind. But once you have a word you can accuse someone of with actual repercussions folks acting in bad-faith try to fit people they don't like into the mould. We think ourselves so much better than those silly puritans accusing people of witchcraft but we just changed the words. I'm sure you could name five off the top of your head that people level without any kind of justification.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  Wanting free speech on internet forums is different from wanting it at the government level. I'm not sure what Free Speech Absolutism is, but if it means unmoderated internet forums, yeah that usually doesn't end well even if only a small minority has bad intent. Big online forums with any kind of global popularity already have an inherent problem despite the moderation, not because of hate speech but because of ragebait and other forms of grifting. Especially with anonymous users.
- brigandish 2y ago
  I broadly agree but present two caveats. Firstly, that Germany's descent into fascism and anti-semitism were both helped by the lack of free speech. Blasphemy laws prevented the anti-semitism preached from the pulpits to be challenged, and hate speech laws actually helped the Nazis publicise their movement[1]. > Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate. In the years from 1923 to 1933, Der Stürmer [Streicher's newspaper] was either confiscated or editors taken to court on no fewer than thirty-six occasions. The more charges Streicher faced, the greater became the admiration of his supporters. The courts became an important platform for Streicher's campaign against the Jews. As to norms, they can be self-enforced because free speech allows such a choice, otherwise it would be the case that those norms were imposed or not even available. Most likely, they'd be someone else's norms. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-violence https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-v... Interview with Fleming Rose about his book.

dauertewigkeit 2y ago

Hate speech accusations are a bit like being accused of rape. Once it happens you automatically get tainted and it is very hard to defend yourself in the public sphere, even if the accusations are totally unfounded. This is of course abused by evil people. Moreover, what counts as hate speech can very suddenly alter depending on whoever is in charge, and even if the public don't go along with it, it can still be used to silence people.

consumer451 2y ago
I am not directing this at you, or anyone here, truly. However, this XKCD always come to mind whenever I hear the topics of hate speech and free speech mentioned within proximity of each other: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
- sickofparadox 2y ago
  This XKCD sucks and is essentially a thought-terminating cliche. https://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-speech/index.html https://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-speech/in...
- dauertewigkeit 2y ago
  I have an example in mind, a very recent one, in which case it was indeed the government abusing hate speech laws to silence critics. Ask Greta Thunberg.
  - lomase 2y ago
    Ask Greta Thunberg? The level is very low here. This kind of comments are not what I come to HN.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  Free speech does not mean the first amendment. I have a feeling people here would be a bit upset if the local mosque started executing people for blasphemy: look ma no government involved!
- brigandish 2y ago
  That XKCD, ironically but not intentionally ironically, starts off by claiming the opponent (the "asshole") is conflating the first amendment with free speech rights, then goes on to conflate the first amendment with free speech rights in service of limiting someone's speech. Maybe it's easier to see if you're not American and thus aren't covered by the first amendment.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  That is mainly relevant in a U.S. context, whereas we’re talking about the EU in this thread. Unlike the U.S., several EU countries do indeed make it a crime to express certain opinions.
- seoulmetro 2y ago
  This is poorly done. If you're banned from doing something for a long time for unfair reasons, then the unfair reasons are rectified and you can actually do it, people will still feel brainwashed to treat you as before even though they never actually wanted to. To just think that a bunch of people not liking something means that something is inherently bad is missing the context for why those people think something is bad, and who told them to think that. If a billion people think you're an asshole for no objective reason, then you are just doing something they are emotional about.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Social control, 'showing the door', is abused to silence dissidents. Plenty of methaforical ideological death marches on different topics could have been avoided by social gatekeepers not having the social power to silence their friends or party co-members. Pretending the question is really about someone being rude is patronizing by XKCD. The concept of 'showing the door' is fine for practical reasons but the other present at the party need to follow in protest on any just so slightly transgression of power. So now when authoritarianism and racism are in fashion again in ”the West”, those political movements that oppose it are in a quite bad spot, since freedom of thought and expression have been turned down to do a shortsighted delay of the shift in the first place.
- account42 2y ago
  This kind of attitude is of course why the government is more than happy to have megacorporations in control of our public square who they can then push to implement the censorship they want. Of course unless you are trying to win an internet argumet about free speech with a gotcha that makes you feel smart then you will realize that free speech doesn't just mean preventing the government from directly interfering with your speech but is a much broader concept.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> it can still be used to silence people Really because all the people I've seen who bitch about both the lack of their freedom to speak and of being accused of hate speech never shut up, in fact it's seemingly their entire career now to make public appearances at venues and complain about how silenced they are, into hot microphones, for an audience.

Dig1t 2y ago

OP specified “culturally”, ie people who stand up for free speech regardless of its content are painted as alt-right bigots, even if they only care about preserving the right to speak freely. I’m also in this camp and have been down-voted into oblivion many times for just saying something like “I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. It’s not fun to be a defender of truly free speech because you get painted into the same camp as the bad guys.

consumer451 2y ago
I don't believe that anyone is truly for absolute free speech, it's just some theoretical utopia which sounds great, until you actually dive into details. Would you defend my right to call your little brother or sister terrible disgusting names? Threaten you or your family's lives? Say that your entire ethnicity doesn't deserve to exist? Because that would be absolute free speech. I don't think anybody should have the right to do that. I mean they can try, but if it happened in real life, they'd find out real quick that it wasn't a good idea. If you disagree with me on major issues, I will defend your right to state that. But if I find myself in a place full of hate, be they nazis, or tankies, or whatever, I leave and don't come back.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  The U.S. might not be a free speech utopia but it’s pretty close. > Would you defend my right to call your little brother or sister terrible disgusting names? Threaten you or your family's lives? Say that your entire ethnicity doesn't deserve to exist? Out of these three examples, the first and third are totally legal in the U.S.
  - consumer451 2y ago
    Legal yes, IRL not very good for one's health though.
- Dig1t 2y ago
  I know I sound like a horrible evil person, but yes I truly would like to live in a world where you can say any of those examples. As another commenter said, 2/3 of those are already legal to say anyway, and I am so glad that I live in a place that has that freedom. I don’t agree with or like any of the things you say but I would rather live in a world where you can say them instead of being arrested.

hot_gril 2y ago

It's illegal in a lot of countries.

Spivak 2y ago

Free Speech Absolutism was/is connected with hate speech because sites that hold up such an ideal end up being the landing pad for the very worst people who were banned everywhere else. There aren't enough normal people who vote with their money/time/engagement to reach critical mass on those platforms. And turns out very few people want actually free speech. We're in a forum with strong moderation and the discussion is better for it. Most communities self-enforce norms even without central moderation. There's no easy answers when you have to reckon with the real effects speech has. Germany wasn't special, they weren't even alone at the time. What folks call "fascism" naturally precipitates under the right conditions and I can't think of any time in history where it's been dealt with by the socratic method and not violence of a kind. But once you have a word you can accuse someone of with actual repercussions folks acting in bad-faith try to fit people they don't like into the mould. We think ourselves so much better than those silly puritans accusing people of witchcraft but we just changed the words. I'm sure you could name five off the top of your head that people level without any kind of justification.

hot_gril 2y ago
Wanting free speech on internet forums is different from wanting it at the government level. I'm not sure what Free Speech Absolutism is, but if it means unmoderated internet forums, yeah that usually doesn't end well even if only a small minority has bad intent. Big online forums with any kind of global popularity already have an inherent problem despite the moderation, not because of hate speech but because of ragebait and other forms of grifting. Especially with anonymous users.
brigandish 2y ago
I broadly agree but present two caveats. Firstly, that Germany's descent into fascism and anti-semitism were both helped by the lack of free speech. Blasphemy laws prevented the anti-semitism preached from the pulpits to be challenged, and hate speech laws actually helped the Nazis publicise their movement[1]. > Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate. In the years from 1923 to 1933, Der Stürmer [Streicher's newspaper] was either confiscated or editors taken to court on no fewer than thirty-six occasions. The more charges Streicher faced, the greater became the admiration of his supporters. The courts became an important platform for Streicher's campaign against the Jews. As to norms, they can be self-enforced because free speech allows such a choice, otherwise it would be the case that those norms were imposed or not even available. Most likely, they'd be someone else's norms. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-violence https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-v... Interview with Fleming Rose about his book.