3 ms·

What is wrong with respecting people's right to have opinions you don't like? Isn't that what everyone wanted?

by ranger_danger 2y ago

celdon25 2y ago
Free speech is hate speech according to some Edit: I just committed hate speech!
- meroes 2y ago
  Tech bros. Never change
- eqvinox 2y ago
  Nah my dude, HN just doesn't respond kindly to stupid comments.
  - celdon25 2y ago
    lol, not true. You get -4 points at the max. I downvote many stupid comments a day and the hordes just keep coming. Look at all the so-called "researchers" complaining about "open weights" in all the AI threads for exhibit A.
OhMeadhbh 2y ago
no.
bee_rider 2y ago
You have the right to say what you want, and the right to not associate with people who say certain types of things. Free speech doesn’t mean everybody has to hang around and listen.
eqvinox 2y ago
Respect and endorsement are not the same thing. Also, when tolerance is the goal, there must be an intolerance against intolerance - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- celdon25 2y ago
  The problem with that is that the definition of intolerance tends to get weasel-worded into whatever argument suits the trolls.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Not only that, the necessary resolution to the paradox is inherently narrow. Suppose you have some fools who assert that their opponents' ideas are too dangerous to be heard and have to be censored. Actually doing this is itself too dangerous to allow because once the censorship is in place it would be used to quash dissent and suppress the truth and people would be punished for challenging the prevailing dogma, even when they're right. But to prevent the harm you don't need a system to prevent people from proposing the harm, you need a system to prevent them from enacting it. It doesn't require censorship, it requires a robust system of checks and balances for protecting fundamental rights, so that the people who propose censorship or violence are thoroughly incapable of bringing them about.
    - eqvinox 2y ago
      I totally agree. The problem is that we don't have such a system, and as a result, the proposition of harm is in itself already a credible threat and therefore harmful. Personally speaking, to reduce that harm, there's not a lot I can do to make these propositions less credible, so I'm left with trying to give these threats less of a platform. I will note that from my perspective it is a logical conclusion that the insufficient policing and regulation of violence (and tools of violence) in the US in particular is directly detrimental to the expression of free speech.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        > The problem is that we don't have such a system, and as a result, the proposition of harm is in itself already a credible threat and therefore harmful. But we also don't really have an airtight system for censoring people we don't like, and we certainly shouldn't build one. When you have to make a change from the status quo to get what you want, make the good change, not the ugly hack someone is promptly going to use against you as soon as you turn your back. > I will note that from my perspective it is a logical conclusion that the insufficient policing and regulation of violence (and tools of violence) in the US in particular is directly detrimental to the expression of free speech. Eh. "Tools of violence" are largely a red herring. The tool of violence for a lynch mob is rope. The most common tool of violence for acts of terrorism is explosives, which can be made from the stuff in the average garage or kitchen. You don't get there by banning rope or cooking oil, you get there by deterring would-be murderers with the threat of prosecution. Notice the circumstances under which these things happen. The first is when the government isn't prosecuting the offenders for acts of violence, e.g. the KKK in its heyday. The second is when the offenders are zealots or otherwise mentally ill and thereby undeterrable, e.g. religious terrorism or lone wolf mass murderers. The first, then, is easy; you prosecute them and they're deterred. The second is extremely difficult to eliminate, because what are you going to do, institute a police state? Try to restrict access to elements necessary for human life because a chemist could make them into a weapon? But it's also rare. It's not the real problem. The real problems, in terms of fatalities, don't work anything like most people think they do. The large majority of firearms fatalities in the US are suicides and accidents. Then the people who use a partisan frame or think every problem looks like a nail will still argue that you could get somewhere by banning guns, but since that doesn't pass, a realist might want to direct their efforts to things like improving mental health services or subsidizing gun safes. But then we're into politics. If you subsidize gun safes or similar and that actually reduces the number of kids playing with daddy's guns, you can't run on fixing it anymore. "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."
btreecat 2y ago
> What is wrong with respecting people's right to have opinions you don't like? Isn't that what everyone wanted? To the first, the paradox of tolerance. To the second, we can use traffic numbers as a proxy as to what "most people" want and if that is increasingly or decreasingly found on the platform.
eyelidlessness 2y ago
Are you suggesting that, in respecting people’s right to have opinions GP doesn’t like, GP must make an account and, in their view, endorse those opinions? Or are you suggesting that in merely not liking or endorsing those opinions, GP is somehow denying their right? Does this just apply to Twitter, or should GP also join every forum allowing public signup, to give fair and balanced attention to each of their respective viewpoints?
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  Using a service that doesn't suppress some opinions you don't like is not an endorsement of those opinions. Or else you'd better figure out whether it's easier to cancel your home internet after you no longer have a phone number or the other way around so you know which one to cancel first.
  - jimnotgym 2y ago
    Twitter does suppress opinions though. Go on there and criticise Donald Trump or Israeli policy in Gaza and see how quickly you get shadow banned. It probably works for liberal causes too. A few years ago criticising Jeremy Corbyn could get you shadow banned. I think any subject where you get a whole community sharing your heresy with each other and mass reporting you will suffer...except somehow the far right seem to be able to stay in my timeline despite my best efforts....because Twitter wants to trigger me.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      Their shadow banning system is and always has been just completely broken. It's probably the single most broken part of the site. A major problem with it is that the site is organized by user, so if you reply to someone then it's disproportionately their followers who see it. The quickest way to get shadow banned, then, is to try to debate zealots, because by doing it where they congregate they'll mass report you for contradicting their dogma and then you get shadow banned. It's not about what the dogma is, which is why everybody thinks the site is biased against them. They see reasonable people they agree with getting shadow banned, and yet tons of buttheads don't because they are mostly congregating with people who agree with them and the feed then showing their posts to random people doesn't get them shadow banned because most random people aren't zealots who report non-abusive posts just because they disagree with them. The algorithm is just asinine.
jcranmer 2y ago
The beef people have with Twitter after the Musk takeover is that it has objectively gotten worse at upholding free speech ideals, even as its new owner claims that doing so is one of his main reasons for taking over the social media company. Pre-takeover, the company was generally considered to be the best of the major outfits in standing up to censorious dipshit politicians [1], routinely challenging government attempts to enforce censorship on social media. But since the takeover, there has seemed to be a rather partisan tinge to its attempts to challenge government censorship: the company has notably caved to authoritarian regimes (like Turkey) where it used to challenge it, although it does tend to remain resolute in opposing leftish censorship attempts. Furthermore, the company has gone after people for saying ugly truths about the company [2], going so far as to encourage certain right-wing governors to investigate those people for criminal actions. The patently obvious mismatch between the free speech rhetoric and the censorious actions is the key thing here, not merely the (perceived) odiousness of the opinions on display. [1] Do note that being censorious dipshits is a thoroughly bipartisan activity. [2] Like, they literally admit that what was said is true in their own legal complaint, which just torpedoes everything from day one, without the respondent having to say anything!
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  What we really need here is some anti-censorship technology that makes it so an authoritarian regime that tries to block its political opponents, fails. Make the ultimatum "block these accounts or we block the whole site" toothless. Have every major site using it by default so you're not just blocking Twitter but also Facebook and YouTube and Office365 and Wikipedia, and it acts as a generic VPN that allows anyone anywhere to access anything else their country tries to censor. In theory "just use a VPN" already does this, but it should be built into the browser so it happens automatically and unsophisticated users don't have to do anything to make it happen.
- EdwardDiego 2y ago
  Also, the classic "cisgender is hate speech" thing Musk introduced is very far from free speech.
EdwardDiego 2y ago
What's wrong with respecting the commenter's right to boycott Twitter?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
rsynnott 2y ago
One can acknowledge that they are legally permitted to say whatever deranged crap they like, without necessarily having to walk amongst them. You can, in general, in democratic countries, say more or less what you like (some exclusions apply). However, you can’t generally compel others to listen to it.

What is wrong with respecting people's right to have opinions you don't like? Isn't that what everyone wanted?

celdon25 2y ago

Free speech is hate speech according to some Edit: I just committed hate speech!

meroes 2y ago
Tech bros. Never change
eqvinox 2y ago
Nah my dude, HN just doesn't respond kindly to stupid comments.
- celdon25 2y ago
  lol, not true. You get -4 points at the max. I downvote many stupid comments a day and the hordes just keep coming. Look at all the so-called "researchers" complaining about "open weights" in all the AI threads for exhibit A.

OhMeadhbh 2y ago

no.

bee_rider 2y ago

You have the right to say what you want, and the right to not associate with people who say certain types of things. Free speech doesn’t mean everybody has to hang around and listen.

eqvinox 2y ago

Respect and endorsement are not the same thing. Also, when tolerance is the goal, there must be an intolerance against intolerance - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

celdon25 2y ago
The problem with that is that the definition of intolerance tends to get weasel-worded into whatever argument suits the trolls.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  Not only that, the necessary resolution to the paradox is inherently narrow. Suppose you have some fools who assert that their opponents' ideas are too dangerous to be heard and have to be censored. Actually doing this is itself too dangerous to allow because once the censorship is in place it would be used to quash dissent and suppress the truth and people would be punished for challenging the prevailing dogma, even when they're right. But to prevent the harm you don't need a system to prevent people from proposing the harm, you need a system to prevent them from enacting it. It doesn't require censorship, it requires a robust system of checks and balances for protecting fundamental rights, so that the people who propose censorship or violence are thoroughly incapable of bringing them about.
  - eqvinox 2y ago
    I totally agree. The problem is that we don't have such a system, and as a result, the proposition of harm is in itself already a credible threat and therefore harmful. Personally speaking, to reduce that harm, there's not a lot I can do to make these propositions less credible, so I'm left with trying to give these threats less of a platform. I will note that from my perspective it is a logical conclusion that the insufficient policing and regulation of violence (and tools of violence) in the US in particular is directly detrimental to the expression of free speech.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      > The problem is that we don't have such a system, and as a result, the proposition of harm is in itself already a credible threat and therefore harmful. But we also don't really have an airtight system for censoring people we don't like, and we certainly shouldn't build one. When you have to make a change from the status quo to get what you want, make the good change, not the ugly hack someone is promptly going to use against you as soon as you turn your back. > I will note that from my perspective it is a logical conclusion that the insufficient policing and regulation of violence (and tools of violence) in the US in particular is directly detrimental to the expression of free speech. Eh. "Tools of violence" are largely a red herring. The tool of violence for a lynch mob is rope. The most common tool of violence for acts of terrorism is explosives, which can be made from the stuff in the average garage or kitchen. You don't get there by banning rope or cooking oil, you get there by deterring would-be murderers with the threat of prosecution. Notice the circumstances under which these things happen. The first is when the government isn't prosecuting the offenders for acts of violence, e.g. the KKK in its heyday. The second is when the offenders are zealots or otherwise mentally ill and thereby undeterrable, e.g. religious terrorism or lone wolf mass murderers. The first, then, is easy; you prosecute them and they're deterred. The second is extremely difficult to eliminate, because what are you going to do, institute a police state? Try to restrict access to elements necessary for human life because a chemist could make them into a weapon? But it's also rare. It's not the real problem. The real problems, in terms of fatalities, don't work anything like most people think they do. The large majority of firearms fatalities in the US are suicides and accidents. Then the people who use a partisan frame or think every problem looks like a nail will still argue that you could get somewhere by banning guns, but since that doesn't pass, a realist might want to direct their efforts to things like improving mental health services or subsidizing gun safes. But then we're into politics. If you subsidize gun safes or similar and that actually reduces the number of kids playing with daddy's guns, you can't run on fixing it anymore. "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."

btreecat 2y ago

> What is wrong with respecting people's right to have opinions you don't like? Isn't that what everyone wanted? To the first, the paradox of tolerance. To the second, we can use traffic numbers as a proxy as to what "most people" want and if that is increasingly or decreasingly found on the platform.

eyelidlessness 2y ago

Are you suggesting that, in respecting people’s right to have opinions GP doesn’t like, GP must make an account and, in their view, endorse those opinions? Or are you suggesting that in merely not liking or endorsing those opinions, GP is somehow denying their right? Does this just apply to Twitter, or should GP also join every forum allowing public signup, to give fair and balanced attention to each of their respective viewpoints?

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
Using a service that doesn't suppress some opinions you don't like is not an endorsement of those opinions. Or else you'd better figure out whether it's easier to cancel your home internet after you no longer have a phone number or the other way around so you know which one to cancel first.
- jimnotgym 2y ago
  Twitter does suppress opinions though. Go on there and criticise Donald Trump or Israeli policy in Gaza and see how quickly you get shadow banned. It probably works for liberal causes too. A few years ago criticising Jeremy Corbyn could get you shadow banned. I think any subject where you get a whole community sharing your heresy with each other and mass reporting you will suffer...except somehow the far right seem to be able to stay in my timeline despite my best efforts....because Twitter wants to trigger me.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Their shadow banning system is and always has been just completely broken. It's probably the single most broken part of the site. A major problem with it is that the site is organized by user, so if you reply to someone then it's disproportionately their followers who see it. The quickest way to get shadow banned, then, is to try to debate zealots, because by doing it where they congregate they'll mass report you for contradicting their dogma and then you get shadow banned. It's not about what the dogma is, which is why everybody thinks the site is biased against them. They see reasonable people they agree with getting shadow banned, and yet tons of buttheads don't because they are mostly congregating with people who agree with them and the feed then showing their posts to random people doesn't get them shadow banned because most random people aren't zealots who report non-abusive posts just because they disagree with them. The algorithm is just asinine.

jcranmer 2y ago

The beef people have with Twitter after the Musk takeover is that it has objectively gotten worse at upholding free speech ideals, even as its new owner claims that doing so is one of his main reasons for taking over the social media company. Pre-takeover, the company was generally considered to be the best of the major outfits in standing up to censorious dipshit politicians [1], routinely challenging government attempts to enforce censorship on social media. But since the takeover, there has seemed to be a rather partisan tinge to its attempts to challenge government censorship: the company has notably caved to authoritarian regimes (like Turkey) where it used to challenge it, although it does tend to remain resolute in opposing leftish censorship attempts. Furthermore, the company has gone after people for saying ugly truths about the company [2], going so far as to encourage certain right-wing governors to investigate those people for criminal actions. The patently obvious mismatch between the free speech rhetoric and the censorious actions is the key thing here, not merely the (perceived) odiousness of the opinions on display. [1] Do note that being censorious dipshits is a thoroughly bipartisan activity. [2] Like, they literally admit that what was said is true in their own legal complaint, which just torpedoes everything from day one, without the respondent having to say anything!

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
What we really need here is some anti-censorship technology that makes it so an authoritarian regime that tries to block its political opponents, fails. Make the ultimatum "block these accounts or we block the whole site" toothless. Have every major site using it by default so you're not just blocking Twitter but also Facebook and YouTube and Office365 and Wikipedia, and it acts as a generic VPN that allows anyone anywhere to access anything else their country tries to censor. In theory "just use a VPN" already does this, but it should be built into the browser so it happens automatically and unsophisticated users don't have to do anything to make it happen.
EdwardDiego 2y ago
Also, the classic "cisgender is hate speech" thing Musk introduced is very far from free speech.

EdwardDiego 2y ago

What's wrong with respecting the commenter's right to boycott Twitter?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

rsynnott 2y ago

One can acknowledge that they are legally permitted to say whatever deranged crap they like, without necessarily having to walk amongst them. You can, in general, in democratic countries, say more or less what you like (some exclusions apply). However, you can’t generally compel others to listen to it.