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>So are we seeing full free speech in action? Even free speech has its limits...for example calling for the extermination of a race. >Or is whats right decide

>So are we seeing full free speech in action? Even free speech has its limits...for example calling for the extermination of a race. >Or is whats right decided by which side people agree with? Correct, most of the time it is, and that is exactly why laws (esp. international ones) exist and Justitia is/should be blind.

alt227 2y ago
> Even free speech has its limits It doesnt though, thats the point. Its the same as competition in a capitalist marketplace. A company can sell terrible products and what should happen is people see they are terrible products and vote with their wallet to stop buying. Then the company goes out of business. With free speech if somebody is saying something that other people think is terrible, they should stop listening to that person. They are still allowed to say anything they want, but their reputation is tarnished and hardly anybody listens to them and they loose their platform/influence. In reality, people are weak and do not do these things. They keep buying the terrible products because they dont want to have to think about looking for a better alternative. They keep listening to the hate speech because its easier to respond in anger than to ignore the person. The solution to all these things is education and people spending more time thinking about how they respond to things in the world. Again in reality this wioll never happen, and so people will keep shouting and shouting about what they dont like until the world ends up destroying itself through hate and anger.
- robin_reala 2y ago
  The free market on its own doesn’t work, that’s why we have regulation in place to guide it to a place that minimises the long term damage while consumers try to maximise the short-term benefit. It’s an interesting analogy to free speech.
  - alt227 2y ago
    > It’s an interesting analogy to free speech. I agree, thanks for pointing that out. There are nuances on both sides which make it an interesting thought experiment to apply to the other side.
- manwe150 2y ago
  Free speech in the US means they cannot make specific laws against proposing ideas, but a long history of legal cases does mean there are cases when you can be civilly or criminally liable if your words lead others to harmful actions
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    Its a weird grey area for sure. The best rationalization I have ever come up with is that when speech involves a legitimate threat to do harm, for example, that skips past just speech and can be seen as a step in actively planning to do harm. In certain situations, like murder or terrorism, we've agreed that simply planning to do it is a crime. Combine the two and it isn't that you said something that is illegal, its that the statement is interpreted as a clear signal of actively planning to do something which itself is illegal.
    - Y_Y 2y ago
      That's a good rationalization indeed! It makes sense that you should be able to think and say "Y_Y is a jerk who deserves to die", but if you say it to my face then I might be reasonably upset to the point of considerable emotional harm, or if you say it from your pulpit it could reasonably be interpreted by one of your followers as an instruction to commit murder. The speech alone isn't the crime, but you can certainly commit different crimes purely by speaking (though the context is determinative).
      - manwe150 2y ago
        It is quite nuanced, but generally it depends on your intent. If you plan how to commit a crime without intending or encouraging anyone to commit it, that is not illegal, but intending to commit a crime, even if some else does the actual deed or if nobody is even harmed, that is illegal, as they were the perpetrator and succeeded. Eg https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/80382/can-you-be-punished-for-planning-a-crime-and-what-constitutes-planning https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/80382/can-you-be-pun...
- BSDobelix 2y ago
  >It doesnt though, thats the point. Not a Lawyer, but threatening to kill someone is not protected by free speech right? >They keep listening to the hate speech The definition of "hate speech" is unclear and a made-up word to make people feel bad for being angry -> Two Minutes Hate >>The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatred toward politically expedient enemies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate
  - SiliconSplash 2y ago
    > Not a Lawyer, but threatening to kill someone is not protected by free speech right? It depends on context. The legal test is called the "Imminent Lawless Action" Test in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio#Brandenburg_test_(%22imminent_lawless_action%22_test) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio#Brandenbur...
  - alt227 2y ago
    > Not a Lawyer, but threatening to kill someone is not protected by free speech right? If someone threatened to kill me theres no way I would be trying to invoke law to protect me. Why would I when they have done nothing wrong? If they pick up a gun and shoot at me then that becomes illegal and I will call the police or defend myself. If they pay somebody else to act on their opinion and cause me harm then again it becomes illegal. But to expect the law to punish someone just because they said 'I want to kill you'? That IMO is barbaric and completely ridiculous.
    - ilikecakeandpie 2y ago
      > If someone threatened to kill me theres no way I would be trying to invoke law to protect me. Why would I when they have done nothing wrong? In practice, the law not taking this seriously is how a lot of women in abusive relationships die
      - alt227 2y ago
- croes 2y ago
  That's not how capitalism works because the between the companies and the customers is a Mismazch in power and information. That's why governments make rules to protect those with less indormation and power. According to your logic cyberbullying is just free speech. Should I wish for you to by cyberbullied, so you see first hand that free speech has limits? And don't forget that many free speech apologetics say that free speech doesn't mean free of consequences. At this point it's clear that for most people free speech doesn't exitst because they censor their posts if say fear consequences.
  - alt227 2y ago
    > According to your logic cyberbullying is just free speech. IMO it is > Should I wish for you to by cyberbullied, so you see first hand that free speech has limits? Feel free to, you have that right. If people choose to act on it I will deal with it on my end appropriately, and I wont be complaining to you to stop saying what you have the right to.
    - croes 2y ago
      What about cyber grooming? So you think you can’t damage people’s psyche through words?
      - alt227 2y ago
        > What about cyber grooming? Words are still just words until they are acted on, but this is just my opinion and you are entitled to yours. > So you think you can’t damage people’s psyche through words? Not sure where you got that from, of course it is possible. But we are all gatekeepers of our own minds. You seem to be ignoring my responses and trying to lead me further into extreme examples to trap me. Carry on if you feel you must, but at the end of the day we both have our opinions and we are entitiled to them.
        croes 2y ago
        If an extreme example could trap you there would be limit to free speech, so there can’t be trap, just proof. You overestimate the power of your mind. Constant attacks breaks everybody and don’t forget the mind of children and young people is even weaker. But it doesn’t matter because free speech over all? Back to extreme examples, what about Charles Manson? He didn’t kill anybody, was his imprisonment wrong?
- lucumo 2y ago
  > > Even free speech has its limits > It doesnt though, thats the point. In theory. But in practive even the most staunch pro-free speech jurisdictions have limits on them. A lot for good reasons that most people would agree with (threats and fraud, stuff like that), but also some that would be absurd in other jurisdictions (obscenities for example, which is usually very locality specific). There's a Wikipedia page with free speech exceptions in the USA. Those exceptions don't really seem weird, but just seeing that there are reasonable exceptions makes free speech absolutism less sensible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    Your logic here is circular. You're arguing definitions, it doesn't make sense to point to examples of places that claim to have free speech and decide that free speech must have limits because those places said they have it and they have limits. You could just as easily look at those places and say they must not actually have free speech because they have legal limits on what you say.
    - pegasus 2y ago
      Sure, you could easily say that, but it would be a pretty silly thing to say. The world is not black and white, as much as we'd like it to be sometimes.
      - Y_Y 2y ago
        It's ok as long as you don't want the world to be black xor white.
  - Gormo 2y ago
    Most of the limits on free speech don't pertain to the speech itself, but rather the speech being related to some other form of criminal conduct. Incitement to violence can be punished because of the violence; fraud can be punished because of the theft, etc. So one can still be a free speech absolutist with respect to speech in itself, while still holding people responsible for unlawful activity that the speech is helping to facilitate.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > It doesnt though, thats the point. If free speech has no limit, that means you can't prevent people from arguing against the end of free speech. Such arguments have been convincing in many places and in many times, for many different reasons. Including the USA — the things that are considered "corrupting our youth" at different times and in different ways, plus a bunch of other stuff that society just doesn't function without banning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce... > A company can sell terrible products and what should happen is people see they are terrible products and vote with their wallet to stop buying. Then the company goes out of business. Like the 84% reduction in Twitter revenue prior to the election? > They are still allowed to say anything they want, but their reputation is tarnished and hardly anybody listens to them and they loose their platform/influence. Musk sued the people who pointed out to brands advertising on twitter that their reputations were getting tarnished by what their content was getting associated with on Twitter. > The solution to all these things is education and people spending more time thinking about how they respond to things in the world. Number of times I've personally witnessed sales clerks and customer support teams not knowing their own products suggests this is one of those solutions that sounds easy but isn't. Had to tell one that not only did we support browsers other than Internet Explorer, but that they were themselves using Firefox at the time they claimed to only support Internet Explorer.
  - alt227 2y ago
    > If free speech has no limit, that means you can't prevent people from arguing against the end of free speech. Correct, they can talk about it all they want but cant act on it. > Like the 84% reduction in Twitter revenue prior to the election? Yep, and if the majority of the world fully agrees that Twitter is in the wrong and is a horrible place then it will plummit further and cease to exist. The thing here is that there is a massive percent of the population that loves twitter as it is, and so it will continue as there are still enough people to justify the advertising. > Musk sued the people who pointed out to brands advertising on twitter that their reputations were getting tarnished by what their content was getting associated with on Twitter. He didnt. He is trying to and we will see what hapopens there. Personally I think his case will be thrown out but thats just an opinion. > Number of times I've personally witnessed sales clerks and customer support teams not knowing their own products suggests this is one of those solutions that sounds easy but isn't. I agree, I never said it was easy. In fact I said that the majority of the world will take the easy way out and not put the thought required into their reponses to things.
scarab92 2y ago
[flagged]
- edmundsauto 2y ago
  I see it a bit differently. Progressives tend to believe speech can have limits, and generally support private citizens and companies enforcing it through shame etc. Elon touts being a free speech absolutist, but limits speech on his platform in a … whimsical … manner.
- notahacker 2y ago
  There's nothing inconsistent with people who don't call themselves "free speech absolutists" not being free speech absolutists. There's a lot inconsistent with someone masquerading as a "free speech absolutist" whilst actually drawing the line in a different place, in this case a place which has all sorts of arbitrary new offences like references to the word "cis", ADS-B feeds, and parody accounts and whatever else has annoyed him recently whilst removing more posts at government request than his predecessors, but is mostly cool with racial hatred.
  - scarab92 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - fzeroracer 2y ago
      Elon Musk literally said he's a free speech absolutist multiple times.
    - sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
      https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600
- BSDobelix 2y ago
  >Pick a lane. No, a good society should not pick lanes, but cherries.

alt227 2y ago

> Even free speech has its limits It doesnt though, thats the point. Its the same as competition in a capitalist marketplace. A company can sell terrible products and what should happen is people see they are terrible products and vote with their wallet to stop buying. Then the company goes out of business. With free speech if somebody is saying something that other people think is terrible, they should stop listening to that person. They are still allowed to say anything they want, but their reputation is tarnished and hardly anybody listens to them and they loose their platform/influence. In reality, people are weak and do not do these things. They keep buying the terrible products because they dont want to have to think about looking for a better alternative. They keep listening to the hate speech because its easier to respond in anger than to ignore the person. The solution to all these things is education and people spending more time thinking about how they respond to things in the world. Again in reality this wioll never happen, and so people will keep shouting and shouting about what they dont like until the world ends up destroying itself through hate and anger.

robin_reala 2y ago
The free market on its own doesn’t work, that’s why we have regulation in place to guide it to a place that minimises the long term damage while consumers try to maximise the short-term benefit. It’s an interesting analogy to free speech.
- alt227 2y ago
  > It’s an interesting analogy to free speech. I agree, thanks for pointing that out. There are nuances on both sides which make it an interesting thought experiment to apply to the other side.
manwe150 2y ago
Free speech in the US means they cannot make specific laws against proposing ideas, but a long history of legal cases does mean there are cases when you can be civilly or criminally liable if your words lead others to harmful actions
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Its a weird grey area for sure. The best rationalization I have ever come up with is that when speech involves a legitimate threat to do harm, for example, that skips past just speech and can be seen as a step in actively planning to do harm. In certain situations, like murder or terrorism, we've agreed that simply planning to do it is a crime. Combine the two and it isn't that you said something that is illegal, its that the statement is interpreted as a clear signal of actively planning to do something which itself is illegal.
  - Y_Y 2y ago
    That's a good rationalization indeed! It makes sense that you should be able to think and say "Y_Y is a jerk who deserves to die", but if you say it to my face then I might be reasonably upset to the point of considerable emotional harm, or if you say it from your pulpit it could reasonably be interpreted by one of your followers as an instruction to commit murder. The speech alone isn't the crime, but you can certainly commit different crimes purely by speaking (though the context is determinative).
    - manwe150 2y ago
      It is quite nuanced, but generally it depends on your intent. If you plan how to commit a crime without intending or encouraging anyone to commit it, that is not illegal, but intending to commit a crime, even if some else does the actual deed or if nobody is even harmed, that is illegal, as they were the perpetrator and succeeded. Eg https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/80382/can-you-be-punished-for-planning-a-crime-and-what-constitutes-planning https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/80382/can-you-be-pun...
BSDobelix 2y ago
>It doesnt though, thats the point. Not a Lawyer, but threatening to kill someone is not protected by free speech right? >They keep listening to the hate speech The definition of "hate speech" is unclear and a made-up word to make people feel bad for being angry -> Two Minutes Hate >>The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatred toward politically expedient enemies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate
- SiliconSplash 2y ago
  > Not a Lawyer, but threatening to kill someone is not protected by free speech right? It depends on context. The legal test is called the "Imminent Lawless Action" Test in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio#Brandenburg_test_(%22imminent_lawless_action%22_test) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio#Brandenbur...
- alt227 2y ago
  > Not a Lawyer, but threatening to kill someone is not protected by free speech right? If someone threatened to kill me theres no way I would be trying to invoke law to protect me. Why would I when they have done nothing wrong? If they pick up a gun and shoot at me then that becomes illegal and I will call the police or defend myself. If they pay somebody else to act on their opinion and cause me harm then again it becomes illegal. But to expect the law to punish someone just because they said 'I want to kill you'? That IMO is barbaric and completely ridiculous.
  - ilikecakeandpie 2y ago
    > If someone threatened to kill me theres no way I would be trying to invoke law to protect me. Why would I when they have done nothing wrong? In practice, the law not taking this seriously is how a lot of women in abusive relationships die
    - alt227 2y ago
croes 2y ago
That's not how capitalism works because the between the companies and the customers is a Mismazch in power and information. That's why governments make rules to protect those with less indormation and power. According to your logic cyberbullying is just free speech. Should I wish for you to by cyberbullied, so you see first hand that free speech has limits? And don't forget that many free speech apologetics say that free speech doesn't mean free of consequences. At this point it's clear that for most people free speech doesn't exitst because they censor their posts if say fear consequences.
- alt227 2y ago
  > According to your logic cyberbullying is just free speech. IMO it is > Should I wish for you to by cyberbullied, so you see first hand that free speech has limits? Feel free to, you have that right. If people choose to act on it I will deal with it on my end appropriately, and I wont be complaining to you to stop saying what you have the right to.
  - croes 2y ago
    What about cyber grooming? So you think you can’t damage people’s psyche through words?
    - alt227 2y ago
      > What about cyber grooming? Words are still just words until they are acted on, but this is just my opinion and you are entitled to yours. > So you think you can’t damage people’s psyche through words? Not sure where you got that from, of course it is possible. But we are all gatekeepers of our own minds. You seem to be ignoring my responses and trying to lead me further into extreme examples to trap me. Carry on if you feel you must, but at the end of the day we both have our opinions and we are entitiled to them.
      - croes 2y ago
        If an extreme example could trap you there would be limit to free speech, so there can’t be trap, just proof. You overestimate the power of your mind. Constant attacks breaks everybody and don’t forget the mind of children and young people is even weaker. But it doesn’t matter because free speech over all? Back to extreme examples, what about Charles Manson? He didn’t kill anybody, was his imprisonment wrong?
lucumo 2y ago
> > Even free speech has its limits > It doesnt though, thats the point. In theory. But in practive even the most staunch pro-free speech jurisdictions have limits on them. A lot for good reasons that most people would agree with (threats and fraud, stuff like that), but also some that would be absurd in other jurisdictions (obscenities for example, which is usually very locality specific). There's a Wikipedia page with free speech exceptions in the USA. Those exceptions don't really seem weird, but just seeing that there are reasonable exceptions makes free speech absolutism less sensible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Your logic here is circular. You're arguing definitions, it doesn't make sense to point to examples of places that claim to have free speech and decide that free speech must have limits because those places said they have it and they have limits. You could just as easily look at those places and say they must not actually have free speech because they have legal limits on what you say.
  - pegasus 2y ago
    Sure, you could easily say that, but it would be a pretty silly thing to say. The world is not black and white, as much as we'd like it to be sometimes.
    - Y_Y 2y ago
      It's ok as long as you don't want the world to be black xor white.
- Gormo 2y ago
  Most of the limits on free speech don't pertain to the speech itself, but rather the speech being related to some other form of criminal conduct. Incitement to violence can be punished because of the violence; fraud can be punished because of the theft, etc. So one can still be a free speech absolutist with respect to speech in itself, while still holding people responsible for unlawful activity that the speech is helping to facilitate.
ben_w 2y ago
> It doesnt though, thats the point. If free speech has no limit, that means you can't prevent people from arguing against the end of free speech. Such arguments have been convincing in many places and in many times, for many different reasons. Including the USA — the things that are considered "corrupting our youth" at different times and in different ways, plus a bunch of other stuff that society just doesn't function without banning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce... > A company can sell terrible products and what should happen is people see they are terrible products and vote with their wallet to stop buying. Then the company goes out of business. Like the 84% reduction in Twitter revenue prior to the election? > They are still allowed to say anything they want, but their reputation is tarnished and hardly anybody listens to them and they loose their platform/influence. Musk sued the people who pointed out to brands advertising on twitter that their reputations were getting tarnished by what their content was getting associated with on Twitter. > The solution to all these things is education and people spending more time thinking about how they respond to things in the world. Number of times I've personally witnessed sales clerks and customer support teams not knowing their own products suggests this is one of those solutions that sounds easy but isn't. Had to tell one that not only did we support browsers other than Internet Explorer, but that they were themselves using Firefox at the time they claimed to only support Internet Explorer.
- alt227 2y ago
  > If free speech has no limit, that means you can't prevent people from arguing against the end of free speech. Correct, they can talk about it all they want but cant act on it. > Like the 84% reduction in Twitter revenue prior to the election? Yep, and if the majority of the world fully agrees that Twitter is in the wrong and is a horrible place then it will plummit further and cease to exist. The thing here is that there is a massive percent of the population that loves twitter as it is, and so it will continue as there are still enough people to justify the advertising. > Musk sued the people who pointed out to brands advertising on twitter that their reputations were getting tarnished by what their content was getting associated with on Twitter. He didnt. He is trying to and we will see what hapopens there. Personally I think his case will be thrown out but thats just an opinion. > Number of times I've personally witnessed sales clerks and customer support teams not knowing their own products suggests this is one of those solutions that sounds easy but isn't. I agree, I never said it was easy. In fact I said that the majority of the world will take the easy way out and not put the thought required into their reponses to things.

scarab92 2y ago

[flagged]

edmundsauto 2y ago
I see it a bit differently. Progressives tend to believe speech can have limits, and generally support private citizens and companies enforcing it through shame etc. Elon touts being a free speech absolutist, but limits speech on his platform in a … whimsical … manner.
notahacker 2y ago
There's nothing inconsistent with people who don't call themselves "free speech absolutists" not being free speech absolutists. There's a lot inconsistent with someone masquerading as a "free speech absolutist" whilst actually drawing the line in a different place, in this case a place which has all sorts of arbitrary new offences like references to the word "cis", ADS-B feeds, and parody accounts and whatever else has annoyed him recently whilst removing more posts at government request than his predecessors, but is mostly cool with racial hatred.
- scarab92 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - fzeroracer 2y ago
    Elon Musk literally said he's a free speech absolutist multiple times.
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
    https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600
BSDobelix 2y ago
>Pick a lane. No, a good society should not pick lanes, but cherries.