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That something is legal does not force it to be acceptable by any business whatsoever.

golemotron 12y ago
That's not my argument. My argument is that there is inherent good in providing space for all opinions. That's what liberal democracy is about. Reddit gets to choose whether it will be one of those platforms and it looks like they have. You can boycott Reddit for that choice but why not boycott the US for permitting speech you disagree with too?
- tedks 12y ago
  I agree that the American government shouldn't regulate speech. I don't trust the government and I can't easily replace it, so it's worth the legality of NAMBLA that the activist groups I belonged to could exist. But being legal and being able to exist are totally different things. If you're a business owner, you can disrupt white supremacists by denying them the use of your business. Hotels do this all the time, to the point where it's difficult for militant white supremacists groups (that aren't, say, the police) to find places to meet (maybe the police will get theirs eventually). I'm okay with this because there are a lot more hotels than governments, and they're a lot easier to replace. If a hotel I wanted to go to started prohibiting communists from using it, I'd just use a different hotel. Or AirBNB. It's a great world we live in. To put it in a word, the government and private entities are different, so they should obey different rules. This is not a hard concept to grasp, but very frequently people literally do not think about these things, they pattern-match on the first argument that leads to what they want. Which in this case is the ability to objectify, harass, and sexually assault women. There is no inherent good in providing space for all opinions. Free speech is not an end in itself, but rather a means. You are confusing the two.
  - golemotron 12y ago
    > There is no inherent good in providing space for all opinions. Free speech is not an end in itself, but rather a means. You are confusing the two. No, I'm pretty sure that free speech is an end in itself. It's how we as humans maintain our integrity in a social context. That's why it's seen as a basic right. In any case, I have no problem with the fact that you disagree with me on that and I have enough basic respect for you as a human (and even for racists) to be willing to let everyone talk have it all sort out (or not). Marginalizing people only makes them more bitter. It doesn't solve problems.
    - tedks 12y ago
      Actually, white nationalists and other racist groups depend on liberals like you allowing them a platform to appear like a legitimate alternative in the political system. They use that legitimacy to attract new members, and there's a bright line from that to violence to Kristallnacht. Europeans understand this, which is why they've outlawed Nazism. It's to express as a society that such a thing is not acceptable. By expressing that it is acceptable, you are participating tacitly. In contrast, expressing at every point, in every interaction, that white supremacy in all its forms (radical white supremacy, institutionalized white supremacy, cultural appropriation, colonialism, imperialism) is fucked up and fucking wrong and disgusting, you are chipping away at the fascists' resolve. People have a tendency to conform; it is physically difficult not to. In experimental settings, people who have to act nonconformingly feel physically uncomfortable and experience a fight-or-flight response. After experiencing this enough, people will stop being fascists. In contrast, it's been demonstrated time and again that "rational" argument does nothing but solidify people's pre-existing ideas. So if you want to increase the chance a Nazi stays a Nazi, continue to debate with them. But remember that unlike your high school debate club, the Nazi will, empowered by his strengthened beliefs, go out and kill people. And their blood will be on your hands, because you had a chance to weaken his beliefs instead of making them stronger and you made them stronger. I think humans maintain their integrity by rejecting all forms of oppression, from patriarchy to white supremacy to homophobia to capitalism, and I think that you sell your integrity away by capitalizing on your privilege and oppressing people, either actively and directly, by being a nazi; actively and indirectly, by arguing for a liberal concept of free speech; passively and directly, by ignoring opportunities to fight when you could; or passively and indirectly, by remaining silent and therefore complicit. You are wrong, empirically, on every claim you have made, and you are wrong morally, because you have been given a chance to eliminate injustice and have chosen to back the side of oppression. History is a tidal wave; you can either ride it or be crushed by it. The choice is yours.
      - mkr-hn 12y ago
        Where are the violent neo-Nazis? Where are the Baptists going out gaybashing after Sunday service? I don't see it. You said a lot of airy, high-minded things without actually supporting your position.
- wpietri 12y ago
  That is not in fact what liberal democracy is about. Democracy requires us not to use the apparatus of the state to suppress opinions by force. But that's it. It certainly doesn't require us to provide material support for all opinions, no matter how toxic. Neither does it require tolerance of speech that goes beyond opinion. Incitement to riot, for example, is a crime. So is making threats, or conspiring to commit other crimes.
- mrexroad 12y ago
  Because real-life harassment isn't protected by first amendment. A large part of the problem is people, like you, who view all of this as someone just expressing their opinion equally with others. That has nothing to do with targeted harassment and death threats to one's family. In real life, people get prosecuted for this stuff. Unfortunately there's so many obstacles and hurdles to prosecuting Internet harassment that it only happens if the harassee is someone famous.
  - golemotron 12y ago
    I'm not sure what you think I was saying. What I was saying was that I'm okay with Reddit not shutting down subreddits. What happened to Kathy was horrible and I don't condone it. But, while whack-a-mole-ing on the internet may make people feel better it doesn't fix the problem. Shutting down forums is a copout.
- ryanpardieck 12y ago
  We can also criticize Reddit for that choice. Freedom of speech, and all. It sounds like you're upset that we choose to criticize Reddit for this. The difference between what a business allows and what a state allows are so different as to not really be illuminative here. I could decide that no one watches animated cartoons in my house, and no one is really harmed by that in any significant way. A state that declares that no one shall watch animated cartoons, however, is quite a different thing.

That's not my argument. My argument is that there is inherent good in providing space for all opinions. That's what liberal democracy is about. Reddit gets to choose whether it will be one of those platforms and it looks like they have. You can boycott Reddit for that choice but why not boycott the US for permitting speech you disagree with too?

tedks 12y ago
I agree that the American government shouldn't regulate speech. I don't trust the government and I can't easily replace it, so it's worth the legality of NAMBLA that the activist groups I belonged to could exist. But being legal and being able to exist are totally different things. If you're a business owner, you can disrupt white supremacists by denying them the use of your business. Hotels do this all the time, to the point where it's difficult for militant white supremacists groups (that aren't, say, the police) to find places to meet (maybe the police will get theirs eventually). I'm okay with this because there are a lot more hotels than governments, and they're a lot easier to replace. If a hotel I wanted to go to started prohibiting communists from using it, I'd just use a different hotel. Or AirBNB. It's a great world we live in. To put it in a word, the government and private entities are different, so they should obey different rules. This is not a hard concept to grasp, but very frequently people literally do not think about these things, they pattern-match on the first argument that leads to what they want. Which in this case is the ability to objectify, harass, and sexually assault women. There is no inherent good in providing space for all opinions. Free speech is not an end in itself, but rather a means. You are confusing the two.
- golemotron 12y ago
  > There is no inherent good in providing space for all opinions. Free speech is not an end in itself, but rather a means. You are confusing the two. No, I'm pretty sure that free speech is an end in itself. It's how we as humans maintain our integrity in a social context. That's why it's seen as a basic right. In any case, I have no problem with the fact that you disagree with me on that and I have enough basic respect for you as a human (and even for racists) to be willing to let everyone talk have it all sort out (or not). Marginalizing people only makes them more bitter. It doesn't solve problems.
  - tedks 12y ago
    Actually, white nationalists and other racist groups depend on liberals like you allowing them a platform to appear like a legitimate alternative in the political system. They use that legitimacy to attract new members, and there's a bright line from that to violence to Kristallnacht. Europeans understand this, which is why they've outlawed Nazism. It's to express as a society that such a thing is not acceptable. By expressing that it is acceptable, you are participating tacitly. In contrast, expressing at every point, in every interaction, that white supremacy in all its forms (radical white supremacy, institutionalized white supremacy, cultural appropriation, colonialism, imperialism) is fucked up and fucking wrong and disgusting, you are chipping away at the fascists' resolve. People have a tendency to conform; it is physically difficult not to. In experimental settings, people who have to act nonconformingly feel physically uncomfortable and experience a fight-or-flight response. After experiencing this enough, people will stop being fascists. In contrast, it's been demonstrated time and again that "rational" argument does nothing but solidify people's pre-existing ideas. So if you want to increase the chance a Nazi stays a Nazi, continue to debate with them. But remember that unlike your high school debate club, the Nazi will, empowered by his strengthened beliefs, go out and kill people. And their blood will be on your hands, because you had a chance to weaken his beliefs instead of making them stronger and you made them stronger. I think humans maintain their integrity by rejecting all forms of oppression, from patriarchy to white supremacy to homophobia to capitalism, and I think that you sell your integrity away by capitalizing on your privilege and oppressing people, either actively and directly, by being a nazi; actively and indirectly, by arguing for a liberal concept of free speech; passively and directly, by ignoring opportunities to fight when you could; or passively and indirectly, by remaining silent and therefore complicit. You are wrong, empirically, on every claim you have made, and you are wrong morally, because you have been given a chance to eliminate injustice and have chosen to back the side of oppression. History is a tidal wave; you can either ride it or be crushed by it. The choice is yours.
    - mkr-hn 12y ago
      Where are the violent neo-Nazis? Where are the Baptists going out gaybashing after Sunday service? I don't see it. You said a lot of airy, high-minded things without actually supporting your position.
wpietri 12y ago
That is not in fact what liberal democracy is about. Democracy requires us not to use the apparatus of the state to suppress opinions by force. But that's it. It certainly doesn't require us to provide material support for all opinions, no matter how toxic. Neither does it require tolerance of speech that goes beyond opinion. Incitement to riot, for example, is a crime. So is making threats, or conspiring to commit other crimes.
mrexroad 12y ago
Because real-life harassment isn't protected by first amendment. A large part of the problem is people, like you, who view all of this as someone just expressing their opinion equally with others. That has nothing to do with targeted harassment and death threats to one's family. In real life, people get prosecuted for this stuff. Unfortunately there's so many obstacles and hurdles to prosecuting Internet harassment that it only happens if the harassee is someone famous.
- golemotron 12y ago
  I'm not sure what you think I was saying. What I was saying was that I'm okay with Reddit not shutting down subreddits. What happened to Kathy was horrible and I don't condone it. But, while whack-a-mole-ing on the internet may make people feel better it doesn't fix the problem. Shutting down forums is a copout.
ryanpardieck 12y ago
We can also criticize Reddit for that choice. Freedom of speech, and all. It sounds like you're upset that we choose to criticize Reddit for this. The difference between what a business allows and what a state allows are so different as to not really be illuminative here. I could decide that no one watches animated cartoons in my house, and no one is really harmed by that in any significant way. A state that declares that no one shall watch animated cartoons, however, is quite a different thing.