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Comment by jimmywanger | Hacker News Reader

Youtube, Facebook, Twitter all loudly trumpeted their attempts to assist "free speech", especially during the Arab Spring.

And they were only doing that when what they were doing was going along with the cultural democratic zeitgeist at the time.

If they were more open about "Hey, we're providing you a free service, we can shut you down if you don't conform to public opinion" that's fine also. But you can't have it both ways.

Either you support the free expression of unpopular opinions, or you reserve the right to censor anything at all you find objectionable. You can't say "I support expressing opinions, as long as I approve of them, and I support freedom!"

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Of course you can, and don't be ridiculous.

You can absolutely run a company that allows users to communicate in interesting ways, and say you support freedom but also refuse to show content you don't want to.

Beheadings. Child Pornography. Instructions for making chemical weapons. Snuff films. Animal abuse. Recruiting extremists to kill innocent people from your country.

I'm really tired of idealists who refuse to accept pragmatism. If you would really run a video site that willingly hosts those things, then I have no respect for you. At all.

> You can absolutely run a company that allows users to communicate in interesting ways, and say you support freedom but also refuse to show content you don't want to.

You can say you support free speech and ban free speech you don’t like. What?

>You can say you support free speech and ban free speech you don’t like. What?

Actually most countries that have free speech do actually ban certain things that fall under hate speech laws.

Some of the things in the parent comment aren't hate speech. However I think it's certainly possible for a company or government to decide between what should be allowed or not allowed, and to do that in a way that isn't morally objectionable.

Your argument seems to be something along the lines that companies and governments cannot possibly censor free speech in a morally acceptable way. It's a slippery slope argument: "ban ISIS and you'll eventually ban Trump supporters" (that seems to be jimmywanger's argument).

No, no slippery slope argument here. My argument is that hate speech is in the eye of the beholder, and is not well defined.

If we had well defined guidelines, such as pedophilia defined as nude people under 18 years old, that would be one thing. Although ridiculous (see all the teenagers who are put on registries for sending naked pictures to each other), at least it can't be twisted to make something else illegal.

Go ahead, define "hate speech". And if the laws already ban hate speech, why wouldn't we just punish the people who violate laws instead of censoring them?

And since hate speech laws vary from society to society, do we have to create a separate site for each country, where the allowable videos shown differ, and the comments are pruned differently?

It's a slippery slope argument: "ban ISIS and you'll eventually ban Trump supporters" (that seems to be jimmywanger's argument).

The same moral authority would be at work in both cases, so there's no fallacy in play, IMHO. It's a very valid concern.

(1) I support your ability to speak.

(2) I have a forum.

(3) I do not need to allow you to speak your awful, disgusting crap in my forum.

Is there a part of this that's complicated?

Yes. You're missing:

(4) I will pretend to champion free speech and reap the good publicity, while simultaneously not allowing you to speak things I think are awful and disgusting.

That's the last point. If you're running a SF Giants' forum, you have the right to ban LA Dodgers' fans. However, you should not say that you're a bastion of freedom and upholding free speech at the same time you're doing it.

(5) Extend "awful and disgusting" to anything that -however mildly- goes against your commercial interests or personal interests of anyone placed high enough in the organization.

(6) Still claim you're a bastion of free speech.

and -lately-

(7) Monetize other's expressions of correct free speech.

Ironically people actually seem to think this is worth doing. Compare youtube comments and people's opinions of them with, say reddit or wikipedia, both of which boast political moderators.

> If they were more open about "Hey, we're providing you a free service, we can shut you down if you don't conform to public opinion" that's fine also. But you can't have it both ways.

That's why articles like these are being written—it's the companies letting everyone know that they're changing their policies. They used to be more laissez-faire, didn't like the results, and now are starting to rethink their decisions. I imagine in a few months' time they'll have figured out how they want it to go, and will publish updated guidelines.

Yes, but they will not be too clear about their elephant in the room: this will have demonstrated that free speech is not possible. Many here seem to believe in free speech, freedom to express anything, is an absolute. But it is not and cannot be. Tolerance has limits, and its limits is intolerance. Tolerance can happen only inside a framework, a common ground where the parts agree on some values, agree to tolerate each other.

Same with free speech: it is possible only inside a framework, with some higher order rules and agreement. One of them could be that you are allowed to tell others your opinions only if you would agree to carry them publicly on your back when waking your kids in the streets. This would certainly moderate a lot. Or, closer to the topic, I should be allowed to upload a video only if I'd be ok with my kid knowing I uploaded this video when they get to be my age.

Why would you say it's not "possible"? Clearly it is: we didn't have those restrictions, yet people spoke.

Free speech is only one aspect of freedom, it is possible to have free speech only within a bigger framework enabling the more general freedom.

You have to tolerate everything but intolerance?

Have you read Godel, Escher, Bach?

I have read Paul Ricoeur, and I think it's a better entry point in ethics.

You misunderstand my point. I'm not talking ethics, I'm talking about recursive definitions.

You posit that tolerance is good and intolerance is bad. And you don't give good definitions for either word. That's literally begging the question.

But we are not talking about formal logic here, we are talking about ethics. We use words that have a meaning, and we all know how to recognize a "sign of tolerance" and it's opposite. There is no need for a formal definition, which is not possible anyway.

Incorrect. We're talking about a computer system now, and you need formal definitions.

The statement "we all know how to..." is problematic. Do we buy into the "we all" that comprises the west, or the "we all" that is east asia (which, btw is far more repressive. See the great firewall of China)?

>You can't say "I support expressing opinions, as long as I approve of them, and I support freedom!"

Yeah, they can say that, but reality doesn't have to conform to such when the chickens come home to roost :P

Ah. What I meant to say is "you can't say that with integrity".

The overthrown governments probably thought that the opinions expressed on Twitter and Facebook were highly extremist, and should be shut down.

The only reason they weren't (And they even built an SMS bridge for Twitter) is because their biggest markets supported the insurrection. And if that were made a bit more obvious, it would be far more honest and interesting.

>Ah. What I meant to say is "you can't say that with integrity".

What companies have time for such quaint notions of integrity these days? They're too busy trying to extract profit! :P

>…And if that were made a bit more obvious, it would be far more honest and interesting.

I think that a lot of people in the western world choose to willingly turn a blind eye to such, and its a shame, because it will eventually be at their own peril if we look to history as any example.

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