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Comment by veddox | Hacker News Reader

I am staggered by the amount of people here who object to Imzy's "Be Nice"-policy on the basis that it limits free speech. To me that seems to be a rather flawed argumentation:

a) The First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech, explicitly does so in a political context ("Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech"). Imzy is not the US Congress, they don't have jurisdiction over anything but their own little niche of the Internet (which absolutely nobody is forcing you to visit if you don't want to) - so why are you upset when they ask you, within the bounds of their community, to be nice?

b) Why does free speech mean that we get to insult and demean each other, even going so far as to sending death threats? I think the German constitution (the Grundgesetz) has a point when it says in Article 5, §2 that the right of free speech is limited, amongst others, by every person's right of dignity ("Recht der persönlichen Ehre" - a hard to translate concept).

c) On Reddit and like sites we see behaviour that we would never tolerate if we saw it in real life. Why do we not only tolerate it online, but suddenly elevate such antisocial behaviour of the extremest kind to a mystical status of "expression of free speech"? There is a reason we are taught "manners" as children: without a minimum of politeness, societies cannot function. Politeness and courtesy have to do with respecting another's person even if you don't share his (or her) opinions, with tolerating people who are different from you. And is that not the very epitome of freedom?

Free speech is perhaps the most fundamental right of any democracy that must be protected at all costs. It is vital for the continuation of a free nation. However, Imzy is not a nation. It is a little website on the Internet. And it doesn't ban dissenting opinion (the real reason why we need free speech) - it merely asks you to remain polite while stating your's. So what is your problem with it?

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I can't upvote you enough. I've always likened Internet forums to having guests in my home. If I, as a forum owner, invite you into my home, you are expected to abide by the house rules. If my house rules allow you to destroy the furniture, insult my other guests, and generally raise hell, I won't yell at you for it. But if my rules forbid such activity, I'm well within my rights to kick your ass out. Free speech has nothing to do with it; you chose to enter my realm, and in my realm I am the king.

The only way freedom of speech enters into it, is if it's a government run forum. Last I checked, Reddit, Voat, Imzy, and others are not government sites, and there is no free speech violation if the forum owners decide to bounce a misbehaving person.

That's correct as far as the law is concerned. However, when you have a very large social network like Twitter, Facebook or Reddit, things get more complicated. A forum's owner has some say but a lot of the conflicts are at the boundaries between forums, or involve the common rules that everyone should follow. It's not a government but at this scale, the moderation starts to look more like privately run governance, something imposed from above onto a community rather part of the community itself.

True that. Public utilities (traditionally pretty much anything with a network effect) require regulation; the government must get involved, and then governmental ethics ought to apply.

There exists doctrine in constitutional law where its guarantees are deemed to apply even when the actor infringing the right is a private party. This can occur in cases where a private party is deemed to be a "state actor". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_actor

I would suggest that even large social media organizations are not "state actors", so federal constitutional protections don't apply. Of course, states are free to enact laws on their own to guarantee free speech in social media, if they want. It's just not protected by U.S. Constitution, not a constitutional right. [As an editorial aside, I'm dismayed at the general low level of understanding of constitutional rights in the U.S., even among "well-educated" people.]

I think this is a bit to one side of the question. Where government is doing the regulating, then surely the government itself is a state actor and must not infringe constitutional rights or be a party to same. You can argue it doesn't have any business calling anything a public utility, but that would be a different argument.

Your argument is flawed. Your primary intention is to invite total strangers into your house. You then cannot force your rules on them, because they can naturally demand things.

Edit: Besides, nobody opens up their houses for strangers. So it is a flawed comparison as well. You need to be honest with the premise. You are talking about an online community which is built for a purpose. Your purpose is two-fold. You want to be a nice contributor towards some ideal (nothing wrong with that). Your second purpose is to be self-sustaining (so you can continue your goals). Again, nothing wrong with that either. But none of this has anything to do with open and inviting house, or even strangers. But look at what your purpose does: it necessarily invites strangers. You then have consequence.

You also know in your heart of heart, that if you do not invite strangers (let's also remember that we're talking about the online world), you will never be able to achieve your ideals. Because no matter how big your social circle may be, you cannot achieve your ideals through just the people you know.

The invitation isn't to come in and do whatever you please. The invitation contains conditions. In the case of Imzy, one of them is to be nice. And the invitation doesn't necessarily mean you can stay as long as you want flouting the house rules. And the house rules can change if the owner decides the current ones need to change.

You are missing the point. Your secondary intention has no relevance because your primary intention is to "invite the strangers". When you invite strangers, you should expect anything.

Expecting anything doesn't mean putting up with everything.

Again, you're looking at secondary matters. Look at the consequences which results due to the primary intention.

Besides, nobody opens up their houses for strangers. So it is a flawed comparison as well. You need to be honest with the premise. You are talking about an online community which is built for a purpose. Your purpose is two-fold. You want to be a nice contributor towards some ideal (nothing wrong with that). Your second purpose is to be self-sustaining (so you can continue your goals). Again, nothing wrong with that either. But none of this has anything to do with open and inviting house, or even strangers. But look at what your purpose does: it necessarily invites strangers. You then have consequence.

What are you saying? This doesn't really make much sense. Are you arguing that inviting someone into your house, a stranger or not, means that they can demand whatever they want and you have no right to kick them out? Sorry if I'm not following but the idea of primary and secondary intention doesn't really make sense to me.

This argument is not about creating a "perfect social circle" with only specific people who have the same view points as you, it's that you can have someone who believes wildly different things than you but they are expected to be nice and treat the invitation into a community with respect, e.g. be nice, rather than do whatever they want. And if they disrespect the invitation, they have consequences.

> ...means that they can demand whatever

What I am simply saying is that setting such an expectation (via rules and enforcement) is unnatural for humans.

People are not going to "demand whatever" because they are not nice. You should expect them to demand whatever, even if they are nice.

What I am really trying to say is further explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13148978

But just because they can demand whatever does not mean you have to fulfill their request.

But now that's a different point altogether, isn't it? We were not talking about whether one should fulfill the demands or not. This also does not imply that the implicit rules can be automatically enforced.

If you agree that the rule-setting is unnatural under such context (i.e, the context of an online community, dealing with humans and human nature), then you would agree that you should first fix your own expectations.

If you read my comment about the Scott Peck's framework, then you can see that at the first stage, humans are generally nice to each other in any group setting. This is a modern condition: the consequences of civilized societies. But humans also tend to reach the second stage, where they are totally not nice to each other. If you read him directly, you'll get the better idea.

This argument of freedom of speech, or lack there of, is misguided and misplaced in my opinion. It tends to come up at every opportunity (every normalized social network now initially had this argument when they started in the beginning - and we're still having this misplaced argument.

I'll be honest. I don't know what your point is right now (which I admit you stated explicitly above: "You are missing the point"), other than to disagree. I've read and re-read your comments in this thread, and this one in particular in an effort to figure out where you're coming from.

I see no reason why the consequence of allowing people to join and contribute to an online community where they might do things I'm not happy with (I think that's what you're getting at when you say "consequence")—which I understand will happen—also doesn't mean I can't have expectations of their behavior and choose to, say, kick them off if they don't meet those expectations. I haven't expressed this explicitly, but I don't think it's much of a reach from what I've posted upthread.

At best we're talking past each other, but I'm going to take my answer off the air.

Let me ask you this: If you want to kick "people" off, because they're not playing nicely (according to you, or normal perceptions) then why in the first place you want to invite them? Note my emphasis on people which includes you as well.

If I invite some friends over for drinks and one one them takes a shit on the carpet in my living room I will kick them out. Shitting on the carpet is not playing nicely, according to me and "normal perceptions", whatever that is supposed to mean. I invited them over because I wanted some friends over for drinks, but there are a few things that I will not tolerate in my home. How can you possibly not understand this?

I think you're missing the point - inviting strangers does not mean the absence of rules of conduct.

Any public space is open to strangers, but you can't go around murdering people.

Public space? How are these social media platforms, run by corporations, a public space? What is your definition of a public space?

I was never arguing against the rules, and following the rules.

I've invited people who are strangers to me into my home many times. Friends invite friends so strangers show up at my house and I welcome them. Everyone was polite because social norms dictate politeness when you are a guest. If they weren't then you bet I'd tell them to GTFO. I don't have to "expect anything" because it's my home, I make the rules.

Right, exactly. If you own a bar and some person is picking fights all the time or generally acting like an asshole in your bar.. Then you tell them to change their behavior or throw them out of the bar. Or allow it and become "that kind of bar" over time.

Press coverage of Imzy has been rather clickbait-y. It's a good angle to get attention I guess. How the actual site and community will feel and plays out in practice will actually feel rather normal. Its not super revolutionary.. Internet forum moderates discussion and participation for better resulting community.

>Then you tell them to change their behavior or throw them out of the bar. Or allow it and become "that kind of bar" over time.

this is exactly why it isn't censorship. no one has a right to be an asshole on the internet, if you insist, don't be shocked when you get shown the door.

no one is obligated to deal with pricks.

calling it censorship or pretending to be persecuted for political opinions is disingenuous at best.

There is more to the idea of free speech than simply the first amendment. This essay explains it well: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first...

The general gist is: imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are ostracized from society, rejected from conferences and fired from their jobs. Those of us who favor a broader concept of free speech feel this is a bad state of affairs even if it isn't Congress doing it.

I would say that in a society like that, there is more amiss than simply a lack of free speech. After all, there are other human rights. However, I see what you mean, and not being a constitutional scholar I shall cede the point.

Nonetheless, you have only addressed one half of a point out of my original three. (You cannot compare a website like Imzy with society at large is what I was trying to drive at in point A.) What do you say to the other two?

> I would say that in a society like that, there is more amiss than simply a lack of free speech.

Every society (and community) has norms which are acceptable, and those which are not. If a person decides to not live according to those norms they're an outcast and will be dealt with as such. The society is like a living organism which will protect its norms in order to survive akin to an auto immune system. Because of these principles every society lives within its own bubble, too.

I suppose Von Trier's Dogville touches upon the subject, but there's countless examples available from Swartz to Snowden. If someone has another (or better, more accurate) example I'm interested hearing yours.

>imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are [...], rejected from conferences

Your expanded idea of free speech is noble but it's not possible for society to provide.

Free speech allowed by the government is possible.

Free speech hosted and paid for by private commercial entities is impossible -- in any long-term sustaining way.

The "free speech on commercial entities" would require 2 extra draconian laws that citizens would never agree to:

1) a law to force private entities to pay for speech they disagree with on their private platforms and in their private conferences even if that opposing speech causes them to lose the funding that allows for them to pay for it in the first place.

2) a law to force web surfers' eyeballs[1] to view content they don't agree with, and force people to buy tickets to conferences with speakers they don't want to hear

Free speech with private commercial entities creates a contradiction of priorities. I've written about this impossibility before.[2]

To make it relate to HN readers, imagine after creating a Digital Ocean account and paying $9/month for VPS to host a blog about photography or enthusiast forum about cars, you must now pay for opinion pieces about Trump or Clinton (whichever you disagree with). The draconian law requires you pay for it because nobody's opinion is allowed to be marginalized. Also, the web users visiting that new site are required to show video proof (maybe via iPhone/Android camera) that they've read the marginalized opinions. (To satisfy the proverbial "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" ... if no visitors go to the web page and read it, it's effectively not free speech.)

[1] Ludovico technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)#/med...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12158682

> 1) Private entities must pay for speech they disagree with on their private platforms and in their private conferences even if that opposing speech causes them to lose the funding that allows for them to pay for it in the first place.

Just thinking about your point (1), I'm not sure it is impossible, depending on the industry. Isn't it just the straightforward position for most companies that are considered common carriers - they can't discriminate?

>Isn't it just the straightforward position for most companies that are considered common carriers - they can't discriminate?

(For more about that won't work, see my previous comment I linked in the footnote.)

It wouldn't make any sense for the government to forcefully reclassify a company like Facebook as a "common carrier"[1] like a telecommunications provider because FB is sponsored by advertisers. The ISPs (with subscribers) can be common carriers but not websites (with ad sponsors).

A "common carrier" designation from the government doesn't come with a $20 billion payment to Facebook from the government (taxpayers) to make up for loss of advertisers pulling their ad dollars on platform that allows speech they don't like.

Likewise, since "common carrier" doesn't mean users are forced keep their Facebook accounts and forced to read newsfeeds of opinions they disagree with, it doesn't solve the problem.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier#Telecommunicati...

Not everything has to be a law. For example, one could imagine a world where the social norm was that services embodied some more generalized idea of free speech, and people are reluctant to use services that don't do this because one day it's likely to be used against them. Instead, the press are pushing the opposite social norm, that sites are somehow morally obligated to restrict speech: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/social-media-companies-are-...

>For example, one could imagine a world where the social norm was that services embodied some more generalized idea of free speech, and people are reluctant to use services that don't do this because one day it's likely to be used against them.

Ok, I'm having trouble parsing what you wrote. I also looked at your link to see how it relates.

Tell me if I interpreted your hypothetical scenario correctly:

Suppose we have website called OrganicMothers.com that focuses on things like mothers breastfeeding their infants, growing veggies in the back yard and using a blender to pulverize it into homemade baby food. That website has heavy censoring against posts about artificial foods, or alternative viewpoints about synthetic breast milk, or messages with a disrespectful tone.

Another website is AnythingGoesMothering.com allows any writings including chemical additives and all profanity and insults are uncensored.

You're saying that a future societal norm could be where a mother who avoided AnythingGoesMothering.com because it had too many messages saying "any mother who doesn't feed her baby Monsanto's patented baby milk instead of breastmilk is a stupid c-nt!" ... will be denied a job and/or shunned from dinner parties?

Remember that "free speech" includes everything from the cess pool. Basically all text is allowed short of doxxing people's social security numbers.

I just don't see your hypothetical becoming the norm.

Honestly, I was more thinking about the layer of abstraction above individual communities like OrganicMothers.com and AnythingGoesMothering.com - the one made up of shared services like Reddit and Facebook that are used to establish communities, since they're harder to avoid. But even at that level, speech-restrictive websites can certainly be worrying. For example, anti-vaccination ideas are likely to be popular with your hypothetical organic mothering community, and obviously they are also likely to attract a lot of anger. So the community would certainly be a lot friendlier if they banned criticism of mothers' choices not to vaccinate their kids. Can you perhaps see how this might not be socially desirable?

>be a lot friendlier if they banned criticism of mothers' choices not to vaccinate their kids. Can you perhaps see how this might not be socially desirable?

Yes I do, but only because you cherry-picked an example that seems to be an obvious benefit.

I want to emphasize again that true free speech includes everything you don't like and all stupid opinions so you can't isolate good examples and ignore bad ones.

You cannot isolate good and bad examples of censorship that easily either, because it denies users information on what information they're being denied. This hypothetical site is hardly going to tell users that it's hiding the fact they're killing their babies from them; it's more likely to frame it as protecting them from industry propaganda, exactly as you argued they should be allowed to. It's only from the outside perspective that this is obviously terrible.

(This is, in my experience, a general principle of site-based censorship. For example, if I had a dollar for every regular of every feminist community who was sure the site moderators were protecting them from the oppressor, when actually they were protecting the site owners from criticism and dissent by women more oppressed than them who they were rather spectacularly failing to represent...)

>Suppose we have website called OrganicMothers.com that focuses on things like mothers breastfeeding their infants, growing veggies in the back yard and using a blender to pulverize it into homemade baby food. That website has heavy censoring against posts about artificial foods, or alternative viewpoints about synthetic breast milk, or messages with a disrespectful tone.

Indeed these sort of communities actually require "heavy censorship" to remain functional and on topic otherwise it enviably would be overrun with trolls or people "looking to debate." It actually cannot be prevented without moderation. Without moderation the internet is not functional for the majority of users.

Anyways, any form of moderation at all, even removing spam and off topic posts is "censorship." Commercial speech is also speech so removing spam is "restricting freedom of speech." (not that I think "freedom of speech" is applicable to private websites, because that's silly)

1) The fact that they're paying for speech they disagree with isn't necessarily bad for business. Whether it causes them to lose funding/revenue is a business problem that doesn't seem inherently unsolvable. Does reddit increase or shrink their ad revenue when they decide to drop a controversial subreddit? To take the example in your other post, there's probably a bunch of offensive groups on Facebook. Does P&G threaten to stop advertising on FB? What about non-ad-based revenue models?

2) Not sure why that follows at all.

>2) Not sure why that follows at all.

Because marginalized or fringe opinions already have freedom of speech at the level of ICANN DNS (get a domain name) and the ISP (pay for internet connection and virtual server to host webpages). E.g., if you really really really want to write a webpage about the benefits of child sex, you can get a domain called ChildSexIsGood.com. Host your controversial content (text not pics) there. You don't need Facebook to "approve" of your fringe content. There, you already have "freedom of speech" -- and you've had that autonomy for decades before Facebook/reddit came into existence. You still have that uncensored publishing power on DNS+ISP now.

But that's not good enough because marginalized voices also want an audience. Registering a new domain name doesn't mean you have web visitors. Without the audience, it's not "really free speech."

>What about non-ad-based revenue models?

Nobody has come up with a way for people to pay for websites with opinions they don't want to read.

Consider how hard it is for The New York Times and WSJ to entice people to pay for stories they do want to read.

1) But free speech doesn't entitle you to an audience? Not sure why you're making that leap. It's free speech regardless of the existence of an audience.

2) Sure. And people read the fraction of the NYT they do want to read. And they pay for the part they don't want to read too, because it is happily packaged with the rest. There could also be other business models that involve other third parties than advertisers. Who knows?

Edit: Engrish.

>Not sure why you're making that leap. It's free speech regardless of the existence of an audience.

To clarify, I'm arguing the way others argue so if doesn't seem logical to you, I totally agree!

When you tell people who are censored on places like Facebook to just go make their own website, they'll respond with the analogy: "freedom to shout opinions in my own living room where nobody else can hear it is NOT FREE SPEECH!"

Using that logic, that's why they insist putting the "public space" label on Facebook/reddit/twitter. It's not good enough that DNS+ISP is the "public space". Instead, it must be somebody else's website that already has an audience of millions.

I didn't advocate creating any laws. I was simply describing a concept that goes beyond congress.

However, lets roll with your thought experiment. Lets consider a variation of "equal rights" that applies to more than just the government - say it also applied to lending. It would require 2 extra draconian laws:

1) A law to force private entities to associate with people they dislike, even if that association causes to lose money.

2) A law to force some borrowers to pay higher interest rates to subsidize the defaults of others.

Actually these draconian laws exist and are not particularly controversial at all (though they certainly were in the past). I'm curious to know what you think about it.

Which laws are those?

ECOA and FHA act, among others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Credit_Opportunity_Act

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Housing_Act

Surrounding these laws is a bunch of regulation and agency interpretation - i.e. if an agency doesn't like your lending/free association choices they'll hit you with lawsuits/regulatory actions that are themselves very punishing.

As a concrete example, see Figure 7 of this paper. This figure shows that lenders could avoid a lot of defaults if they did per-race isotonic regression on FICO scores. In non-technical terms, this means a black person with a FICO score of 600 is more likely to default than an Asian person with the same score, and this information is easy to use. However, lenders are legally forbidden from using this information; as a result, lenders must associate with people (potential defaulters) that they don't want to and Asian people must pay higher interest rates because of this.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-wQVEjH9yuhanpyQjUwQS1JOTQ...

> citizens would never agree to

From the perspective of your elected officials, apathy is agreement.

Well, lets say you know someone who is a legit flat earther. You're not going to change their mind, because such a belief is unreasonable, but if you attempt to reason with them you elevate their social status and accidentally lend credence to them. This is the Fox News "fair and balanced" model -- if you give equal time to both viewpoints, even if one viewpoint is nuts, people will assume that there's a rational debate being had.

HN, for all its good parts, tends to be humorless. I would argue that humor can work as an immune system to bad ideas. When someone says something really stupid, often the best response really is mockery. You wont convince the person you're making fun of, but it can settle a debate pretty fast. Humor doesn't have to be mean to be funny, but sometimes it is. "Be Nice" policies tends to lead to communities that lack this useful sociological immune system, and it can drive out the smart people, to the point where you have a lot of "nice" people arguing some very dumb points.

> When someone says something really stupid, often the best response really is mockery.

That's not working for climate change, brexit, the Us election, etc etc etc.

Maybe it's time to accept that mockery is a sub-optimal tactic that makes you feel good but is counter-productive.

It might have played slight part. But those have multiple dimensions to them.

The worst thing that ever happened to fixing the pollution was calling it climate change. Making wildly inaccurate hyperbolic documentaries and politicizing it to such a degree that it became a defining aspect of our species. Where everyone needed to have an opinion on it, no different than their favorite brand of cereal.

When greedy selfish people make doomsday prophecies which happens to make them more money, the people get skeptical. We've been exposed to millions of such prophecies in the past, the average person will just say "Oh? Another one..."

Regarding Brexit/US election, I think Obama interfering with peoples choices by telling them what they should pick hindered one side in both events. Brexit and Trump happened because Obama was condescending. Both would have been different results if he had done nothing at all.

Regarding Brexit/US election, I think Obama interfering with peoples choices by telling them what they should pick hindered one side in both events

No. I guarantee that Obama's opinion on Brexit was given little attention in the UK, and his intervention had no effect on the outcome. I am utterly baffled that anyone could possibly think that the result would have been different had he not communicated his opinion.

How did Obama's endorsement of Clinton interfere with people's choices? There's nothing that says you have to listen to him. And how could he not endorse his own party's candidate? And since Clinton served in his administration, anybody who had a negative opinion of Obama wouldn't have voted for her anyway.

What would you do in real-life? Would you make a mockery of them? Or would you simply ignore them?

I find a lot of people (on both sides) will do things online behind the shield of anonymity they wouldn't otherwise in real life.

I find this behaviour cowardly.

Would you confront these people in real life, and mock them to their faces? I suspect a lot of people who do it online wouldn't in real life (if for no other reason than they'd get punched in the face).

I'm not saying we can't argue with people, or be direct - however, there are lines you don't cross (and I feel Reddit often crosses those lines). You can be upfront, and honest about your beliefs without being a jerk.

> What would you do in real-life? Would you make a mockery of them? Or would you simply ignore them?

I guess it depends on the context right? I remember in college there used to be these religious fanatics that would loudly berate strangers in the plaza; whenever someone would walk up and try to "debate" them, it would just make things worse, but sometimes someone would just say something really funny and the mood of the whole crowd would change and the extremely aggressive obnoxious fanatic would end up packing it in early or going for a new tactic. (Maybe not immediately, but it did seem to have an impact overall)

My point isn't like, go pick on people, that would suck, I'm just saying that humor is a really useful tool sometimes. Self-serious "be nice" policies can remove those tools and give some unreasonable people a nice cloud of cover to haunt places.

Maybe a different metaphor is better. A good community is like a garden. Nobody likes pesticide, but sometimes if you have a pest problem... It's all a judgement call right. "Be nice" policies only work if you can assume the other people you're interacting with are reasonable, and that's not really always true.

It all makes sense, however i don't like metaphors that compare people with opinions to pests (insects don't have opinions afaik), a metaphor like this is dehumanizing your opponents - it is a very bad metaphor.

To be honest, yeah, in a lot of social environments that I've been in, if someone were to make a show of some really bizarre beliefs, they would be openly mocked.

I've worked on construction crews were people will rib each other over almost anything. If you start spouting off about the earth being flat, you're for damn sure going to catch some flak and everyone is going to have a good laugh at your expense.

Is that really a good thing though? I mean it's not the polite thing at least and I don't care to be around impolite people.

> I would argue that humor can work as an immune system to bad ideas.

Okay, but malice and schadenfreude are not requirements for humor. Obnoxious memes and troll baiting are not some kind of Shakespearean fools. They are the lowest form of humor that incubate far more bad ideas than they're worth.

> "Be Nice" policies tends to lead to communities that lack this useful sociological immune system, and it can drive out the smart people, to the point where you have a lot of "nice" people arguing some very dumb points.

I think you've touched on a very important point. There is a huge difference between enforcing "niceness" and civility. The latter allows for the organic and authentic discussion of ideas, while the former doesn't.

> This is the Fox News "fair and balanced" model -- if you give equal time to both viewpoints, even if one viewpoint is nuts, people will assume that there's a rational debate being had.

I don't think this a good citation for the point you're trying to make. The problem is the concept of "both viewpoints" rather than many viewpoints, and that they get extremely irrational people to debate against slightly irrational people, and the viewers think that's the entire range of discourse and they have to choose somewhere within that continuum to fall themselves. (Usually right smack in the middle based on the average person's trust in the "law of averages.")

The problem with Fox is a narrowing of opinions to a range acceptable by management, not any diversity of ideas.

> I am staggered by the amount of people here who object to Imzy's "Be Nice"-policy on the basis that it limits free speech.

It's especially curious, because HN does try to have a free speech uber alles approach. If limiting speech is good for HN, why isn't it good for Imzy?

It's also important to remember that reddit is very pro-free speech, but bans some protected speech, namely, doxxing. Redditors started to dox people who ran some of the more ahem controversial subreddits. And then reddit banned doxxing.

No right is limitless. I don't know about other countries but in elementary school where I am we're taught a person's freedom is limited by the freedoms of others, and freedom of speech is certainly limited by other people's human rights, including the right to human dignity. AFAIK the declaration of human rights include that right. There is no freedom without responsibility, and that's why people who aren't or can't be responsible are often excluded from the community temporarily or permanently.

Elementary school is not the place to learn about the subtleties of human cultural conflict.

A good starting point though.

I must have been doing something wrong then... Elementary school was exactly where the subtleties of human conflict first appeared to me. IMO, it's as good of a place as any to have some of your first (and due to that, perhaps the most important) encounters with what it means to exist within a society.

Reminds me of the book. "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten".

Early education is generally where people get most of their socialization and first learn about conflict resolution.

This was downvoted for some reason I couldn't see so I upvoted it.

Well, thanks, but some downvotes were quite foreseeable as there are those who believe every right is limitless and that a functional society on that base is possible. I suggest those to go up to someone on the street and try using their right to free speech to the extent they believe it's okay, and see if that person gives them a punch or calls for help.

I'll let you on on a secret that you aren't thought in elementary school. Real human rights are intrinsic and inalienable. Things like the right for your pursuit of happiness and freedom of thought and speech. All supposed rights that require other people's labor or permission (health, education, shelter) are bogus, they are just organizations moving goalposts. Real rights are not bestowed.

Bogus rights are to not be offended, not be attacked, be given dignity and respect. Real rights are to defend yourself, stand your ground and use your body how you want. You just want a few more social norms in some spheres of interaction than some of your neighbors that's all.

Well I hope then that you end up in a society like what you describe, where there are no bogus rights. All the best.

I know I won't, it is too far away I would probably not be alive even it came to pass.

My point was that at least some people recognize that these rights are made up and want to be in a place where they may be offended, they may be riled up, and laugh, and be insulted, and be seriously challenged in their beliefs. We are the smartest known species in the world and yet most of us make such a darn effort not to upset our childhood-imprinted beliefs.

My point was that at least some people recognize that these rights are made up

All rights are "made up". Rights can only exist in a system that recognises them, definitionally.

And just how are you going to pursue happiness or use your freedom of speech if you do not have the ability to defend yourself? A healthy body to stand your ground with? An education that enables you to express what you want to say?

You are not advocating human rights, you are advocating social Darwinism in its worst form.

I am not advocating. It's just what we have. Decreeing we have the right to health doesn't make diseases disappear.

I am advocating not calling this a discussion about human rights but about human wants.

There's no such things as "real rights." Rights are granted to people by the entities willing to defend those people in the exercise of those rights. There's no "real" right to a pursuit of happiness, there's no "real" right to freedom of thought, and there's no "real" right to freedom of speech.

> Real rights are to defend yourself, stand your ground and use your body how you want.

A right that you grant to yourself is called an "ability."

That is false, or maybe just semantics. Imagine an enslaved man. I believe he has the right to attempt to free himself from slavery. By your definition he doesn't because those around him haven't granted him that right. In my definition he may or may not have the ability to actually free himself or attempt to.

Did slaves in the 17th century have the right to free themselves from slavery? No. That right was limited by law. They had the ability to do so, in some cases, but certainly not the right (as is legally recognized).

"No right is limitless" I agree. But some want no limits on speech, they want to be able to say any homophobic thing they want, on any forum. And when/if that is banned/removed they complain about free speech.

HN does try to have a free speech uber alles approach

Could you explain what you mean by this? I take uber alles to mean "above all", which would imply that HN aspires to have no moderation. But this clearly isn't the case, as your next sentence says. Did you maybe mean to write "HN does not try"?

> Could you explain what you mean by this?

The HN FAQ[1] has the rules/guidelines. e.g.: " Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.". It says guidelines, but you will be banned if you keep breaking those things.

I think this rule for HN is a great idea BTW.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The reason people raise issues of free speech is that Reddit-style sites act more like a public utility and less like a single community. Reddit is a community of communities. The argument is that Reddit itself shouldn't limit speech, but that the individual communities within it can decide for themselves how to regulate discussion.

This is the same tired justification of injustice that "states rights" advocates trot out.

I don't think that really compares.

and reddit really is just one aggregator among many others, we can play this Matryoshka thing all day.

There's a huge problem with calling sites like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and the rest utilities is that it implies there's no other means to communicate effectively on the web. The reality is that we have RSS, Atom, blogs, Bittorrent, and many other easy to use technologies for which anyone can share their content. It's not like these are hidden behind console commands on Linux as these are readily available for use via for-pay (and some free) providers. So, your argument doesn't hold in terms of the practical aspects of a utility who has a legal and material monopoly (the web cannot exclude other technologies and their adoptions like say the power grid can).

>On Reddit and like sites we see behaviour that we would never tolerate if we saw it in real life. Why do we not only tolerate it online [...]

That's because the behavior you are seeing online is actually not at all like the behaviors "in real life" that you are comparing them to. In person, you get a lot more information and in a vastly more narrow context, and it's much easier to interpret people under those conditions.

For one thing, if you show strong opinions online, people tend to think you're a pig-headed fool, but if you do it in person, they're more liable to think you're just blowing off steam or impassioned. Which is to say, we also tolerate things in person that we do not tolerate online very well.

Funny that you're getting downvoted for a nuanced polite response to why online behavior necessarily differs from in person behavior. Apparently being nice doesn't apply to arrows.

I'm generally nicer online than I am in person; online you can be misinterpreted, and as a cipher behind a username, your entire identity becomes what you just said. In real life, you can be a lot harsher and more blunt, because you don't have to bundle an implicit friendliness into every statement that you make:) In the proximal world, you start building up civility credit with the first handshake and smile.

> Why does free speech mean that we get to insult and demean each other

This doesn't pertain to Imzy as all, but asking this question seriously is a very strong indicator that you're completely missing the point of absolute legal free speech protection.

"Oh, you're saying bad things about the current government? That's pretty insulting and demeaning towards all these nice politicians and government employees! To the jail with you!"

Does it really seem reasonable to you that that saying something "insulting" should be met with force at the hands of the government? That's as anti-liberal as any Sharia law-based Islamic nation that kills people for blashpheming Mohammad.

I agree that it is within any website's authority to determine precisely what its users are allowed to say. I just disagree with your weakening of the concept of free speech. Germany does not have a tradition of free speech in any meaningful sense, so their law is not a great example.

>c) On Reddit and like sites we see behaviour that we would never tolerate if we saw it in real life. Why do we not only tolerate it online, but suddenly elevate such antisocial behaviour of the extremest kind to a mystical status of "expression of free speech"? There is a reason we are taught "manners" as children: without a minimum of politeness, societies cannot function. Politeness and courtesy have to do with respecting another's person even if you don't share his (or her) opinions, with tolerating people who are different from you. And is that not the very epitome of freedom?

Because internet communities regularly raid each-other. Someone who's a dick to you on reddit may just be a troll from 4chan with a new-made alt-account. Community and politeness require a relatively fixed set of identities with which to interact.

Think of Reddit as a quarantine or a honeypot. The people who don't value decency have to go somewhere.

I thought that was 4chan?

If reddit bans everyone on the site, reddit would be a nice place, definitely no trolling anymore.

>The First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech, explicitly does so in a political context ("Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech"). Imzy is not the US Congress, they don't have jurisdiction over anything but their own little niche of the Internet (which absolutely nobody is forcing you to visit if you don't want to) - so why are you upset when they ask you, within the bounds of their community, to be nice?

Yes, insofar as the law protects free speech, it does so only against the government.

We as individual Americans, should, however, be wary of using privately-owned spaces as public spheres unless they provide broadly similar guarantees that different points of view can be expressed. This is becoming more important as the traditional public sphere is increasingly giving way to privately-run ones (e.g. Facebook and Reddit).

>Why does free speech mean that we get to insult and demean each other, even going so far as to sending death threats? I think the German constitution (the Grundgesetz) has a point when it says in Article 5, §2 that the right of free speech is limited, amongst others, by every person's right of dignity ("Recht der persönlichen Ehre" - a hard to translate concept).

No one is arguing for allowing death threats. This is a classic straw man used in just about every major online debate ever.

The German constitution is flawed here. When German police can arrest people for having the wrong opinion, something is badly wrong.

>On Reddit and like sites we see behaviour that we would never tolerate if we saw it in real life. Why do we not only tolerate it online, but suddenly elevate such antisocial behaviour of the extremest kind to a mystical status of "expression of free speech"? There is a reason we are taught "manners" as children: without a minimum of politeness, societies cannot function. Politeness and courtesy have to do with respecting another's person even if you don't share his (or her) opinions, with tolerating people who are different from you. And is that not the very epitome of freedom?

The problem is the definition of politeness. The cultural powers have dictated that calling people racist and sexist for disagreeing with you is "polite", while fighting back against that madness is ghastly.

> unless they provide broadly similar guarantees that different points of view can be expressed.

Note, once again, that Imzy does allow this. They just ask you to remain polite while you do so. (Which appears to me to be a reasonable request.)

> No one is arguing for allowing death threats.

I didn't say anybody was. I am saying that they are being made anyway, and that that is one of the things we need to stop if we want a culture conducive to a civilized online discourse.

> When German police can arrest people for having the wrong opinion, something is badly wrong.

I agree, but you misunderstand the difference between free speech and free thought. German police cannot arrest you for holding the wrong opinion, they can arrest you for voicing that opinion in a way that wrongfully infringes on the honour and dignity of another person. (This is the basis for libel and slander laws.)

> Note, once again, that Imzy does allow this. They just ask you to remain polite while you do so. (Which appears to me to be a reasonable request.)

It's an extremely reasonable request, but its enforcement is unlikely to be even-handed. In general people are very likely to allow their personal biases to influence the application of the politeness rule.

It's fairly easy to think of examples where "different points of view" may be perceived as personal attacks. Eg. I've seen a few commenters here suggesting that reddit is a terrible place inhabited by terrible people. I don't think it should be forbidden for people to express that opinion, even though it's not really possible to do so without risking offence.

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