We Fight for the Users
dreamhost.com
dreamhost.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHZSfhd1X_8
And by the looks of it alt-right sites soon will barely have domains, they don't need to worry about the state requesting something like this.
Or you're doing dragnet on your political enemies.
It's wrong if someone working for Obama does it, it's wrong if Reagan does it, it's wrong if Hilary does it, it's wrong if _anyone_ does it. Including Trump. He's not special, he's the same whether you like him or not.
That's 310k more "threats". Need a bigger army XD
Half America crying out against Nazi's, but extracting information on certain categorized groups and being pro Nationalistic is how NAZIs (Hitler) rose to power in the first place. Some tough irony right there.
What Google and GoDaddy did was the private citizen equivalent of hearing someone else state their opinion, allowing the words to enter their brain, think about them, and then decide they do not espouse those opinions, so they will not go around stating them to other people as fact. That is not censorship, it's just good sense.
It is censorship (not “tantamount”), but censorship of the sort (private actors deciding on what views to promote with their own resources) that the idea of “free speech” in general, and the First Amendment in particular, exist to protect.
It's theirs, Google and Godaddy are not public libraries.
I can't stop you from screaming pro Nazi propaganda on the streets
But if you do it in my home, I kick you out.
Simple as that
And even if one of the rioters had also made threats, how is getting 1.3 million ip addresses of visitors to the site that organized the protest possibly salient to that investigation? It's not a forum, there isn't going to be any further incriminating evidence on it. If the threatener visited the site, the went to the protest and made the threat, what exactly does the government gain by proving that he visited it?
O'Keefe is a conservative activist has a storied history of "severely editing" videos to mislead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O'Keefe
>DisruptJ20 countered that it had caught on to the Veritas operation and had thus fed its operative a false plot.
I'm not even defending this whole dreamhost thing, it's wrong on many levels but your thinking will hurt you.
...any government? ... Including the inevitable non-trump one?
Because the justice department is demanding the IP address of everybody who ever connected to that website
It's the epitome of silencing exactly that speech, which is protected by the first amendment.
It happens when Cloudflare refuses to cancel service to some of the most disgusting sites on the internet, even though they're on the free plan and Cloudflare has no legal obligation to continue to host them.
It happens when reddit fights tooth and nail, at great expense and with no reward forthcoming, to maintain some of the most toxic communities on the internet, only agreeing to close them when there is truly no other choice.
It happens when computer scientists invent technologies like tor, freenet, and bitcoin, allowing unpopular groups to get their message out and collect donations, even if the majority would prefer that they be banished.
And yes, it even happens when a small ISP steps up to host The Daily Stormer, secure in their knowledge that the best way to contend with such filth is to let the sunlight disinfect it, rather than trying to bottle it up and hoping that bottle never breaks.
America is exceptional in its embrace of the cultural value of free speech. However bad we are about it sometimes, the rest of the world (including Western Europe) is much worse. This makes me proud to be an American citizen.
As a counterexample, in Europe, no company can fire an employee for "perpetuating gender stereotypes", or any other opinion, while in the US it seems quite easy to fire people for any reason.
I don't have much insight into European companies and how strongly they protect speech as a matter of policy, but rulings by the EU have been extremely discouraging. Here are some examples:
1. The EU's "right to be forgotten" can compel the removal of content that is both true and relevant. [1] In the US, my right to publish true facts about you trumps your right to have them swept under the rug.
2. The EU can compel publishers to remove content they deem "hate speech." [2] If you look up the EU's definition of hate speech, it actually sweeps broadly into what the US would call protected speech. For example, Germany's "incitement of popular hatred" [3] can be used to prevent newspapers from advancing the argument that migrants are disproportionately likely to commit crimes. Since there is no truth defense against hate speech accusations (unlike libel in the US), a newspaper that is dragged into court on hate speech charges couldn't defend itself by proving that what it wrote was true.
[1] http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/court-imposes-r...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/14/14920812/germany-facebook...
Bull. Shit.
Tabloids still run ridiculously xenophobic and bigoted headlines in Germany even if we're not quite at the level as e.g. UK tabloids.
Saying "there's a correlation between the refugee crisis and a rise in crimes" is protected speech in Germany. Saying "those donkey fuckers crossing our borders must be shot on sight and their children too" is hate speech.
We're talking about the kind of statements that get showcased on sites like this: https://perlen-aus-freital.tumblr.com
In the US it's acceptable for politicians calling for undesirables like Snowden or Assange to be murdered. In Germany this kind of rhetoric would land you in jail for inciting violence and instigating criminal behavior.
Also in Germany it's forbidden to bring weapons (including "defensive weapons" like shields or gasmasks) to demonstrations. In the US you have neo-nazis and antifa running into each other with riot gear and bashing each others' heads in with lengths of wood. Not to mention paramilitaries parading in camouflage with military-looking gear and firearms.
Incidentally, German riot police doesn't use military equipment and actual violent protests are usually confined to anarchists using improvised weapons to cause property damage.
> Since there is no truth defense against hate speech accusations
Again, bullshit. If you use Nazi symbology, loudly shout "gas the jews" and do the salute, you know what you're doing. Stop pretending we're talking about scientific discourse here.
This isn't about some economist or sociologist publishing troubling research findings or level-headed reporting on anything of the sort. This is about bigots venting their hatred and tabloids abusing scare tactics to sell more copies.
Which part of that offensive statement is 'hate speech':
a) Donkey Fucker
b) must be shot on sight
c) [their children] must be shot on sight
In US, a) cannot be restricted by the govt. b) and c) can be, provided the govt prove that it was the same thing as asking your right hand to pull the trigger (as it's a clear and present danger).
Moreover, if someone does shoot kids and immigrants, and it was shown that this someone was motivated by your statements, then you can be sued under a civil lawsuit for millions by the family of the people who died.
> In Germany this kind of rhetoric would land you in jail for inciting violence and instigating criminal behavior.
In US too, inciting violence and instigating criminal behavior could land you in jail, except American definition of 'inciting violence and instigating criminal behavior' is a lot different than European definition.
A politician calling drone attacks on Snowden or Assange isn't 'inciting violence and instigating criminal behavior' in US.
A politician picking up the phone and asking his brother who is a drone operator to do a drone attack on Assange or Snowden, would be.
"Donkey fucker" is a racial slur. Most of the racial slurs used in these comments don't translate well, e.g. "oil eye". It's in the same register of language as the n-word in English.
It may not come across that well in English but there's a direct call to action: "shoot them and their children", basically. It's not specifically directed at anyone. Charitably it could be read as "we should enact policies so soldiers do this" but less charitably it's directly calling for people to go out and shoot other people -- which is inciting violence.
I'm fairly certain going on national TV and offering a significant monetary reward to anyone who murders Snowden/Assange/Trump would be illegal even in the US. The only difference is that Germany doesn't require a tangible reward for that to be illegal.
But hey, what do I know, it's not like the US is at risk of bringing lynchings back or something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States#...
EDIT: Oh, and the obvious difference: aside from a strict loyalty to international Human Rights, the German constitution centers around the idea of the indelibility of human dignity. Dehumanizing people is always unconstitutional and promoting hatred around racial identity or ethnic background is almost always dehumanizing.
If you say that's all that gets called "hate speech" you're being deliberately dishonest.
> Stop pretending we're talking about scientific discourse here.
I don't have to pretend.
In my opinion, this is also far beyond the "good" free speech (as in, free statement of opinion and political dissent) and into the realm of trying purposefully to do damage, by using speech in bad faith, which I think should not be free at all. Then again, e.g. cursing at police officers seems to be legal in the US as well, so I guess this is a cultural difference :)
Nonetheless, alone they are not enough to prove the point. I could go and find other cases for the US too.
If we look, though, at the Freedom of the Press report of Freedom without Borders, the US comes after all Western Europe countries (except Italy): https://rsf.org/en/ranking
I can tell you that, in the US, it's extremely difficult to prevent a newspaper from publishing things the government doesn't want published (see New York Times v. United States), or for a private party to successfully sue them (see New York Times v. Sullivan). It has happened, but it's very rare and there is nothing analogous to Europe's sweeping "hate speech" laws that force newspapers to self-censor anything critical of migrants.
The thing is, what you say about this kind of law is probably true. But freedom of speech goes further than that and, as you mentioned in your original comment, it's not just a matter of laws.
2. The EU can compel publishers to remove content they deem "hate speech." [2] If you look up the EU's definition of hate speech, it actually sweeps broadly into what the US would call protected speech.
Some coutries deem, for example, Holocaust denial a criminal offense. You can argue if this is good or bad. But let me assure you that Europe is not that hellhole where you not dare say anything.
England, with its insane libel laws may be an exception, but soon it's anyway no more part of the EU.
German court upholds its ban on comedian's Erdogan poem
Not the exact same business situation, but is that an example? Guy can't make a living off of his comedy because he's mocking a dictator.
He's also still very much able to "make a living off of his comedy". His "Schmähkritik" (the title of the piece as well as the crime reciting the poem would constitute) was just a single one-off performance on a publicly funded TV show.
I've actually met ex-nazis in Germany and I don't believe the causality you're proposing holds up.
Yes, neo-nazis think the "jews" are running the country and keeping them down, but this is no different from how the antifa think the "fascists" are doing the same.
The recent rise of nationalism in Germany actually has more to do with both major parties having become indistinguishable in many cases and "moderates" flocking to the extremes to "punish" the government.
It's a lot like trolls on 4chan spreading racist memes "for the lulz" until they end up having become actual white supremacists participating in Nazi rallies instead of merely shitposting on the Internet.
Right-leaning "moderates" vote for the right-wing extremists (NPD if you're really angry or AfD if you are more of a realist) out of spite and then fall for the rhetoric as they continue exposing themselves to their messages.
The only effective treatment against this disease seems to be constant exposure to other people with other ideas coming from other walks of life.
Yes, there's an East/West divide in neo-Nazi density in Germany, but it's also very much a rural/metropolitan divide. If all the people around you look, talk and think like you, everything different becomes a threat to your way of life.
The whole purpose of the poem was to get banned.
Mr Boehmermann's lawyer said the ruling went against "artistic freedom".
"We believe that the court's decision in its concrete form is wrong, given that it deems those parts dealing with Erdogan's approach to freedom of expression to be acceptable," said Christian Schertz.
per one of the links in that article
That kind of rhetoric trivializes how repressive the Erdoğan regime really is. With all its faults, Germany hasn't locked up thousands of innocent people on shady claims of conspiracy or terrorism, or shut down independent TV stations or newspapers. Germany also hasn't abolished its strict division of power and given the president or chancellor absolute power.
And so would you
Stop pretending we believe your rethorical bullshit
Also, in the US, often companies offer you money to not sue them when they fire you. Doesn't mean the firing is legal, simply it is easier for everyone involved that way.
Here the guy was likely fired for saying that he witnessed discriminating hiring practices, i.e. quotas, to improve diversity metrics. And firing a whistleblower is illegal in the US as well. Most likely they will reach an agreement (or they have already reached). The guy will get some money and everyone will move on. Much easier than getting involved with legal stuff for both, google and the engineer.
What also matters is the practicalities and cost of redress and that varies across Europe. It's not the liberal paradise across the board as some suggest.
Its a phrase that different people use to express different culture values, but the one behind the Constitutional Amendment is, very clearly given the other evidence of the ideology of those wrote it, the freedom of private parties to speak and to use their own property to distribute their own speech and that of which they approve without constraint or compulsion by government.
It is not the idea that private parties, in general, are obligated, morally or otherwise, to amplify speech whether or not they agree with it, indeed, it is diametrically opposed to that idea.
It is true that there are some people who hold to the latter value and call it free speech, but that is entitlement rather than liberty.
In this case, cloudflare or whatever, is exercising their free speech by saying "We care so much about free speech, we'll amplify these jerk's speech".
I agree that expecting someone to do this for you is indeed a privilege, not a right.
So I'd say the difference between your comments is more semantic than anything. Parent commentor doesn't really imply everyone has a right to this kind of amplification.
To discuss does not legitimize. If you are fearful of an idea being debated, that says more about you than the idea.
Calling humans "monkeys" is not debate.
Why should Cloudflare be morally obligated to offer free speech to Daily Stormer, when Daily Stormer doesn't offer free speech to non-racist non-murderers?
Freedom of speech is a core democratic principle. You can't have a democracy without freedom of speech. It doesn't really matter if the censorship is done by a few big corporations or the government. The effect is the same. If some ideas become wrongthink and can't be distributed or discussed, democracy dies.
Sure, it starts with the most extreme, least defensible things. Like stormfront. But it won't stop there. Before you know it any speech even mildly critical of immigration is silenced and you get the situation going on in Europe.
What happens when the next red scare happens? Politics is like a pendulum - it goes back and forth. Just a generation ago Communism was the persecuted ideology. People on the far left were blacklisted, silenced, and discriminated against. Was that ok with you? You want it to be 10x worse next time, by establishing a culture with no tolerance of differing opinions? Because that is where we are heading.
Defending freedom means defending undesirables first. Because undesirables are always the people who benefit most from freedom. Copyright violaters are the first people to adopt torrents. Pedophiles are the first people to adopt tor. Hackers and drug dealers are the biggest adopters of bitcoin. Undesirable extremists are going to be the group to benefit the most from free expression.
This seems... odd. I don't think right now there's any (western) European country where this occurs. Sure: it has occurred and has contributed to a backlash against 'political correctness'. But this doesn't sound like a description of the Europe I live in. Just the stereotypical Europe shown on some american TV, where muslims run a lot of cities and all ghettos are offlimits to non-muslims.
Free speech isn't responsible for genocide; the electorate is.
Excuse me while I enjoy the benefits of our fascist socialism.
And most Americans are opposed to shit like the Hobby Lobby crap, just like most Europeans are opposed to what Russia does.
Also, cut out the whataboutism. It's dishonest.
No, you shouldn't if they are based on hate
Countries that allow this kind of "political support" are idiotic.
The main difference between Europe and USA is that we Europeans have learned from our past mistakes
If money wasn't speech, the government would easily be able stifle speech simply by limiting what advertising and promotions a corporation could do. So the ruling and legal precept are prefectly valid.
Aside from that, "based on hate" is a completely meaningless phrase. It's great for creating stuff like "blasphemy laws" though, I suppose. In your opinion, should I not be able to insult Scientology? Is criticism "hate?" Are insults? What about making a negative documentary about Catholicism, or any other religion?
>The main difference between Europe and USA is that we Europeans have learned from our past mistakes
Are you sure? Europe doesn't seem too stable lately.
Political influence reform is a whole separate issue and I think the problems are structural and go much deeper than just "corporate money in politics."
Personally, I think the idea of a "representative" democracy is simply outdated and problematic. Representatives can be bought, and that will always be the case. I'd prefer to see more direct democracy (with constitutional constraints.) I believe you'll see society gradually transitioning towards that, as in California.
Of course you can
But then you have to suffer the consequences if what you said is against the law
For example if you say that scientology is a cult, it's your right to say so
If you say that members of scientology are pedophiles without any proof, it's not
When a right has no limits it's not a right anymore, it's a privilege
> What about making a negative documentary about Catholicism, or any other religion?
Seriously, if you don't get the difference between criticism and hate speech, I can't help you.
BTW, you can't say lightly anything bad about Scientology for the same reason Citizen United is a threat to freedom
They can throw an enormous amount of money to "the problem"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_and_law#Cases_in_t...
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/09/us/scientology-s-puzzling-...
http://www.sptimes.com/News/32899/TampaBay/Hardball.html
> Are you sure? Europe doesn't seem too stable lately.
Still not killing each other in the streets over a stupid statue
You're obviously pro-free speech. But surely, if speech is so important, it is also important to make sure it can be effective. If one waters down definitions like that, the ability to speak effectively against dangers diminishes.
I'm an european, way too young to have seen WWII. But I deal with its broad consequences, that still permeate society and psyche in subtle ways, daily. To see the evil of fascism repurposed to mean something else, just makes me sad. Don't screw up our heritage please.
Then how, as an American, do you justify Ag_gag laws?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag
It seems to me that free speech values in the US are not quite as absolute as you make them out to be. Especially when the interest of powerful people or big corporations come to play.
I don't, and they have been repeatedly struck down by our courts. Checks and balances between overzealous legislators and our judicial branch.
Pointing at them is classic whataboutism. We have problems in the US. We mostly confront them headon rather than pretending they don't exist. Suppression of speech is pretending they don't exist.
Another example: Americans are constantly blasted by Europeans for racism. Racism is a very real problem in America - That's why groups like Black Lives Matter exist. We deal with these problems with speech, like the aforementioned group. As such, some fairly basic indicators, like the public opinion on miscegenation have been trending in a good direction - Less than 20% of America disapproves of it[1]. The data is not quite quantified in the same way, but there's an argument that in Germany, that number is more than 40%[2]. Across the EU, 35% of people would be upset if their child were dating a black person. The numbers are not directly comparable - The US numbers are about interracial marriage as a whole, not personalizing it about "your child", and I've seen firsthand that there's a difference. But those aren't numbers that swing that far. It might be equally bad, it might be a little worse in the US. It's not the sea change that it's so often presented as - Racism is a global problem, not a US one.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_Un... [2]http://www.equineteurope.org/IMG/pdf/ebs_437_en.pdf
I don't think that my comment was whataboutism. Not when I reply to the following quote:
"As an American, I look down on the limits of speech in Europe with disdain"
Which implicitly puts an absolute to free speech in America. Which it's most definitely not.
I come from Italy, parents in Italy are upset even if you ask them what they think about their children marrying someone from the village 2 Kms away from theirs
But then they won't shoot anybody who does it
It's not really racism.
it's old people being old
It was the result of a weak, young democracy that couldn't/wouldn't stop political parties raising private armies and beating the crap out of their opponents, combined with deep seated cultural problems (resentment at the outcome of WW1, latent anti-semitism etc).
If you really believe suppression of free speech stops dictators committing horrible crimes, explain Stalin.
The communist rise to power was an actual civil war. Hitler rose to power by democratic election (assisted by violent thugs and demagoguery and ultimately corruption but still an election).
Some of the unwritten standards by which we judge an election democratic or not are things like "do people get beaten up for campaigning". When we see violence and then a leader who wins 97% of the vote in places like Africa, we don't hesitate to call it a sham democracy. Why would we do differently for Germany?
May 1924: 6.6%
December 1924: 3.0%
May 1928: 2.6%
September 1930: 18.3% (second largest party)
July 1932: 37.4%
November 1932: 33.1%
March 1933: 43.9% (last free election)
November 1933: 92.1%
March 1936: 98.8%
April 1938: 99.1%
Also note that by that point the government had been destabilized since the 1920s, ruling only with an absolute minority of the votes.
In 1930 the left-wing parties (KPD and SPD) actually campaigned against ever having another war with very successful demonstrations.
The NSDAP campaign in 1930 was the first campaign organised by Goebbels. It was based on conspiracy theories like the economical crisis being an international conspiracy against Germany, appeals to national identity, scaremongering against communism and capitalism. They actually toned down the anti-semitism on Goebbels' orders.
This was a "small government" democracy in action. An unstable one, yes, but the elections were democratic. The Nazis exploited the instability of the government and the economy and they used scaremongering and demagoguery to get the relative majority, but they won democratic elections and they had a significant share of the votes before being in a position to force the outcome.
Even in the last election you label as "free" the Nazis had stormtroopers on the street, no? And a significant reason they were able to win the Enabling Act was because they simply blocked other politicians from turning up at all, and violently threatened the ones who did? Or am I misremembering history?
By the time the 1933 election happened, Hitler was already chancellor and NSDAP thugs were openly assaulting political opponents. The reason I pointed it out as the "last free election" is that it was the last election that at least offered people the option to vote for someone else.
Starting with the election of 1930 the NSDAP had enough popular support to slowly force its way into dictatorship. Maybe this could have been prevented with a more stable political climate (i.e. a strong majority government and a less fragmented Reichstag) but there's no way around the fact that many millions of people voted for the NSDAP.
This is why every German who's familiar with their history is uncomfortable with the popularity of the right-wing nationalist AfD today. They may not be the NPD but they're certainly at risk of being enablers. This is also why openly anti-constitutional parties can be banned (but also why it's so difficult to do so).
EDIT: Let me reiterate my point for emphasis: While Hitler's rise to power wasn't exactly democratic, the NSDAP was only able to get him into that position because millions of people voted them into the Reichstag. How many people didn't vote for Hitler doesn't matter -- most Americans didn't vote for Trump either.
Democracy and freedom of speech are the primary bulwark against people like that, not the cause of it!
Note that while Germany does censor specific nazi symbolism to prevent a direct repeat of its own history, the constitution is actually written in a way that is not simply aimed against nazism but to uphold human dignity.
If you allow for humans to be dehumanised in political speech, for in-group/out-group rhetoric to be pushed to such limits that other humans are portrayed as subhuman or inherently worthless or evil, it doesn't matter whether you're a nazi or a communist or an anarchist.
Saying free speech is important because Hitler got rid of free speech is a false equivalency. It's like saying free trade is important because Stalin got rid of free trade. It's not either one or the other. You don't have to allow people to incite hatred in order to protect a society's freedom.
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1357
Free speech isn't just a paragraph in the American Constitution that appeared there out of nowhere. It's a larger cultural norm that allows you to share your ideas and, much more importantly, allows you to hear other people's ideas without censorship. Whether censorship comes from the government, university, or some megacorp is completely irrelevant to whether it is an infringement on free speech.
Right.
> Whether censorship comes from the government, university, or some megacorp is completely irrelevant to whether it is an infringement on free speech.
Wrong, unless you mean a university or corporation literally physically censoring you from communicating something. See sib response by dragonwriter. If a university disinvites a speaker or a corporation stops hosting someone customer's website, nobody's right to free speech was infringed upon. Sure, you may accuse them of acting against the spirit of the value of free speech, but that's their prerogative and they are in fact simultaneously exercising their own right to free speech by choosing not to host/amplify another's speech they find repugnant.
The consequence is that the private sector is a huge and critical part of how China censors information. Actual direct government censorship is relatively limited: it's all based on distributing vague principles to the private sector combined, with punishments for failure to comply. The result is people interpreting the principles in the most aggressive way possible.
In the west, governments have egged on progressive agendas and passed laws that punish various kinds of speech (e.g. "hate speech"). But most of the censorship is done by the private sector, who are trying to interpret vague principles in ways that'll avoid them being targeted for punishment. The fact that in the west the media and various ideological groupings have as much to do with it as a government agenda doesn't change the fact that most of the ensuring censorship is still run and managed by the private sector.
Sometimes that's true, sometimes it's not. If Google and Bing both decide to delist your website because they think it's "hateful" or some other reason you're out of luck. There are only two major English-language search engines.
If your Wordpress hosting provider doesn't want you, well, that's inconvenient but not the end of the world.
One problem with encouraging a culture of "free speech doesn't matter if you're a company" is that the type of speech that requires the most defence is the most unpopular kind, which means you can end up with all the offensive or challenging material lumped under one or two providers ... who are then vulnerable to other forms of attack by people who wish to crush speech they disagree with. It's really a lot more robust if everyone agrees that "I disagree with what you have to say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it".
I totally agree. I wasn't encouraging that attitude per se, but rather pointing out that free speech protections as they are implemented in the US protect the rights of private individuals/corporations to take either attitude towards the speech of others. And FWIW I can't really envision an alternate implementation that insures people abide by the robust interpretation of the value of free speech - at a certain point it falls to the public to continue to embrace free speech as a positive value.
Private censorship of what is transmitted by the censors' own resources is not only not an infringement of free speech, it is central to the essence of the concept of free speech.
Likewise, criticism of others' speech and advocacy against others amplifying or supporting it is also a central part of the idea of free speech.
Then you can pretty easily ask: civil rights protests? Using speech--and violence!--but not violating that contract. They tolerate all who extend that contract to them. LGBT activists? Using speech--and violence!--but not violating that contract. They tolerate all who extend that contract to them.
The daily st-literalnazipropaganda-ormer? violating that contract. Suppress it. Destroy it. No platform should allow it. Nazis in Charlottesville shouting "Jews will not replace us"? violating that contract. Suppress them. Make them fear. They do not tolerate all who extend them that contract.
I think that, while tolerance works well as a vague social value, trying to define it and draw a border around what it is or isn't will only result in destroying the rights of one's opposition. The word can be used in a variety of way in a variety of contexts; I would propose that any use of violence against someone for holding another idea is a form of intolerance, and from your comment it clearly seems that you disagree. The only "clear social contract of tolerance" is one that is tainted by everyone's political views. Where you would advocate for the removal of those who stand against LGBT rights, a religious Christian/Muslim/Jew would advocate for the removal of you for denying their right to speak their minds.
...the next word is "that", a qualifier. And that qualifier answers literally all your questions?
There is no successful formulation of absolute free speech, because then you must allow intolerance, which takes over. This isn't a new question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...
Let's apply my test: What happens if someone's religion mandates intolerance? Then they are violating the social contract of tolerance--we should not allow that to be done.
> a religious Christian/Muslim/Jew would advocate for the removal of you for denying their right to speak their minds.
They can speak their minds about anything they'd like, so long as they don't advocate for the suppression of the rights of others. That is the thing that is not allowed. Their right includes that qualifier; it is not an absolute right to speak. This qualifier is the safety net that stops a tolerant society from being eaten by intolerance.
(I am not saying that free speech as outlined in the US constitution, for instance, meets this formulation from a legal standpoint; I am saying that social mores do and should, and certainly private speech and private platforms should be formulated in this way.)
And one would posit that you could speak your mind about anything you'd like, so long as you don't advocate for suppressing their rights. From their perspective, what they are doing isn't even suppressing anyone's rights -- in their eyes, their God has mandated that doing so is _not_ a right. Everything is a matter of viewpoint, and in an alternate reality someone would be advocating for you to be silenced on the same basis.
What's your solution?
I gave a nice, uniform principle that allows as much as tolerance as is possible without eroding all of it. Many before me have offered it too. Again, it's not a new idea.
You pick it apart, claiming that in some (specifically intolerant of others) religious person's point of view, their magical god favoritism allows them to stigmatize people, so therefore my principle just doesn't work.
You're right: my principle excludes people. It excludes the intolerant, where intolerance is identified by the simple test I outlined. And that's it. That is all it excludes. It excludes people for their choices to harm others. But your hypothetical (again, specifically intolerant) person's magical god-favoritism instead excludes people for who they are. That's the difference.
So, we as a society can choose one of these ways or the other. And I argue we continue to treat tolerance as a social contract for the simple reason that the other option, free speech absolutism ...breaks. It erodes down to an intolerant society, where a violent few pry away the rights of everyone else. But if you treat tolerance as a social contract, the result is stable.
I hold a bit of a strong view, here. Criminalize actions. In all but the rarest if cases, speech should be protected.
If somebody tells you to go punch a Nazi, they shouldn't get in trouble. You should, if you go punch a Nazi. Not that I like Nazis, but that you shouldn't assault them when they aren't being violent or an immediate threat to your physical safety.
I only think speech should be punished when you can show demonstrable harm. Libel, slander, credible threats, and things like that. Some idiot yelling about gassing Jews isn't a credible threat, even if reprehensible. However, if they happen to have a gas chamber, and amassed a bunch of Jews, that's a credible threat - though I am going to guess their speech is the least of our concerns, if they got that far.
I don't want speech to be illegal, in all but the rarest of circumstances.
You can say that now because you're on the other side of the history.
But put yourself in the dorm room of someone organizing one of the first lunch counter sit-ins. That organizer is using their speech to convince a group of people not to tolerate the segregation that made it illegal for them to sit non-violently in a public place.
Now imagine a potential activist who agrees with your first paragraph hears the speech of this organizer. Do you really think it's clear that potential activist will end up participating in the sit-in?
edit: clarification
Let's see... whose speech is this organizer advocating intolerance against? It appears to be the business owners who say "some people cannot be here, because they are black."
So, the business owners are violating the social contract I outlined: their actions are intolerant. The organizer is, therefore, not breaking the contract.
Someone who followed the principle I argue for would land on the side of the protestors in this case.
So wait, when someone says "kill all Jews" that's an idea to be discussed, but when someone says "let's censor people who call for that" that's somehow worse, and not simply also speech you can also discuss?
By not letting people fucking recruit en masse, that's how.
> as someone who had multiple family members killed during the holocaust
Did you yourself ever try to actually discuss with actual Nazis, yes or no?
> Saying that the person who had to delete their response because of what "Nazis" said to them is even worse.
What? Where did I say that? I said they deleted their comment, probably because they realized they could be identified. Here's two bits of their comment (I wanted to reply to it that's why I had it open in another tab)
> when you try to discuss with Nazis, they will jump you and beat your ass and give the old college try to killing you if they are given a chance.
Then they describe how they actually had Nazis try that on them, and finally
> That's why I'm entirely and unflinchingly okay with being loud and eating the downvotes and the flags (oh no, downvotes and flags) when these people pop their heads up here. They can't try to kill me here. But they would if they could. Caping up for a societal autoimmune disease, the kind that infects your structures and subverts them so that they can kill you, is profoundly, profoundly unwise.
Your "ancestors" don't give you the right to just go on about how someone is a wuss about "sharing an unpopular opinion" by virtue of making up shit nobody said. And I'm also not trying to "shame" anyone into anything, you're projecting. I'm asking you, did you actually try what you suggest on the real deal, because so far the one person who isn't a virgin agrees with my opinion about sex, so to speak.
That's what I thought.
> Der wahre Grund für die unabwendbare, prinzipielle Überlegenheit aller totalitären Propaganda über die Propaganda aller anderen Parteien oder Regierungen ist, daß ihr Inhalt - jedenfalls für die Mitglieder der Bewegung und die Bevölkerung eines totalitären Landes - nichts mehr mit Meinungen zu tun hat, über die man streiten könnte, sondern zu einem ebenso unangreifbar realen Element ihres täglichen Lebens geworden ist, wie daß zwei mal zwei vier ist. Die Vorteile einer Propaganda, die sich niemals nur auf sich selbst und ihre Argumente verläßt, sondern zu der von vornherein "die Gewalt der Organisation hinzutritt", in der sie durch Gewalt ständig und unmittelbar verwirklicht, was sie sagt, sind so außerordentlich, daß es fast schon eine gefährliche Unterschätzung ihrer Möglichkeiten ist, sie noch mit dem Namen Propaganda zu belegen. Alle bloßen Argumente gegen sie, die ja aus einer Wirklichkeit stammen, welche die Bewegung ohnehin zu ändern verspricht, sind bereits im vorhinein dadurch disqualifiziert, daß die Massen die wirkliche Welt weder akzeptieren können noch akzeptieren wollen. Totalitäre Propaganda ist keine Propaganda im üblichen Sinn und kann daher nicht durch Gegenpropaganda widerlegt oder bekämpft werden. Sie ist Teil der totalitären Welt und wird nur mit ihr zusammen vernichtet.
-- Hannah Arendt, "Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft", page 537
I'm dog tired, but here's my attempt:
> The real reason for the unavoidable superiority in principle of all totalitarian propaganda against the propaganda of all other parties or governments is, that its content - at least for the members of the movement and the population of a totalitarian country - has nothing to do with opinions about which one could argue, but have become an equally invincible real element of their daily life, just like two and two making four. The advantage of a propaganda which never depends on itself and its arguments, but is ab initio "joined by the violence [or power] of the organization", in which it manifests through violence continually and directly what it claims, are so extraordinary, that it is nearly a dangerous underestimation of its possibilities to still call it propaganda. All mere arguments against it, which stem from a reality which the movement promises to change anyway, are already disqualified because the masses can't and don't want to accept the real world. Totalitarian propaganda isn't propaganda in the usual sense and therefore can't be fought or refuted with counter propaganda. It is part of the totalitarian world and gets destroyed only together with it.
I'm not saying she would support anything else I said, but she did write the above, in a book that should be mandatory reading but is not. Those who have ears and all that. Good night and good luck.
Has anyone here ever actually been near a group of, say, more than two actual nazi skinheads? Would you discuss their ideas in their basement?
I'm not for censorship either, but I know what would be needed to confront such people -- namely, going past their "ideas" and to the root, their fucked up, impotent personality -- isn't even allowed on HN. If you get personal here, you're gone. So that's laughable from the get go in a way.
Yet if you discuss "ideas" with a Nazi, you're just in endless quick sand. I tried discussing with Nazis, and I'm still up for it (I even tried discussing with pedophiles, but I totally noped out of there because it also achieved nothing and it was even more depressing than the Nazis). But I know the murderous cold that lingers there, and how no Nazi stands on their own. If you win the argument, you get a cold smile saying "just you wait", and that's it. Then you're back to square one. But if you didn't even try that you simply don't know what you're even talking about.
edit: take the guy who murdered one person and wounded 19 severely by driving with their car into protesters. His father died early and his mother didn't know what he was up to. I'll just say, this family could used help 10-15 years ago. I don't know how or by whom, but in a magical fantasy world, that would have been the correct solution -- now you can do nothing, just look at the spilled blood. If you want to prevent more of that, look at the people who are growing up with pain today... but by the time their fist is clenched beyond a point, it will take something special or very big to change them, and otherwise they will just hate or even kill, just dwindle mentally or even suicide. Hitler wasn't random, he's the prototype. Stalin wasn't random, he's the prototype. Mental issues are the problem, fucked up childhoods are the problem, not "ideas". Don't assume everybody is that far gone, but also don't delude yourself thinking this is about ideas. And frankly, too many people here aren't even on to themselves enough to meaningfully look at anyone else's personality, and should deal with their own obedience and hiding behind abstractions first.
They care about power, and they're fueled by hate. Their genius is their ability to use words as weapons, to strike at the weaknesses of a civilization as they are doing now in this free speech 'debate'. They'll use truth, or lies, as needed to get what they want. They're not bound by the usual rules framing debate.
During the Charlottesville attack this weekend, these assholes were all over the internet claiming that the attacker was actually an antifa socialist, doxxing an innocent person in the process. After that turned out to be of course false, did they express shame or regret at their lies? Of course not. They went onto the next justification, claiming that the driver had been 'provoked' into driving into the crowd. Now they have the fringe Alex Jones element claiming that the Nazis at this rally were Jewish actors.
That's what we're dealing with here. People need to get that through their heads and stop thinking that fascists can be reasonable. They're inherently unreasonable and they use that to their every advantage. They're not ashamed of lies, and they will tell different lies and different truths to different people to sow chaos, confusion and inaction amongst those who speak against them.
After they've won, let's see exactly how much they hold up their reverence for free speech as they're claiming to do now. They don't care about free speech. In fact I wouldn't even say they're necessarily against free speech. They don't care about ideas - they'll just kill anyone who gets in their way. They're using our reverence for free speech against us.
In some twisted way you could almost say they really are more evolved. Just as we are able to control animals in large groups by understanding their behavior and manipulating it, fascists dedicate their energies to manipulating human emotions and behaviors, both at the micro and macro level. By driving out all compassion from themselves, they open themselves up to actions and manipulations that most people would be prevented from doing by their human shame.
- Jean Paul-Sartre, Anti-Semite and the Jew
Someone has to determine what constitutes 'inciting violence'. There will be some websites that are targetted for shut down while some won't be; there is no way to get around this. What gets targetted will be the ones that go against the group who has the ability to choose the targets (a government agency or perhaps a private ISP).
Second, what stops a false flag from getting a site shutdown? If a site allows comments, a person hostile to the site could post a violent comment, and then you would have justification for shutting the site down.
Third, you will get false accusations. Take, for example, the civil rights movement in the sixties. You don't think state governments in the south wouldn't have accused the various protest groups as inciting violence? It doesn't matter that they were peaceful protests, they would have certainly argued that organizing sit ins and protest marches was a form of violence. While we might say, "Well clearly those were peacful and would be allowed to have their protest", that doesn't mean a court run by that same government wouldn't see differently. You don't think a southern court in the 60s would have sided with the government when they accused the civil rights groups of being violent?
Once you give the government an out to get around free speech requirements, they will take it whenever they can.
The current "out" is to let private companies run the entire infrastructure of speech itself. That's worrying.
"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
- Justice Louis Brandeis, Whitney vs California
Perhaps this is because not enough people are stepping up?
When was the last time you challenged a proclamation from some Fox News ditto head? When was the last time you looked at someone in your family spouting racist garbage and called them out on it?
"Exposure cures all" only works if someone is also willing to take on the challenge of creating the exposure.
You won’t see the same reaction when the story is about anti western Islamic propaganda. And I’m not talking about killing videos but speech that glorifies attacks for example in the same way that in the past day you can still read on the daily stormer how they glorify that domestic terrorism attack...
For the record I’m against any content of that nature but wake me up when it’s not only nazis that needs defending their free speech.
If you are not sure what you're saying is bullshit, just ask Aaron Swartz.
It's bullshit that western EU is worse than US.
Even if we consider my country, Italy, where we already had Berlusconi and the granddaughter of Mussolini is in the parliament.
USA don't learn from other countries mistakes.
And when they make their own mistakes (and we in Italy had suffered a lot because of them), they say "we are still better than you"
No, they're not.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15013897 [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-19/free-spee...
- it asserts USA is better than most western EU, it's false
- it asserts that freedom to hate is proof of more freedom, but if people are not protected against hate speech and hatred, nobody is really free
I will only use companies that always defend their customers for my own small business and personal sites.
[107] Bethania Palma (January 18, 2017). "Progressive Group Claims to 'Sting' Sting Video Maker James O'Keefe". Snopes. http://www.snopes.com/2017/01/18/dueling-stings
[108] Peter Hermann (January 25, 2017). "Meetings of activists planning to disrupt inauguration were infiltrated by conservative group". Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/meetings-...
[109] Hermann, Peter (March 7, 2017). "Protester pleads guilty to conspiring to disrupt DeploraBall for Trump supporters". The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/protester...
Right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, in that order.
Groups calling for their extermination, I'm not going to stand up for any of them, because they're actively working against the first of those three values.
What good is freedom of speech or assembly when you're being run over by a white supremacist in a Charger?
If that's a slippery slope--that ordering of values that prizes life over website hosting--then it's one I'm still content to stand on, because the alternative isn't taking us anywhere good right now.
White supremacists are disgusting.
Other race supremacists are disgusting.
Anarchists are disgusting.
Communists are disgusting.
People calling for dead cops are disgusting.
People looting and committing arson during protests are disgusting.
There's a lot of disgusting people out there, and I'm beyond tired of people trying to escalate things even further. If all this political tension in the US escalates to full-blown civil war, it will be to no credit of a single group, but the many who keep getting excused by mainstream politicians, political commentators and journalists.
The fun fact is that most of this could probably have been widely defused by allowing people to speak up in public, and then providing better counter-speech, but I guess that was hurting way too many feelings.
Free speech as a value and ideal must be content-neutral.
The ACLU understands this, which is why they defend such people.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2017/08/13/the-misguided-attacks-on...
Those trying to harm other people _must_ be less free to do so.
Freedom is not neutral
This is a tactic that seems to be more common recently: trying to equate expression of ideas with violence, and then claiming that violence is acceptable to suppress this supposed "speech violence".
it is indeed!
"This article reflects the tremendous interest in the freedom of information in the postwar years. The Soviet Union proposed an amendment that would deny this right to Nazi and fascist groups. This forced the drafters to discuss the question of how tolerant an already just society should be of intolerant groups like Nazis. Taking together Articles 19 and 7, they solved the dilemma by giving everyone two rights: the right to free speech (subject to the limitation of Article 29) and the right to be protected against hate speech."
they're granted by The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/udhr/article_19.html
"Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law."
I work for an ISP and I intentionally do not log user <-> IP address mappings. The time I've had to spend producing similar information in response to such requests is very minimal (basically, "sorry, we don't have that!").
I had a bogus DMCA takedown filed against a WP blog I have on a DH shared hosting account. DH went into my DB and took the post offline before they even notified me.
Had they bothered to notify me first or spend 5 min reading the blog they would have found it to be clearly fair use.
Anti-fa violence is investigated, but the levels of actual recorded violence, and threats of violence, from anti-fa groups is minuscule when compared to that from white supremacists.
They're simply not comparable.
White supremacists have already murdered people in the US, sometimes in mass killings.
https://beta.code.dccouncil.us/dc/council/code/sections/22-1...
The rioters broke DC law. Nothing scary, nothing shocking, it's a click bait title and nothing more.
Perhaps Trump had issues "untangling motives" hence the delay: http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/9/obama-says-moti...
On not knowing all the facts. That's never stopped Trump before when a brown person was the perpetrator
An automobile isn't a missile. One is designed for war and destruction, the other is a mode of transportation that can be used as a weapon.
Is terrorism the next english word that americans ruin?
Emotions are running too hot.
We dont need political violence and any more escalation.
Dont believe me. How about the atlantic? https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/534192/ How about cnn ? https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/08/14/us/what-is-antifa-trnd/in...
Edit: ¡No pasaran!
Historically the police have a poor track record when it comes to choosing sides in the fight against fascism
If you think antifa has too many anarchists and communists, maybe it's time to mask up and help
Don't expect sympathy.
https://mobile.twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?la...
Source: https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/we-fight-for-the-users/
Which is exactly a manifestation of the point about "chilling effects" on speech pointed out by many other comments in these threads.
Your statement above expresses a fear to access the site (if even just to judge for yourself what the site contains) due to your IP address potentially being linked in some govt. database with agreeing with the site.
This is exactly why the right to free speech is set forth in the first amendment to the US constitution. To prevent just this sort of govt. suppression in the first place.
How many people have they killed recently? Are they marching through the streets ripping off Nazi salutes?
If there aren't any nazis, a good old international summit will do.
Notably: this failed in the case of Nazi Germany, rather profoundly.
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/RCGDd2Gt...
I'm impressed by that.
Not sure I agree, but it is well argued and written.
(And yes, I know Rehage from his extended perambulation....)
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/RCGDd2Gt...