Freedom of Speech Isn't About Speech | Hacker News Reader

Freedom of Speech Isn't About Speech

geoff.greer.fm

54 pointsexolymph100 comments

I think a common failure (intentional or not) in discussing free speech is isolating free speech absolutism from the sort of free speech that we'd be happy to accept in a liberal, open society.

Speaking practically and from the absolutist perspective, there should be no legal penalty for inciting others to violence. However, I think that (nearly) all of us recognize the importance of motive in cases -- we rightfully recognize both the inciter and the mob and assign blame commensurately. Most of us, I think, would not want to live in a society where inciting panic or violence is at least morally neutral. If that's the case and we think that the laws should reflect such a judgement, then it follows that open societies must (counterintuitively) place restrictions on free speech.[1]

Geoff makes good points, and he uses good sources to advance those points. But we should not think that Paine or Mill would be comfortable with the absolutist rhetoric that they get applied popularly to today.

[1]: Karl Popper called this the "Paradox of Tolerance."

You misunderstand me. I thought it was clear that I was talking about ideas, not threats or inciting mobs. You'll have a hard time finding any self-described free speech absolutist who thinks those should be permitted.

Is it always clear when it’s one or the other? If I say “western society is decadent and as such should be overthrown” is that an idea or an incitement to violence?

It's usually pretty clear, and if it's not then it's best to err on the side of free speech. Declaring one's desire to overthrow western society is not a threat or an incitement to violence. Here's an example of what counts as free speech in the US: "If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J."[1] It has to be a true threat. Likewise, inciting a mob only applies to actual mobs on the verge of violence.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threatening_the_President_of_t...

  It's usually pretty clear

Is it?

Seems to me if I wanted to preach hate I'd wrap it in allusions, hypotheticals and you-know-what-I-mean

Maybe letting that stuff through is the cost of free speech?

He's not saying "it's clear when someone is preaching hate" (it is certainly often couched in oblique language to avoid attracting ire and opposition), he's saying, "it's pretty clear when someone is making a threat or incitement to imminent, actual violence."

Neither "The Jews will not replace us" nor "euthanize the rentiers" constitutes an imminent threat of violence.

How imminent and serious does it need to be for us to ban it?

I would say the second one does.

> You misunderstand me. I thought it was clear that I was talking about ideas, not threats or inciting mobs.

And who decides what's an "idea" and what's "threats or inciting mobs"?

Would you be happy for the British government to say that of course the colonists have the right to free speech, but many of them are advocating threats and inciting mobs, which isn't allowed? Or for the king of Thailand to say the same thing about those who insult the king? Or for the Spanish government to say the same thing about Catalonian politicians? Or for Trump to say this about the women's march?

What is a threat or a mob? Is a group of Nazis in Nazi uniforms marching down the street saying Nazi things somehow not a threat or a mob? The ACLU believes they have a right to free speech!

Oh the other hand what about, Milo pushing his followers to send Leslie Jones racist imagery and slurs on Twitter? Is that an idea, or inciting a mob?

Yup, exactly. To be clear about my position, I believe that "free speech" is an impractical ideal, and we as a society need to be clear about what sorts of speech we value and what we don't, and if we don't do that, we're left with one of two bad options: either we have to err so hard on the side of free speech that we can't ban threats or incitement to violence or anything at all, or we let the government define "threats" in a way that is prone to government abuse just like everything else is.

As the OP says, if you ban speech you are marking it as permanently unthinkable.

In the case of, say, social media platforms banning violent threats against their other users, is that a bad thing?

That's asserted by the OP, but I don't think that claim is supported by the OP or by his sources.

I argue that banning speech (as a speech act) and banning ideas are different things. To pick a sort of pedantic counterexample, banning me from yelling a racial slur at you in public more than once isn't making anything unthinkable. I can yell it once, other people can yell it at you, I can yell it at others, people can record the yell on YouTube, etc.

So, I agree with OP's argument that we should not ban ideas, and I do agree that speech is necessary to communicate ideas (of course), but I think that banning some speech acts can be entirely defensible.

(Also, remember that every functioning advanced society bans several forms of speech already - a good example is that I am banned from using a trademark without authorization from the trademark holder, or from reproducing copyrighted material, or from making defamatory claims.)

There does need to be some sort of sane standard for determining whether something counts as a threat/incitement if they're not going to be permitted.

Say I'm very popular on twitter, and say I don't like somebody for whatever reason. If there's a reasonable expectation that this will result in them being mobbed by my less personable followers, does that count as incitement?

Or at what point does aggressive banter in good faith become an actual threat in [favorite multiplayer video game]?

I think we're not even at that point, yet. On Twitter, there are lots of people who receive violent threats, and they're told by Twitter that those are not a violation of the ToS.

I understood you, but I think that you conflated freedom of conscience with freedom of speech. Freedom of conscience seems pretty uncontroversial, and it's what Paine is talking about in the quote you gave (on my interpretation).

I think everybody agrees that freedom of conscience is both good and necessary in an open society. However, it's incorrect to think that absolute freedom of speech necessarily follows.

> You'll have a hard time finding any self-described free speech absolutist who thinks those should be permitted.

I've debated people who believe this. You and I don't have to agree with them, but they exist.

How can anyone be said to have freedom of conscience when the range of thought they may encounter is circumscribed by censors?

First, the cases I've listed aren't ambitious ones -- there are no censors, only public courts looking at a case after the fact to determine whether someone's speech was indeed inciteful.

Second, how can anybody discover facts about the world if they haven't been discovered yet? Truth and thought are not contingent upon prior art; at best, they just speed it up a bit.

> I understood you

I'm sorry but you don't. (Also, don't I get to decide that, not you?)

> Freedom of conscience seems pretty uncontroversial, and it's what Paine is talking about in the quote you gave (on my interpretation).

Paine and Mill weren't just talking about freedom of conscience or thought. Paine thought it crucial to hear others' ideas so that he could avoid being wrong. That requires the ideas be expressed. Likewise with Mill. Chapter 2 of On Liberty is titled "Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion"[1]. Throughout the text, Mill defends expression as well as thought, and condemns the silencing of any expression of opinion:

> But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it.

1. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Liberty/Chapter_2

> I'm sorry but you don't. (Also, don't I get to decide that, not you?)

Yes, you do. Sorry if that came off as blunt - I only think that I understood you.

You're right that Mill considers both thought and speech in On Liberty, which is why I said Paine and not Mill.

That being said, Mill should be taken holistically -- he's a Utilitarian[1], and is firmly committed to his version of the principle of utility (the "Greatest Happiness Principle"). Reading a practical prescription of free speech as a moral (or even lesser, legal) prescription would lead to a contradiction in any circumstance where the GHP says that restricting speech would promote happiness (e.g., where incitement leads to murder).

[1]: Specifically, on my interpretation, he's an act utilitarian. I've seen him read as an rule utilitarian (and parts 4 and on of his Utilitarianism can support that reading), but his first formulation of the GHP is pretty unambiguous:

> [...] actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness [...]

I am going to discuss the concept of "free speech", not government regulation, because I don't think anyone at Charlottesville was arrested for just marching.

The issue I have with the whole rational argument thing is that having to argue constantly and entertain every other opposing view requires me to expend time and energy to understanding viewpoints I disagree with. Why is the onus on me to understand others instead of them having to convince me?

This is a debating tactic: you put the other chap on defense, forcing them to respond, which puts them in a weaker position. White supremacists, racists, climate deniers, and the like use this tactic online all the time, they pose dumb questions and make challenges, citing obscure sources that take time to prove false, all the while, they get what they want: they put you on defense taking time to defend the consensus while they have to demonstrate nothing in the meantime. These arguments get nowhere, because the people who posed them never were genuine in the first place. The intent was always to spread FUD and convince the uninformed that there's enough doubt to at least entertain the idea, and by the time you post your multi-paragraph reply (like I am here), most of the crowds' eyes have glazed over and the trolls already accomplished what they set out for.

It gets to a point where these tactics are so tired that internet communities silence these voices wholesale, like here on HN, we don't rehash emacs vs vi or things like that over and over again and admins generally flag political threads. I know dang says they do it to keep the community from turning toxic, but the reason it gets toxic is because ideologues aren't really interested in an honest conversation, toxicity is their goal as I alluded to above. On a more personal level, you learn to not really entertain people when they bring up the Bell Curve or how "global cooling became global warming", and that isn't being close minded, that is not choosing not to feed the trolls.

> Freedom of conscience seems pretty uncontroversial, and it's what Paine is talking about in the quote you gave (on my interpretation).

I don't see how you can limit that quote to freedom of conscience. He is clearly talking about the spread of opinions and debate on them i.e. speech.

> I think everybody agrees that freedom of conscience is both good and necessary in an open society.

No, everybody doesn't This is why we have a supreme court cases about forcing businesses to make wedding cakes for gay marriage. We have pretty uncontroversial laws preventing people who have racist believes from discriminating based on those beliefs.

Freedom of Conscience and Speech both need limitations. This article isn't really about that at all anyway. This article is about talking about the reasons why we should value Free Speech.

I think you'll find a lot of people who will disagree what constitutes "threats or inciting mobs".

Though tangential to the points in the article, there's also a common failure to distinguish between freedom from infringement of speech by the government, and freedom from infringement by private parties. The former is guaranteed by the federal government; the latter is not (though some states provide limited protections [1]).

Not to mention failure to distinguish exercise of free speech (permitted) from discrimination against protected classes (prohibited). (The old "I'm exercising my right to free speech by refusing to provide gays/blacks/etc. services" argument.) "My rights end where your rights begin" is an important pillar of modern society that really precludes any sort of absolutism about free speech.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_...

Both government and private parties can pose separate risks to free speech, but the value of freedom of speech in a society does not change based on where those risks are coming from.

The point your are making is against the strawman argument that the first amendment should prohibit private companies editorial decisions. I haven't seen anyone making that claim.

When the bill of rights was drafted, it was inconceivable that any company would have the level of control over speech that companies have today.

I can't follow whether you're arguing for or against interpreting the first amendment as prohibiting restriction of speech by private entities. (Your 2nd paragraph seems against, but your 3rd paragraph seems for.)

Regardless, I'm not arguing either, I'm stating facts backed by case law as outlined in the linked Wikipedia article to support the thesis that the phrase "free speech" is used to mean many different things, often to deliberately confound discussion on the topic. If supporters of "free speech" clarified what exactly what flavor of "free speech" they are talking about (1st amendment prohibition of federal restrictions; imagined prohibition of private restrictions; ability to override rights of protected classes) I suspect we'd have fewer, and more productive, discussions.

Unfortunately such precision of language is hard to come by in this brave new world of emotion-driven discource and deliberately confounded communication.

> I can't follow whether you're arguing for or against interpreting the first amendment as prohibiting restriction of speech by private entities.

That might be because I thought it was obvious that the second amendment doesn't prohibit private entities from restricting speech. In fact, it is much more likely to prevent Congress from passing any law to limit the abilities of private entities to limit speech (since those editorial decisions count as speech.)

> If supporters of "free speech" clarified what exactly what flavor of "free speech" they are talking about (1st amendment prohibition of federal restrictions;

My point is that there is no "flavor" of free speech only "flavors" of censorship. The importance of freedom of speech and its value to society does not change based on which "flavors" of censorship are being used.

Ultimately, our misunderstandings might be based on you trying to refute an argument which does not occur in the article and of which you provide no concrete examples.

But there are flavors of free speech. I, for one, don't believe that violent threats fall under free speech. I don't believe that makes me against free speech.

Violent threats are already illegal and I haven't seen anyone here arguing to make them legal. What is your point?

I see plenty of people saying that all speech should be legal, and that sites like Twitter shouldn't police any speech. That would include violent threats.

> I see plenty of people saying that all speech should be legal

So why don't you go argue with them on a platform where they exist? I haven't see anyone making that claim here or in the article. Again, what is you point?

> sites like Twitter shouldn't police any speech. That would include violent threats

Generally we leave enforcement of the laws to law enforcement officials. Twitter should give out the information needed to prosecute that illegal speech and send those people to jail, not be in the business of determining what speech is illegal in a way where all of the protections of our legal system are lost.

I see plenty of people making that argument, so I don't think you could really call it a strawman.

I've seen nobody here making that argument, and since it is presented as 'common' but with no concrete examples I am plenty happy calling it a strawman argument.

Here? No. But online? Yes.

You are operating/arguing from the neutral reality perspective-- that is to say, that "we as a society" exists as a concrete entity that can pass laws. But that's not the case. We are not the government, far from it. The government is a collection of people who have power over us.

Many of them are corrupt and will do evil-- just imagine the worse member of the political party you disagree with as a dictator.

Every time you want to give government power to the government, imagine that guy as a dictator wielding that power.

Any limitations, as we have seen, on human rights become the camel nose under the tent, and then you eventually end up with government violating the right wholesale. (eg: secret courts and secret rulings, National Security Letters an the like, illegal surveillance and wiretapping.)

While inciting a mob to violence can be considered immoral, it is the violence that is the crime... the action.... not the opinion.

"You are operating/arguing from the neutral reality perspective-- that is to say, that "we as a society" exists as a concrete entity that can pass laws. But that's not the case. We are not the government, far from it. The government is a collection of people who have power over us."

That we, the people, choose (a least in non-dictatorship countries).

"While inciting a mob to violence can be considered immoral, it is the violence that is the crime... the action.... not the opinion."

Taken to extremes, that means that hiring a hit man, or ordering someone in your cult to kill someone isn't responsible. And yet, as a society, we've said otherwise.

This argument is patently false. As soon as you give them the power to censor speech, we stop choosing the government - They choose themselves, by deciding what we can and cannot say, who we can and cannot hear from, who gets to even announce their candidacy. See https://youtu.be/c1HdCIW2Xtk - We're not China, but they're not even using their official power to censor, just misusing their official power to look the other way while their unofficial power censors. This is why we need adversarial politics - And why even trolls must be protected speech, because they serve as a canary in the coal mine about what you're not allowed to say.

> Any limitations, as we have seen, on human rights become the camel nose under the tent, and then you eventually end up with government violating the right wholesale. (eg: secret courts and secret rulings, National Security Letters an the like, illegal surveillance and wiretapping.)

Free speech in Canada does not allow for hate speech or inciting violence, and we're at least no worse than the USA for whatever violations of the right.

In Canada it is illegal to refer to somebody by anything other than their preferred gender...

The camel's nose is in the tent in your country. Good luck getting rid of it. Hate speech laws are blasphemy laws wearing a secular skirt. They will be expanded to persecute political minorities.

http://www.torontosun.com/2017/09/20/m-103-weaponizes-what-a...

https://www.catholicregister.org/item/26111-m-103-could-brin...

Thanks to the internet I’m sure you still get plenty of exposure to America’s actually free speech.

You're saying that like being bombarded with hate speech is a good thing.

> While inciting a mob to violence can be considered immoral, it is the violence that is the crime... the action.... not the opinion.

Instead of a mob, what if I use speech to sic a dangerous dog on someone?

The incitement is no different – the dog isn't thinking rationally, nor is anyone in the mob ("mob mentality"). In both cases the inciter is directing the action.

Of course, you can't legally try a dog… but you can't practically try a mob.

Same with war crimes. Should generals not be held accountable for genocides under their orders, if they never personally murdered any civilians? After all, they were just saying words.

> The government is a collection of people who have power over us.

Where I live, they have power over me because the people put them there. We can (and absolutely should) talk about corruption and the erosion of popular rule, but I don't think we should succumb to such a fatalist view.

> While inciting a mob to violence can be considered immoral, it is the violence that is the crime... the action.... not the opinion.

Read my argument again. If inciting a mob to violence is immoral and we accept that the law should reflect that judgement, then it follows that incitement itself should be a crime (and, in fact, is a crime).

>Many of them are corrupt and will do evil-- just imagine the worse member of the political party you disagree with as a dictator.

I personally see very little utility in this thought experiment because this isn't reality. There is a reason why we have a government in the first place, and we risk loss to liberty and freedom by making the government too weak. It's a balancing act, and imagining the worst case should not be an argument for what reality requires.

For example, imagine the government was full of rational dictators who had my best interests in mind. Should I give them absolute power? That too is unrealistic, so why make arguments based on it.

> Karl Popper called this the "Paradox of Tolerance."

Popper was talking about a last resort, not something which should be applied as a blanket policy of suppression of "unacceptable" viewpoints.

This gross misreading of Popper's thoughts on free speech was popularized by a cartoon which went flying around social media after Charlottesville. But here's what he actually said on the subject:

> I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise.

I was familiar with Popper well before Charlottesville, and that footnote only refers to the same paradox, not the same argument.

In any case, Sarte seems more applicable to our current rash of "ironic" intolerance:

> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

Popper is indeed the best articulation of the caveat of the OP. We must be intolerant of intolerance. And intolerance is defined as ideas that attack others based on inalienable aspects (skin color, lineage and the like) or intrinsic to our understanding of self determination that does not impinge on the rights of others (religion, beliefs, sexual orientation and the like).

This is spot on. Most people who are calling for censorship don't have an ideological backing behind their stance and just want to violently shut their opponents up, while somehow believing they are righteous.

"Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."

-- Walter in The Big Lebowski

You're not wrong Walter you're just an asshole.

I really don't think so. I don't think persons of color not want to be constantly assailed with racism online fall into that category. Women not wanting to be assailed with death and rape threats on line don't fall into that category.

It's fine for people to not want to read things online. What's not fine is giving them the power to prevent those things from being written.

In the cases I listed above, I cannot agree. I think it is perfectly fine to prevent rape threats from being written. I don't believe things like that fall under free speech.

And while we're on the subject of preventing speech, realize that, if you're of the mind that we should allow those things, you're not preventing speech from being silenced. You're just changing the speech that is silenced. Someone who is constantly bombarded with racism or violent threats online is less likely to contribute their voice to conversation.

There's a big difference between "I stopped contributing because people said things that upset me" and "I got arrested for saying something." I don't accept the premise that people who are upset by what they read are somehow shut out of the conversation.

Yet, they are. And as for the "I was arrested for saying something," I think that can be pretty disingenuous, given that "something" can range from "All (ethnic group) are a bunch of (ethnic slur)" to violent threats. I don't believe the first one should be an arrestable offense, but I don't believe that either of them have a place in polite society.

In the past I had an account whose handle people would often assume was a woman. I liked to discuss politics and so I'd disagree with people, and I ended up disagreeing with people on the right and the left.

The only death and rape threats that account received were from the left.

Your anecdote is not data. I never mentioned anything about a political "side", and you'd be pretty hard pressed to make the claim that the right does not do that.

It seems actually like both those groups fit perfectly in that category. Should they feel differently? Who am I to say (probably not).

"It’s commonly assumed that freedom of speech is about the right of the speaker to express their ideas"

... without government interference. However, it is fully within the rights of the audience to condone, chastise, avoid, and laugh at the speaker.

To prohibit the audience from that reaction would be to suppress their free speech.

Freedom of association also requires that a group be able to prevent speech in the context of a group assembly.

"Who decides what to censor?"

Who is calling for government censorship of which expression? This essay sounds like a completely different discussion on free speech than what I am used to hearing, and I don't understand the context.

"If you ask, “Who should decide which ideas you may hear or read?”, people boggle."

Most people don't seem to boggle about porn filters or automatic spam rejection. The books "Ulysses", "Lady Chatterley's Lover", and "Memoirs of Hecate County" were once banned in the US.

While I don't agree with those bans, I bring it up to point out that people don't always boggle.

"So we ban Mein Kampf."

Who is proposing that we ban it? I understand that it's rhetorical, but it doesn't sound like a serious example of anything in the current discourse.

As I understand it, the question is, should organizations like a public university have some ability to override a student group which has selected a contentious external speaker to speak, given that the event uses university subsidized facilities and security staff.

That's hardly calling for a ban on Mein Kampf.

The point they made doesn’t just apply to government

I know that's the argument, but it's not true.

The US First Amendment isn't just the right to free speech. It also includes the freedom of assembly. There is a necessary balance between these two. Or, to go back to John Stuart Mill:

> This, then, is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises, first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual which concerns other people; but, being almost of as much importance as the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same reasons, is practically inseparable from it. Secondly, the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow: without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. Thirdly, from this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, within the same limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others: the persons combining being supposed to be of full age, and not forced or deceived.

That "liberty of expressing and publishing opinions" is the the freedom of speech. The "freedom to unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others" is the freedom of assembly.

The freedom of assembly - often seen as synonymous with the freedom of association - means that a group must be allowed to expel people from the group or prevent people from joining the group. A group must be allowed to control who speaks at a group's meeting or uses a group's resources. (This is not absolute, as you can see in civil rights laws prevent businesses from certain behaviors.)

Without this freedom, a minority group can easily be overwhelmed by a majority who decides to use the heckler's veto.

For all of the people who say that "free speech" is not restricted to government restrictions on speech, why do you want to weaken the right to assembly?

"Free Speech" is a valuable trait of a society. Government restrictions on that speech were (and still are) the largest threat to that freedom when the bill of rights was written.

We have reached a point where government is not the only entity with the power to severely restrict the freedom of speech in our society.

Is the solution to this to pass a new law or make a new amendment curtailing freedom of associated? I personally don't think we have the political capability to write that law well, (even if it wasn't a horrible idea.)

But that doesn't mean we should should pushing, encouraging and shaming these private entities into doing MORE censorship and doing our best as private entities to limit the freedom of speech that exists in our society.

Strong anti-monopoly laws which break up Google and Facebook would solve the problem, yes?

Without touching the freedom of assembly or speech.

I'm not saying it's the best solution, but bring it up to point out that it's important to also consider the economics which caused the problem to arise in the first place.

Remember, unrestrained capitalism doesn't incorporate human rights - as the slave trade shows.

> Strong anti-monopoly laws which break up Google and Facebook would solve the problem, yes?

While we do strongly need a revamp of our anti-monopoly laws, I don't think that really solves the problem.

The core problem as I see it is that people's goto approach for combating objectionable ideas is veering towards shaming, ostracizing, and censoring rather than reason, discussion and facts.

It’s not really practical to combat ideas with reason, after a while.

I vehemently disagree.

If you abandon reason, then you can only be right by pure coincidence.

If you vanquish ideas using means other than reason, then you have only vanquished bad ideas by pure coincidence.

And I disagree with that. Having to decry ever racist that pops up on Twitter with "reason" when they had no intention of debating in good faith in the first place is exhausting. And quite frankly, letting them run wild just means that other people are going to stop going there and contributing to the discourse. So now all you've done is succeeded in silencing marginalized people, which was their goal in the first place.

> Having to decry ever racist that pops up on Twitter with "reason" when they had no intention of debating in good faith in the first place is exhausting

That sounds exhausting. Maybe you should pick a couple of the ones that do appear to be interested in debating in good faith?

> letting them run wild just means that other people are going to stop going there and contributing to the discourse. So now all you've done is succeeded in silencing marginalized people, which was their goal in the first place.

And the alternative is to ban everything from twitter that people find offensive? I think that is a losing proposition. I'd much rather focus on promoting and spreading content from silenced and marginalized people to make sure their voices are heard and amplified.

Some trolls specialize in sealioning. It's hard to tell which ones are debating in good faith. Plus, assuming most are not debating in good faith then that still leaves us with the problem that the "other people are going to stop going there and contributing to the discourse".

Perhaps you can share from your experience in decrying racists on Twitter how you can distinguish one from the other?

"And the alternative is to ban everything from twitter that people find offensive"

Is banning from above the only solution you can think of?

One alternative is much more effective control tools.

Some people voluntarily use collaboratively developed blacklists of accounts to ignore. This is not censorship any more than kicking someone unruly out of your meeting in a library meeting room is censorship. (Old-style shared Usenet killfiles are also not censorship.)

Combine that with some collaboratively developed training corpus of spam/ham to filter your twitter stream.

Then have Twitter set up a few default filters, rather like "Safe Search" on Google.

Very few people say that GMail censors their email by automatically placing some messages into "Junk".

However, this will cost money, and likely not increase Twitter revenue. It might even decrease it. So why would they do it?

To be fair, "reason, discussion and facts" have always been malleable in the hands of the powerful. "The Divine Right of Kings" was based on them. So was "scientific racism".

You need to be careful because it's hard to define what shaming and ostracism mean. I think James Watson is a both misogynist and racist and I don't want to be part of a meeting where he is involved.

Am I shaming or ostracizing him, or am I practicing my rights of free speech and association?

In general, by what reason and what facts do you determine that my actions are no longer acceptable? If that happens, what can you do about it which won't, in turn, be labeled "shaming, ostracizing, and censoring"?

> You need to be careful because it's hard to define what shaming and ostracism mean.

I don't think it is. In any case, I am not trying to write a law so a solid definition is not necessary.

> I think James Watson is a both misogynist and racist and I don't want to be part of a meeting where he is involved.

James Watson was fired the way he was, not because of his words, but because of the internet's reaction to his words and Google's desire to get ahead of the news cycle. I suspect he will win or settle his court case against Google.

I don't know James Watson, you may be right. Do you know him? Have you talked to him? How do you know meetings with him involved would be bad?

I definitely think we would be better served if people have focused on picking apart his mis-used scientific terms, mistaken understanding of some experiments and rather incoherent argument. Instead people decided to loudly label him as sexist, push google into firing him, and push him straight into the waiting arms of the alt-right.

> Am I shaming or ostracizing him, or am I practicing my rights of free speech and association?

Both.

> To be fair, "reason, discussion and facts" have always been malleable in the hands of the powerful. "The Divine Right of Kings" was based on them. So was "scientific racism".

I fail to get your point... other than you think reason is useless?

> In general, by what reason and what facts do you determine that my actions are no longer acceptable? If that happens, what can you do about it which won't, in turn, be labeled "shaming, ostracizing, and censoring"?

When you violate the law, we will prosecute you and send you to prison. If you violate our organization's policy, we will discipline or fire you. If you say mean things to our other guests and show no remorse, we won't invite you to our house. If you tell me you think the holocaust didn't happen I will attempt to use reason and facts to discuss it with you.

"James Watson was fired the way he was"

Umm, pardon? I'm talking about the Nobel prize winner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson . I think you're thinking of James Damore? What sort of meetings do you think I would go to where Damore might speak?

"How do you know meetings with him involved would be bad?"

Watson's record is quite well documented. Some of them are: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=119772&page=1 , https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12835-james-watson-re... and https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fury-at-dna-pione...

Or for a personal report, at https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2017/05/29/jim-watso... :

> I had dinner with Watson at a small restaurant in New York several years ago. It was the most uncomfortable two hours of my life. All he wanted to talk about was race, and the conversation was all about our geneaology. He asked what my ancestry was, and when I told him half Scandinavian, half Scot/English/Irish he immediately judged me acceptable company, and started explaining my personality to me. Scandinavians are intelligent but cold and aloof, and share the same problems that the Japanese have: they are among the smartest people in the world, but they lack the passion and drive to accomplish great things. You know who may not be as intrinsically intelligent, but make up for it with their aggressive need to get things done? The Scots/Irish! Best people on the planet! The perfect combination of ambition and smarts! ... “So, Jim, what’s your ancestry?” “Scots/Irish!” he cackled.

His unfounded statements caused many others to avoid him ("ostricize" in your terms) so he missed out on speaking fees. In order to maintain his life style (which included buying some fancy artwork), he sold his Nobel Prize. http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/james-watson-the-f... . Someone bought it $4.1 million and gave it back to him.

You wrote "I fail to get your point... other than you think reason is useless?"

I said they were malleable. I didn't say useless.

Facts are interpreted in a framework. Who gets to decide the framework? It's usually those in power who pay for the scientists, and for "the facts", and that influences how those facts are discussed.

Quoting https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/a-brief-... on the controversy concerning Kennewick Man, "We sometimes forget that though the data should be pure and straightforward, science is done by people, who are never either."

This also of course raises the question of what the rights of the audience are in terms of their choice to listen or not. This becomes especially complicated with situations like the internet (where the barriers to engaging in conversation with other people are lower), or on property which isn't a completely open public forum all the time. Ex. free speech rights might be restricted in a library, even though it's government property, where that interferes with the ability of other people to use it.

"Ex. free speech rights might be restricted in a library"

These are "Time, Place, and Manner" restrictions. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Time%2c+Place%... . These are pretty well understood.

You also don't have the right to go through a neighborhood at 2am with a bullhorn talking about your political platform in the upcoming election.

What's at issue is that most internet sites are privately held, and such things as "free speech", which is a prohibition on government interference, have no real meaning. Groups, including companies, also have the right of association, and that includes the right to kick people out.

The government has some ability to restrict that right of association, as with the various civil rights protections regarding businesses. However, none of that analysis applies to, for example, one's ability to post videos to YouTube. In the US, the government can't even prohibit private clubs from discriminating on basis of race.

> Imagine our society passes laws to ban the publishing of abhorrent and bigoted ideas. No longer are people allowed to express racism, sexism, homophobia, or antisemitism. So we ban Mein Kampf.

Is this an actual proposal?

Most things I have seen in the discourse that seem to be objected to on free speech grounds are e.g. proposals to prevent certain speakers from speaking at colleges, proposals to prevent certain groups from having marches, proposals for certain discussion websites to ban particularly toxic/abusive users, etc.

This seems to me to be very different from banning Mein Kampf as a book. I think you can coherently believe in the above bans while also believing that Mein Kampf should be available on Project Gutenberg etc. for anyone to read and evaluate, for people to understand what is this scary book that people keep talking about, etc.

To take the example of banning speakers at colleges - I don't think any one of the people for whom no-platforming has been proposed lacks a platform of their own. They have websites. They have books. Their ideas are out there. If their ideas are in fact coherent enough for "the opportunity of exchanging error for truth," that debate can already happen.

If they aren't, the virtue-signaling approach of putting up "ideological minorities" in college lecture halls to say the exact same thing they've said 100 times before isn't going to help anyone reach truth.

When we "suppress speech", we aren't actually suppressing the utterance but rather limiting the audience.

This may seem like a good way to limit the spread of an idea and it will definitely reduce the spread in the short term.

However, people will always find a way to communicate (e.g. side channels and dog whistles develop). This means that eventually you've now only removed from the audience those who are the least susceptible to the idea and have the best tools for refuting it.

At this point, the idea is actually better able to spread within it's audience because dissenting voices have been isolated.

As you broaden the criteria for what is suppressed (used to be use of the N word, now includes mentioning any genetic component to differences in distributions of traits between genders), you end up driving more and more people into this isolated audience and encouraging the spread of very objectionable ideas to people who used to just have mildly objectionable ideas.

The more we allow private companies with monopolistic or oligopolistic products to push these voices out of the mainstream the worse off we will be in the long term as these ideas become more entrenched, isolated and difficult to remove.

The more we rely on shunning, ostracizing and public shaming as tools to battle objectionable ideas, the more we encourage the creation of communities that are fertile ground for those ideas to grow in.

[edit: minor grammar fixes]

But really, who is advocating the government do anything other than the fringes? The discussion around "Free Speech" is the concept, not the government's role in regulation of it or lack there of.

Are you saying that "hate speech" is a concept that is only adopted by the fringes? Doesn't seem to be that way to me.

20 years ago, it was the fringe. Now it seems like if it isn't mainstream, it is close. Certainly we see Canada and the UK passing laws eliminating free speech for political minorities.

Can you give me a link to evidence of this? Like an op-ed in a major publication or something? My first google shows articles that affirm "hate speech" is protected speech in the US.

I really can't speak for the UK or Canada. The US has free speech enshrined in the constitution's first amendment; and I'm not aware other countries have such constraints that are as absolute as the first amendment.

> But really, who is advocating the government do anything other than the fringes?

Former senator Harry Reid called for the repeal of the First Amendment in 2014, in response to the Citizens United ruling which held that the First Amendment protects the right to show a film critical of a political candidate prior to an election. Whether or not one supports that action, I'd say that's certainly not on the fringes.

Googled it and the only publications who discussed this were right wing publications. I think "repeal of the first ammendment" is hyperbole used mostly by those sets of authors.

Politifact seems to say it was about campaign finance[0]

[0] http://www.politifact.com/iowa/statements/2015/dec/22/ted-cr...

That is an incredibly uncharitable and biased take on things.

Free speech is part of the natural right of individuals to live and think without being oppressed by society.

Without being oppressed by law or legislation, not by society. It seems like a crowbar of distinction, I know, but it's an important distinction. You can still be ostracized for your speech and chided, as certain ideas should be given what the society values, but you shouldn't be jailed or prevented from speaking on public grounds, given proper permits/clearances.

It's also important to recognize that government is not society. Government to my mind is a mafia. A group of thugs that enforces its will and buys good will with a little charity while sucking the life out of the country (eg: massive inflation, taxation, regulation to favor their allied businesses, perpetrating drug wars and wars in other countries despite society opposing them, etc.)

If government represented society, we would not have a drug war, we would not be in so many wars, etc.

But how far does that go? Speech can also be used to suppress others. When Leslie Jones was bombarded with hate speech and racism on Twitter by members of Gamergate and the alt-right, she ended up quitting Twitter. That would qualify as oppression to most people. Now if you want to say something about Twitter, then fine. Replace Twitter with the public park.

These arguments presuppose that people value the truth. I've found, at least on Reddit, that most communities that have rampant censorship subscribe to indefensible ideas. For example, none of the science subreddit would consider banning someone who argues for Flat Earth, because scientists live for the opportunity to debate on the side of the truth.

However, certain subs such as T_D and LSC allow no challenge of their ideas, because they don't merit correctness and know that a debate of their ideologies is a contest that they will lose.

To paraphrase Dawkins, you cannot reason with people who don't value reason.

Indeed, free society forms a fixpoint of ideas, where it protects itself from being eaten by The State by insisting that any person can stand up and speak about free society. It is unfortunate that it also shields so many reprehensible opinions, but as usual, if the best thing you can say about an idea is that it is allowed in a free society, then perhaps that idea isn't worth much.

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