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Comment by Brendinooo | Hacker News Reader

No one born in the mid-80s onward ever faced an outside existential threat like Hitler or the Soviets. It's not hard to imagine that people who only know relative freedom have a harder time appreciating that freedom. The grass is always greener elsewhere.

Fear is a good answer here, though phrases like "helicopter parenting" and "victimhood culture" might bely some existing biases by the author. Perhaps the fear of the "other" tribe are driving these shifts; after all, I doubt that anyone who says they'd be in favor of restricting speech feel like their speech will be restricted.

And it's also possible that a decade or so of gridlock is taking its toll. If this is what freedom looks like, could you blame someone for wanting to try something different? Not saying that's true of me, but I can see how it would happen.

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Very fascinating. You argue that millennials favor restrictions on hate speech because they have not experienced anything like Hitler. Yet Germany censors hate speech precisely because of that history.

Hate speech is always a problem. "let's kill all the $value" isn't the type of free speech that most people are trying to preserve.

That's where the distinction between "hate" and "violence" comes in. (at least in the USA)

"Let's kill all the $X" is a call for violence. "I hate $X" isn't. It's hateful, but observably some values of $X are currently acceptable while others aren't, depending on what direction the popular outrage trends are heading. Should "I hate the rich/politicians/corporations/nazis/capitalists/white males/etc" be illegal speech? That's quite a can of worms.

These free speech arguments are sort of like the government wanting secure encryption, except that the they should still be able to break it. Encryption is either secure for both legal and illegal uses, or it isn't. In the same way, it's semantically unresolvable to have legally-protected free speech for acceptable speech only.

Any argument for free speech necessarily empowers unacceptable speech, and any argument against free speech necessarily criminalizes acceptable speech.

Or you know, we could setup a powerful system of laws and judges, with multiple recourse to overrule and get decisions reevaluated, where details of a particular case could be thoroughly analysed, and debated, with a professional representative on either side, and we could eventually rule what seems to be the most reasonable given the concrete case.

Honestly, this isn't a computer algorithm. We have the capacity to judge different speech in different contexts.

I'd rather have a specific system of rules governing what I can and cannot say than discover post factum that what I said was illegal based on lawyers' consensus.

While realistically such consensus is required in some cases anyway due to the imprecise nature of lawmaking, we should still strive for clear ruleset as a baseline, precisely so that the little guy is as informed of his rights as he reasonably can be.

Sure, there could be common guidelines. I'm also talking civil, bad speech could maybe get you fined, or banned from certain public speaking facilities, if proven by court of law that you acted inappropriately. I mean we have these already, and we manage just fine. Defamation and public indecency for example.

And it doesn't need go very far. Inciting violence, threats to ones well being or insults towards a group, spoken to a crowd, say 10+ people, either verbally, or written, or gestured. That would include any medium which assumed an audience of more then 10 people. Yes, I'd include online forums, tweets, etc in that.

Like, I can't think of any socially relevent commentary that needs you say things of that sort, unless its because you're basically rebuting against someone else doing the same. And again, don't need to jail people, a fine would be a good start.

You can even express very inappropriate ideas without resorting to these. For example: "If X were truly less intelligent, it could be that this alone would explain why they are poorer overall, and so, no amount of extra care would help, because their intelligence is an innate limitation." No insults, no threats, no violence. Yet still incredibly controversial. Now the people you'd say this to might be tempted to insult you back, but if they did, they'd be fined, so instead they'd also have to be civil. For example: "That's true, but there's no proof that X are innately less intelligent, and there's known examples of Xs which have demonstrated higher then average intelligence, so its a moot argument, and one that seems to imply a certain innate bias against X from Y. If it were true, and this shows it, that Y had an innate racism against X, then its possible Y wants to keep X poor."

Please prove me otherwise, but I don't see what's so hard about enforcing some civility in speech when expressed to a sizable audience.

Other people gave you enough arguments against censorship above. I'll just add that "Inciting violence, threats to ones well being or insults towards a group" are all quite vague and thus contradict the goal of having a clear ruleset.

I understand your point, and others point. But I'm not seing real arguments that aren't just: "believe it! the government will use this to censor and oppress the people, and we'll all end up in a dystopian authoritarian regime with our freedoms gone, and everyone afraid to speak up."

Maybe, but probably more likely we'll just end up where media and public discourse just becomes slightly more civil, tones down insults and focueses a little more on substance to make its claims.

I similarly don't have a way to prove this would be the outcome, I admit. I rely on a different premise, that we're a reasonable democracy, and that just as we work to fight collusion and corruption, we'd manage to control abuse of such laws in cases where they'd be used to oppress and control in a non democratic way. I feel if you don't believe our society can do this, then we're doomed to lose our freedoms to an authoritative regime anyways.

In theory, yes, but we are also a system of due process. It's not reasonable to expect that if the law says something is illegal, and a person is shown to have done it, that the good judgment of the system will understand and not prosecute. Things like self-defense and fair use are specifically encoded into the law, not just unspoken common sense. And that's not even getting into legal/political careers, lobbying, etc, that entrench the system to introduce and over-enforce technicalities.

The judgment of most of the court activity is focused on whether or not someone broke the law, not whether the law is "reasonable". That's a much bigger battle that can't be reasonably expected to be fought in any individual case, and ideally should be done before signing into law, not after. The law, as written, should apply to all cases and all sides equally. Justice being blind and all.

The history of free speech in the USA has had it pretty wide open, and these issues are about whether and how much to constrain it. That means criminalizing or penalizing in some way speech that used to be free, bringing up all the issues above and in my last post.

Is that so of civil law? It was my understanding civil law is specifically designed for this, that is, promoting civility amongst people. Courteous debate and disagreement is possible, even if one argues the other is a monkey. Such speech promotes arguments and content over appeals to hateful emotions, ridicule, and fear. The latter type of speech, to me, are actually psychological weapon of anti-free speech. They target someones else thoughts and speech, by inciting fear and blocking out reason.

Insulting someone, calling them names, threatening their well being, shouting at them, and inciting others to do the same, those are all tactics to shut out the targeted individuals. Make their voices irrelevant, ignored, and their will to speak smaller in fear of retribution.

Now I think we're smart enough to find regulation that are smart enough to restrict only that kind of speech, and if it's non obvious, I'm okay sitting on the side of allowing it. But some of today's speech is just blatantly the latter, and thats true in all political spheres, and even in most apolitical spheres.

"Civil" law (person vs person) is for damages which aren't "Criminal" (government vs person), usually disagreements that leave one party burdened with countable damages and seeking restitution from the other. Sure, if somebody uses manipulative speech to instigate damage that might go to civil court, but that's because of the damage, not because of the speech.

I have no idea why you think those things you list should be legally actionable in and of themselves. The fact that people are petty and appeal to lesser things like this are really cultural failings, not legal failings. You can't legislate people into being (subjectively) well-tempered and reasonable in their beliefs and daily interactions.

We have restrictions on Commercial Speech such that commercial exchange and competition is to be around truthfully presented products, which is pretty objective. Stuff like libel also hinges on the truth of what's being said which again can usually be tested.

The issues you list are far more nebulous and subjective. Anybody could claim that they felt threatened by another's ideas, claiming a conspiracy to silence them exists, etc. These exact tactics are currently in use to silence and manipulate others in the same way. It's simply a war of propaganda on both sides of these "tools".

I think the legal notion of none of this stuff mattering unless actual damage is incurred, or actionable threats of real damage have been made, is reasonable. Otherwise, you're falling into pre-crime fallacies. And besides, let's not continue to expand the litigiousness of our society by making every nitpick and disagreement a legal issue.

Failing of the culture for sure. But take the public indecency laws for example. Or the road laws, like laws against jaywalking and other obedience laws of that sort. The smoking and drinking laws are also good examples. Gambling laws. Harassment laws. Those all impose conduct on people, work reasonably well, and rarely are misused.

> You can't legislate people into being (subjectively) well-tempered and reasonable in their beliefs and daily interactions.

I'm not trying to do that. I think speech targetting a sizable audience, like in media outlets, public quorum, internet forums, should not be allowed to insult or threaten a group, and shouldn't be allowed to entice others to those acts. I think this could be legislated, and I believe cases of abuse would be rare, and in those cases, I think legal recourse can be used to have a proper verdict.

You're still allowed to express all matters of unreasonable opinion. You're just not allowed to verbally attack someone. Which I believe most American would culturaly favor. I think it's in our values that we condemn verbal abuse.

> These exact tactics are currently in use to silence and manipulate others in the same way.

I'm curious to learn more abiut this. Can you provide examples? It's very possible I'm being naive here, and I'm just not aware of these instances and their impact.

> Failing of the culture for sure. But take the public indecency laws for example. Or the road laws, like laws against jaywalking and other obedience laws of that sort. The smoking and drinking laws are also good examples. Gambling laws. Harassment laws. Those all impose conduct on people, work reasonably well, and rarely are misused.

These are also much more objectively tested in a court of law. That's the main point, not the subject of culture or behavior. Somebody feeling threatened, feeling that words that were spoken had a hidden implication that attacks them, is subjective, easily faked, and does not require any intent or malicious behavior of the accused.

> I think speech targetting a sizable audience, like in media outlets, public quorum, internet forums, should not be allowed to insult or threaten a group, and shouldn't be allowed to entice others to those acts.

Yeah, that's fine. It's how people should act decently, for whatever shared notion of "decent" we can muster. Different forums have different levels of moderation depending on what sort of culture of interaction they want. Some are very professionally-minded, some are loose and openly revel in offensive banter and arguments between participants.

Also, actual threats are already illegal. If you want to add to the set of things that are illegal, then you're talking about making non-threats illegal. You can stop including "threaten" to try to legitimize the severity of the other more minor infractions such as insults.

Don't get tyrannical with your own personal view of how people should be "decent". Freedom means freedom for others to act in ways you don't consider decent, in the understanding that others don't agree that your ways are decent, but that same freedom is extended to you. Any legal restriction you put on others can be turned around to punish you for things you think are right but others don't, with those others now equally armed with the new laws.

>I think this could be legislated, and I believe cases of abuse would be rare, and in those cases, I think legal recourse can be used to have a proper verdict.

But WHY? There's no reason in a free country why you should seek to over-legislate minor behavioral misconduct, overreactions, strong opinions, personality clashes, and the like, if no actual damage occurs. If you legitimately want to drop the notion of "a free country" or "constitutional government" as the US defines it and explicitly head down the road of totalitarianism to pursue some homogeneous ideal of enforced acceptable behavior, then cross that line; don't conflate it with freedom.

Consider public indecency laws again: Not everybody thinks that the incidental situations of changing clothes or using bathroom facilities should be prosecuted if somebody else happens to catch an accidental glimpse. Heck, some people don't even believe that nudity should be hidden or shamed. Yet since these are effectively zero-tolerance laws, people get life-ruiningly legally branded as sexual offenders for minor and non-antagonizing accidental situations. Because of course the broad intent of the law is agreeable and a hot topic, nobody wants to actually challenge such law, no matter the collateral damage. Online speech laws as you describe would overcriminalize in the same way.

> You're just not allowed to verbally attack someone.

This is the core of your problem. Who defines what an "attack" is? Everybody's jumping on the bandwagon today to be victims of verbal attacks, demanding a mob outrage response for every little slight they perceive, defining "violence" as things the "attacker" isn't even aware of, etc. Disagreements are too easy to be branded as "verbal attacks" to put legal weight behind that branding.

Physical attack is clear-cut. Financial attack is less so, but has countable damages. Verbal attacks as a whole have no basis but some arbitrary internal interpretation. We already have laws for harassment, which is continued behavior, not a single perceived attack.

> Which I believe most American would culturaly favor.

America still has a very strong culture & respect for free speech, but yeah this entire article is about an age range which has a component of disagreement to that. But there's also a millennial and post-millennial backlash to this disagreement and the various outlandish victimization claims (which damage the legitimacy of actually victimized people), and going even more reactionarily right-wing.

> I think it's in our values that we condemn verbal abuse.

Here you're conflating words for a fabricated escalation, which is part of the intellectual dishonesty I'm pointing out. You've switched multiple times from "attack" to "abuse", which are different concepts. Again, harassment and abuse are already illegal. If somebody says something angry online, that's not "abuse". If somebody verbally attacked you or your beliefs, that's neither objective nor legally damaging, with a link between those 2 adjectives.

> I'm curious to learn more abiut this. Can you provide examples? It's very possible I'm being naive here, and I'm just not aware of these instances and their impact.

Sorry, at this point, I think you're just trolling for something. We're on hacker news, where things like the github behavior policies, google diversity manifesto, harassment in startup workplaces, people getting banned from major projects & technical conferences for outside issues, and other such things have been major headlines, hashing through all the various arguments on all sides.

By the way, thank you for actually engaging in a civil discussion that has meats on its bones. Really, if anything, I'm trying to be convinced. Trust me, none of it is trolling, I'm surprised you'd think that actually. I'm just a hard sell on ideas.

If I understand, your hesitation to have any constraint on acceptable speech in certain situation is that you suspect it would cause more unfair harm due to it being used to falsely condemn people, where they did not intend to cause social harm? And you believe that injustice be a greater bad to society then the instances where speech was used with the intent to harm.

And I 100% follow that logic. In fact, if true, then yes, I'd be fully onboard.

Now, I think a lot of people, young ones more so even, including me, have noticed a trend of a kind of speech which seems to only harm society or individuals. Providing no positive social value, other then power to those who speak it. And the issue is not with the ideas being controversial, or unpopular, but really with how it is spoken in demagoguery terms.

If I acknowledge this problem, I conclude that fully unconstrained speech has its own set of downsides and issues to a healthy society.

I also acknowledge that fully restricted speech has issues, in fact, I agree, much worse issues, and we have other countries and history as examples.

I also feel we have other countries and history as examples of the harm demagoguery speech can have when it overtakes rational speech.

I think denying either of these problems is just ignoring reality. So what do we do? Do we continue down the path of accelerating demagoguery speech until it overtakes most outlets, and accentuate the problem? Do we ignore the people who do suffer harm from such speech?

Maybe, but if so, ya, you're going to have to hard sell me. Like I'd need to really be convinced there's no better solution. That this is the ideal trade off and I have to just accept the problems it comes with, knowing that's the best we can do, that alternatives are just worse.

So my first instinct is to explore hybrid solutions. Can we be smarter about speech. Can you restrict the worse of it, while not damaging the best of it?

So you gave great pointers in that, such as: Is legislation really the right approach? Or should, say, education be used instead? How would speech be categorized? And how would we distinguish accidental misuse of it, with no real intent, versus premeditated? You also strongly hinted that in doubt, the default should be to allow it. You brought up if it should be about the harm to the listener, or the intent of the speaker? Those are great considerations, and clearly this is a complex problem.

Now, I just think if we don't acknowledge the problem though, and either convince people the status quo is the ideal solution to it, or come up with something better, then we might end up with a new generation who will come to simply resent free speech, having only seen its downsides, and might choose to outright repel it much more strongly then I'm suggesting.

> If I understand, your hesitation to have any constraint on acceptable speech in certain situation is that you suspect it would cause more unfair harm due to it being used to falsely condemn people, where they did not intend to cause social harm? And you believe that injustice be a greater bad to society then the instances where speech was used with the intent to harm.

No to the latter; the problem is that it would literally be bad law. It does not target that which you wish to target, and would prosecute those who have done no wrong, because the wrong is defined by what's in the prosecution's head instead of something the defendant actually did.

You're saying that laws should be passed and then we can see as a society how those laws work out, which is absolutely backwards. Bills should be constructed and debated until they're acceptable for broad application in all situations & directions, and only then be signed into law. (unfortunately, it's all lobby and panic driven nowadays)

Again, if you want to fine others for speaking indecently in your eyes, then others can fine you for speaking indecently in their eyes. That's nonsensical for a legal structure.

I am under the impression that you've never been involved in any legal proceedings. None of it is ever about what is right or reasonable; it's ALL about finding out if the letter of the law (or contract, or whatever) has been breached. If a law goes on the books, people will be prosecuted for it by its letter, regardless of the law's intent. That's literally the job of the legal industry. And this isn't because the government magically decides to clamp down on things, it's because individuals with disagreements start bringing lawsuits, empowered by new laws.

> Now, I think a lot of people, young ones more so even, including me, have noticed a trend of a kind of speech which seems to only harm society or individuals.

The traditional media and social media websites make money off that polarization and viral outrage. It attracts monetizable eyeballs and clicks. This isn't a representative state of the day to day behavior of people, it's an artificially concentrated charged environment that certain charged people engage with, while everybody else steps back and calls them weirdo zealots. Those who get sucked into the ridiculousness do so by yelling at constructed stereotype targets, never by actually having conversations with actual people in real life, and are often quite different IRL than online.

This simply isn't "real" enough to legislate. It's a bunch of hotheads yelling at each other. Why should this be a legal matter?

> Providing no positive social value, other then power to those who speak it. And the issue is not with the ideas being controversial, or unpopular, but really with how it is spoken in demagoguery terms.

Having no social value, and trying to muster social momentum to somebody's claims has no basis to be illegal. That's my fundamental question of you.

The US government is constrained in its powers; what significant impetus is there to expand this to something with such massive collateral damage and slippery slopes?

You're the one calling for change, so it's your views that need the burden of proof.

> If I acknowledge this problem, I conclude that fully unconstrained speech has its own set of downsides and issues to a healthy society.

I think you're barking up a red herring, to mix metaphors. The fact that people are screaming over each others' caricatured ideas is not caused by the lack of laws punishing it.

> I think denying either of these problems is just ignoring reality. So what do we do? Do we continue down the path of accelerating demagoguery speech until it overtakes most outlets, and accentuate the problem? Do we ignore the people who do suffer harm from such speech?

I said this in the very beginning: "Any argument for free speech necessarily empowers unacceptable speech, and any argument against free speech necessarily criminalizes acceptable speech." I think it's better to have people disagreeing with each other, than the government criminalizing the populace for acting like humans with beliefs & opinions.

> Do we continue down the path of accelerating demagoguery speech until it overtakes most outlets, and accentuate the problem? Do we ignore the people who do suffer harm from such speech?

But those things aren't real.

Demagoguery doesn't work unless people buy into it. If people buy into it, that indicates it's where people were heading anyway; it's just rallying. Suffering "harm" from speech is in very few cases an actual thing, and where it is it's already illegal. There are fundamental disagreements about where the country should go, what's "right" for the country, how children should be raised/corrected/taught, how drugs should be handled, what should be paid for by taxes, etc etc. These disagreements must be able to be out there in the court of public opinion for a free society to develop answers to them. Some will be reasoned, some will be emotional, and some will scream on social media. Again, why is that a problem? Why must it be a legal issue? WHY????!?!?!?!? :)

> So my first instinct is to explore hybrid solutions. Can we be smarter about speech. Can you restrict the worse of it, while not damaging the best of it?

You don't get to decide for everybody else what's the "worst" and "best" parts of their free speech!

It would be a social and cultural movement which accomplishes change of speech. The law won't change how people think & believe, and the law has no mandate to be involved here. Plus, it would cause martyr complexes and streisand effects which would have the exact opposite outcome to your intent.

I think you're literally talking about using the law to allow you to promote your ideas, by criminalizing promotion of ideas that you're against. Now imagine for a moment that somebody of the ideas you're against is taking the same approach. You'd be quite militant against that situation, wouldn't you? If they can't do it, then why should you have the right to? I don't care which side is which, that's a legal usurpation of freedom. Keep this stuff in non-governmental speech among the population.

> Now, I just think if we don't acknowledge the problem though

You're being incredibly nebulous about "the problem". What specific problem is there with all the online argumentative babbling out there that you think requires legal action, and is not already illegal? People yelling at each other? People calling each other names? People posting propaganda to try to increase the purchase of the ideas they want to peddle?

It's up to listeners to freely determine what they agree with or not, who's worth listening to, and where they will give their social weight. If listeners are empowering those peddling speech you dislike, well then I guess you're democratically outnumbered and the people have spoken to what they actually want. Or, it could simply be that you're listening to overblown media caricature-laden hype and the "problems" that you see are smaller or more nuanced in reality than what you might believe.

But really, look at what you're saying. Legislation, re-education, categorizing other people's speech for legal consequences...

> You're being incredibly nebulous about "the problem"

You're right. The article is titled Why are Millennials wary of freedom. That's the problem I'm talking about. There's data in that article, that irrespective of where they find themselves on the political spectrum, newer generations seem to devalue the merits of free speech and democracy. Now why is that?

I think its just because of a subtle reason. Newer generations of listeners don't have the amount of intrinsic valor you give to free speech. They don't see all form of it as a requirement to a free society. I think they might even see it as a threat to their freedoms.

If you take even Canada, or Germany, you'll see they actually have outlawed forms of speech which is legal in the US. Hate speech is illegal for example. In germany insult is also illegal. In Canada, all speech can be restricted if it can be shown to be hurtful to a free and democratic society. For example, fake news is illegal in Canada. Similarly, no speech can be restricted if it can be shown to be beneficial to a free and democratic society.

Now, I think there's a certain amount of speech right now, which is hateful and insulting, and some of it could be demonstrated to be hurtful to a free and democratic society. You said "Any argument for free speech necessarily empowers unacceptable speech, and any argument against free speech necessarily criminalizes acceptable speech." Well, it seems that some other countries have managed to find a better balance and contradict that statememt, yet remained very free and democratic.

I agree with you on the 99%. Speech is hard to classify, what someone said, wanted to say, thought they said, and what someone heard, wanted to hear and thought they heard is very fuzzy. And almost all speech should definitly be free.

But where I disagree is on the last mile. I feel all newer generations all find that there's a large swat of hate speech right now, that isn't too hard to misunderstand, and they'd be okay if we forcibly toned it down. Which a lot of other free and democratic countries like Canada and Germany already do.

So I'm not saying to just restrict random vague things and make it law. I'm saying I think a bill to restrict certain nefarious speeches should be put forward, debated, refined and then signed into law. A good starting point for that is hate speech, insult, and incitement to do the same. Offcourse I'll leave it that these would come with more defined context and specifications as to what qualifies as such.

And now, that to me, would help freedom and the safeguard of the free society. By limiting speech such as hate speech, which targets freedom of others, you protect freedom. By toning down noisy speech of no utility like insults, you allow debates on freedom to be heard more clearly.

Ya, I'm okay with others preventing me from propagating my own hate and from shouting insults. If many people interpret my speech as such, and I didn't intend it to be, really, I'm okay being forced to reword myself, and express myself in a way that they understand. This should be possible, if I'm truly not trying to promote hate and express insult, then there's a better way I can express my thoughts then, and if I can't figure it out, well too bad for me. That's fine, really, it's not worth talking if no one understands what I want to say. Even more so if they undersrand I'm just insulting and hating with no good reason.

I think you just don't believe that this level of precision is possible. And I believe it is, based from data in what Canada and Germany restrict and the way their societies have turned out.

You can debate all matter of controversy without hating and insulting. None of this stands because of my own ideas. And examples of recent corporations taking actions against employees debating hot topics and getting fired over it is irrelevant, as that's more of a debate about corporate power, and the bounds of a contract. In fact, you can see that by the fact that while non of the restrictions I suggest are in place currently, they were still fired.

But, I have to say, you're making me think twice. I don't believe in the outrageous dangers of such restrictions, but you've made me think that maybe there's also little gain, and so the whole exercise might be a bit of a waste of time and effort. Yes, maybe being so close to the line is too much work, for little good. Maybe I worry about hateful and insulting speech too much, and its harmless, or maybe you're right, preventing that kind of speech is just covering up the inevitable, if people chose to hate and insult, society might be going that way no matter what restrictions are put in place.

I'll be thinking about that. Thank you for the discourse.

> The article is titled Why are Millennials wary of freedom. That's the problem I'm talking about.

Ah, ok. Since you were always pointing to insults and demagoguing and such as things that must be legally silenced, I thought you were placing the content of the discourse as the problem.

> newer generations seem to devalue the merits of free speech and democracy. Now why is that?

The simplest reasonable answer is just that they're distanced further from the solved problems of the past, and from the solutions deemed necessary to counteract or prevent those problems. And thus, history begins to repeat itself.

I hope you're not excluding yourself from the label of devaluing the merits of free speech, because obviously you're promoting a reduction of free speech as well, for reasons you still haven't made clear.

> I'm saying I think a bill to restrict certain nefarious speeches

Again, who defines the "certain nefarious" categories?

We already have a term that acts a barrier that when crossed triggers the law: Damages. Your rights end where my nose starts. But as long as you're not that far, you're within your rights. I think that's the cleanest boundary to draw.

> And now, that to me, would help freedom and the safeguard of the free society.

"Hate" and "insulting" speech doesn't harm anything, except maybe blood pressure temporarily. It's damaging actions that do, and that's completely irrespective of whether they're driven by this ill-defined usage of "hate" or not. So leave the thoughtcrime alone, and police the actual crime. The only "hate" you actually need to worry about is that which manifests into action, which would be policed anyway.

> Now, I think there's a certain amount of speech right now, which is hateful and insulting, and some of it could be demonstrated to be hurtful to a free and democratic society.

I'll bite. Name one common case, where legal speech and not action is the problem. "Hurtful" as in feelings is a nonstarter as a literally anti-American concept: Diversity itself hurts feelings and offends beliefs, and we are an intentionally diverse nation.

> Well, it seems that some other countries have managed to find a better balance and contradict that statememt, yet remained very free and democratic.

I'd posit it has nothing to do with the laws, and more to do with having a more unified cultural identity than the USA. There are also tons of other factors which show you can't simply translate the effectiveness & outcome of a law across borders, especially when they're at the core of particular social unrest.

> I think you just don't believe that this level of precision is possible.

It's not the precision of censorship that's a problem, it's that you feel some sort of (what I would personally call tyrannical) passion to punish these targeted people in this way. Remember, you're talking about social media and such, where people socialize and banter with their friends, where people get into arguments over disagreements just like in real life, and where everybody overpublishes flippant reactionary stuff that would previously have been private. That's a lot of very new & very raw human interaction and personal expression going on there. Let it settle.

> And examples of recent corporations taking actions against employees debating hot topics and getting fired over it is irrelevant, as that's more of a debate about corporate power, and the bounds of a contract.

I agree. That's angry mob stuff, not legal stuff, and has its own problems.

> But, I have to say, you're making me think twice. I don't believe in the outrageous dangers of such restrictions, but you've made me think that maybe there's also little gain, and so the whole exercise might be a bit of a waste of time and effort.

Thank you. Yes, that's a lot of what I was pointing at.

But in places like Germany, the speech legislation has galvanized underground Nazi movements which keep popping up and growing. In the long view, it's probably better for the speech itself to be free and deposed, than for it to be illegal and foment in private as secret underdogs and martyrs. So it's not just for little gain, it's easily damaging (because it will be applied "legally" aka by the letter of the law) and counterproductive by galvanizing counter elements.

> I don't believe in the outrageous dangers of such restrictions

How different is this from the dangers of drug laws? Exposure laws as I brought up before? Laws around suspicion of terror? These have already destroyed tons of lives beyond their intended targets. There's a lot of danger in vague ideas gaining a specific legal wording, and having a police & court system bound to enforcing those words. It's best to only legislate the subset that has can be more objectively tested in court.

If you search around, you'll also see plenty of cases of hate speech laws being overapplied in the countries you venerate here as well. Laws are dangerous things (and moreso in the USA than most smaller 1st world countries), and we should not be passing permanent law to deal with temporary flare-up problems.

BTW, go read some legal stories from this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15492907

> Maybe I worry about hateful and insulting speech too much, and its harmless

It's certainly not harmful enough to summon Justice to bring wrath down on people's personal interactions (ie, social media interactions) through the letter of the law.

> or maybe you're right, preventing that kind of speech is just covering up the inevitable, if people chose to hate and insult, society might be going that way no matter what restrictions are put in place.

You can't control what others believe & say, society-wide. This is especially true if you're using a stick instead of a carrot. It's simply out of your hands. Just focus on your actions, and your own sphere of influence. You will be subjected to people who find you just as disagreeable as they are to you. That's life, and it's a two-way street. You don't get to destroy them, just as you wouldn't want them destroying you; you get to coexist with them in this big ol' melting pot of diversity.

But I'm still left questioning why "hate" and "insult", when it's just bloviating words in an impersonal setting such as broad internet discussions, need to be punished.

Surely your own words are formally "hating" and "insulting" what you disagree with, in calling someone's earnest words "worse speech" than others, labeling people as "demagogues", openly advocating to suppress & punish other people's words & expressions via new laws. Even the notion of labeling "hate" is basically prejudiced hate & insult if the only thing it's based on is a shallow disagreement. It doesn't matter how rational it's dressed up.

The KKK has engineered very specific rationalizations and tempered sounding non-prosecutable speech over the years, for instance. That doesn't make it any less "hate", does it? So shouting/insulting/etc is orthogonal to all of this, and shouldn't be a basis for your punishment proposals either.

Maybe millenials think that this whole "if you don't let white supremacists march through the streets with guns then democracy will fail" is a rather silly notion.

I do like getting my arguments vetted on this site! Thanks.

These arguments aren't really sequential; maybe only one is true. Maybe for three different people, each argument is true for one of 'em.

So, I don't think the connections you made in my argument are really what I meant. The more I think about it, it's very possible that the kinds of freedoms that were restricted because of WWII and the Cold War normalized the idea of restricting freedoms in defense of a certain ideology. After all, what looks better in historical hindsight: the ACLU in Skokie or Japanese internment?

I have a feeling that pinpointing a singular cause is impossible, if there even is a singular cause. Still worth discussing, but good to have the discussion framed with that in mind.

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