Without Free Speech, All Speech Becomes Government Speech | Hacker News Reader

Without Free Speech, All Speech Becomes Government Speech

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23 pointsbuboard12 comments

Yeah, but what about deplatforming speech I don't like?

These last few weeks I've had some really astounding conversations on Reddit. People are literally demanding censorship, doubling down on the "political correctness" enforcement aka "the fight against toxicity".

Yet at the same time, there's massive outrage over companies actually complying with that, as it happened with ActiBlizz, only then to backfire in a shitstorm along the lines of "Not that political incorrectness, that's the good kind, you are not supposed to censor that!".

Turns out that the same speech can be very politically incorrect in one place, while being considered the epitome of political correctness in another.

For companies that work on an international scale, this means there really is not much wiggling room, so they will end up rather over moderating than under moderating.

I think you're seeing hypocrisy when it isn't there.

There's nothing hypocritical about US citizens not wanting US companies operating under US law to censor their US media for the benefit of the Chinese government, even if they may be perfectly fine with their own demands to censor their own media.

You may dislike it, but it's hardly an inconsistent position.

"I want this speech censored, not that speech". (I agree with this, I don't agree with that- so censor it).

Of course it's completely hypocritical. The exact specifics of the situation w.r.t China are irrelevant.

What they really want is for them to have the right to certify what speech is acceptable - by "they", I refer to the cancel culture crowd. Objective standards would work again their baises, so while they turn up the rhetoric on "hate speech", sometimes, they'll be making arguments for it, if it suits their political narrative. It's the classic "rules for thee, not for me" case.

Blizzard/China is particularly confusing, as they hate the grassroots organic support that Hong Kong has for capitalism, but don't particularly like China despite it being a socialist Mecca

Wouldn’t the socialist meccas be places like the Nordic countries?

Strong social safety nets and workers rights, freedom of expression and religion, etc?

I don’t think the people who identify as woke are in favor of top down party rule which stamps out dissent and free speech and puts Muslims in organ harvesting concentration camps.

I think they’re against unfettered capitalism where wealth accrues at the top while workers rights, infrastructure, and education crumble or are taken over by private enterprises which skyrocket costs for essentials at the expense of the citizens.

Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a lot of black/white thinking out there in these cloisters and communities where anything capitalist is equivalent to bad, but people who can’t acknowledge that the world’s a particularly messy place full of ambiguities, well, they generally don’t make good leaders as far as I can tell.

Nordic countries aren't socialist, they are regular market economies with high taxes. Those high taxes go towards healthcare for all, and a larger safety net.

Quoting Denmark's PM [1]: > I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.

[1]: https://www.thelocal.dk/20151101/danish-pm-in-us-denmark-is-...

Certainly, but I think that Nordic model is sort of the aim.

It provides socialism for essentials and capitalism for the rest with a relatively libertarian approach to personal beliefs.

I know it’s my preferred model.

> Objective standards would work again their baises

The thing is, what are "objective standards"? Even inside individual societies vastly different Overton windows exist.

As such it's impossible to have an "objective standard" for what accepted opinions are and whatnot, this even applies to the classification of content that seems pretty straight forward, like pictures.

The infamous picture of Phan Thi Kim Phuc aka Napalm Girl is by most people considered of historic importance and an icon for social movements that would be of utmost importance nowadays, the peace movement. Yet by "objective standards" of Facebook moderators [0], it's also child pornography/nudity [1] and as such was deleted.

The only reason this was even noticed was that a reporter tried to post it, and then followed up on it getting deleted. There is no telling how many people before him tried to post it but were denied, with no access to media to make it known or no drive to follow up on it, people just accept it and move on.

That's why there is also no telling how many other potential "Napalm Girls", have been censored out of awareness in this way, hidden from the public view like they never even happened.

Trying to apply this whole mess to the written word, to political opinions, that's even more problematic. It's also not exactly something new, Germany has been trying to do that for decades, literally censoring and banning movies, music, books, video games, controlling speech to such absurd degrees that even certain number combinations on license plates are banned because they are considered "Nazi-Code".

Did it work? Not really [2], it only made people more careful about where and how to voice their opinions, it also gave them a massive persecution complex which is pretty hard to deny things being as they are, and so the problem still keeps on festering while everybody pretends it doesn't exist because we've made it illegal to do the "wrong think".

[0] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/327887/pbs-th...

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37318031

[2] https://www.dw.com/en/germany-torch-wielding-neo-nazis-march...

A couple of weeks back we had a thread where some people were arguing that speech can be a form of violence. That sort of lunacy is one of the assumptions that lead to the consequences described here.

I am getting emails telling me I need to get a car serviced, which I no longer own, and it's from a dealer I did not buy the car from. It is claimed they got my information from the manufacturer. And there is no unsubscribe link, presumably because I have a "business relationship" with someone.

So yeah, I think that is a form of violence.

> Just as you can’t be half-pregnant, there is no such thing as government regulated free speech

How is that reconcilable with the limitations on and restrictions of free speech that already exist in the US [0]?

I've seen this type of all-or-nothing argument quite a few times and it just does not make sense to me -- surely you need to distinguish between different kinds of restrictions of free speech?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...

The "restrictions" are absurdly narrow, and especially when it comes to content. Technically, there's the "obscenity" exception, though I can't speak for how commonly it's applied (oftentimes it doesn't seem to stick, and doesn't appear to be heavily used). Generally, we don't have a discussion as a society over what speech the government allows* , in terms of content; everything goes. It's just that there are a few exceptions for inciting illegal acts, obsenity, fighting words, ect. The proposed change would require us to get together and decide what people are allowed to say, so nobody gets offended. That's a big departure from tradition in the USA.

* PS I know there have been high profile challenges to offensive speech (eg. Frank Zappa, Lenny Bruce, 2LiveCrew, Video Games, ect.), but certainly appears that in the long run free speech has won out in the USA.

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