And who gets to decide what's 'hate speech'? Censorship is basically the same as propaganda - changing the narrative to influence opinions. One day obvious hate speech is banned, the next day any dissenting opinions are 'hate speech'.
I refuse to believe the challenges we face now are unique to us. We made the decision as a country not to trade comfort for liberty and we must not go back on that.
I think a bigger/better question is: "How do we fix people, such that a majority of the population no longer falls for these kinds of tactics?"
[Edit] Some examples:
Support Free Speech? But you're giving a platform to hate!
Support E2E Encryption? But you're helping pedos evade justice!
Support body autonomy? But you're helping anti-vaxers!
Etc etc...
People die because we have liberty. If we take some of that liberty away (but not all of it), less people would die. Less people dying is a good thing, right?
- Take away some or all gun liberty. Less people will die in mass shootings, suicides, etc.
- Take away some or all speech liberty. Less people will die by suicide (esp. LGBTQ youth targeted by hate speech)
- Take away some or all liberty to purchase choking hazards such as Kinder Eggs and less children will die.
Basically, for every cause of death or public health issue, you can almost always limit liberty (in the form of laws, regulations, etc.) to mitigate the issue.
Until we as a people decide liberty is worth a few deaths, it'll be a (slow, because democracy is inefficient) race to the bottom.
We have chosen. This is why cars, sugar, beer and numerous other liberties are legal.
Free choice is woven into the fabric of America. With freedom of choice the collateral death will always be present.
I disagree it is a race to the bottom as we have made life much more livable than in 1787.
Then why the constant attempts to invalidate the 2nd Amendment when gun death is one of the lowest causes of death?
For now. But remember the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
There are probably quite a few Americans on HN that would like to see cars severely limited or otherwise much more difficult to obtain in favor of trains and public transport. Articles come up regularly about banning cars in cities.
Sugar taxes and sugar drink bans are regularly proposed in California.
Beer... yeah, I concede that will probably never be illegal again, though I could see tobacco becoming illegal some day seeing as the legal purchase age was just raised to 21.
The scripture tackles this head-on, more or less attributing it to the chaos of the universe, and that there is no notion of good and bad.
Eventually it goes on to share some examples, but they all follow the same pattern: if someone committed murder out of passion—and you were ready to judge them for it or offer them the death penalty—could you absolutely, unequivocally, certainly say—without any doubt–that you would not do the exact same thing in their shoes? In their exact circumstances, their state of mind? With heir psychosis or their grief or their desperation?
If you were to physically embody that other person and their consciousness, would you know better than they did?
The answer is always no.
In that same vein, you have your deeply metaphysical counter-argument to the point you're making.
Do you support the death penalty? Well, what if you committed the same crime and got put on death row?
Do you support censorship and authoritarianism? Well, what if the opposition gets into power and uses that against you?
There's no notion of it being wrong or right; it just challenges how happy you are to accept it as a fact of life and not just a temporary advantage in your favour.
The implied problem here is "we as a people" deciding that our liberty is worth other people's deaths. Practically by definition, marginalized and minority groups (more likely to suffer the negative consequences of such liberties) would suffer for the sake of the majority's liberty to oppress them.
I wonder how many people these days would think he was a terrorist...
Jefferson said that in reference to Shay's Rebellion, and he certainly wasn't praising the people behind it, describing the rebellion as having been “founded in ignorance ... The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.”"
The entire quote even ends with him comparing such people to manure. He was, indeed, calling such people "terrorists", as he considered them traitors and a threat to the Union. Jefferson also said the following just prior to that famous quote:
"...what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them."
In other words, while he recognized that rebellion was inevitable in a free society, he did not believe such violence was always justified, or that it should be encouraged.
But is it hate speech? Well... it has been used to justify terrorist activity. Tim McVeigh was wearing the quote on a t-shirt the day he decided to set off the Oklahoma City bombing, and I doubt Jefferson would consider him a patriot doing his duty. So yes, while it wasn't originally hate speech, the nature of the extremist fringe of modern American gun culture, neo-libertarian and anarchist ideology has twisted it around to interpret it in the most hateful way possible.
The tools that are needed here would provide the ability for each of us to screen out whatever we don't care to see, whether it be racist speech or just people that won't shut up about crossfit.
And since it's just me controlling my filter, I could easily adjust the level of filtering. Sometimes it's useful to know what people outside my Overton Window are talking about.
You say you'll use it to peek outside of your bubble, but I suspect most people would use it to reinforce their bubbles by filtering any speech that is inconvenient or uncomfortable.
Instead, we need to end isolationism and the siloing of audiences. We should be forced to interact with people we have ideological disagreements with so, at the very least, we don't dehumanize them (note that I'm not calling for tolerance of intolerance, and I believe voices of division should be deplatformed).
So letting people live in their bubbles might soften their conviction and keep them open to opposing ideas when they finally encounter them.
> Sometimes it's useful to know what people outside my Overton Window are talking about.
People don't have a personal Overton window: The Overton window describe's society's range of acceptable opinions.
And I guarantee that the vast majority of extremists - or even people already on the fringes - are not interested in reading or hearing about the opposition.
Who determines what is an "extremist opinion"?
I define it (for the purposes of this conversation) as an opinion that its holders buy into so much that they outright refuse to acknowledge anything in opposition. After-all, if you believe you've bought-in to "the truth" (and lack critical-thinking skills, and/or have been propagandized to this point anyway) then it has to be an extreme position (by whatever the standards of the contemporary Overton window apply) because otherwise it wouldn't be necessary to propagandize or rile similarly-minded people against your opposition.
Let's say some leader decides to build a thousand new coal power plants, and the people want him lynched for destroying the climate. Filtering that hatred out is not a clear positive.
For example: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/ted-cruz-wife...
This is a much better approach than going online and screaming vulgarity, because this prevents them from enjoying their actual life. If your opponent is genuinely doing something wrong, you want to make them miserable. You don't want to Be Mad Online at them.
Edit: The above poster edited this after I had replied, and everything after the first question mark my comment isn't responding to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
If it starts earlier, the violence can be avoided.
The deaths of the ruling class were unfortunate, but didn't necessarily outweigh the benefits.
A modern version of the French Revolution is far more desirable than allowing the planet to be made uninhabitable by the actions of the ruling class, for example.
The French revolution resulted in years of oppression before things shook out for the better. The Articles of Confederation were imperfect but were not an oppressive government.
Citation for an improved standard of living due to napoleon's code is needed.
It has been widely-argued that the American Revolution was an influence on the French: https://www.history.com/news/how-did-the-american-revolution...
Finally, I doubt the planet will be uninhabitable. Perhaps harsher or more difficult, but definitely not uninhabitable. Humans are profoundly-adaptable creatures.
Those who want to know the stories around the coal plants can allow them through
Those who choose to avoid the more violent parts can choose to not see them
The consequences of and responsibility for seeing/not seeing any topic becomes a personal choice, not one of any corporation or central authority. I see this as a very big positive step.
Try posting one-sided political content on Facebook and watch your friends on the opposing side unfollow...they're not obliged to listen to your speech. Or on Reddit look at /r/politics vs /r/The_Donald (left vs right echo chambers).
I never understood the culture of censoring your opponents, it just seems intellectually weak.
Typically the democratically elected legislature defines hate speech through legislation and the penalties, if any. The executive branch will generally seek enforcement of the legislatures laws through the courts. Then the last check/balance on power comes by way of the judiciary which may or may not include finders of fact consisting of a jury made up of the very members of the electorate coming full circle.
>Censorship is basically the same as propaganda - changing the narrative to influence opinions.
By that measure almost all communication is propaganda, for example, was you comment intended to control the narrative to influence opinions (i.e. censorship is the same as propaganda)? And are you suggesting the censors be censored?
So tyranny of the majority is okay? There are many nations where the majority chooses governments which violate the rights of the minority. The obvious caveat to your proposal is that you must implicitly trust the government, not just today but in the future. This in spite of the fact that next election cycle the majority can pick someone bad.
1) I never said a US-centric system of laws was "okay", I just answered the question of who defines hate speech; 2) it seems to be bad-faith to call such a system as a tyranny of the majority...especially when the laws is question specifically protect minority classes of people. Was the Obama administration a tyranny of the majority? How about Trump? Because Trump actually lost the popular vote, does that make him a tyranny of the minority?
>The obvious caveat to your proposal is that you must implicitly trust the government, not just today but in the future.
I must have missed where I said you must implicitly trust the government and their laws now and forever in the future...In fact, it seems the obvious caveat to the US system of government is that there are 3 branches all providing checks and balances on the others...and implicit in our government is the idea that if you don't like the government or their laws, you have the freedom to organize to elect new legislators who can repeal the laws. Not to mention the idea of the voters themselves (whether from the majority or minority) serve as jurors that make findings of fact over these matters.
>This in spite of the fact that next election cycle the majority can pick someone bad.
Do you have evidence of hate speech protecting the majority class, because again traditionally hate speech laws tends to protect the minority classes of people.
If you view social media as personal interaction then ask yourself how you would react to statements in real life. You would shut someone down if they threatened you or people you care about. I have seen people go so far as to threaten people's lives, but more veiled threats are also in the social space.
Call it censorship if you will. The definition of censorship I will leave to pundits. The pundits have decided to define social media as publication only.
I guess there is some ambiguity in this but large classes of threats are illegal:
https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federa...
> A criminal threat involves one person threatening someone else with physical harm. The threat must be communicated in some way, though it doesn't necessarily have to be verbal. A person can make a threat through email, text message, or even through non-verbal body language such as gestures or movements. However, some states require written or verbal threats, and in those states gestures are not enough.
I'm not aware of anybody asking that this should be legal either or of anybody defending this. So at least in this regard I can assure you people defending free speech for the most part (>99%) are not trying to change the law to make criminal threats non criminal.
This sort of filter just puts an envelope on material online so that choice can be restored/ported from earlier media behavior.
[1] imo it's a sociological problem. we should be connecting irl and not be online which just leads to isolated people ending up alienated and indoctrinated with hate. instead of only "hunting down" hate speech we need to address the fact that people join such groups in the first place. There are some really hard questions when it comes to dealing with white-power groups: https://twitter.com/EmilyGorcenski/status/120998572902520422... and unless we can find a solution to them people will continue getting clicks for snake-oil solutions such as "better AI" (AI really just stands as an excuse to continue the current revenue model of information extraction and surveillance capitalism)