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>"Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws, but, you know, feel free to make a list of the important ideas that you feel are being SILENCED."

The definition of "reasonable discourse" is the problem here. I'd reckon a good chunk of people don't see problems with "hate speech" censorship because they only see them applied to things that they don't seem to be reasonable discourse, so "why not". Then again, the general internet is a cesspool a lot of the time anyway and "reasonable discourse" is quite often very bad-sounding, nasty and personal.

The other side of it is that "hate speech" is not being applied legally at all. Platforms are using some sort of nebulous definition of it and a few other semi-related concepts in order to appease to offended people (from the perspective of the people it's being applied to). This is what a lot of the people are fighting back against, they're not fighting against "legal censorship for the legal definition of hate speech", which practically never happens anymore in the west.

On a side note now that I think about it, you could argue what's going on in the UK, Germany & South Africa among other places as being examples of reasonable criticism & discourse online being silenced under hate-speech laws. And some people even going to jail over some of it. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung

Yes, the laws are phrased in "feel-good" ways such that at the surface it looks like they're just there to prevent bad things like "inciting racial hatred/violence", etc. But the way they get applied is not exactly that because it's open to interpretation and attempts to legislate offense and feelings which are very grey-terms. Also, these laws get "cited" by various platforms in pro-active justifications for why they remove/de-platform individuals on them, without legal or criminal proceedings ever actually taking place.

>Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws, but, you know, feel free to make a list of the important ideas that you feel are being SILENCED.

Now that paraphilias have been removed from the DSM and are no longer considered a mental illness, the idea that they need an acceptance and support group (of course, acting on them in a way that harms someone is still unacceptable). This has been taken to be hate speech against sexual minorities that were removed from even earlier editions of the DSM.

There is also some evidence that having some level of social acceptance results in less anti-social behavior including hurting other people (I think Germany has begun to incorporate this in therapy programs).

Upvoted because I think you're the first response indicating an understanding of the challenge: the prospect of walling off discourse regarding support groups for a paraphilia may plausibly be a loss (vs, say, what might be lost if the freedom to train a dog to perform nazi signifiers is limited).

OTOH, it's an example I'm skeptical is functioning as a loss, because it's as easy to construct the idea of such groups as affinity gatherings as it is to construct them as remediation meetings. As far as I can tell from secondhand familiarity with, say, BDSM-involved folks (which I'd assume is a reasonable parallel for most paraphilias and maybe even an example of something DSM-demoted), there's never been a better time to find other similar people for communal discussion and exploration of what it means to live ethically and well in that way.

Are there concrete examples of related legal trouble for people? If so, are they from people incorrectly construing affinity gatherings as remediation meetings, or are they from people suggesting that remediation should be the primary purpose of gathering paraphilia'd people together?

If there are speech-related restrictions, I assume we're talking about a context outside the US. Here AFAICT it would be quite legal to discuss support groups as outright reform efforts (and in many jurisdictions actually run such support groups as ostensibly legitimate therapy).

In general I have not seen any legal trouble or even social consequences falling on people, but that is because I've never seen anyone even attempt such a discussion without the veil of anonymity (be it advocating for themselves or advocating for others).

As for laws, the US generally has few legal consequences but the social consequences are so assumed it is like finding people who can confirm jumping off a bridge hurts you. It is taken as such an absolute truth that most do not know someone who has tested the premise.

For other countries with far stricter laws on speech, I do not know of many examples but have rarely searched. I do remember there being a related case involving a claim concerning the prophet Muhammad. But at the same time, I want to acknowledge while I raise this issue for general discussion, I have personally seen many use similar arguments only as weapons against minority groups. Thus the challenge of someone using an argument as weapon against minorities vs. someone who uses an argument as a means to increase tolerance.

> Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws

What is "reasonable" discourse? The purpose of freedom of speech is that all discourse is allowed; "reasonable" or not.

What a great comment.

> "Hate speech" has specific functional meanings when it comes to legal jurisdictions in which it applies. The idea that it's a tool for arbitrary suppression of disagreement is approximately correct as the idea that any other limitation on free speech (libel, slander, fire in a crowded theater, verbal assault, time place manner, etc) can be used arbitrarily

As I understand it (could be wrong), hate crime/speech regulations only actually act as punishment modifiers for existing crimes. They don't criminalize otherwise legal acts or speech (in the US, at least).

For example, it's illegal to vandalize a synagogue with spray paint. Hate crime/speech laws generally might mean that a person who spray paints an immature, lewd picture/message on a synagogue, is treated differently that a person who spray paints a swastika. The latter would be treated more harshly - which seems reasonable to me.

That would be hate crimes, not hate speech, which are different legally speaking (though in common parlance we use them interchangeably).

Hate speech from my own understanding legally is relatively narrowly defined (in the US) for direct calls of violence that can reasonably be interpreted to incite action. Eg "Kill Hitler!" isn't hate speech, but inducing someone to assassinate a particular person would be.

The issue is that platforms and some countries often use an expansive definition which is frequently weaponized against "the other side" (whomever that might be). The case which got JK Rowling on twitter's angry side, the Maya Forstater case, is an example of non-citing speech which had legal consequences.

I think only if there's a direct threat of violence. It could be argued that a swastika on a synagogue is a threat of violence but it'd be on a case by case basis for those edge cases. A kid doing it for giggles is different to a violent gang doing it

> Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws

Citing your ignorance of events is not a compelling argument.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/02/social_media_arrest...

Literally thousands of people have been arrested in recent years for things they've said on Twitter. That's just in the London.

Here's a man who was arrested and convicted of a hate crime. What did he do? Taught his girlfriend's dog to give a Nazi salute.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7785225/Supreme-Cou...

Now I would not exactly consider this an "important idea". But arresting and convicting someone for that is egregious and, dare I say, offensive.

At the same time, I could not possibly care less which ideas _you_ consider important or not. Or anyone for that matter. That's the whole point of free speech.

> Citing your ignorance of events is not a compelling argument.

If you're going to make a case that there are harms from imposition on speech, then you need to be able to point to harms. An absence of demonstrable harms does not necessarily constitute ignorance on my part (though demonstrable harms might, although the good news for me is that can be easily remedied).

> Now I would not exactly consider this an "important idea". But arresting and convicting someone for that is egregious and, dare I say, offensive.

Your objection here is apparently to either the fact that the law was enforced, or to the specific punishment. I assume it's not the former, or laws protecting speech don't matter either. There's legitimate room for discussion of the later, but all conversations about what constitutes a reasonable consequence for violating the law are distinct from whether it's reasonable to have a law regarding any specific activity in the first place. And it's worth pointing out that there are other forms of speech such as fraud and perjury that can result in prison time.

> I could not possibly care less which ideas _you_ consider important or not. Or anyone for that matter. That's the whole point of free speech.

Actually the whole point of free speech is that ideas matter. Broad allowances aren't the primary value; the search for value in discourse is. Where broad allowances exist they flow from that central point.

When you understand that, it's easier to see why even societies which hold free speech as a high value do not consider every form of expression equally valuable, and why exceptions to allowances exist both by informal social construction and in legal formalisms. Including those that distinguish even crude expressions like "The Prime Minister is an Asshole" from slurs, or the idea that freedom is for teaching animals to pass on Nazi signifiers.

> then you need to be able to point to harms

Right. That’s why I included articles on people being arrested. Being arrested is very much a harm.

Here’s a woman who was arrested for tweeting rap lyrics. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921

Do some research on how the law is being used for. On what people are being arrested for. I look forward to your report.

> Your objection here is apparently to either the fact that the law was enforced, or to the specific punishment.

My objection is to the existence of the law. Not only should there have been no punishment but there shouldn’t have been an arrest or even an investigation.

> Right. That’s why I included articles on people being arrested. Being arrested is very much a harm.

The mere existence of an arrest or the general fact of any legal consequence does not demonstrate that a law is harmful.

Presumably you don't believe that being arrested for theft is a demonstration about how property law harms people. Presumably you don't believe that punishments for perjury would demonstrates how some legal obligations to speak truthfully constitute harm.

This is a conversation about the value of free speech and the contention that hate speech laws have eroded that value. If there's a case for that, it has to be demonstrated with examples of meaningful discourse that has been barred or otherwise suffered.

How do you propose somebody demonstrate that something did not happen because of hate speech restrictions? It is very difficult to prove a negative. What we can do is reason over the situations that have cropped up. Do you think it's a net benefit to society that a teenager was arrested and had to wear an ankle bracelet for posting lyrics of a song on Instagram in remembrance of someone that was killed? Because I don't think that's good for society. I think that she's now much less likely to speak her mind on the future, because she has essentially already been punished for doing that in the past.

>Presumably you don't believe that being arrested for theft is a demonstration about how property law harms people.

Theft is demonstrably bad for society and it is generally easy to separate theft from non-theft. Therefore punishing theft is a net good for society, because we want to discourage theft.

I've not seen someone demonstrate that hate speech is bad for society. Furthermore, hate speech is not easy to separate from regular speech. This means that if you discourage hate speech you'll likely discourage some regular speech as well.

You haven't demonstrated why theft is bad for society though? If Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the poor, is that bad for society simply by virtue of theft being seen as generally wrong?

You really can't see how hate speech is bad for society? You don't think calling minorities racial slurs affects society negatively? The difficulty of separating it from "regular speech" or satire really isn't important for there to be laws against it, that is why there are courts and judges and juries to settle cases and set precedents.

I also think you're highly overestimating how easy it is to separate theft from non-theft. Again, not that the complexity in separating a crime from a non-crime should in any way be a deciding factor in whether a law against said crime exists.

There's no such thing as hate speech. You have the right to hate, and expressing it helps. It's often the things you hate that need to be talked about the most. You shouldn't be scared to say it, it should be encouraged, especially if you are wrong.

> There's no such thing as hate speech.

There most certainly is, you just don't like any of the definitions of it.

You're also confusing dealing with personal psychological problems and causing duress to another person based on your own fears and biases.

>If Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the poor, is that bad for society simply by virtue of theft being seen as generally wrong?

It is. Theft causes harm to society because it deprives property from somebody that legally owns it. Humans can't survive without property in nature, which means that theft harms their survival. Furthermore, rampant theft in society means that individuals will spend a lot of effort on securing their property, effort that could've been used for better effect. Hate speech, on the other hand, is about being offended. Offense is taken, not given. Remember that speech that intimidates or harasses is already illegal and not part of hate speech laws.

>that is why there are courts and judges and juries to settle cases and set precedents.

This is still punishing. I imagine that most of us on this site agree that copyright law is not in a good spot right now, because justice is often only had when you spend a lot of money defending yourself. Courts, judges, and juries do not seem to make the process fair. And I believe many feel the same thing about hate speech laws in the UK, where a teenager was arrested and had to wear an ankle bracelet for quoting song lyrics on Instagram.

> Humans can't survive without property in nature

This is a loaded statement. Humans can absolutely survive without property, they did so for hundreds of thousands of years before the concept of property was defined.

What is speech that harasses covered under, if not hate speech? I would argue that the only reason why hate speech came into being was because so many harmful remarks didn't qualify as harassment in the same courts you question the fairness of.

Let me be clear and say that I don't doubt that any of these things are tough to define once you really start looking at possible edge cases. My problem with your statements are more about how you think things are black and white, but hate speech is all grey. If I sing lyrics of a very violent song directly at a passer-by in the street, is that not threatening? Do you think that action should fall under harassment?

> Courts, judges, and juries do not seem to make the process fair.

If you don't trust courts, judges and juries (and I'm not saying I do), then you really can't rely on them, nor politicians, either to define what is lawful and what is not, and that includes theft, murder or whatever other offenses.

It's about the individual, not society. The individual comes first

I too am alarmed by these spooky disinformation campaigns.

I just googled "what party was abraham lincoln in" and a big box popped up at the top saying "National Union Party". I've never even heard of this party. I assume its a euphemism sinister people use like "Democratic People's Republic".

Is this sarcasm? Lincoln was in the National Union Party during the civil war since he wanted to keep the Union together. It was a temporary 'rebranding' of the Republican party for the Presidential Election to attract members who wouldn't take the Republican name but were sympathetic to the Union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_Party_(United_S...

He was elected initially as a republican and was a republican for much longer than he was in the "National Union Party" - I think the result from google is clearly deceptive.

Yes, I found it very deceptive as well. I have no idea why you're being downvoted.

Are people honestly insinuating that Google's algorithm is hiding the party of Abe Lincoln as some sort of slight against modern Republicans? What in the world... how could anyone believe that?

Is that bizarre conspiracy theory more likely or that their search results scrape Wikipedia and return the most recent party a politician belonged to?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

Lo and behold, it reports that Strom Thurmond was a Republican (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond) and Jeff Van Drew is too (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Van_Drew), even though both were Democrats for substantial periods in the past.

Is it a persecution complex when many of these kinds of "technical errors" seem to so often befall people from one political persuasion? Some of them clearly weren't errors and that has happened enough that people stop believing that it's just an error, because these companies have demonstrated in the past that they don't mind doing moves such as that.

Yes. The fact that the OP had never heard of the National Union Party and jumped immediately to the conclusion that is was a 'euphemism sinister people use' rather than spend 30 seconds confirming that this was in fact the name of the party he represented as President at the time of his death is ample evidence of a persecution complex. Propensity to assume one's own ignorance of facts is evidence of malfeasance on the part of one's opponents is pretty much the definition of persecution complex.

I was being facetious; it appears it is your theory of mind which is lacking. Of course, this is no grave fault of yours. Noticing these subtle tricks takes special acuity. After a few dozen more Google queries and even examination of several different platforms entirely, the picture becomes much clearer.

> search results scrape Wikipedia and return the most recent party a politician belonged to?

Google for: "what party was Andrew Jackson in"

For me this shows "Democratic-Republican Party" - this was the first party he was part of - he was elected president while a member of the Democratic party and remained such until his death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson

So your theory does not hold.

Here we have someone who was a Republican being portrayed as something else and someone who was a Democrat being portrayed as something else - and in both cases there is political benefit to Democratic party in the US.

Upon expanding the answer, this is the explanation I saw.

"The National Union Party was the temporary name used by the Republican Party for the national ticket in the 1864 presidential election that was held during the Civil War."

Since Lincoln's final election victory as President was under their ticket, it's not a crazy answer to give. It's not the answer one expects (I had never heard of it until now) but it seems to be technically correct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_Party_(United_S...

Wikipedia: Abraham Lincoln started out as a Whig Party leader in 1834. He left politics in 1849, and reentered it in 1854 as leader for the newly rename republican party created the same year.

In 1864 during the civil war both republicans and democrats had internal conflicts about leadership and the war. In order to create a majority, those republicans loyal to Lincoln decided to create a new party name in order to form a collation with pro-war democrats. The new party name got called the National Union Party.

Lincoln died the next tear in 1865. The next year after, in 1866, the new National Union Party leader failed to maintain the coalition and Republican members left, with the remaining democrats leaving short after.

"what party was abraham lincoln in" is thus a question about time. He was party leader under three different party names, president under two, and leader of one coalition that spanned between two parties. He spent 15 years as a Whig, 10 years under the republican name and 1 year under the coalition which is the point of his death.

He spent only 2 years as a Whig before exiting politics. He returned as a Republican until his assassination over a decade later. (Granted, by sleight of hand he did change the name of his Republican party for a year. Perhaps the trickery of his contemporary enemies here is payback for these tactics.)

Its now Republican Party

> Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws, but, you know, feel free to make a list of the important ideas that you feel are being SILENCED.

So you believe it’s fine for any expression that doesn’t fit in with whatever it is that you perceive to be “reasonable discourse” to be a criminal offence? A vast majority of the worlds population is religious, and most religious texts contain “hate speech”. Arresting and prosecuting people for expressing their religious beliefs has happened numerous times. There are also many political and moral issues where the views of one side are simply declared hate speech. Many people have been arrested and prosecuted for such views. A lot of the most ridiculous cases get thrown out, but not before somebody is arrested, potentially spends several days incarcerated, potentially loses their job, potentially loses future employment opportunities, and would have to pay thousands of dollars for lawyers.

Whatever it is that you, or I, or anybody else considers to be “reasonable discourse” should be completely irrelevant in the eyes of the law. You either believe that views you consider to be offensive, or vulgar, or obscene should be protected, or you believe that all views falling outside the political orthodoxy should be oppressed. Not only is this tyrannical, but it’s completely stupid. If your views happen to fall within the political orthodoxy today, that’s merely a coincidence, and you can guarantee that at some point in the future, they won’t.

> So you believe it’s fine for any expression that doesn’t fit in with whatever it is that you perceive to be “reasonable discourse” to be a criminal offence?

"Any expression?" Way to strawman.

There are broad areas of expression that should remain entirely open. There are perhaps some that are borderline but nevertheless deserve respect or at least spaces in which they can be examined. None of that keeps us from identifying categories of speech that are broadly recognizable as outside reasonable discourse, several of which beyond hate speech I identified in my comment above should you want to engage this topic thoughtfully.

I didn’t strawman you at all. Your stated rationalization is that such laws are fine because they do not impact whatever it is you perceive to be “reasonable discourse”. I’ve stated the very immediate dangers of criminalizing unreasonable discourse above. Unreasonable discourse has been instrumental in much of our progress as a society, I can’t imagine why anybody would have so much contempt for it.

> whatever it is you perceive to be “reasonable discourse”

Is there anything that you personally would consider to be a step too far? Anything that would make you say "this should really, really not be allowed"? Alternatively do you have an example of (subjectively) reasonable speech that was criminalized?

> Unreasonable discourse has been instrumental in much of our progress as a society

In the sense that society evolved with this as the example of "don't".

“Hate speech” laws are simply enforcing an orthodox morality. In my life I’ve seen many different groups attempt it. When I was a kid it was conservative Christians lobbying Congress to get Twisted Sister off MTV, and god forbid (literally) you wanted to promote some sort of alternative sexuality... Luckily for us, society rejected the enforced morality then, just as its doing now with all the backlash against this sort of toxic politics.

I think it's important to be on the same page about what free speech and hate speech mean, the definitions, the limitations, otherwise we'll go nowhere. Hate speech is "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation".

The example you gave (with the details provided) doesn't sound like hate speech on either side. And I don't think people were imprisoned for speech promoting or rejecting "alternative sexuality" over the past decades in any free country unless they were also promoting the hate and violence to go with their opinion. Being pro or against something is free speech. Promoting violence against someone is hate speech.

Can you help with an example of what you'd say is a step too far or is any speech free (never hate) speech? If a significant group of people would advocate violence against you and you felt your life is in peril every day would you want that (hate) speech to be limited in any way?

> Hate speech is "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation".

Do you believe that this is somehow an objective definition? It’s not. It’s also not the definition that is actually applied by the law. To know whether somebody is expressing hate, you must know the contents of their mind. This is obviously impossible, so the law that is actually applied is based on whether anybody perceived hate. As anybody is free to interpret speech in anyway they please, this simply ends up criminalizing ideas.

Probably the most controversial way the law has been applied (actually been applied, in practice, with convictions) is people expressing their own moral objections to homosexuality. Now you could speak the phrase “I morally object to homosexuality”, and you could be expressing any number of non-hateful things. You could be expressing “I have a different view”, “I am promoting a different view”, “I disapprove of a different view”... But you could also read that statement and perceive it to be hateful. The criminality is not determined by the act, but by the audience, and the subjective views of law enforcement.

There is no such thing as objective hate speech, outside of the incredibly rare (in terms of enforcement) situations where somebody is explicitly expressing hate. The primary impact of such laws is to enforce a political orthodoxy, and to suppress speech that may challenge it. That not even to mention the fact that suppressing the expression of hateful ideas does nothing to suppress the ideas. It simply emboldens the people who hold those ideas, generates more support for them, and ensures they can’t be challenged by actual dialogue.

> Do you believe that this is somehow an objective definition? It’s not.

It's better than anything you've provided so far (vagaries completely devoid of concrete examples). That definition makes it pretty clear that encouraging violence towards a group based on the such mentioned criteria constitutes hate speech. It has nothing to do with "the content of their mind". Thought is not punished, action is. And if the action is calling for violence then it's called "hate speech". Whether you actually hate them or not makes no difference to the meaning of the term: call for violence against a group based on the defined criteria.

Why are you avoiding providing concrete examples instead of vague "could" and "probably"? If this is abused I'm sure there are thousands of examples of people being unreasonably silenced by calling their speech "hate speech". Are you afraid that there are no examples, or that you'll claim some extremist rant is "reasonable" thus attracting a lot of hate... I mean free speech towards you? Where do you draw the line for what's reasonable and what's not?

> (actually been applied, in practice, with convictions)

Which is why I'm sure you'll be more than happy to provide example of someone being convicted for saying "I don't support the idea of homosexuality and morally object it [period]", without actually calling for violence. Unless it's unsubstantiated BS.

> The criminality is not determined by the act, but by the audience, and the subjective views of law enforcement.

Stands to reason the concept of crime should not exist and anyone should be allowed to commit any act under the defense that "it's all subjective man".

I'm having a hard time taking the best interpretation of your comments and assuming good faith.

P.S. Take the (now flagged) comment below. It's obviously misinformed and wrong in so many ways, and there's a lot of impotence and frustration behind those words, possibly even hate. But the comment itself is not hate speech as it doesn't actually instigate violence. In the private space of HN though the comment was seen as garbage (much like every other comment the sock account has posted) and the ideas rejected still without violating anyone's rights.

Direct calls to violence is the borderline. Hate is just hate. Hatey hatey hate hate. It's only expressing hate and talking that helps things.

The Gores’s (PMRC) were also part of that but I’d not consider them religious conservatives. They just thought they were “protecting kids” or whatever.

You can have your opinion about it but hopefully you don't have any power to enact your opinion