Freedom of Speech: A Right for Everybody, or Only for Like-Minded People?

Whether you agree with e.g. internet mobs doing this sort of thing or not, it's usually perfectly legal and happens all the time. And many (most?) would agree that's perfectly fine when someone in authority/in a public facing position does something that's clearly bad behavior.

What's less clear is when someone rank and file says or does something dumb and it ends up on YouTube or simply somehow offends someone with a big following. The reality is that if you become a liability to most companies, they'll just follow the path of least resistance and show you the door.

I think there are ways to "try to stop people from speaking freely" that are acceptable and indeed vital. We as a society generally have conventions around what speech is appropriate, and we generally teach people (both explicitly and implicitly) to, for example, ask for things nicely, compliment people, express gratitude, etc. And we as a society generally "punish" people who violate these conventions by being reluctant to interact with those people. I don't see this as a violation of freedom of speech in any sense.

And also, I don't really agree with the mode of argument of "eventually the tables will turn against you." I don't oppose strict legal consequences for murder, for instance, because one day someone might frame me for murder. I support the legal consequences for murder and I support various mechanisms to increase the likelihood that only actual murderers receive those consequences.

I don't think that most or even many people believe that all ideas are equally good, but there are absolutely many people who invoke "freedom of speech" in their opposition to efforts to argue or establish that certain speech is bad.

But in the same way that the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you, the universe is also under no obligation to be just or fair to you; it simply exists. One of the primary issues here is that all meaning is subjective, and therefore all value judgments are subjective. People are not fungible. You would certainly save twelve of your closest friends and family if it meant the death of a complete stranger, but we could guess that the complete stranger's husband would pick his wife over what appears to him to be twelve random names on a list. If that man gets to make the choice, and he makes it, it was a fair and equitable choice for him, but unfair and unjust to you. That is the nature of our universe, whether we accept it or not. Imbalance exists because all meaning is subjective. This consequence holds even if the subjectivity is only marginally variable.

And because meaning is subjective, and therefore all value judgments are subjective, life itself has no inherent value, except for the meaning and value we each assign to it. Whatever our differences in opinion, this is indisputably the case. The inherent objective value of any given life is precisely zero United States dollars (and the same is true of those dollars). This is a really really big hurdle, and I'd venture an estimation that most people in fact go all the way to their grave believing the opposite, or at least believing that the opposite "should be" true (hint: words like "should be" are the language of value judgments and therefore in the realm of the subjective).

It is at its core primarily an issue of control, and illusions of control, and the complications arising from this. Control -- real control -- does not extend beyond the boundary of your mind. Most people go through life without truly grokking what control means, what it looks like, where it exists, and where it does not exist. It follows then that because of this ignorance, most people do not have control of their own minds. And being only human, we project so much of ourselves and our thoughts onto our perceptions of the universe, that we can fool ourselves easily with illusions of control.

I think this is where most criticism of free speech is rooted: Most people are unable to control their own minds, their own thoughts, because they don't understand the nature of control, and therefore they are subjected to literal mind control by the external forces creating the storm of words, ideas, internet memes, gossip, propaganda, tweets, comments, et cetera, coming in from all directions. And so it's a simple matter of imagining that everyone else is also powerless against this torrent, such that people need to be protected from "dangerous" ideas and speech.

This must be accompanied by a realistic assumption of how power is used. Wielding of political power (particularly tyrannical power) is nearly always accompanied by suppression of speech that expresses dissent.

Demagoguery may pollute a search for the truth, but nothing cements misinformation like a climate where people are prevented from saying true things.

No, you can't. Human beings don't process language at such a low level that any statement which parses as grammatically valid is considered equally valid to all others in all possible dimensions, interpretations and contexts.

While It may technically be possible to make an argument that any arbitrary statement causes real world harm and violence, not all such statements would be considered equally credible. The slippery slope you're describing here doesn't exist.

1. Your assertion has empirical counter-examples. My favorite example is Tinker. The dissent in that case already foreshadows exactly your concern, that the "substantial disruption" test was quite arbitrary. But, in fact, lower courts were by-and-large extraordinarily friendly toward student speech when applying the Tinker test. So much so that SCOTUS has had to limit the scope of Tinker at least a few times in the intervening years (e.g., Hazelwood and Morse). It's not perfect, but no reasonable person looking at the historical record can say that the "substantial disruption" exception to free speech was used to ban "absolutely anything". And "substantial disruption" is probably the most mild form of harm.

2. Remember that TulliusCicero isn't arguing against free speech. They're only pointing out that DanielBMarkham's particular defense of free speech isn't compelling. I think that's fair. DanielBMarkham's approach toward defending free speech, which has at its roots in some enlightenment-era ideas about what man is, really doesn't provide us with a good conceptual framework for addressing TulliusCicero's critique.

So, although I'm pro-free speech, but I don't think the argument that either you or DanielBMarkham put forward are particularly compelling.

If you want to defend free speech, you have to honestly deal with the valid concern that speech really can harm. Insisting that man is a rational animal, or even that the search for truth will always lead to good outcomes, is... just not historically compelling.

This is why crying "Fire!!" in a crowded theater is not considered free speech.

Unfortunately again, there's no easy and decisive test to show what kind of utterance leads to direct harm, and what does not; this space is unavoidably nebulous. This is why it's often left for courts to decide on a case by case basis.

The US constitution guarantees that the government will not suppress free speech. But the US society needs to find mechanisms to channel speech on uncomfortable subjects so that it is not entirely suppressed and so the voices against the majority opinion can be heard, but also so that it's not leading to imminent violence and the loss of the rule of law. Without the rule off law, all free speech protections would be lost anyway.

I disagree with this mode of argument that you should not support some action A because someone might perform action A incorrectly or mistakenly.

You might have said if states were forbidden from holding slaves then that "exception" could be used to ban absolutely anything.

"We can't protect people without turning fascist" is a really rough take.

Also, in your statement is a buried assumption that the people happiest with the status quo are the ones most likely to be upset by speech from people challenging it. There is again a standard counter-argument to this, asserting that being very, very upset is part and parcel of "fighting the power," and the right to upset people is used mostly by cruel-minded supporters of the status quo as a means to amuse themselves by upsetting the agitators more or to goad them into violence that can be used as a pretext for state suppression.

When a group starts arguing for something you don't like from philosophical principles, you'll regret not addressing their arguments earlier. The philosophical issue is already political, and it was made political by MacKinnon and Dworkin during the Sex Wars in the 80s and 90s.

I think the solution is a better mechanism to tune out people who are obviously (to us) insane or morally bankrupt. Unfortunately, I see no easy way to do that without strengthening our filter bubbles even more. Maybe widespread meditation practice would help the race realists and the bigoteers be more visible without having as much impact.

EDIT: Downvoters, what do you object to? Do you really think defamation and threats are not free speech? Or do you not think these are cornerstones of Twitter mobs?

- they allow their target to reply to it (and have it displayed alongside with their post) -- this is the most important

- they are being honest in their arguments (not intentionally constructing straw-men for example or repeating over and over the same thing that was answered before)

I'm not a free speech absolutist and I fully agree that not everything that people publish on (say) Twitter should be allowed to stay on Twitter. The problem is the growing centralisation of power and the lack of democratic oversight. One day everyone who currently works at Twitter will be dead, but Twitter may still exist, staffed by a completely different bunch of people. Can you be so sure that the reins will always remain in hands you approve of?

I don't know what the solution is to the problem of centralised private power to control the internet, but it baffles me that anyone could deny that it is a problem.

You're misunderstanding the causality. These are private spaces. Just because lots of people show up doesn't make it public. Yankee Stadium isn't a public utility.

You're asking to make these private spaces public. That's something you have to change in the existing laws. The first amendment has nothing to do with that.

I would also argue that the government creating its own public space would be the best because then there wouldn't be this perverse idea that anything anyone creates can be taken from them by the government whenever it becomes convenient.

> (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or

> (B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).[1]

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

But with the Network Effect naturally concentrating communication to a few sites, I'm starting to feel conflicted about that.

There's way better explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23576919

No, it does not.

> You're free to yell

In the same sense that I am free to murder someone or free to modify and distribute proprietary software - free in the sense that nature won't stop me, unlike flying for example, but not free in any useful sense of the word, otherwise everyone would have free speech at all times and no matter where they are and at what era they lived in as long as they are not mute.

I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. Is it your belief that we are actually capable of silencing bigots? Keep in mind that the largest TV network in the US is Fox News, which is more-or-less openly bigoted. Bigots are capable of writing their own publications and building their own websites.

And I'll just save everyone's time by pre-emptively shooting down that dumb study of Reddit which censorship proponents frequently cite[1]; there's absolutely no evidence that those users didn't simply move over to Voat.

Put yourself in their shoes: if someone tried to censor anti-bigotry speech, wouldn't that mobilize you to find different avenues of speech and speak all the louder? What makes you think that bigots can't or won't do (or haven't already done) the same thing? On the contrary, trying to silence people is more likely to radicalize them than actually succeed in silencing them.

[1] http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf

This is the same as saying "I can't logically defeat their points so I will use underhanded censorship tricks". I would not care so much if it was only about actually bigoted things but it seems to include everything that goes against what the average SV google engineer believes.

At the same time you are punishing these that are interested in seeing what the censored side thinks as well as the points against it.

Except that it doesn't. If anything, it's a lot easier to play the "redpill normies" game when you don't even _have_ to phrase your arguments clearly and logically, because censorship gives you plausible deniability. Innuendo, Straussian irony, dog-whistling etc. etc. become the name of the game, and the most truthful, open and pro-social ideas are put at a serious disadvantage.

> A huge number of people have fallen into terrible thought patterns after being exposed to these ideas through youtubers and faux academics.

Maybe, but surely you would agree that there is a useful middle ground between sites like YT which actively promote the most outlandish and click-bait ideas (flat earth, conspiracy theories, discredited urban legends etc.) in the name of "engagement", vs. government-mandated censorship.

It is graceless, faithless, trustless, bigoted and suspicious towards past generations, unanchored in history, and sought for the purpose of personal moral status more than the perceived rectification of injustice.

I'm not going to argue that there aren't cases where it won't be used irresponsibly, and if what you mean by decrying "cancel culture" is simply a question of responsible application, then that's fine. I object more toward the concept that people shouldn't be free to say or band together in a fight against someone's words and anyone associated with those words, especially if that association can be reasonably made to indicate tacit approval.

I'll use a Tucker Carlson example here since it seems to be an appropriate contemporary choice. Tucker Carlson says something that some consider to be exhibit A under "dog whistle racism". People are outraged, but they're just normal people; they have no powerful media entity providing them a soapbox to directly counter his words on an equal playing field. They can counter his words in various social media posts or essays or blog entries or what have you, but regardless of how excellent the content is, it'll never have the same punch as a man with a TV show.

So instead they look at the advertisers; these advertisers buy ad slots during specific programs, trying to get the most eyeballs on their product. They KNOW what they're buying; they don't just say "Hey, Fox, run this ad for me at some point and here's my millions of dollars for it". That's too much money and they want more control than _that_. So they specifically choose a slot.

In the best case, they may not be aware of the things Tucker Carlson may say. In the worst case, they are absolutely aware and choose to stick with him no matter what.

What's the best use of your time if you want to rebut someone's words, in this case? If you can't get a powerful media corporation to give you the same soapbox as Tucker Carlson, no matter how excellently you've rebutted his point, you're in a bind. So the best thing you can do; the biggest bang for your buck, is drag him back down to your level. Without media backing, Tucker Carlson is just a guy. A guy with a blog who says crazy shit. And the only way he is going to lose that backing is if the advertisers wise up to how toxic he is. They choose the slots, remember? It's reasonable to conclude that continuing to support Tucker Carlson's show is tacit approval of the things he says, especially when there is no retraction.

I don't see the downside to this at all. It wouldn't matter if it were Tucker Carlson saying racist things or Rachel Maddow saying white fragility things. You are entitled to your thoughts and your words and you can speak them all you want, but you are NOT entitled to a soap box, nor are you entitled to association or support from others. On a fundamental level, I believe people try to say entirely too many things without having the backbone to own them, and trying to suppress ramifications only gives them more reason to say outrageous things without taking responsibility for them.

I find the "I can say whatever I want, it's just words" to be an immature stance to hold. Words hold power, and power can be used or misused. We know words hold power; otherwise protesting wouldn't work, MLK's letters from a birmingham jail wouldn't matter, even the very constitution itself would be pointless.

So if that power is being applied to harm people, there needs to be a check on that. I fully agree it isn't the government's role to play that part; it's society's full, universal, democratic decision what to do with it.

The final result is "if you say something so upsetting that you can get a large group of people to use their own words and freedom to associate to harm you in return, then that's on you". If you don't like the worst that the so-called "cancel culture" response can bring you, then the solution is relatively simple: choose your words carefully and own them.

Which has, when you really think about it, very little power. Consider this: the nebulous "cancel culture", with all its fury, didn't cancel the Rosanne reboot. ABC execs did.

you don't seek to destroy them

Who is getting "destroyed"? Getting fired from a job is not getting destroyed.

You should be more worried about what people in positions of power are doing rather than what nobodies on Twitter are saying.

Social consequences inflicted by other free people are those things which free people (i.e., those who are not incarcerated) enact upon you within their rights. These most exist in the negative: This is the right to not shop at your establishment; the right to not hire you to work for them; the right for them to not be near you, engage with you, or otherwise pay attention to you.

A simple way to think about it is that people whose opinions are far from the mainstream have to put in the intellectual work to convince people to associate with them if they value that opinions expression more than their own cohesion inside society. This is fair, as it's been demonstrated effective for various groups.

By misconstruing free speech to mean that the government ought to force private institutions to give everyone a microphone skews this work. It amounts to the government forcing private individuals to sponsor things they disagree with, and removes the ability of free people to disassociate themselves from that speech.