> which is that some speech shouldn't be tolerated
who get to decide what should/shouln't be tolerated ? harmful/harmful ? facebook ?
who get to decide what should/shouln't be tolerated ? harmful/harmful ? facebook ?
The only speech assured by the constitution is from your literal mouth. Anything else is not free speech.
Even if you are going to narrowly interpret freedom of speech as "constitutionally protected rights only", the US Constitution explicitly says:
Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for
a redress of grievances.
That said, if you want to read things into what I said and actually have this conversation, does my hosting provider have to host my website? Does their ISP have to not cut them off if they do? Under a narrow reading of "free speech" as "stuff protected by the First Amendment", obviously not (unless the ISP is run by a government entity, of course). Under a reading of "free speech" as "the ability of society to not have entities with overwhelming power (governments, but not only them) suppress speech they don't like", the situation becomes more complicated.
And I would argue that a narrow legalistic focus on the First Amendment is not the right way to approach the problem. The First Amendment is a means to an end, not an end to itself. For an 18th century analogy, if a private company has the power to go around destroying all printing presses that don't belong to them and refuses to print views it disagrees with, that is just as much a problem for free speech as if the government were doing it. This was just not a realistic scenario in 18th century North America (unlike, say, contemporaneous India), so wasn't a big concern for the framers of the First Amendment.
Is this a scenario we have to worry about now? It's not clear to me that it's an imminent problem right now, but I can easily see it becoming one in the next 10-15 years. Might be worth thinking about norms (and laws, as needed) now so we're not playing catch-up when it does.
None of that has anything to do with the factually inaccurate claim about the narrow constitutional right that was made in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25673573
I don't think we'll agree there, so I won't argue further.
Edit: It's going to be a big job to reconcile this country and get people working together again, I hope you don't take this as an assault, I just don't feel like arguing today, but I appreciate your thoughts.
I am absolutely not taking your comments as an assault, and I suspect we largely agree on specific cases.
And specifically, taking down explicit incitement to violent illegal actions by someone already in a position of power does not seem at all unreasonable to me; I can see very little redeeming value in such. Also reasonable is a basic "cooling off" period of "we're not letting you post anymore for a bit, until people calm down".
And I fully agree that there is a long job of getting people to talk to each other, much less be on the same page ahead of us. I hope we succeed at it. Facebook and the like are not going to be helping much with it, unfortunately, because outrage is just so monetizable..
The "build your own x" argument doesn't take into account that as technology evolves not everyone has the means/skills to "build" their digital public town square, hence why the existing once ought to be regulated by governments once they get too big.
If you have an expectation that every event in history is accompanied by the instigators writing/saying "Let's all go do an X" (where X might be "coup" or "revolution" or whatever), you're going to be disappointed.
Most often, it's only historical hindsight that forms the narrative in which "X said Y which led to Z".
If you're somewhat sympathetic towards Trump, then likely only utterly unambiguous language - "So listen up everyone, I want you, in fact I order you, to go to the Capitol, get inside, prevent the certification from taking place, by any means necessary, including violence" - would convince you that he had incited a coup (and perhaps not even that).
Out in the real world, few people speak in such unambiguous ways even if their goals are clear. That's why we often need trials to establish whether or not certain language had intent A or intent B, because the language used was not unambiguous (often deliberately so).
Who gets to decide our taxes, criminal code, safety regulations, or election rules?
Whoever have the stronger power/influence.
Cynicism can really lead you astray as your comment proves.
Can you explain this and how that contradict my statement
>You should feel right at home living under the Chinese communist party?
I don't feel right at home about it but it doesn't contradict my statement
Chinese communist party get to decide the rule because they are currently the one who have stronger power/influence, this is has nothing to do with how I feel.
On Facebook's platform, that would be Facebook.
In my home, that would be me.
In your home, that would be you.
I could go on, but I trust you get the point, yes?
Build a public option if you want an alternative.