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Comment by BeefWellington | Hacker News Reader

It's funny to me because Free Speech is one of those topics on its own that doesn't permit nuance in my experience - either you're for it or you're a dictator/sheep/lapdog/etc.

In reality though, laws have been limiting speech for hundreds of years, and those laws and judgements are enforced by the government. The idea that it is sacrosanct and is (and should "continue" to be) unabated is already not what happens. The usual example is about shouting bomb in an airport or fire in a crowded movie theatre but those are more about mischief than any freedom to say a thing (you aren't punished for the words alone). However, Libel and Slander laws exist and have for a long long time and are limits on free speech.

I'm not in favor of draconian laws designed to chill debate but it's important to recognize that limits already exist and how we navigate where to draw the line is the key I think.

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Nobody complained when social media sites shut down ISIL videos or Taliban content. And why would they? Those are bad ideas from bad people! But anti-vaccine content? Why, that could be your neighbor! And your neighbor doesn't deserve to be censored (unlike the evil people who definitely needed to be)

That's a very selective interpretation on events. ISIS propaganda spread like wildfire through Twitter. The administration did nothing and the media barely made a peep about the root cause until the horses had already left the barn. None of these "concerned" stakeholders gave a shit about the socially corrosive nature of social media and they still don't beyond their own interests.

Where's your proof that the administration did nothing? Shutting down terrorism content is about the easiest political slam dunk imaginable.

I have never seen ISIS propaganda. Plenty of "Fauci went to school with Bill Gates and was CEO of Moderna" memes, though.

>Where's your proof that the administration did nothing? Shutting down terrorism content is about the easiest political slam dunk imaginable.

Before they were terrorists they were "insurgents" of the "Arab Spring". Something that the administration and Twitter/SM were more than willing to lean into before they lost control of the situation.

>I have never seen ISIS propaganda. Plenty of "Fauci went to school with Bill Gates and was CEO of Moderna" memes, though.

That's more a function of your age and filter bubble not whether there was ISIS propaganda which is well documented.

What remains undocumented however is your claim that no action was taken.

This is a very strange approach to discourse. What action do you think was taken and where's the documentation?

The administration was openly showing support for the Arab Spring mobs and even built up a military coalition in its support. Lack of knowledge on current events isn't the same as taking a skeptical stance.

I mean, this isn't really true: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpomete...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/technology-once-used...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/12/07...

...

Social media companies actually had a hugely successful anti-ISIS recruiting and propoganda campaign. This was something that everyone wanted a bit of credit for, but was ultimately totally uncontroversial because terrorists bad and no one complains when companies deplatform them.

Your assertion is orthogonal to the original thread. When the "Arab Spring" started all the talking heads were going on about free speech, Democratic values, the positive role social media is playing, and beating the war drums. It's only after the situation had started threatening geopolitical interests did the tune change.

>Social media companies actually had a hugely successful anti-ISIS recruiting and propoganda campaign.

I question if that's the case. That's like closing the barn doors after the horses have already left. The networks were already in place. The damage already done.

Aggregators like r/syriancivilwar had no shortage of atrocities to share most of which directly from social media.

I'm having a hard time seeing your point. It seems like you're saying that because [entities] only started to do online counterinsurgency once ISIS was somewhat established, those entities didn't actually try to shutdown extremist content.

And well that's silly for two reasons. The first is that the social media landscape was very different 10 years (yeah really!) ago when the Arab Spring started, the companies didn't have "stop terrorism" on their radar.

The second is well until 2013 or 2014, ISIS wasn't really a thing (of note). So no one cared. For better or worse, denoting something as a terrorist organization matters. Countering terrorist propoganda sounds a lot better than countering propoganda put out by arab spring protestors agitating for more democratic governments.

And actually a third is that a lot of the initial arab spring was explicitly about pro-democratic and non-muslim or more secular governments. So this whole complaint doesn't make a lot of sense. Like yes, people were in favor of the use of social media for democratic organizing.

I'm just very confused, what point are you trying to convey.

>I'm having a hard time seeing your point.

The start of this thread is a comparative juxtaposition of anti-vaxxer and terrorist content. I think that's an interesting thought experiment but requires historical context with an emphasis on the roles social media and realpolitik played. Put bluntly, social media is socially corrosive, we are experiencing a non-partisan leadership vacuum, and all these polarizing events aren't as different as they seem.

>And well that's silly for two reasons. The first is that the social media landscape was very different 10 years (yeah really!) ago when the Arab Spring started, the companies didn't have "stop terrorism" on their radar.

10 years later and social media is still driven by polarizing engagement metrics and addictive anti-patterns. Banning content is an insufficient bandaid at best and scapegoat at worst. Fundamentally the same landscape.

>And actually a third is that a lot of the initial arab spring was explicitly about pro-democratic and non-muslim or more secular governments. So this whole complaint doesn't make a lot of sense. Like yes, people were in favor of the use of social media for democratic organizing.

It's not a given that it was about democracy any more it's a given antivaxxers are about safety/freedom. Are these the real issues, are they proxy issues, or is it layers of both?

occasionally I like to view the internet through a translating service. It's fascinating how different the world becomes outside Western European languages.

Try it.

>Nobody complained when social media sites shut down ISIL videos or Taliban content.

People did. You didn't hear about it because they were brushed aside as free speech extremists and wacko libertarians.

Or they were kids and too young to comment or understand the situation. I would have protested then if I were an adult with my life understanding now.

Imagine if they used their powers to shut down something that's actually harmful, like, I don't know, sex trafficking.

If they put as much energy into stifling human trafficking as they did dissenting covid opinions, we might make a dent in it.

I didn't cheer. I don't cheer unless the videos are snuff (a beheading) or pornographic (not in ISIS' case).

For the later I wouldn't even erase such content from the internet. All I demand is a proper age verification system for viewers and the actors. More guarantees that the actresses aren't, in fact, being abused by their situation would be nice - what can I say, I dare to dream.

So you agree that there should be restrictions on speech that negatively impacts public health then. You just disagree on where the line should be drawn.

Those were essentially recruitment videos for enemies we were literally at war with. If we are literally at war with individuals skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccines, we should say so.

This is true, there are no absolute rights. However, the examples you cite have no resemblance to the stifling of careful discussion which might, in some way, question the wisdom of universal vaccination or inquire about the long-term effects, etc. That kind of speech is qualitatively different from incitement to violence and other clear and present danger cases. So I'm not sure how pointing out that in some abstract sense rights are never absolute has any bearing on this discussion. The chilling of speech in the public square that we are currently witnessing has no clear limits and the logic used to justify it ends up making this tantamount to setting up some kind of a wrongspeak standard. In a free society, individuals must be uninhibited in their investigation of the wisdom of public health policy. Equating this to the "yeling fire in a crowded theater" case is silly.

> In reality though, laws have been limiting speech for hundreds of years, and those laws and judgements are enforced by the government. The idea that it is sacrosanct and is (and should "continue" to be) unabated is already not what happens. The usual example is about shouting bomb in an airport or fire in a crowded movie theatre but those are more about mischief than any freedom to say a thing (you aren't punished for the words alone). However, Libel and Slander laws exist and have for a long long time and are limits on free speech.

Why is it that I have never heard these laws cited outside the context of justifying additional restrictions on freedom of speech, and especially restrictions on political speech? Without digging for an example, when is the last time you personally encountered someone who was prosecuted for saying a naughty word in a movie theater or saying mean things about someone online?

Well, a few days ago we had this article on HN...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28682582

(Tesla suing people for defamation over social media posts)

> either you're for it or you're a dictator/sheep/lapdog/etc.

This is the nature of the things we come to see as rights. Why is an X a 'right' and not just a nice idea? Because of a history of political entrepreneurs pushing, pushing, pushing against it -- it's just a reasonable tradeoff for this case, can't you see?

A right is a Schelling fence beyond which the 'reasonable' tradeoffs must face a much stronger presumption against them. Of course the world is complicated. One of the most salient complications is the ubiquity through history of clever people with justifications why they need power over others. When in this context you bring up the indisputable fact that no human question is 100% clear, the effect is to weaken the fence.

Academics have warned that their faculties get more ideological and contrarian views are suppressed, people begin to self-censor. There is certainly a very real threat to freedom of expression, opinion, speech or whatever you want to call it. I think in exchange we should recognize this a well.

That is of course also fundamentally contrary to your lapdog characterization.

You could use this exact argument form to argue that there are limits to your “right to life” as well.

After all, there are laws that have existed to limit that right for hundreds of years. The death penalty.

My point is that just because there have been laws in the past, that changes nothing about if something should be a right or not.

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