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Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

> As you point out, while boycotting someone based on your perception of their opinion is not new, the modality of mass mob boycotts of individuals over things potentially taken out of context is entirely new. … One other thing that's new, in America, is the idea that speech is less important than people's feelings.

They used to kill people for advocating for integration and civil rights. Actual mobs used to assemble to kill black men accused of hitting on white women. Not internet “mobs”, actual ones with guns and pitchforks.

Literally nothing you’re talking about is new, in fact it has gotten way less bad over the past few decades. In fact, arguing that its new and pernicious requires us to purposefully ignore the history of political and speech based violence throughout the 20th century and earlier.

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They used to imprison people for sending information about birth control through the mail. I don't know what planet the "it wasn't like this in the good old days" people live on. The most common phrase quoted by people to describe a hypothetical rational limit on speech[*] was cribbed from a case that found it was ok to imprison people for passing out pamphlets against WWI.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

> I don't know what planet the "it wasn't like this in the good old days" people live on.

Obviously not always, but often because you are viewing it through the a different lens: there is an unspoken "for people like me" missing from the end of their statement.

I think thats a big part of why powerful writers and journalists are complaining. They’re not used to the masses talking back to them, and they don’t like it very much.

They especially don't like that now, the people they're talking about get to respond directly to them.

There's a huge lack of education and cultural understanding about just how much freedom of speech we have today compared to what it was like in the past. Overall, people in America are more free today to say things than they used to be in the past, period. They have more mediums that they can publish to, it is easier than ever before for them to get support and to connect with communities, and legal protections have literally never been better.

I think part of it is that dominant parts of culture were never in a position to experience past censorship. Some of it might just be short memories. Some of it is probably bad faith, or that attacks on Twitter feel more real for some people. But the lack of perspective is a real problem. You don't have to go far into the past to find out that there were tons of taboo topics and ideas that could not be talked about, both because of legal restrictions and gatekeepers, and because of a lack of tolerance from society, and because the mediums through which to talk about them were just so much more centralized and exclusive than they are today.

Even today, I find that free speech advocates (and I consider myself to be a free speech advocate) are often uneducated about the scale of censorship that happens outside of mainstream culture.

It's really disappointing and frustrating. Academics get a tiny, tiny sliver of the kind of backlash that marginalized groups get when they protest dominant narratives, and it's the end of the world -- because many of them have just never encountered real, hard censorship before and they don't have a frame of reference. Or less charitably, they just don't care about having a frame of reference and it's all just a narrative tool for them.

They have more mediums that they can publish to, it is easier than ever before for them to get support and to connect with communities, and legal protections have literally never been better.

Yes. Now everybody has a megaphone and it's too noisy to hear anything. This leads to heavy self-selection of inputs. The real battle today is not over who can say what. It's what people should be listening to.

For the current war, not much is being censored after the source. You can read all the positions: Russia Today, China Daily, South China Morning Post, One America News Network, CNN, Fox, the Voice of America, the BBC, Reuters, the office of the President of Ukraine... Plus vast amounts of stuff on Twitter. Few people do that. They tend to obtain info from one source they more or less agree with.

> The real battle today is not over who can say what. It's what people should be listening to.

This is why the characterization of all speech criticism as cancel culture is so problematic. We have a segment of the population now that believes that free speech means not only that they can say things while being shielded by laws from government retaliation and by cultural norms from unreasonable forms of cultural retaliation; they now also believe that free speech requires them to be given exclusive, privileged priority on platforms and for them to be given extra control over what people hear. For them, it is cancel culture that their voice isn't louder than everyone else's.

Notably, they don't view it as censorship that other segments of the population don't have the same platform privileges in the first place. To them, the normal position of free speech is that their voice should always be specially audible, and they are less concerned about making it easier across the board for people to filter through the noise or about democratizing curation, and more concerned with making sure that their microphone is never threatened by other people's speech or association.

----

It is very important for us to talk about how people get information and about how to further decrease gatekeeping around curation and subscription of information; I think that's one of the next fronts in increasing free speech in America.

But it's also important for us to recognize that most people don't have exclusive contracts with major media networks and tons of advertising and promotion, and that demanding that people retain access to privileged speech platforms while their critics are characterized as censors for even just criticizing them or boycotting those platforms -- it's essentially the same as walking into a public gym and getting mad that everyone doesn't stop their own conversation and only listen to what one person has to say.

I think Popehat really hits the nail on the head when he talks about privileging the first speaker; some (not all, but some) of the backlash I see around online communication and criticism is coming from people who were used to being major voices that couldn't be ignored, and are mad that the increased noise means they no longer have that same level of exclusivity or respect, and are mad that opposing voices are increasingly given the same level of volume and attention and that those voices have more ability to respond to their speech. They're mad that their critics are on more equal footing with them in public debates and have similar levels of reach and volume.

This is why it's also so deeply important to express that there is a difference between a rando someplace getting fired from their job for a Twitter opinion they gave 10 years ago, and someone getting disinvited from an semi-exclusive speaking role at a conference because they are actively expressing bad or harmful ideas. Those are really not the same thing; one is a cultural retaliation against speech that might cross the line into unnecessary harm and mob justice, and the other is just people getting mad that they don't have a special right to an exclusive megaphone.

I'm not convinced that history is just repeating itself. There does seem to be something qualitatively different about the possibility that nowadays a non-celebrity can spout an offensive joke or political take and have it be much more likely to be recorded and broadcast to the whole world with permanent consequences for them everywhere they go. Bad decisions are far more likely nowadays to be permanently recorded, and moving over to the next town, state etc is no longer enough to escape your history. There were implicit safeguards before in that most people were much less likely to have a wide audience that would remember what they said. It was much easier to change your mind about something and then pretend it was your opinion the entire time and save face. There are organizations with pet issues that dedicate themselves to recording offensive social media posts by college students and then making profile pages for each student on their site to publicly shame them. In the past these kids could graduate and then change their mind years later and no one would be the wiser as long as they never became celebrities or politicians.

> There does seem to be something qualitatively different about the possibility that nowadays a non-celebrity can spout an offensive joke or political take and have it be much more likely to be recorded and broadcast to the whole world with permanent consequences for them everywhere they go

Just don’t do it on Twitter.

Or any social media for that matter. The only difference is that people hadn’t learned yet about vitality and the truth is the statement that “in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”

You can still make all the crass offensive jokes you want around your friends.

Speech is far more free in the US today than in, say, the 1950s and 1960s.

But I would argue less free than, say, the 1990s.

What are things that you would say in the 1990's that you wouldn't feel comfortable saying today?

Can't speak for parent but I have refrained from discussions of things people have been cancelled for even when I agree what is leading to the cancelling is horrific, because the consequences of getting misinterpreted are too grave. Even asking a clarifying question for something you genuinely don't know could be misinterpreted as a dog whistle. It's hard to blame people for that because sometimes clarifying questions really are feigned ignorance meant to sink time or provoke, but at the same time there is a growing sentiment on Twitter and elsewhere that choosing the most charitable interpretation in discussion is actually bad and empowers bad actors. What you get is a situation where nobody trusts anybody.

Lol, obviously if I typed it here it would mean I'm comfortable saying it, so it's a Catch-22 isn't it?

If you can't explicitly say it, can you at least describe in what ways it is "less free than, say, the 1990s?"

If not, the comment loses value.

In the 90s the culturally most influential people tended to mock censors and championed being “politically incorrect”. Al and Tipper Gore were roundly mocked for the record rating system they championed.

R rated movies were far more successful at the box office, with lots of questionable content by today’s standards.

Pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable to say was considered cool.

Today, the academic and cultural power brokers are the biggest champions of shutting down “objectionable” speech.

I appreciate the followup.

> Al and Tipper Gore were roundly mocked for the record rating system they championed.

Which has a direct mirror in the mocking of Republicans who are currently trying to ban books and ideas (CRT) they don't like. A lot of your idea rests on the concept of "culturally influential people" pushing these actions. Again, I don't see the evidence of that, seems like a boogeyman.

> R rated movies were far more successful at the box office, with lots of questionable content by today’s standards.

Odd to compare 90s box office to today's box office given the impacts of COVID and streaming. We didn't have Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Paramount, HBO Max, Disney Plus, and more. You would need to add all the R-rated movies from those platforms to make a comparison. Either way, 4 of the 5 highest grossing R-rated movies (inflation adjusted) came out after 2000 [1].

> Today, the academic and cultural power brokers are the biggest champions of shutting down “objectionable” speech.

We definitely hear more complaining about it, today. I haven't seen evidence that it actually occurs more frequently. If anything, I see the opposite influence in the race to ban scary books and transgender people. Those ideas aren't coming from "cultural" leaders or "academics".

That said, it is far easier to be gay or transgendered today than the 90s. We also just had a President who described people as ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals.’ He also 'told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees …” [2] I don't think that would have been a good electoral strategy in the 90s, probably would have gotten him "cancelled."

[1] https://www.the-numbers.com/market/mpaa-rating/R-(US)

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/30/political-co...

The link to R rated movie statistics shows a steady drop in marketshare, excluding a weird blip in 2020. Probably an artifact of Covid?

Trump is the chief catalyst of Cancel Culture, in my opinion. His violation of every norm of decency and blatant cruelty created a backlash and a desire for retaliation for anyone seen to be in the same camp as Trump.

The drop in R rated movie share in the box office is almost certainly a result of streaming, not a change in cultural taboos. The linked chart only includes people who paid money specifically to watch a movie in a theater, and does not include movies watched on Netflix or Hulu.

> created a backlash and a desire for retaliation for anyone seen to be in the same camp as Trump.

Trump also demanded basically anyone who was ever insufficiently nice to him get fired. If anyone was for “cancel culture” it would be him. But like everything else in his life, he wasn’t very good at affecting those changes.

> In the 90s the culturally most influential people tended to mock censors and championed being “politically incorrect”

There is a sizable industry still doing that exact same thing today. Instead of saying that they’re “politically incorrect” they say that they’ve been “cancelled”. It seems like this line of discussion is not only alive and well, it is quite lucrative too, which more than a tiny bit undermines the core premise of what being “cancelled” means.

> R rated movies were far more successful at the box office, with lots of questionable content by today’s standards.

As a sibling comment pointed out, this is factually incorrect. You also need to adjust for the fact that the internet exists, and various social and economic pressures are sending more R rated content directly to streaming.

Are there fewer R rated movies in theaters because of how sensitive we are, or are you just preferring to watch R rated content at home rather than in the theater?

> Pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable to say was considered cool.

Given the rise of the alt right and the dirtbag left, pushing boundaries is still very popular and lucrative.

> Today, the academic and cultural power brokers are the biggest champions of shutting down “objectionable” speech.

[Citation Needed]

Anything that called bullshit on political correctness, and anything not politically correct.

I'm not afraid to say so here, but I would be if I were on social media.

Eh, ‘it depends’ - plenty of people got harassed, sent to jail, or outright killed for being openly gay during that time, among many other things. Not everywhere, but a great many places in the US.

Anti-obscenity laws were also going nuts around that time.

The internet was relatively mellow on that front, but that was because it was mostly unknown and super niche.

society was still trying to apply it’s rules to it, it was just far less competent at doing so.

I'd agree.

I'd also say race relations are on the same trajectory, and that's probably not a coincidence.

I can see an argument for it, but it's worth noting that there was quite a lot of censorship in the 90s that people don't often remember nowadays. Remember when MTG and D&D completely removed "demon" and "devil" from their lexicon? Remember when Nintendo localization policies required removing every cross from every game?

In the 1990s, my ability to speak was restricted to high school essays, zines that 12 people read, and FIDONet BBS boards.

That was, for many of us, our ability to be heard. Our ability to speak was not hindered by fear of having our lives ruined for holding an unpopular opinion or asking an incorrectly phrased question.

The most common battlefield on which these "cancellation" debates happen is people's access to Twitter, a service that did not exist in the 1990s (you could, obviously, get banned off a BBS for any or no reason). You see it in this very thread: people writing appeals to the amount of control tech companies have over speech, and how unprecedented that is.

Another commonly cited consequence of cancel culture is losing your job or ability to earn money.

Sure. And there are certainly disproportionate social and economical responses to speech, such as Colin Kaepernick finding himself unable to sign anywhere as a free agent after Donald Trump called for him to be fired for kneeling during the National Anthem, or David Shor losing his job at Civis Analytics after questioning the political effectiveness of violent riots protesting police misconduct. I'm sure if we dig, we can also find economic responses to speech that we'll agree aren't disproportionate.

The point isn't that these processes are never abused, or even that they're rarely abused. The point is that the problem we're trying to nail down isn't "there can be economic consequences for unpopular speech", but rather "there can be disproportionate consequences for speech". People on the right and the left are scrambling to find a simple bright-line rule, such as "speech should never cost you your job". But push to shove, almost nobody really believes that; we can all generally think of viewpoints you can loudly advocate for that will rightly make you difficult to employ.

I could write more, but I'd just be relaying my own personal beliefs about what speech is or isn't OK. Instead, I'll note that Ken White was pretty careful not to do that, or really to try to resolve this dilemma at all. Again: he's just pointing out that the NYT editorial's effort to resolve this was poorly reasoned, and itself a threat to free expression.

As for what I wrote upthread, I'm just pointing out: one major impetus for this debate is people losing their Twitter accounts. That seems germane, since you yourself brought up that one issue at play here is the enormous influence tech companies have on access to audiences for speech. My point was, of course, that the access you're talking about didn't exist at all as recently as 20 years ago. What access there was at the time was governed by... large corporations, who (for example) deplatformed Bill Maher when he questioned the orthodoxy around the moral weight of terrorism compared to US military interventions.

I consider Twitter just a very successful BBS, and I'm all for them banning the shit out of most of their idiot users. It's ridiculous that people who couldn't figure out how to set up a modem in 1993 now think they have a right to post and be heard as if God stepped down and gave them a megaphone. I don't have any sympathy for their complaints about being banned. What I do have a problem with is services allowing people to be brigaded and have their families and jobs threatened, which as a sysop I would have shut down the brigaders for, not the asshole who wrote the inflammatory thread, even if I disagreed with him.

I personally don't think even that is true.

- Culturally, the 90's were ripe with moral panics over satanism, gender expression, obscenity, etc... That could be a longer conversation, but the short version is that there was a ton of speech suppression happening in the 90's and early 2000's.

- Technologically, our mediums today (as problematic as they are) still allow for a greater ease of communication with a wider audience than they did in the 90's. There are developments online since the 90's that I don't like, and I worry about centralization online. But the earlier decentralized Internet was also very insular and inaccessible to a lot of people, and I think that gets lost from conversations about Internet freedom. More people have access to the Internet today and more people have access to publishing platforms today.

- In terms of mass media, there is again worrying consolidation happening, but it is nevertheless still the case that getting your message out to a wide audience in 2022 is easier than it was in 1990. Podcasts, video streaming, site deployment, etc... is all easier to do today than it was in the past.

Stuff like game development, music production, and so on are also easier today than they were in 1990. That's not to say that they're perfect or can't be improved, but I think back to the Flash boom, and that didn't really start until the early 2000's and it really was a different level of accessibility for making games, including games about political and social topics. In the same vein, a quick reminder that Youtube as a site was not founded until 2005 and until 2010 the max video length was only 10 minutes. Podcasts didn't really start to catch on among the public until the late 2000's. Patreon was launched in 2013, providing a very simple, mainstream way for at least some creators to self-fund their own work by directly interacting with fans.

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I think people forget sometimes how new all of this stuff is. And again, that ignores how much straight-up censorship and how many moral panics were happening during that time period, but even just from a technological perspective, if I have a message I need to get out, I would rather do it in the 2020's than the 1990's.

I could maybe see an argument that we're on a technological downtick from the 2010's, but honestly I don't even believe that. Even with all of the platform problems we have online (and it is a problem for our online communication to be so centralized and there are problems about where some platforms are headed), I still feel like almost everything today about media production and dissemination is just so much easier than it used to be. About the only thing I really miss is Flash, and I don't even really think that's a tech problem, I think many of those developers have just moved over to programs like Unity.

Not to say everything is perfect or everything has gotten better, just... I think people have rose-colored glasses that they wear when looking back at those times.

How old were you in the 1990s? I’ve noticed that for a lot of people, the golden age of no strife just happens to be right before they became aware of how people actually behave in public.

I too looked fondly back on the 1990s, but I was also a child. Looking back as an adult I can tell that my recollection of the era was colored by my inexperience. To draw one example, I totally missed all the moral panics of the 1990s, and how many people that harmed just for liking D&D.

If you were white, straight, cis, and particularly male, then this is true. Everyone else, eh not so much!

“Fight the Power” rap groups were incredibly popular then, and enjoyed a lot of support across races.

The movement for same sex marriage started in earnest then.

Feminism didn’t start in the 2000s.

All of those groups had a lot to say in the 90s, and the norms protecting free speech enabled them to say it, even when it was unpopular.

And they were "canceled" like crazy. People spoke up about all these issues, and were fired, beaten, jailed, killed, and worse. But a white dude totally could say what he wanted to, kinda.

This is a really toxic, ahistorical attitude that pays no attention to the many individuals of all races and genders who sacrificed for greater equality. It also fails to address the situation of a nonwhite person now who is cancelled for disagreeing with woke sloganeering, or explain how that's justified just because someone else was evil to someone else in the past.

I disagree. Believing the 90s were more free speech and ignoring the context of that era is the toxic, history-ignoring attitude. That's not to say we don't have problems currently, but it is better than it was in the 90s, overall.

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