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Comment by madeofpalk | Hacker News Reader

At the very very terrible TED interview last week:

Interviewer: You've described yourself, Elon, as a free speech absolutist, but does that mean that there's literally nothing that people can't say and it's okay?

Musk: Well, I think obviously Twitter or any forum is bound by the laws of the country that it operates in. So obviously there are some limitations on free speech in the US, and, of course, Twitter would have to abide by those rules. [...] No, I think, like I said, in my view Twitter should match the laws of the country

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Just to elaborate on how uneducated these people are on the topic of "free speech" and running something like twitter:

Interviewer: Right. So you can't incite people to violence like a direct incitement to violence. You can't do the equivalent of crying fire in a movie theater, for example.

Elon Musk: No, that would be a crime.

Shouting fire in a crowded movie theatre is not, and never was, illegal. It was an analogy in a court case which was then overturned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

Interviewer: But here's the challenge, is that it's such a nuanced difference between different things. So there's incitement to violence. That's a no, it's illegal. There's hate speech, which some forms of hate speech are fine. I hate spinach.

"I hate spinach" is not hate speech, and importantly, hate speech isn't even illegal.

"hate speech isn't even illegal. "

Well, in US there are certainly attempts to make it so. There is definitely framework in place and there is the mores. The time seems ripe too given how people seem afraid of what people might say if you let them.

There are definitely hate speech laws in other countries.

For the record, I am sympathetic to your stance, but I am not sure it is accurate.

My stance is "these people don't know what they're talking about".

I'm not actually American, but my understanding is that there have been prior attempts, especially in some US states, to make hate speech illegal, but each time it just gets knocked down because it violates that pesky first amendment.

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that most of what would qualify as hate speech in other western countries is legally protected free speech under the First Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat...

Now, if you're saying "All twitter should just follow the laws of the country", now you've got to decide which country?, because most Twitter users are not in the US, and Twitter operatates - has business entities and employees - in other countries apart from US.

Really, what are the attempts to make hate speech illegal in the U.S.? That would come up against the first amendment really quick. New constitutional amendments are unlikely to succeed in todays polarized political environment.

Hmm.

You pose an interesting question and I might not have sufficient information to give you a full picture, but I might try to show a glimpse of what I think may be happening.

Someone somewhere decided it may be a good idea to expand existing framework ( hate crimes[1] ), which was relatively easily adopted in America due to historical ( slavery ) and political factors ( combating racism ).

[1] https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/laws-and-policies

With that in mind, the first step is saturating the media with opinions indicating some sort of support for a policy/law change ( in this case hate speech - links with sample articles follow - note how old some of those are ):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/29/why-ameri...

https://newint.org/sections/argument/2012/12/01/is-hate-spee...

https://www.ihrb.org/news-events/press-centre/the-challenge-...

https://theconversation.com/the-idolization-of-free-speech-i...

Once the population is sufficiently primed, one can run it through congress. It is not a weekend project.

Note that it is exactly the same pattern with encryption battles, but at least that one has clear originators ( usually three letter agencies ).

Whatever efforts are happening here will be shut down by the courts unless they managed to do something about the first amendment. I am not saying these efforts are good or bad, just that they are (I guess in my opinion) extremely unlikely to succeed.

That would come up against the interpretation of the First Amendment espoused by the Supreme Court in 1969, in the case Brandenburg v. Ohio. Before then, the First Amendment was not interpreted nearly so broadly, and speech regulations at the federal and state levels were common, beginning with the Alien and Sedition Acts soon after the Constitution was ratified.

If/when the Democrats restructure the Supreme Court to have a liberal majority, overturning Brandenburg with a single ruling becomes on the table, and the door is open for hate speech legislation.

First part I agree with. The second part, maybe I guess? But that is, if ever, decades away so we can worry about that when it becomes a realistic prospect.

I don't think any of the current sitting life time appointed supreme court justices have expressed any will at overturning that decision.

The spinach example is so bad it's either such gross misunderstanding as to disqualify that interviewer from any future interviews, or it's an example deliberately designed to conflate issues.

The whole difficult part of 'hate speech' is that it often is highly offensive and nasty, but what people find highly offensive and nasty differs (e.g. an atheist stating there is no god is deeply hateful and offensive to many people, or being pro-abortion). Ugh. I can't even.

I am not a lawyer, but it seems that intentionally and falsely shouting fire to cause panic would not have any kind of blanket 1A protection. From https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...:

> And in fact the line from Justice Holmes in Schenck v. United States is “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” That “falsely” is what’s doing the work, both in Justice Holmes’s hypothetical, and in how such a false shout would be treated by First Amendment law today. Knowingly false statements of fact are often constitutionally unprotected — consider, for instance, libel, fraud, perjury, and false light invasion of privacy. That would presumably apply to knowing falsehoods that cause a panic.

Also see: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1038.

That said, this doesn't change your broader point that it seems that most people (myself included) are not very clear on 1A exceptions.

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