> The degree to which the effect of the cause is typical matters a lot in designing legislation or making fair decisions that apply equally to everyone.
I think this was added after I replied. I would certainly agree this legislation is overly broad and probably not helpful. At first I thought you were arguing cyberbullying could only be a matter of life and death if you had a "mental disorder".
I actively practice antisocial online behaviors. I disable game chats and rarely use voice, I block or purge things in my news feed that I don't like and at the end of the day my preferences dont impact other peoples' online lives.
There is an intentionality that you are not addressing, and is at the core of this law.
I see myself as a relatively stable person, but there will be topics and angles that touch me more than others. Someone digging through my post history should be enough to come with a general life profile and reasonable attack vectors.
We can keep a thick skin against attacks that are vague and/or indiscriminate, but it becomes harder when it’s more focused and resonates with thoughts we already have. You are right that one or two comments might not be much, but bullying isn’t about one-off acts, and any button that yielded a different reaction will be pushed again and again…
So yes, it’s not a fully random process to look for that “secret password”, the victim is online with an identity, and it comes down to how much effort is invested in trying to hurt them. Even worse when it’s a semi-public figure, or someone that exposed part of their everyday life.
Doing it enough times/for long enough, and there will be some chance to hit the victim during a vulnerable period (professional issues, friend/couple issues etc.). If they lose their place in society (lose their job, or are ostracized in their irl community), effects will compound.
https://daily.jstor.org/wittgenstein-whether-speech-violence...
Generally speaking, pernicious "speech" is not the speech itself, rather targeting the social network of the victim with slanderous messaging.
For a simple example, somebody plastering their ex's nudes into their ex's linkedin network.
For another example, pernicious forms of cancel culture, where pressure groups take pleasure in contacting the employer of the victim and threaten reputational damage (scandal) unless they fire the poor sap.
In these cases is not the "speech" that is a problem, but the targeted malicious slandering.
What if there is a person who was mentally ill and if they hear the word coconut it could cause them to inflict self harm? Now what happens if I'm talking to that person and I say the magic word coconut? Am I liable in the situation, even if I wasn't aware that this would cause them harm?
Now let's take a more real world example, let's take the word rape. Some people may have had traumatic experiences in the past that can cause just the mention of this word alone to act as a trigger that could lead to negative thoughts and possibly self harm, even suicide. What about now?
What happens when the culprits are society as a whole?
In this case, there are varying levels of toxicity, but the general sentiment among Japanese netizens was disproportionately against the Hana Kimura.
Of course, if everyone died and the last person was able to speak freely, it would be worth it.
Everything else is trading safety for liberty.
Slippery slopes of free speech crackdowns inevitably lead to loss of liberty.
Leave if you don't like it.
Absolutism in free speech is the only justifiable position.
Welcome to debate.
Easy to say when it's not you doing the dying.
In this form, it's easy to show the flaw in this line of thought, because it concludes with literal extermination of the species ("the last person" implies no further people). And if a right leads to extermination of the species, what good was that right in the first place?
All rights have a balance point. Most hinge on where the rights of others begin. The freedom of speech (in the form of criticism of power) has massive value to the formation and maintenance of a free society, which is why some nations protect it so zealously. But even those nations have recognized its constraint in various contexts.
The position described here is a fringe position and should remain one to maximize the value of free speech.
?
Well, that depends on the amount of dying and the kind of speech.