Freedom of speech may protect against government consequences but it doesn't protect against social consequences.
Whenever I see this line, all I can think is this is the exact same reasoning used by racists and homophobes and religious fanatics in the past. Maybe it’s legal for you to be gay now, but we don’t want to welcome you in our community. Maybe it’s legal for black people to buy houses in our neighbourhoods now that doesn’t mean we have to be welcoming. Maybe we can’t kill you know for being an atheist but we’ll banish you from the community.
The reason modern societies are functionally republics ( I am counting constitutional monarchies here as well ) and not direct democracies is to protect against this very phenomenon of changing societal whims.
If you subscribe to this line of thinking, remember one thing. Societal normal are constantly changing. Just as acceptance of homosexuality waxed and waned across time, just as acceptance of foreigners waxed and waned, so to it will in the future. There will come one day, maybe in our life time, maybe far into the future, when all your values will be turned upside down and it will be people like you who will find themselves persecuted. And when that happens, just tell to yourself “Freedom of speech may protect against government consequences but it doesn't protect against social consequences”
- A homophobe cca 1954
To quote Matthew Price: “it would have been appropriate as an infrastructure provider for us to wait for legal process”
In a civilised society, we do not have mob rule, we have the rule of law.
The reason we have this stems from the observation that societal norms change throughout time. If we do not have rule of law people will find themselves at the mercy of mobs and petty tyrants. We do not let the mob or “gods anointed” dictate who gets rights and who doesn’t, we offer the same rights to everyone and have a system in place to punish those who step outside the boundaries of the law. This is how a civilised society functions.
If you believe kiwifarms did something wrong, the correct steps are to engage with the system, go through the courts and show they have stepped outside the law. The correct steps are not to censor on the whims of a mob.
Let me ask you a question as well. If a gay teenager or a pregnant teenager gets kicked out of their house for being gay or falling pregnant, would you be as callous as to tell them “you may be protected against government consequences but you’re not protected against social consequences”?
He acts like as if internet outside of Cloudflare doesn’t exist, he pretends that there are no alternatives. Either he’s actually insane or this is just a marketing strategy.
>If a gay teenager or a pregnant teenager gets kicked out of their house for being gay or falling pregnant, would you be as callous as to tell them “you may be protected against government consequences but you’re not protected against social consequences”?
Of course not, but I also wouldn't go out of my way to do anything to help the people who kicked out that teenager! There is no equivalence here, and it's utterly dystopian that you and anyone else seem to insist otherwise. What, specifically, is the protected class you think Kiwi Farms is a part of?
Do you believe stores should be allowed to ban black people from shopping there? Do you believe pharmacies should be allowed to deny medication to jewish people? Perhaps you believe bakeries should not have to sell cakes to gay people?
Are these groups not “owed a literal service at their own expense because... principles”?
To me it seems you’re the one painting yourself a bizarre rhetorical corner. You can’t have it both ways. If we agreed as a society businesses should not discriminate, then they should not discriminate.
So to answer the question you should asked, yes, I honestly believe that nobody should have consequences for any actions outside of the literal legal system when dealing with a business. Business relationships are not the same as interpersonal relationships.
And to answer this one too:
> What, specifically, is the protected class you think Kiwi Farms is a part of?
People who think differently from you.
> People who think differently from you.
The issue at hand is not that they "think differently" than me, it's that they did terrible things to innocent people. The mere virtue of them having a different opinion from me doesn't mean they're suddenly off limits for repercussions, again, that's assinine, and nobody reasonable thinks the only time there should be consequences for anything is when they're legal consequences.
A hate campaign was launched against a minority group wielding no societal power by a socially dominant group backed by governments and corporations alike. A group of people with institutional power used their power, influence and privilege to harass and silence a powerless minority. Because they think different to them. This is why Kiwifarms is no longer on the internet.
A better comparison with what happened is, at some point in the past before civil rights were implemented, a white man overhears a black man talking. The white man doesn’t like what the black man is saying, so he says “that black man there is a murderer!”. So the black man is arrested and executed. And you, a passerby, take the word of the white man and begin telling everyone “oh that black guy was a vicious murderer”.
In any case, I have no further wish to engage. I have expressed my thoughts on the matter. I’ll leave you with an echo of my original post. When you’ll find yourself outside the cathedral, just tell your self “nobody reasonable thinks the only time there should be consequences for anything is when they're legal consequences”
The comparison isn't to the people who are being harassed randomly. It's between two "mobs", the Twitter one and the KF one.
> Freedom of speech may protect against government consequences but it doesn't protect against social consequences.
The legal concept doesn't, but the ideal (and the social norm) does.