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Comment by hodgesrm | Hacker News Reader

This is a fair point but any discussion of free speech should be grounded with examples of systems that help maintain it, of which the US constitutional regime is one. Not all such regimes have worked, as the French Revolution demonstrated starting 2 months after the adoption of the US constitution. [0, 1]

So my question would be, what other practical examples would you introduce to the discussion?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Sta...

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Oh? How successful do you think the US constitutional mechanism has really been in protecting free speech? And by "free speech" here, I mean exactly the broader sense, not constrained by a narrow constitutionalist view. To take one facet of the question, consider the World Press Freedom Index:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index

The country I live in (New Zealand) has no constitutional free speech guarantees, and ranks 11th. The US ranks 42nd, behind East Timor, Jamaica, Slovakia, South Africa, and many other places I imagine your average American would not associate with free speech. Now, I have quibbles with the way the Press Freedom Index is assembled, and it only captures one narrow (but important) aspect of what we care about when we speak about free speech. That notwithstanding, my question to you is this: scanning down that list of countries, does it perhaps occur to you that the US may have something to learn from us, rather than the other way round?

I lived in Russia, New Zealand, Canada, and US. Of the four, US undoubtedly is the best at protecting controversial political speech, which to me feels like exactly what you want to prioritize if you want to maintain a free society.

The US constitution protects controversial speech, in the sense that government punishment is not meted out to people who step out of line. The limits of this are immediately apparent when you ask if people functionally have the ability to speak freely from within US institutions of academia, journalism, or large corporations. I work with colleagues in all of these from all over the world, and nobody is more afraid of saying the wrong thing and having their lives ruined than Americans. The fear is palpable and ever-present. So again, how successful has the first amendment really been here? The frequent response to this is "freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences", which is exactly the kind of legalistic attitude we have to get away from. Real freedom of speech means exactly the ability to say controversial things without suffering disproportionate harm, and I just don't think the US is doing markedly better than the rest of the free world on this front.

I'm not sure where this perverted view on the freedom of speech comes from. It has never meant freedom of consequences or criticism which is what "free speech absolutists" of today are seeking. To say otherwise would be to force people to associate with others. You're going to force a business to keep an employee who is damaging their reputation or hurting team morale. You're elevating the rights of trolls to the point where it infringes on the rights of others specifically the freedom of association. Free speech absolutists want a captive audiences who cannot disassociate with them and force companies to host content that is damaging to their brand. They have no respect for the speech of others in the form of protests which they label as "cancelling" and rail against despite it also being free speech.

I'm not talking about free speech absolutism. What I'm describing here is a specific US-centered cultural phenomenon - thin-skinned, hypocritical tribalism that has turned people against each other, where every conversation that strays outside of narrow doctrinaire bounds, however innocuous or well-intentioned, might be reported on by a remorseless army of cruel snitches ever hungry to find some way to elevate themselves by destroying others. It's the very opposite of being kind or considerate, and, having seen its effects on colleagues, I can't imagine anything more damaging to "team morale". Freddie De Boer has a pungent phrase for this - "planet of cops" - and his essay is worth reading:

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/planet-of-cops

I feel focus on the first amendment gives people of this bent cover: it lets them exert incredible power over speech in every practical way, while claiming that free speech is intact because there's no violation of the constitution. The fact that we need to clearly rebut people like this is exactly one of the reasons why I feel over-indexing on the constitution is unhelpful.

Businesses don't have freedom of association. For example, in California, the "ban the box" law means that FANG must hire convicted domestic abusers even if it is bad for morale. This of course pertains only to past actions of the applicant though.

This is very interesting! How did the FANG in your hypothetical find out about the person being a convicted domestic abuser? The law says they are not allowed to ask about prior criminal history which is not relevant to the job itself, so it would be interesting to know how these pieces of information come to light.

I'll leave the question of "should a person be branded for life even if they've done everything they can to make things right" for the reader.

> Oh? How successful do you think the US constitutional mechanism has really been in protecting free speech? And by "free speech" here, I mean exactly the broader sense, not constrained by a narrow constitutionalist view.

Overall quite successful, especially measured by longevity. It has not always been pretty. Politics in the US is a blood sport--sometimes quite literally. And the right to free speech has not been evenly distributed. But there aren't a lot of nations that have offered the level of protection from government suppression offered by the US since the late 1700s. Many of the nations you cite have not enjoyed these freedoms for very long. Nations like Japan and many in Europe also developed their current rights regime under the protection of the US during the post-war period. It's premature to conclude they have done better.

> That notwithstanding, my question to you is this: scanning down that list of countries, does it perhaps occur to you that the US may have something to learn from us, rather than the other way round?

Of course. Just as one example I'm impressed that many European nations do a better job of balancing free speech vs. harms than the US does. For example Germany does not permit Nazi speech, which seems reasonable. They also did a vastly better job of maintaining a civil dialogue about COVID at least early on. [0]

I'm not in any way arguing the US is perfect. You would have to be pretty blind to do that.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/823865329/das-coronavirus-pod...

I always find it instructive to view these reports at the source. I developed this habit in 2018, when Reporters Without Borders (who maintain the Press Freedom Index you linked) published a report of the six most dangerous countries for journalists: India, Yemen, Mexico, Syria, Afghanistan, and of course the United States. When I read the report, it described how in Mexico journalists are executed by cartels and organized crime, how journalists in Yemen die in prison due to mistreatment, how in Syria journalists were killed in airstrikes and taken hostage by Islamic militants, how in India Hindu nationalist mobs would run down journalists with trucks… and how in the US, six journalists were killed in one year: four murdered by a stalker angry at a 2011 story the newspaper had published (subsequently tried and found guilty of mass murder), and two killed by a falling tree.

Being the midst of Donald Trump’s presidency, of course, there were headlines all over the United States: “Reporters Without Borders ranks US among most dangerous countries for journalists!”. The story was perfect clickbait, especially in that political environment.

I’m not saying Reporters Without Borders is untrustworthy. But I’m skeptical of their rankings by default, because being overly pessimistic about the US is an easy way to get lots of attention.

Here’s their report on the US’s ranking in the Press Freedom Index:

https://rsf.org/en/country/united-states

Issues it lists:

• Many media outlets are owned by the wealthy

• Donald Trump denigrated the press

• Local news outlets are declining

• Polarization of media

• Section 230 debates

• Julian Assange

• Citizens don’t trust the media

• Online harassment can harm journalists

• Journalists face “an unprecedented climate of animosity and aggression during protests”

I invite readers to compare these issues to the entries for other countries and judge whether they justify the US’s ranking in this list.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker lists nearly 300 journalist arrests, nearly 1,000 assaults, 160 court orders, 80 cases of equipment seizure, nearly 50 instances of chilling effects and hundreds of other types of suppression of journalists since 2017[1].

[1] https://pressfreedomtracker.us/

That’s a much more interesting source since it aggregates objective facts and statistics. Do you know of a comparative analysis of these stats with equivalents in other countries?

I don't unfortunately. I coincidentally came across that source recently while doing some research.

> Donald Trump denigrated the press

He absolutely did do that. But what he didn't do was suppress the press, jail the reporters, etc.

> But what he didn't do was suppress the press, jail the reporters, etc.

See "Four more journalists get felony charges after covering inauguration unrest"[1]. PEN America, Protect Democracy and the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Clinic also sued the government because of press suppression[2][3].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/24/journalists-ch...

[2] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/10/16/trumps-at...

[3] https://pen.org/pen-america-v-trump/

Thank you, I did not know that.

I don’t think any of those bullets are strictly untrue. The question is whether in combination they actually demonstrate a serious threat to press freedom relative to other countries.

Wait until Rupert Murdoch sells "News" there.

https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/jacinda-ardern-ru...

The parent post that you're objecting to is advocating exactly what you are. Talking about different measures of free speech and how it relates to society. There are both legal and social Dimensions to the issue

How about the European Convention on Human Rights?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R...

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/European_Convention_for_the_P...

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