You think Steven Pinker, Julian Assange, Richard Dawkins, John Cleese, Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali “[give] free speech a bad name”?
Most atheists are able to express their disagreement, or even opposition, to religion without expressing hatred against religion. Unfortunately, Richard Dawkins is not that sort of atheist.
I'm thankful for what Edward Snowden did. Unfortunately, even if he didn't have much choice, by fleeing to Russia he made it much easier for people to dismiss criticisms of surveillance as anti-American propaganda.
From what I've heard, John Cleese's criticism of "cancel culture" has been nuanced and reasonable. Unfortunately, a lot of people just lump him in with out of touch comedians whining that they get criticized for telling bigoted jokes. My point being; although I don't think it's fair, his inclusion is unlikely to do the Westminster Declaration any favors in terms of changing people's minds.
Yes.
John Cleese, for example, is just about to start a show on a channel that he thought was a "free speech" channel. Then he got annoyed that they hired Boris Johnson, who he described as a serial liar.
Who could have seen that coming, except anyone who was paying the slightest bit of attention?
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/oct/28/john-cleese-...
And he's maybe the best of that particular bunch.
There's no useful discussion of free speech that doesn't acknowledge the need to cultivate free speech by pruning repressive speech. Walled garden and all that.
For purposes of this discussion, let's talk about the origins of Covid-19 and how surgical masks had little effect on the lab-borne virus. Or we can talk about how anti-maskers' rhetoric harmed a vulnerable population, and how discussions of lab-vs-wild distracted us from what should have been our immediate concerns.
Should the government talk to Twitter about my statements to that effect?
What about forcing vaccinated pupils to share a classroom with unvaccinated peers?
Some people will share their (reasonable!) opinion that allowing unvaccinated students presents a hazard to the school population. Others will share their (also reasonable!) opinion that denying education based on vaccination status presents a hazard to the development of our kids.
These are examples! I do not want to actually debate Covid 19 shit. Instead, I'm using it as something concrete to get at the larger ideas about speech "cultivation" and "pruning", and who decides what is "repressive".
So, who's building the garden walls?
Any social media company should be able to prune to whichever degree each company wants to. And the pruning doesn't have to be about whether speech is repressive in X way. It can be as frivolous as "Ban all people who like carrots" to something as serious as "Ban people who think X about Covid". In other words, I personally don't support the Westminster Declaration beyond situations involving government coercion.
> For purposes of this discussion, let's talk about the origins of Covid-19 and how surgical masks had little effect on the lab-borne virus. Or we can talk about how anti-maskers' rhetoric harmed a vulnerable population, and how discussions of lab-vs-wild distracted us from what should have been our immediate concerns.
> Should the government talk to Twitter about my statements to that effect?
"Talk to" is very broad. In my opinion: "Hey, this post might have misinformation" is okay because it's just a heads-up, not a suggestion of an action. By okay, I mean legal under the First Amendment. "We would prefer that you take down the post" is okay because it only suggests an action. "We want you to take down the post, or we will do Y" is not okay because it's coercive. "Take down the post" is not okay because it might have a tone of finality and thus coercion. (I say "might" because determining the tone of a written text is inevitably subjective.)
"Should" the government talk to Twitter? Not necessarily, and it depends on the topic. But at the same time, not every kind of moderation-related communication between a social media company and a government should be frowned upon.
> So, who's building the garden walls?
I'm actually going to choose not to answer these questions because I am exhausted of them being trotted out as if the answer is "it's impossible".
In actuality, better thinkers/writers than I have answered them many times before because they're such obvious problems in anything but the simplest possible set of rules (the one TFA is arguing for: all speech is equal and not harmful).