Xkcd: Free Speech (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Xkcd: Free Speech (2014)

xkcd.com

20 pointsacadapter11 comments

Seems there are more limits on "Free speech" than I recall, these days, at least according to Florida's attorney general [1]..

“In a brief submitted by the State of Florida in support of Escambia, Attorney General Ashley Moody argued that the school board could ban books for any reason because the purpose of public school libraries is to "convey the government’s message," and that can be accomplished through "the removal of speech that the government disapproves."

My counter-argument is this: you could make a more extreme version of the statement like: "the government can't arrest you for what you say, but the people are free to reach for their pitchforks and lynch you". Which isn't true, the government must also protect you from arbitrary violence. The fact that violence perpetrated via social media (harassment, stalking, mobbing) cannot realistically be prosecuted, doesn't invalidate the principle that people should be protected from it.

> Which isn't true, the government must also protect you from arbitrary violence.

"The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm"

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po...

It may not be a constitutional duty, as outlined in the case, but it’s still their job. If they aren’t enforcing the law and court orders, what are they doing?

I do my job because it’s my job, not because of a constitutional obligation.

How could the Court have ruled otherwise? It would just defy common sense to say that the police are responsible to prevent physical harm coming to any person in their jurisdiction. Unless you were to have a police officer stationed at each resident's house, there would be no reasonable way to hold the police responsible.

A separate but related issue: If I see a toddler walking on the railroad tracks and I see a train coming -- but with plenty of time to intervene without placing myself at significant risk -- am I obligated to save the toddler. I think inaction is such a situation is not against the law, at least for an ordinary citizen, but anyone who hears the particulars of the incident will hold me in deep contempt.

It's been nearly 10 years since this famous perspective on free speech was published and circulated.

How do you think it has aged?

“We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.”

― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

It never was a helpful point of view; it was and is a cynical, sad, low side compliance moral principle. One might as well say: "You know, the government and businesses are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, but it has never been the case that I'm not permitted to be a racist in my own heart, in my own thoughts. I'm free to think that black and brown people are lesser humans." That is a legally correct statement, but abysmally immoral. Similarly, yes it is true that the constitution only protects my free speech vis-à-vis the government, but there has always been a prevailing ethos of free speech in America, in the spirit of the maxim often attributed to Voltaire: "I disagree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it."

At one time it was a sign of a cultured, educated person that they did not bristle at the expression of points of view contrary to their own; they realized that in a pluralistic society we all have our points of view but no one can or should assume that their point of view should reign supreme. The increasing polarization of our society can be traced to notions such as this one expounded on Xkcd.

https://newsadvance.com/opinion/cartoons/the-free-speech-umb...

The comic contains an important factual (not legal or ethical) error. It claims "the people listening think you're an asshole, and they're showing you the door."

This is incorrect - it's not "the people listening" that are showing you the door, but the corporations mediating your speech, despite having willing listeners.

Edit as reply because I am "posting too fast": RPM didn't write "your listeners", just "the people listening"?

"The people listening" is not an accurate or honest term for "social and other media corporations", even if some of their board-members sometimes listen to some of the speakers they eventually censor.

RPM didn't write "your listeners", just "the people listening"?

(although note that for me this whole free speech brouhaha seems massively overblown, as I have the great fortune to live in a country with a late 20th century constitution instead of some creaking 18th century legacy)

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