Hopefully with more tech-savvy generations gradually taking power, this will happen without too many painful lessons.
Did we though? Unfortunately outside the US and a handful of other places free speech doesn't seem to be valued that much, often it's even viewed as a threat (and I'm not talking about authoritarian regimes). It's a double-edged sword to be fair, enabling misinformation and chaos.
Can you convince me of this? Because it's not my impression.
https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/e-s-v-a....
Not that I'm a particularly huge fan of some of the opinions that some of these people tend to express (to be fair in this case it's something that Muslims/their holy books acknowledge as well so it shouldn't be controversial at all...) but the whole idea of "balancing the rights to freedom of religion and expression" just seems extremely repulsive to me.
Of course this is a spectrum but having an (effectively) immutable constitution that guarantees freedom of speech is certainly worth something.
> spectrum
The spectrum is far too often simply colored by the politics one's interested in, i.e. Free Speech is simply a tool to attack another and provide justification for their own opinions. Not an actual Free Speech position.
I don't believe anyone truly has a Free Speech Absolutist position. It's always just a tool. When the speech is against you, everyone conveniently turns against it.
Anyone who defended that isn't even close to a free-speech absolutist.
>I don't believe anyone truly has a Free Speech Absolutist position
I do. It's what makes America great. Erosions like that jewish law are slowly weakening that.
You should be allowed to say whatever you want about White people, straight people, men, Christians, etc. and I should be able to say whatever I want about jews.
You just don't want to acknowledge such a stance is possible because the people you agree with are in power, allow the speech you agree with, and censor the speech you don't disagree with, so you stand with nothing to gain by supporting free speech. That's a personal choice to have no integrity.
Because absolute free speech is allowing all that without consequence
Secondly, you're okay with someone inciting violence/vandalism/crimes, and people acting explicitly on that person's direction, as long as only the actual violence/vandalism/crime is punished?
Yes. Everyone has agency, if I tell you to commit a crime it's up to you whether to do so.
Maybe, maybe with an unwieldy amount of time the rubes would all die out as they administer snake oil to themselves and their families, the pyramid schemes all collapse under the weight of their inability to produce the results their funders sought, and the collective, unorganized and ungovernmented multitudes publicly shame and criticize those industry leaders who conducted research into the effects of their products, but decided instead to make some shit up to sell more.
Maybe more likely: as the divine wisdom of the heavenly free market dictates, a few really good liars get a massive foothold and build empires on it. And maybe in the truest American free market fashion, these opportunities to profit from fraud are available to everyone! Even if you’re not clever enough to build an empire, you can at least move state to state, lying, selling more slow-burn poison, all the while with the cops backing you up when the mob forms, because fraud and the affects of lying are as protected as saying something ignorant or mean.
I don't say it doesn't I don't say it does.
And liable isn't a crime? What's then stopping people from calling each other pedophiles which in turn causes them to lose jobs/relationships/etc.
Should Alex Jones have been convicted of liable due to his claims surrounding Sandy hook?
I'm no free speech absolutist, as you'll end up eating your own tail, but I'm a 100% believer in free speech that does not legitimize malicious use (just because you lie about someone doesn't mean you will be prosecuted that if there were to be a law enacted then free speech won't protect said lie), such as no liable, no threat of violence, no willfully scamming/swindling and no abuse of authoritative/alertive speech (as in saying fire in a theater when there is no fire).
But I submit that given our current state of affairs as a species, I don’t think we could handle that “yes”.
That “yes” coexisting in a harmonious world that is safe and sound would require that speech that incites violence or vandalism isn’t acted upon, for example. That the market could and would reliably be able to detect and counter deceitful manipulation. That somehow the market would be able to do the same with lies about a product or service.
It also suggests abdicating accountability for when such a seemingly perfect system would fail and result in harm.
These things seem implausible in our current reality. A lack of accountability seems undesirable generally and is already something that we suffer enough.
If you also abolish the notion of intellectual property as well as trade secrets, both of which are severe limitations on free speech, then sure. Otherwise it's just another case of wanting free speech when it suits the company but wanting to restrict it when it doesn't.
> Lies about your character? Your kids? made up stuff that whips up entire segments of your city to commit violence or vandalism against you?
Sure, as long as the actual violence and vandalism is harshly punished to discourage people from acting on falsehoods. The speech was never the real problem here.
You can’t undo that, not to mention it not illegal to fire someone because if you read some false facts in the paper
Both approaches rely on punishment disincentivizing others from behaving in the same way. Except that "hate speech" laws are a bludgeon that a) can be easily circumvented by clever speech that is still going to encourage violence and b) is guaranteed to be used sooner or later as a pretense to silence dissidents whose speech would not result in violence. They are really only one tiny step removed from trying to combat thought crimes. Better to disincentivize the behavior that is actually a problem for society (i.e. violence) rather than something as vague and subjective as "hate speech" that may or may not lead to it.
> Not to mention it not illegal to fire someone because if you read some false facts in the paper
Some countries have strong worker protections that actually make it quite hard to fire someone without a good reason.
Is basically the argument you’re making here. So I guess we shouldn’t have any punishment for any behaviour then eh?
Freedom of speech is absolutely not about freedom from consequences. Where and how did you ever get that idea?
Free speech means you can say anything you want, some very specific caveats aside, and you can't be prosecuted simply for saying them. But that doesn't mean you won't have to answer for what happens as a consequence.
As an example: You absolutely can go and make wild claims about your product to try and sell it, nobody can stop you from doing that. You absolutely can make bogus claims about someone, nobody can stop you from doing that either. However, you will be prosecuted for making false statements and defamation respectively by the people you harmed. Note what is prosecuted here: The effects of the false and perhaps even sinister nature of the statement, not the statement itself.
No True Scotsman.
> You just don't want to acknowledge such a stance is possible because the people you agree with are in power, allow the speech you agree with, and censor the speech you don't disagree with, so you stand with nothing to gain by supporting free speech. That's a personal choice to have no integrity.
... I am not American, neither do I have anyone in power who supports the speech I agree with. There's no need to attack me specifically. I am talking about the wider pattern. Free Speech Absolutists exist as long as the speech they support is being oppressed. Do you support Free Speech of the person screaming obscenities at your young child? False claims about you? Whipping up entire communities to attack you physically? Do you support speech that incites genocide?
Yes, some of those are crimes but I am not sure you'd care if you'd been attacked already. The damage is done.
Nope. If you support laws that censor criticism of israel you are not a free speech supporter, let alone an absolutist. The term has a very clear definition and it's the opposite of what the antisemitism law entails.
>... I am not American, neither do I have anyone in power who supports the speech I agree with.
Did I say you were American? All of Europe and many parts of Asia are way worse when it comes to free speech.
>Do you support Free Speech of the person screaming obscenities at your young child? False claims about you? Whipping up entire communities to attack you physically?
Yes. If it's just words and not a direct threat it's fine.
Direct threats are a fine exception because they promise crossing over from words into physical action, at that point the NAP is violated if you want to look at it that way. No need to wait and see if they're actually going to follow through.
Aside from that I really don't see any need for further exceptions.
I'd argue that someone who has effectively control over some kind of mob riling them up is quite a bit more threatening than a "direct threat" if they know that mob contains people that will (or even just are very likely to) commit violence as a result of it: instead of making one direct threat, they generate multiple (indirect and possibility silent) ones.
>Can you convince me of this? Because it's not my impression.
In my country (Macedonia), our then-Prime Minister a few years ago during the height of the pandemic, spoke (broken) English and funnily pronounced vaccines, something like "vac-signs" (or "vaksajns" in Macedonian). A guy made a website called vaksajns.com or .mk (can't remember the exact details) and if you visited it, it automatically redirected you to the Ministry of Health covid watch page. Police showed up at his door and he was taken to the police station to be questioned. This would never happen in a true free speech country like the United States.
Free speech in principle is enshrined in the Macedonian constitution as a fundamental right (I studied law), but there are many hate speech laws (we have a complex ethnic structure and wars based on ethnic sides), making it so that free speech isn't a thing (I studies law, if I need to clarify once more.)
If you criticize someone based on their religion, ethnicity, or whatever else that they can't control, you will be fined, or worse (although this does get selectively applied, mainly based on how much political power the group has which the offended member is a part of. Roma people have no political power in this country, so this very rarely happens when they do get offended(I don't think it has ever happened to be honet))- this does not happen in the US where free speech rains supreme (to clarify, i don't think we should go around criticizing people based on things they cant control, *but once you start limiting things the people can and cannot say, you don't have free speech* in your nationstate, Period.)
And what's funny, nobody talks about freedom of speech. Ever. Every political party and politicians of opposing political parties, and even their supporters have seemed to implicitly agree that it's somehow not an issue at all that the all-good state can tell you what's right and what's wrong, and what can be said and what can not be said.
Another funny story. At around the same time when the previous story takes place, the government made an official dictionary of the Macedonian language, supposed to contain all of the known words, BUT excluded all of the offensive words. Talk about state censorship...
What I described, more or less applies to the entire EU. Hate speech laws reign supreme in Europe. Asian countries do not have a good track record of freedom of speech, to say the least, either. I'm not sure about Africa, though I'm sure, that in the countries that do have a stable government, things aren't dissimilar when compared to European and Asian countries.
I've also lived in the US, and I've observed that it's the only place in the world where free speech is, actually, free.
Anybody who disagrees hasn't lived in a country other than the US *and* experienced life there. No, going to a country for 3 months back in '98 when you were in college and only going to parties does not, alas, constitute experiencing life in that country - at best you experienced party life (if you were not blackout drunk), which is a very tiny subset of life.
And to the Europeans and other people except those who live in the US, trust me, you do not know, what free speech feels like, not until you can experience the true freedom to express yourself like you can in the US. If you've done extensive research on this topic, you may actually know what it is, but not the actual indescribable feeling.
Also, have you ever heard of what happened in Tiananmen square, in Hong Kong a few years ago, in Prague a few centuries ago, in Kent State in the US (mind you, one of these was taken much, much, inexplainably much more seriously than the other events.) But I guess you haven't, considering you're asking people to convince you that free speech is not valued that much in countries outside the US.
I suppose that's why a silly Canadian like me wouldn't know much about other countries. We just don't have free speech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_expression_in_Canad...
You do not seem truly interested though. My guess is that you do not feel that your particular speech/expressions are under threat.
Your America-centric view of the world is pretty fun though.
Nowhere does
You're speaking of Canada, the same country where the (Canadian) Bill of Rights can be suspended (which to begin with, this document is not taken very seriously) along with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which is present in your constitution, and free speech with it, for the "good of the people" of course... Yep, you're right, you don't have meaningful free speech, nor do you have that many rights compared to the US.
Oh, and, you're Prime Minister is also basically an absolute monarch compared to the US President, given how few meaningful checks there are limiting his power.
I admit, a few years ago I was naive about just how free Canada is, but once I started reading your statutes a lot of things started surprising me, in a not-so-good way.
(Now, don't take this the wrong way, you're still a freer country than fricking North Korea, but relatively speaking, for a Western democracy, you just ain't that free, bud.)
That's a significant disadvantage democracies that embrace freedom of speech have, though. China/Russia/other authoritarian shitholes have a very easy time shaping, blocking or severely limiting information spread from the outside world. Trying to play nice against a side which is cheating and playing dirty isn't exactly a winning strategy...
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
Btw even Nazi radio broadcasting was not blocked during WW2 in GB.
No, they just executed their announcer for treason just for what he said on radio and accepting German citizenship (and it was not even clear he was legally a British subject to begin with...). Also jamming it back then wouldn't have been that easy and worthwhile also the Nazis occasionally allowed POWs to send messages to their families back home.
Btw the scale of censorship and other measures restricting the freedom of speech in Allied states during WW2 (or WW1 for that matter) were was extreme by modern standards.
American freedom of speech aka "you can literally be fired and see your life ruined for having a political opinion but you won't go to jail so be thankful"
The 1st Amendment guarantees you the right to say whatever the fuck you want, with some very specific caveats concerning disturbing the peace, but freedom is power and power is responsibility.
How is the US different from any other country in history in that regard?
You can be in North Korea and freely criticize the government, you're just not gonna be "free from the consequences".
Turns out, being protected from the 'consequences' is what actually matters.
Boe Jiden will probably sue you for defamation.
The courts will very likely give him the win, slamming you with a hefty fine and perhaps more such as prison time depending on the damages your speech incurred.
You can say Boe Jiden is a purple Martian born in Backwaterstan again, so long as you're fine going through that rigmarole again though you'll probably face even heftier penalties.
You are in no way prevented from voicing your thoughts because the 1st Amendment guarantees your right to do so. You can only ever be prosecuted for the consequences, such as the fallout from making false statements.
Again, freedom of speech exists in North Korea and it's protected by law, it's just that you're not free from the consequences of abusing freedom of speech.
Again, note precisely what is prosecuted here in the US where free speech is a guaranteed Constitutional right. You can with absolute power say whatever you want, but you will need to own up to it.
If you don't or can't own up to what you say, don't speak. This isn't a violation of free speech because nobody is prohibiting or otherwise compelling you from speaking.
Either we say that people are free to express their opinions, or we punish people for saying things we don't like. Can't have both at the same time.
The other guy used the argument "but the US constitution guarantees freedom of speech" yeah so does North Korean, argument invalid.
I don't understand why this step "if people can be punished for saying something then they don't have freedom of speech" isn't an obvious logical statement.
> but the US constitution guarantees freedom of speech" yeah so does North Korean, argument invalid.
Well courts in the US are somewhat independent and generally tend to usually adhere to that part of the US constitution when making decisions. North Korean courts? Not so much... Obviously it's a spectrum since the world is not black and white but I really don't quite understand what are you trying to say.
Are you seriously claiming that you don't see a fundamental difference between the US and North Korea in this case? Or do you just want someone to spend their time compiling a list of Supreme Court decisions relating to freedom of speech?
This is the problem because 99% of people are effectively dependent on their employers, and there's huge power imbalance between employers and employees.
In Europe there's a specific list of reasons which can result in work contract termination. This means that the employer cannot fire me just because I posted on Facebook "vote for party X for better future". This means that I feel free to post this because I know nobody will ruin my life over that.
In most US states there's a specific list of reasons why people cannot be fired - which means they can be fired for all other reasons, and "posting on Facebook that you support given party" does not belong to that list, which means that you can be fired for that, which effectively makes you think twice before you say things publicly.
I really don't think that "you don't go to jail but you have your life ruined by being fired and becoming unemployable" is such a fantastic deal and an example of freedom of speech.
That's the real issue, however fundamentally I don't really see an issue if saying certain things publicly makes you effectively unemployable.
> In Europe there's a specific list of reasons which can result in work contract termination.
It varies by country but I'm not sure it applies to illegal/banned speech? Also in Europe you can be convicted and fined for quoting the Hadith while not being a Muslim* and the ECHR doesn't see a problem with that (which unfortunately proves that "freedom of speech" is just not a thing in Europe).
Germany is putting people in prison (for as long as 5 years) just for their speech (as false and repulsive as it might be. How is that better than making those people "unemployable"? Which probably wouldn't even be the case since there (unfortunately) are still plenty of people who'd hire nazi apologists (both in US and Europe).
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.S._v._Austria_(2018)
> is such a fantastic deal and an example of freedom of speech.
IMHO it really depends on what opinions exactly did you express. Again I don't see how is it any fairer to impose your personal controversial views on your employer (even if indirectly).
You are still failing to understand that nobody is prosecuted for what they say in the US. What is prosecuted is the damages incurred from what is said, such as damage to reputation in the case of defamation or physical/financial harm in the case of false marketing.
If you can't understand that, you need to go back and do your homework before you continuing discussing freedom of speech.