Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

Of course, and thank you for asking. The group I was involved in was repatriating Eastern European women who had been duped. They responded to ads in the paper that were seeking farmhands to spend the summer picking fruit for excellent wages. When the women showed up to the "interview" at the farm, they were drugged and kidnapped.

From there, they were transported to Egypt, where they were smuggled close to the border and "conditioned". Conditioning involves repeatedly forcing them to take strong drugs like heroin, so that they become chemically addicted. The drugs act as an effective restraint. If the girl escapes, she has no way to get a fix within 48 hours, and goes into withdrawal.

Eventually, they are smuggled into slave markets in various countries there, where they are auctioned off or sold via direct sale. Usually, an auto mechanic is involved - he will build the girl into a car for transport. She will be sewed into the seats in the back of the car, built into the dashboard just behind the engine - it's simply awful. Travel can take several days and many don't survive.

I can't say much about how we intervened, but we worked with the authorities to intercept them and repatriate them to their homes in Europe.

>I've considered solutions, and I believe forcing people to reply before they are allowed to downvote would help

I think old school sequential forums were actually much better, outside specific niches they're harder to find these days though. Having the things everyone strongly agrees with at the top where they're the first to be read just encourages flamewars straight out of the gate and a lot of stuff just got lost in the middle to never be looked at again. But when casually reading you see replies from everyone, there's no distinction between controversial opinions and group think approved ones. One of the few I frequent regularly is actually a political and has posters with the full spectrum of beliefs, but the lack voting makes things much more pleasant than a similar topic on here or reddit would be.

There were a couple of other advantages too, bumping threads meant the conversation was over when it stopped being discussed, not when an algorithm decided it was no longer interesting.

In the same spirit, gentleman11's point is that if you attend a gathering with people you don't know, and that gathering turns out to be heavily represented by looters and rioters, you are going to be labelled with it.

> You're furiously defending an argument that you've made

More like trying to show to DanBC that their line of thinking is illogical. Regardless, I do not see anything furious about it.

You're exactly right and I think it's important to consider that the LA Times' position as a sort of authority figure when it comes to speech (being a major news source/ media entity) may be an underlying interest in how the arguments made in this article are put forward. I imagine a whole lot of editors of the last few newspapers that are independently owned had some very interesting thoughts when the workers at New York Times pushed out some of it's leadership over an article Tom Cotton could have just as easily put on his website.

I agree that it's about cultural norms but I think the cultural norms are the cost and limiting factors of free expression being greatly reduced. I imagine an entity like the LA Times has an interest in defining how free speech works in the news room and subsequently the readers of that news source. I also imagine that idea of free speech would protect leadership in the newsroom from subordinates if everything published has to go through said leadership.

In the Canadian Charter of Rights (which is like the Canadian equivalent to the US Constitution), there is a concept of reasonable limits.

This allows a right to be limited to the extent that it is justified in a free and democratic society.

In practice, this has been used in Canada to prevent a variety of objectionable conduct such as hate speech and obscenity.

There's all kinds of limits on the limits themselves, and well defined tests and criterias for what can qualify as an appropriate limitation which since IANAL goes a little over my head.

I'm bringing it up simply because the concept of having an absolutely applicable in all circumstances free speech right is not a concept used everywhere. So I feel the idea that those who defend free speech should defend it also when it's offensive isn't universal, and in Canada, the charter of rights doesn't make it so. It's an interesting contrast I believe.

Here's a good read on other free democracies that also have certain limitations around freedom of speech: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitation...