Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by ryukafalz » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

camelCaseCamel wrote: post #319

indigochill wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How do you manage reading every code of conduct and honoring it? I don't think perfect adherence should be expected. If there's a code of conduct and someone runs afoul of it, just give them a gentle poke and point them to what they ran afoul of. If they're cool with the code of conduct, great. They fix their behavior and everyone's happy. If they don't like the code of conduct, then they're welcome to join a commun…

Who polices those giving the "boot"? Who polices those police? What about nuances and interpretations and lack of context?

Given small enough communities: no one, and that’s okay. If you start behaving in a way I don’t like after inviting you to my home, I’m well within my rights to kick you out, and there isn’t (and shouldn’t be) anyone policing me on that.

No, this doesn’t work at Facebook scale. I think we had a good thing going on the early web with lots of small discussion boards.

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

#342

Post by sojournerc » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:27 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #229

ngngngng wrote: post #177

I argued with a family member about this just the other day. She was trying to get a faculty member at a local university fired for saying something offensive on Twitter. I asked her what happens after we get him fired? Can he earn back the worthiness to again feed his family? Will he need to denounce his views or just stop spewing them publicly? Will he just need to collect unemployment for the rest of his life now…

The thing is that these groups (yeah, yeah, always with the generalizations) preach empathy but have no trouble to get people fired, their families too if possible. I think they behave this way because of pressure from social media and racism and sexism are used as some form of emotional sink. Maybe that is too harsh on them in contrast of people just flaming random people by random characteristics, but they do have…

> racism and sexism are used as some form of emotional sink.

Reminds me of the 10 minute hate from 1984, which was also intended for catharsis not outward justice or remedy.

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

#343

Post by Chris2048 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:28 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #236

high_derivative wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find codes of conduct meaningless. They will go on in very general terms about 'hate speech' which is just synonymous with 'anything that anyone feels offended by' now. I would argue that code of conducts were a symptom of the start of the problem. The strategy of the grievance class: - Propose a code of conduct which surely nobody can disagree with, it's great to have rules and be nice to each other. - Design the…

That was always implicit in group discussions. As others have said, Codes of Conduct aren't creating new rules, they're just making them explicit instead of implicit. Let me give you an example: you have a group of friends. Two of your friends have recently experienced a miscarriage. The implicit rules in your group have now expanded to include "no dead baby jokes" (depending on how dark your group's humour was, this…

I think you are focusing on clear examples, and not the grey areas that can easily be abused.

Should a CoC have a "no politics" rule? No profanity (in an 18+ group)?

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

#344

Post by ColanR » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:28 PM UTC

austhrow743 wrote: post #296

koheripbal wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love it when people throw the term "objectively false" at anything they disagree with - in this case, the person is sharing their opinion on what should be reality. Someone's opinion on how things should be cannot be objectively false.

They were describing how they think the world is not how they think it should be.

how they think the world is != objective reality

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

#345

Post by bluntfang » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

AHappyCamper wrote: post #105

Thorrez wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could always say "underground market". Just make sure there aren't any hobbits around.

Ha! There is nothing illegal about an underground market. And the real issue is: if any use of terminology can get you blacklisted (another potential faux pas) then you end up not being able to say anything. At a certain point, all language becomes not viable because anything could potentially cause offense, so as a result, you just stop talking... even though you're trying to save slaves.

>There is nothing illegal about an underground market

Underground markets, even when selling legal goods, exist to avoid taxes. They are inherently illegal.

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

#346

Post by TuringTest » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

danielheath wrote: post #140

haberman wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The trick is to create channels with limited audiences, where you can set an expectation of which ideas are acceptable and which are not. Do you mean that a community could allow argument X, but disallow counter-argument Y? That sounds like a recipe for an echo chamber. I definitely see the benefit in saying that certain topics are out of scope for a given community. But saying which ideas are acceptable and which…

Every stable community already has things you can and cannot say (try arguing the merits of pederasty, war, or heroin and see how far you get!)

> Every stable community already has things you can and cannot say

My point is that every stable community has a different subset of things that you cannot say.

It's easy to create a group where pederasty, war or heroin can be freely discussed or praised. The problem nowadays appears when utterances aimed to that specific group are picked up and propagated by the general network, reaching people who were not their intended targets and who didn't share the original channel's assumptions for what can and cannot be said.

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

#347

Post by x86_64Ubuntu » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

Free-Speech is a concept that governs government interference, not people losing their jobs or having university acceptance rescinded.

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

#348

Post by luckylion » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

cgrealy wrote: post #328

luckylion wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fear of communists was mostly made up in rhetoric. Maybe ask the West-Berliners that the SU tried to starve to make them surrender and become part of the SU.

“Communism” != “Soviet style totalitarianism”. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a communist. You don’t have to agree with it as a political philosophy (I don’t), but it’s no worse than being a capitalist.

Let's not go down the "those aren't real communists" route. The communists in the West were by and large always very cozy with the SU. Hell, they loved Stalin so much and wanted to hear so little that Orwell sat down to write a fable to explain the issues to them.

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

#349

Post by bluntfang » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:32 PM UTC

cglace wrote: post #265

marcus_holmes wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don't understand this at all. You really can't spend the 30 seconds needed to think about "hmm, maybe be a bit careful about the words I'm using here in case my message gets lost in criticism of my language"? As others have said, finding a non-offensive synonym for "Black market" takes a single search, about 5 seconds. Is it really that time-critical? Where are you sending these messages that those 30 second…

Should we really have to research each word we use before using it?

It's important to know the meaning of the words you use. I can't believe I have to say that.

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

#350

Post by etherael » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #185

syshum wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is not just conservatives that do not grasp that The 2 statements are the difference between a liberty minded person and the authority minded person Liberty mined (or libertarian) can easily separate their personal beliefs on what is "proper" but still allow that other people may view differently and as long as they are not harming them (or anyone else) should be allowed to live their life in the manner they deem…

And yet the 'liberty minded' person in this case is the one imposing a government restriction upon what individuals and businesses might otherwise choose to do. Since virtually nobody agrees that no form of speech or other expression should ever be a fireable offence, the debate actually comes down to discussion of which types of speech should and should have protections in the sphere of employment. You'll find a lar…

Genuine question here from someone who is the "virtually nobody" that you describe in terms of being a complete free speech absolutist and seeing attempts to shut that down as perhaps the worst thing happening in the world today pretty much guaranteed to end in complete disaster, and simultaneously not seeing what the issue is in terms of "while you're at work" limits on sensitive discussions.

It's one thing to tell the employee what they can say on the job to their colleagues or customers when they're not hired to talk to colleagues and customers about sensitive topics (this doesn't even need to be an explicit prohibition, it can take the form of "that's not what you're being paid to do, and while you're doing it you're not doing what you are being paid to do, so please shut up and do your job"), and an entirely different thing to tell them what they can't say period in any context at any time on penalty of being fired for wrongthink, which frankly is just a modern take on the time honoured and previously much bloodier purge process updated for modern non-violent sensibilities, which still taken to its logical conclusion has the exact same results.

Mark my words; this batshit insanity has ended badly already and it will continue to escalate into a continuous spire of catastrophic idiotic badness as long as it is tolerated.