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Blog Anonymously

uglyduck.ca

261–270 of 482 posts

Re: Blog Anonymously

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freedom of speech protects you from people who attempt to silence you by jailing, torturing, or killing you. It doesn't mean people are forced to put up with your stupid and unpopular opinions. You (like many) misunderstand the debate. "Free speech" proponents aren't advocating for a prohibition of criticism--to the contrary, criticism is free speech. Rather, free speech proponents are arguing against intimidation…

If I inform a corporation that I will not do business with them while a person is in their employment, am I oppressing that person or am I using my freedom of speech?

If I say "it would be unfortunate if something happened to your job", am I issuing a veiled threat or am I using my freedom of speech? It's possible that I'm not making a threat, but we know it's unlikely. Technically it amounts to intent (do you intend to ruin someone's livelihood or are you just making a bizarre statement for indecipherable reasons?).

Re: Blog Anonymously

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay, but then you aren't disagreeing with me I wasn't trying to disagree with you. I just think the issue is oversimplified into forum sized bites and needs to be approached holistically. > If you want to have a separate conversation on whether false speech is prosecuted in the United States, we can do that. But this isn't really relevant to the discussion at hand, which is how is "cancel culture" at odds with "fr…

> Free speech isn't free if those who would cause you harm are free to do so at the slightest provocation, and without fear of punishment. It seems like what you're going for is that freedom of speech requires responsibility for consequences of speech, which I'm all for. I'm more worried about understanding how far those consequences stretch; if you share an article about race statistics that prompts a riot, are you…

> if you share an article about race statistics that prompts a riot, are you responsible?

Entirely depends on if the statistics and any stated conclusions are true, and to what extent the article actually prompted the riot vs other factors.

> Do you believe that if someone unknowingly published something that turns out to be false, they should be held legally liable for it? For example, if I share a news article that turns out to be false, I should bear liability?

If you unknowingly repeat that someone is a pedophile just because it seems popular, it seems reasonable that you share some portion of the blame for whatever harm befalls that person.

In the news article example it is the publication and/or the author that is responsible. Of course this gets into a grey area regarding the content of the article and whether it's possible to know the content is false or defamatory.

> At some point, some group of people are going to be hurt by speech or lack thereof, and it's more a matter of deciding what tradeoffs we'll make.

In my (based on the downvotes I'm receiving) unpopular opinion, I don't think we should give up any speech whatsoever under any circumstances. If people say evil things that cause harm (go kill this person, this person is a nazi, let's get this guy fired, etc), go after them for the harm.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except its not I have seen people called Neonazis just for being Republican or siding with Trump whether or not they are "Trump supporters" on issues. Even saying the name "Trump supporter" is evidence alone that there is an element of cancel culture. A woman was rejected from a college recently for posting a MAGA video on Tik Tok. Some developer is being called a Neonazi for protesting against an open source org tha…

Has any individual faced consequences for refusing to rename a branch? Are you saying that cancelling a word is a thing, and a dangerous one? At this point people are diluting the phrase "cancel culture" to mean "thing I don't like that is vaguely related to politics or political correctness". That's not a useful concept. It's just a thing to be angry about.

That's not what cancel culture is, but it's usually the precursor to it. People who are upset over things that are not yet causing negative side-effects know that they eventually will because already what's happened is a bit much in many cases. You shouldn't be fired for things you do and say outside of work, period.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a compelling hypothetical, but I can't think of a single person who only said they were in support of strong border protection and limited immigration and was subject to anything like what you're saying. Could you provide an example of what you mean?

> Could you provide an example of what you mean? The CEO of Goya foods called Donald Trump a "great leader" and there's an active boycott of the brand as a result.

To be fair, that sounds a lot more reasonable. A CEO represents their company and their actions leading to people boycotting their company is just people voting with their wallet. People have boycotted small businesses due to the opinion of the business owner's children, even after persistent apologies by the business owner. In this case I don't even think there is anything significantly wrong. This isn't much different than a company sanctioned advertisement gone wrong.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#265
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not moving the goal posts, you seem to be creating a false dichotomy between: "support free speech" -> must support lack of reprisals for all free speech, including directed racial slurs "do not support free speech" -> must accept the current level and form of reprisals. Where most people who say they support free speech are, is this statement: "support free speech without reprisals, excluding directed harrassme…

You seem to believe the phrase "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" implicitly justifies all possible consequences. It doesn't, it merely implies that speech doesn't exist in a vacuum, and that the consequences of speech often, themselves, are as much a manifestation of free expression as the original speech. Your own counterclaim, however, that "freedom from anything means freedom from the cons…

It's not clear that you and zimablue are in agreement unless you agree that the level consequences people are currently experiencing is excessive.

For a lot of us here, the phrase "free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" comes across (not unreasonably) as support for firing trump supporters or people who question system racism (etc.) which is both unjust and foolish for a number of reasons.

We also need to consider whether it is just to fire someone for something offensive (but not illegal) they did offline that was surreptitiously recorded and uploaded to the Internet to feed mob outrage.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what "cancelling" means in this context--we're talking about concerted efforts to have people's employment terminated (or to dox them or send them explicit threats or etc). I don't see how this is anything other than harassment and intimidation, but even if it isn't, hate speech also falls under the rubric of "free expression", but it doesn't mean we can't (or oughtn't) use our own free speech rights to cr…

> but it doesn't mean we can't (or oughtn't) use our own free speech rights to criticize and protest it. I agree. But this goes in both directions. You can't claim to support free expression while saying that certain forms of speech are unacceptable. It is self-contradictory. Yet that's what harper's does. It criticizes certain forms of speech (criticism) while claiming to uphold the mantle of free expression. You ca…

> You can't claim to support free expression while saying that certain forms of speech are unacceptable.

I'm not making this claim; I'm claiming that it's inconsistent with free speech ideals. I'm not working to prevent anyone from expressing speech which isn't consistent with free speech ideals, and I'm certainly not trying to get anyone fired for their anti-free-speech ideals.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#267
post #91
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having gotten my start on the internet mid 90's it always amazes me the number of people that attached their offline identities to their online identies > This was just something that was unheard of back then. This is not entirely true. I remember many people using their real names on Usenet, or on mailing lists.

Were they real name, or did they just look real. Like I could post under the name JosephDotson, that could be a real name but it is not my real name

Often first name (linus), initials (rms, esr, jwz), first + last initial (marca, billg, dang), initial(s) + last (dmarti, cdibona), first @ last (bruce@perens.org), etc.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has any individual faced consequences for refusing to rename a branch? Are you saying that cancelling a word is a thing, and a dangerous one? At this point people are diluting the phrase "cancel culture" to mean "thing I don't like that is vaguely related to politics or political correctness". That's not a useful concept. It's just a thing to be angry about.

That's not what cancel culture is, but it's usually the precursor to it. People who are upset over things that are not yet causing negative side-effects know that they eventually will because already what's happened is a bit much in many cases. You shouldn't be fired for things you do and say outside of work, period.

> You shouldn't be fired for things you do and say outside of work, period.

Why not? And are you claiming that this is simply a moral standpoint, or do you want to legally prevent employers from firing employees for off-work behavior?

Re: Blog Anonymously

#269
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Threatening violence, yes that will get you in trouble (hopefully). A little different than just minding your business wearing a MAGA hat.

You mean like Trump saying he could shoot someone and not lose voters in 2016? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTACH1eVIaA

We've all heard this, but did he actually go out and shoot someone and do it? He was talking out of his *ss about how confident he was about his supporters. English isn't even my first language and I could tell that's what he meant.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freedom of speech protects you from people who attempt to silence you by jailing, torturing, or killing you. It doesn't mean people are forced to put up with your stupid and unpopular opinions. You (like many) misunderstand the debate. "Free speech" proponents aren't advocating for a prohibition of criticism--to the contrary, criticism is free speech. Rather, free speech proponents are arguing against intimidation…

If I inform a corporation that I will not do business with them while a person is in their employment, am I oppressing that person or am I using my freedom of speech?

You're extorting a company, let's even call it quid pro quo.
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