I feel this is a good thing, it is a clear line and not something open to free speech excuses IMHO in much the same way that what side of the road you can drive on is not open to free choice, however some will feel it will eventually curtail what destinations they can drive too, when it will not.
Removing Holocaust Denial Content
481–490 of 823 posts
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can simply ignore people you don't like, or you deem "intolerant", etc. No, that's not how the Internet - or people in general - work.
The "ignore voices you don't like" argument completely fails to account for the effect of those voices on the millions of people around you, and the effect of their changed actions as a result, on you in turn. It's like saying "pretend you're the only person in the world."
Censorship still isn't the answer.
If you don't like the way other people are thinking, you have to have a conversation with them and try to change their views the hard way.
Censorship may even protect people with views you find objectionable -- because that person is shielded from having disagreements with others.
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've missed the point. Free-speech is widely understood to exclude threats and harassment, but even if it were only a niche definition used by free-speech proponents the pro-cancel-culture argument would still be nonsense because it claims that the pro-free-speech argument is inconsistent and self-refuting based on a definition of 'free-speech' that includes threats and harassment . Anyone who makes this argument p…
No, the "free-speech proponents" do not adhere to your specific definition of what should be considered free speech. The kind of speech which is often labelled "harassment" by its opponents is often labelled as "free speech" by its proponents.
> The kind of speech which is often labelled "harassment" by its opponents is often labelled as "free speech" by its proponents.
If they are doing this, then they are contradicting themselves, but in all of the debates to which I've been a party, the free speech position has always held that coercive behavior (threats and harassment including quid pro quo harassment) are out of bounds of free speech. Once in a while you'll have a few people indulging in a little schadenfreude when a cancel-culture proponent is themselves canceled, and sometimes this stretches so far as to legitimize their canceling--rationalizing the canceling certainly goes too far and conflicts with free-speech ideals and schadenfreude while understandable is probably still not helpful.
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cancel culture is very often concerted petitioning of someone's employer into terminating someone's employment (harassment) or the threat of the same (recall the Hispanic utility company employee who was terminated for making the 'ok' sign inadvertently or the data scientist who was terminated for Tweeting a prominent black academic's research on the efficacy of nonviolent protests or the journalist who was harassed…
If petitioning your employer to fire you for something you said works, maybe you said something that your employer would fire you over? That's, again, not harassment and threats, it's your employer using freedom of association to deny guilt by proxy for spreading someone else's lies, threats, and harassments.
"Well they probably did something to deserve getting fired" is certainly a take. I'd ask though, would these companies still fire you if there wasn't a mob, social media or otherwise, causing a ruckus?
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really. Freedom of speech as defined in the constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Internet speech is not the same as freedom of speech. Facebook is a private platfor…
> Internet speech is not the same as freedom of speech. Facebook is a private platform and when you sign-up and use them you abide by their rules. Some people are better at compartmentalizing than others. They can hold freedom of speech as it applies to the government in one thought-bucket, while holding corporate-enforced limits on their ability to say whatever they want in another. But others can't (or won't) compa…
Yes. This is very true, especially in the US. Many people tend to have this perspective that their constitutional rights have superseding power over any private hold rule or even can give you an avenue to deny rights to others. I consider this primarily a failure of the educational system.
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#486Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech Maybe this is necessary and good, but of course it's an "encroachment on free speech". That's literally what is is. We can obfuscate this by replacing the words "encroachment on free speech" with "heavy-handedness" to get the sentence above. But really what is says if we remove the obfuscation is: > This encroachment on free speech isn't an encroachment on…
Not really. Freedom of speech as defined in the constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Internet speech is not the same as freedom of speech. Facebook is a private platfor…
That's a law about free speech. It doesn't define the concept, it presupposes it. Certainly it doesn't imply that no other form of free speech exists.
(I'm not arguing that Facebook shouldn't remove holocaust denial. I just disagree with this new and extremely narrow interpretation of "free speech" that has popped up like mushrooms everywhere and is being used to curtail free speech in many social and business contexts.)
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant. What is tolerance? You can't tolerate something if you agree with it. Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree. This is an encroachment on free…
Is the government doing this, or is Facebook doing this? Free Speech is only a concern when it's the state, not when it's a private entity, no matter how much HN tries to conflate the two.
> Free Speech is only a concern when it's the state, not when it's a private entity
Why?
Even though FB cannot literally muzzle me, it is explicitly trying to be the singular point of online social interaction in an increasingly digital world.
To the extent that it is successful, its decisions on what content is and is not acceptable affect us all, far more strongly than any government censor, regardless of how right or wrong are its determinations.
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#488Regardless of my opinion on holocaust denialism, I'll never be comfortable with such a large communications platform having the power to decide what ideas are acceptable and unacceptable to discuss. Like all of us, I hold a number of opinions that many believe are incorrect or harmful so I feel the need to defend the principles of freedom of speech regardless of the issue at hand. As for this policy change, I wonder…
> I'll never be comfortable with such a large communications platform having the power... It's their platform, they have the power to do whatever they want with it.
Those two points aren't contradictory. No company should be in the position Facebook is in.
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
The really quick and dirty version: I can't tolerate (neo) Nazis because they want to harm queer people, Jews, disabled people etc. The people they want to harm can't do anything to stop being targeted by (neo) Nazis. Nazis can stop being Nazis and then I'll start tolerating them. It doesn't matter if a Jew stops practising Judaism they will be targeted. It doesn't matter if a gay person is in the closet, they will b…
> Nazis can stop being Nazis and then I'll start tolerating them. So, it's OK to harass e.g. gay people? After all they can stop having sex with men and marry a woman. How about Christians? Muslims? Democrats? All of them can stop being what they are, so it's ok to harass them? Looks like a half-thought argument.
That argument was specifically addressed ('it doesn't matter if a gay person is in the closet, they will be targeted'), but you're ignoring it.
Also, there's a qualitative difference between harassing someone (purposeful infliction of harm on an individual) and mere dislike of their non-harmful consensual activity with others.
Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can simply ignore people you don't like, or you deem "intolerant", etc. No, that's not how the Internet - or people in general - work.
The "ignore voices you don't like" argument completely fails to account for the effect of those voices on the millions of people around you, and the effect of their changed actions as a result, on you in turn. It's like saying "pretend you're the only person in the world."
Sure, the effects of speech on the real world has always been the reason for censorship. "Ignore voices you don't like" isn't a refutation of that old and honest argument in favor of censorship, it's a refutation of the new and dishonest argument that censorship actually protects freedom of speech.