Why banning 'harmful' online speech is a slippery slope
1–10 of 23 posts
Re: Why banning 'harmful' online speech is a slippery slope
#2Ah yes, the old slippery slope argument. First they banned posts saying a man's children should be skinned alive in front of him to teach him a lesson (actual post I saw on Parler) then they're going to come for me making reasonable and acceptable by normal standards political arguments.
Re: Why banning 'harmful' online speech is a slippery slope
#3It’s called slippery slope fallacy for a reason.
Re: Why banning 'harmful' online speech is a slippery slope
#4It’s called slippery slope fallacy for a reason.
It's also called the fallacy fallacy for a reason.
Re: Why banning 'harmful' online speech is a slippery slope
#5Harmful online speech has not been banned. The outlets where one can express death threats, hate speech, and calls for insurrection have been decreased. Two very different things.
Re: Why banning 'harmful' online speech is a slippery slope
#6It’s called slippery slope fallacy for a reason.
It's also called the fallacy fallacy for a reason.
That's not what the fallacy fallacy means.
It is possible to form an coherent argument that happens to include a fallacy, where eliminating that fallacy doesn't invalidate the argument. Essentially, the argument itself is poorly constructed but the claim is still supported by evidence.
In this case, the entire premise is fallacious. You can tell because the written premise includes the fallacy.
Re: Why banning 'harmful' online speech is a slippery slope
#7Slippery slope is actually a kind of logical fallacy.
The author needs to prove that suppressing fascist speech actually has some kind of negative effect or that it leads to other kinds of speech being suppressed. You have to look at intent here to see whether the suppression will lead to a slippery slope. In this case, it's not about suppressing speech it's about removing people who act in bad faith.
On this forum we often suppress the speech of people we disagree with. And people get banned too. If we subscribe to the author's point of view, then why do we have moderation or shadowbanning in the first place?
Re: Why banning 'harmful' online speech is a slippery slope
#8Ah yes, the old slippery slope argument. First they banned posts saying a man's children should be skinned alive in front of him to teach him a lesson (actual post I saw on Parler) then they're going to come for me making reasonable and acceptable by normal standards political arguments.
The point of having laws is to protect the people who everyone thinks are the worst. Even the worst people should enjoy the protections of a free society, because any one of us could at some point somehow (accidentally!) become the worst. The police don't get the right suspect 100% of the time, so if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time you could now be a murder or rape suspect, or worse yet charged. Anyone could!
Similarly we should favor even "bad" people being allowed to speak because norms change, often very quickly. 15 years ago it was entirely within the mainstream politics to not publicly support gay marriage. Now if you're against it you're labelled a homophobe. What views do you have today that might be decidedly distasteful in another decade? Do you know? Do any of us?
Suggesting that because you're expressing what are now mainstream views means you're reasonable and thus safe is to -- at least to me -- completely misunderstand the ideas behind equality under the law or the real goal of freedom of expression.
Re: Why banning 'harmful' online speech is a slippery slope
#9Slippery slope is actually a kind of logical fallacy. The author needs to prove that suppressing fascist speech actually has some kind of negative effect or that it leads to other kinds of speech being suppressed. You have to look at intent here to see whether the suppression will lead to a slippery slope. In this case, it's not about suppressing speech it's about removing people who act in bad faith. On this forum w…
Not that I agree with the post or anything, but slippery slope being a fallacy is a fallacy. Key fact is the idea of precedent which is by definition is quite similar to the slippery slope idea (assuming you disagree with the precedent in question).
Re: Why banning 'harmful' online speech is a slippery slope
#10It’s called slippery slope fallacy for a reason.
Free speech to hate speech, now 'harmful' speech, and discomforting speech will be probably next step. But that slippery slope is just a fallacy.