141–150 of 984 posts
I don’t get all the anti free speech comments here. I rather live in a country with real free speech but no democracy than the reverse. You can’t have democracy without free speech.
Aside from this argument not being based in reality, this isn't even a free speech debate, it's a consequence discussion. Society has a right to reject your speech and not amplify it.
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> The right to bare [sic] arms doesn't mean we give everyone an M60. Actually, most second amendment advocates believe that this is exactly what it means. They think that the whole point of the second amendment is to empower people to resist the government by physical force.
And they are wrong as evidenced by many Supreme Court rulings. Find any point of view and I'll find a group of people that take that view to an untenable extreme. The only reason they have that view is because they live in a world where its not a reality. If it were those people would likely be dead due to a pandemic of gun violence.
Isn't that what's happening here, that the belief in "the right to storm the capitol" has got out of hand? After a while it doesn't matter that that's not the SC ruling, if it's what enough people with guns believe.
Prior to the viral pandemic people argued there was a pandemic of gun violence. It turned out that was a drop in the bucket. If the Vegas shooting happened today, it would be a mere blip in the excess death numbers from coronavirus.
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What's the worst-case scenario if they had succeeded? That they take some people hostage and have a stand-off until the FBI takes them down? There was no path to them attaining any actual power. Their actions were violent and bad, but had no actual effect on anybody outside of D.C. That is not what I call an "existential threat". Again, you have to compare the downsides of free speech vs the downsides of censorship.…
The worst-case scenario is the end of democracy in the USA in the next 15 years. If one side stays convinced the elections were fraudulent and Trump is a victim , it will cause a permanent shift in how Americans see their own democratic elections. Historically, since democracy has existed, that vacuum is always filled by an authoritarian leader.
Also seeing how BLM got backing and did way more damage, makes this all look pretty one-sided. It's only okay if they do it.
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What do you mean by “European”? And what laws are you talking about? Does this include the laws made in East Berlin or other communist countries? Do you think Le Pen didn’t get into power because of free speech laws? It seems to me like she just didn’t have quite enough support to get in. What about the laws made in post-communist countries like Poland or Hungary or Belarus? (Or Lithuania or Latvia?) Perhaps you mean…
I thought it's obvious from the context, but examples include denying the holocaust being a crime.
The point being, it's not clear whether German speech laws are frosting or cake. If the German people wanted to destroy Europe and themselves, that would be enough whether they did it with the symbols of a defeated dictator or not. People point to European speech laws as examples of reasonable protections, but I'm not sure if they're stopping anything. The real bar against the collapse of liberal democracy is the fact that the people living in those countries don't want it to happen, and understand why it would be bad for them.
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I was watching Legal Eagle discussing if Trump incited the mob / insurrection https://youtu.be/XwqAInN9HWI and he goes over some previous cases of “incitement of violence” and it’s crazy how high the bar is. On the other hand, tech companies can very quickly take down illegal content, like child pornography or people singing Happy Birthday. I do think they have the technical chops + content moderators to at least try…
> consider that someone with millions of followers is basically planning acts of violence with a retweet So by your standard, would https://twitter.com/rezaaslan/status/1307107507131875330 count as planning acts of violence, or would he need more followers first, since he's not at "millions" yet?
The unusual thing is turning that violence into reality.
Would it be great to dial that down? Yes. Will the Republicans stop doing enraging things and calm the situation? No.
I gotta say, recent events have left me shaken to my core. I thought I believed in free speech, to the point where I started a company dedicated to providing privacy and communications products that were not subject to control by any central authority (that turns out to be very hard!) But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. I…
Propaganda and misinformation have been around for a long time. Mark Antony and Octavius engaged in a war of misinformation.[0] People in those times had far fewer avenues of information. If somebody sold them a false story, then people were probably more likely to believe them. We're still here though.
I think what's been happening over the recent years is that people have finally started waking up from the End of History. The world is as chaotic as always.
[0] https://www.ft.com/content/aaf2bb08-dca2-11e6-86ac-f253db779...
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I think free speech ends at specific threats or calls to violence. Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Either by the police or by me. I think free speech is necessary, but not free speech to harass or threaten violence. Free speech including the vile and negative won't make the world a better place. Arguing against the bad ideas will. But I do not think it's the burden…
Do you mean like when Kathy Griffin was holding up the presidents bloody head with no recourse? Or the summer riots which were heavily coordinated on Twitter? Twitter is still in the app stores. Extremism is on Twitter, Facebook, and all platforms, yet they came together like a mob and eliminated the one they didnt like.
EDIT: Given your other responses, we're at an impasse. Bowing out.
I would like to see a new class of “social libel” laws - whereby knowing telling lies as truth in a public forum were punishable. Is this a civil or criminal offense?
I don’t get all the anti free speech comments here. I rather live in a country with real free speech but no democracy than the reverse. You can’t have democracy without free speech.
Sigh. I am unbelievably tired of people setting this up as "pro free speech" vs "anti free speech". It's inflammatory (who proudly calls themselves "anti-free speech"? It's bad faith just to say that. Anyway.) and it's misleading. Most critically, almost everyone fundamentally agrees that censorship is a good thing, in principle. Even the most extreme "free speech" oriented websites remove spam, illegal pornography,…
I gotta say, recent events have left me shaken to my core. I thought I believed in free speech, to the point where I started a company dedicated to providing privacy and communications products that were not subject to control by any central authority (that turns out to be very hard!) But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. I…
Seek out information from variety of sources and discern the truth from fiction.
What you may think is evidence may be completely opposite of what it actually is.
Especially any narratives that are pushed to convince people to voluntarily give up privacy and freedoms.
Just look at all the regular people going around screaming at other people to put on masks. What happened to make these people go screaming at other people?
If you're on this board and worked on tech projects, you should be able to spot propaganda in process.
Good luck.