261–270 of 330 posts
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Shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater has never been protected speech.
In the US? Yes it is. You realize you are quoting a 1919 supreme court case (that used the "fire in a theater" argument to make protesting against the draft illegal)... which has been overturned 50 years ago, right?
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Pretty much how it played out with r/fatpeoplehate. Anecdotal yes, but there are quite a few more examples on Reddit alone.
You have evidence that fat person hate has decreased globally beyond reddit?
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I know that the Weimar Republic had anti-semitic censorship laws. I made almost the same argument that you are making just 2 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27865484 "My understanding is that pre-Nazi Germany had hate speech laws, and it didn't seem to work there?" I abandoned my views on this question for a few reasons: - The Weimar Republic laws either weren't effective at preventing distribution o…
>I know that the Weimar Republic had censorship laws. I made almost the same argument that you are making just 2 months ago: What? The anti-semetic expressions crime thing is a fact, not an argument (I am against censorship laws!). I was honestly completely knocked cold fthat you came to the conclusion I was making your argument. The takeaway isn't that hate speech laws work, it's that they don't. I'm pro hate speech…
"I was honestly completely knocked cold fthat you came to the conclusion I was making your argument. The takeaway isn't that hate speech laws work, it's that they don't."
"What you advocate is extremely similar and you are oblivious and disconnected to the reality of the similarity between our current censorship laws and those of the Weimar Republic."
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I have to be honest and say that my faith in the capacity of people to think in a free speech totally open environment was severely tested over the past 5-10 years. Things like Qanon, flat Earth, antivax hysteria, the meme-driven return of both "right" and "left" totalitarian ideologies from the early 20th century that should be completely discredited, and so on have made me wonder if most people simply can't handle…
Chris Hedges sometimes remarks that he finds people turn towards superstitious, religious, or conspiratorial world views when they find they have no control over their lives. I suspect that if the US somehow changed so that economic security were increased for most people, there would be much less unreason and general discourse wouldn't be so mean.
These people ended up being Qanon's bread and butter. From the outside in they seem in control of their lives, but maybe it's all a ruse.
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Servers and bandwidth are not free. People maintaining them need to eat too.
Computation, bandwidth and (open source) software is so cheap these days that it approaches free for many people (but not all). It's just a matter of coming up with a functioning model. Ad supported is just one such model and it's not a very new one at that. Remember, you made this comment on server that was provided to you for free without the need of ad support.
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I think a modern formulation of freedom of speech, like Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, is clearer about what freedom of speech is: " Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. " Note that this formulation doesn't hav…
> Note that this formulation doesn't have to descend into some sort of free speech maximalist apocalypse; spam is unprotected because it's not something anyone wants to receive, incitements to imminent violence are violations of other human rights and laws, etc. so moderation is still possible. There is a difference between interfering with parties who are mutually voluntarily communicating and helping parties not re…
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>I know that the Weimar Republic had censorship laws. I made almost the same argument that you are making just 2 months ago: What? The anti-semetic expressions crime thing is a fact, not an argument (I am against censorship laws!). I was honestly completely knocked cold fthat you came to the conclusion I was making your argument. The takeaway isn't that hate speech laws work, it's that they don't. I'm pro hate speech…
"I was honestly completely knocked cold fthat you came to the conclusion I was making your argument. The takeaway isn't that hate speech laws work, it's that they don't." You've misunderstood. I was previously arguing that they don't work, not that they do work. Read the old post of mine that I linked. "What you advocate is extremely similar and you are oblivious and disconnected to the reality of the similarity betw…
I'm confused. Are you currently arguing for or against laws against hate speech? I thought you had chosen the previous path (2) which was free speech + private and/or voluntary restrictions.
>I was previously arguing that they don't work
Did you change your mind? You genuinely believed in free speech 2 months ago and now believe the government can dictate what is "hate speech"? You abandoned your position on free speech due to learning hate speech laws were ineffective in the Weimar Republic, and that led you to decide to be for hate speech laws? If so, something here doesn't add up.
The argument I was making when mentioning Weimar Republic was that it was effectively free speech with private and/or voluntary regulation, which was what you chose in path (2). The note about the (largely meaningless) criminality of anti-Semitic speech was a footnote so that I did not inaccurately describe the situation, although as you noted hate speech laws could be used as a tool against the anti-Nazis as much as against Naziism. The note about the anti-semetic law was not in any way a center point of my argument (although it did appear to be one of yours in the 2 month old comment).
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Defining free speech is easy, adjudicating it is sometimes hard. In this case, a threat requires the intent to compel (note that compulsion != persuasion). Determining whether "I wonder if the world would be a better place if this man did not exist" is intended to compel or not is harder. But most free speech absolutists will be pretty content if we get to a point where the thrust of the free speech debate concerns i…
> But most free speech absolutists will be pretty content if we get to a point where the thrust of the free speech debate concerns itself with outlier cases like this one (rather than "is it 'hate speech' to criticize woke excesses?" or "to use a Chinese word that sounds vaguely like an English racial slur?"). In your absolutist world how do you stop the trolls on the current incarnation of social media from flooding…
To be clear, I think moderating small communities is fine, but planet-scale social networks are de facto public squares.
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Computation, bandwidth and (open source) software is so cheap these days that it approaches free for many people (but not all). It's just a matter of coming up with a functioning model. Ad supported is just one such model and it's not a very new one at that. Remember, you made this comment on server that was provided to you for free without the need of ad support.
It's not free, it's just not something you compensate with cash. Let's not pretend that HN does not derive value from the people using it- that's a key component of the business.
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Shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater has never been protected speech.
In the US? Yes it is. You realize you are quoting a 1919 supreme court case (that used the "fire in a theater" argument to make protesting against the draft illegal)... which has been overturned 50 years ago, right?