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The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

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Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#311

Post by andsoitis »

efitz wrote: post #298
prohobo wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think about it in terms of pro- and anti-social speech. Free speech is about pro-social speech, not anti-social. The way I see it, people conflate the two types of speech. Citizens arguing about ugly topics like identity politics, conspiracies, coverups, etc. are de-facto pro-social - they are trying to sway public opinion on political issues, ostensibly to make their society better. It becomes anti-social when tho…

I think this is the dangerous opinion that led us down the censorship path that the article is decrying. “Pro-social” and “anti-social” are subjective, not objective. To a religious conservative, it would be pro-social to say “marriage should only be between one man and one woman”. To many progressives, this would be “anti-social”. Here’s a conundrum. Is “we should kill all nazis” pro-social or anti-social? On its fa…

AFAIK Musk has also characterized himself as a free speech absolutist but has now re-suspended Ye.

I’d be curious to hear whether you think that this suspension is compatible with free speech absolutism? Put differently, was Musk simply marketing himself as an absolutist (to win over following) but is in reality a pragmatist, willing to bend his stance when he views it in his own or society’s best interest?

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#312

Post by [deleted] »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #271
snowwrestler wrote: post #149

If you are reading a piece about free speech and content moderation on platforms like Twitter, look to see if it meaningfully engages with the concepts of spam and porn, which are both fully legal speech, and both heavily moderated with little controversy. (This piece does not.) Why does this matter? Because free speech, free expression in general, is a means to express values and beliefs. Our values and beliefs are…

Irrelevant speech is noise. Freedom of speech is freedom to speak to those who might want to hear, not to push ads and spam and porn on those who don't want it. There's no freedom of speech in a night club. If there's noise you can't speak. It doesn't stop with porn, if you're on a social platform to connect with friends and all you see is political things you don't care about, that's noise too. If a social media pla…

[deleted]

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#313

Post by mcv »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #271
snowwrestler wrote: post #149

If you are reading a piece about free speech and content moderation on platforms like Twitter, look to see if it meaningfully engages with the concepts of spam and porn, which are both fully legal speech, and both heavily moderated with little controversy. (This piece does not.) Why does this matter? Because free speech, free expression in general, is a means to express values and beliefs. Our values and beliefs are…

Irrelevant speech is noise. Freedom of speech is freedom to speak to those who might want to hear, not to push ads and spam and porn on those who don't want it. There's no freedom of speech in a night club. If there's noise you can't speak. It doesn't stop with porn, if you're on a social platform to connect with friends and all you see is political things you don't care about, that's noise too. If a social media pla…

> If there's noise you can't speak.

And that's really what moderation is ultimately about. On every forum and platform: suppressing noise and increasing the signal-to-noise ratio.

> If you're trying to muddle the waters of free speech with false narratives and strawman arguments like spam and porn, that's just cheap manipulation.

How is that trying to muddy the waters? It's absolutely relevant. They're both great examples of speech that's completely legal and yet universally banned.

> Spam is by definition something nobody wants to see.

But then what's spam to one person might not be spam to another. There are always some people who do respond to spam.

Same thing with hate speech; most people don't want to see it, but some people disagree on what it is. And let's face it, hate speech is the thing that some people try to defend under the banner of free speech. And unlike spam, hate speech can pose a real danger. It can inspire people to commit violence against the group being hated (this has happened plenty of times). If left unchecked, it can create a culture in which violence against the hated group becomes acceptable.

All meaningful speech has consequences. Calls to violence definitely so. Is this really something that needs to be defended when spam and porn don't?

I'm not saying it definitely does or doesn't, but if you want to have a meaningful discussion about free speech, you have to be willing to go into specifics, and not just wave meaningless platitudes around.

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#315

Post by jmull »

rayiner wrote: post #135
mech765 wrote: post #5

Freedom of association captures the idea of freedom of speech better than freedom of speech itself, I think. Private parties are (with some number of government constraints) free to pick who to work with, who to play with, and who to talk with, and who they don't want to do anything with.

It’s weird to repeatedly see the argument that a corporation’s moderation of human individual’s speech is itself a form of protected speech, from a group of people who until recently mostly thought corporate speech wasn’t even broad enough to cover a corporation’s production and distribution of its own message in a political movie. Like I think “corporations are people too, my friend” but corporate moderation as a fo…

Should media companies be required to provide a platform for government leaders to broadcast their messages?

To me this is basic 1st amendment stuff. We've gone pretty far down the road to authoritarianism when people think we need to protect the leader of the government's ability to force media companies to carry his messages.

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#316

Post by prohobo »

efitz wrote: post #298
prohobo wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think about it in terms of pro- and anti-social speech. Free speech is about pro-social speech, not anti-social. The way I see it, people conflate the two types of speech. Citizens arguing about ugly topics like identity politics, conspiracies, coverups, etc. are de-facto pro-social - they are trying to sway public opinion on political issues, ostensibly to make their society better. It becomes anti-social when tho…

I think this is the dangerous opinion that led us down the censorship path that the article is decrying. “Pro-social” and “anti-social” are subjective, not objective. To a religious conservative, it would be pro-social to say “marriage should only be between one man and one woman”. To many progressives, this would be “anti-social”. Here’s a conundrum. Is “we should kill all nazis” pro-social or anti-social? On its fa…

It's not subjective at all, it's a judgement of whether speech aligns with cooperation or attack as understood in human nature within tribes/communities.

Pro-social doesn't mean "positive" or "good" or "correct", it means that it's an attempt at progress or improvement for the community, from some sincere point of view.

"We should kill all nazis" is pro-social in terms of sincere critique, and anti-social in the threat of wanting to kill them. If we're at war with nazis then calling to kill them is likely mostly pro-social. If they're part of our tribe, whereby you are threatening your own people, then it's definitively anti-social. "We shouldn't accept nazis" is fully pro-social, and so is "we should all be nazis".

We can instinctively tell when someone is trying to be cooperative or offensive (attacking, deliberately destructive) to us in some way. We have the capability of recognizing it even if there are cultural/moral/logical (epistemic) divides. We just have to take the time to understand the other party's perspective and situation, then we can categorize their behavior.

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#317

Post by mensetmanusman »

Children taught by the SS would send their parents to prison because their parents assumed free speech in a private setting.

Once you realize that these abuses are inherent to a system that doesn’t culturally accept free speech, then you see the danger of the current moment more clearly.

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#318

Post by ceejayoz »

gus_massa wrote: post #308
machina_ex_deus wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irrelevant speech is noise. Freedom of speech is freedom to speak to those who might want to hear, not to push ads and spam and porn on those who don't want it. There's no freedom of speech in a night club. If there's noise you can't speak. It doesn't stop with porn, if you're on a social platform to connect with friends and all you see is political things you don't care about, that's noise too. If a social media pla…

What about spam from political parties? I don't have a link now, but IIRC in last USA election the spam filter of gmail blocks the fundraising or "informational" email form the mayor political parties, and it generated a big controversy.

That "controversy" was not in good faith.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/11/repub...

> “My parents, who have a Gmail account, aren’t getting my campaign emails,” Representative Greg Steube of Florida told Google CEO Sundar Pichai in July 2020, during a congressional hearing that was ostensibly about antitrust law. “My question is, why is this only happening to Republicans?”

My Gmail spam folder is very clear evidence it happens plenty to Democrats.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/13/23403259/google-gmail-re...

> In response, Google has launched a controversial program allowing campaign committees to effectively opt out of spam filters — a huge concession to mounting political pressure from Republicans. But Verge reporting shows the RNC has not taken advantage of the program and made few efforts to alter the core practices that might result in their emails being labeled as spam.

> A source familiar with the matter confirmed to The Verge that, nearly a month after the pilot’s launch, the RNC has not joined or even applied for the program, even as the party continues to mount political and possibly legal pressure against Google. The RNC did not respond to multiple requests for comment regarding the committee’s decision to abstain from the pilot program.

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#319

Post by naasking »

joshuamorton wrote: post #249
rhaksw wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, yes, but The refrain "I believe in free speech, BUT" is so common that first amendment lawyers regularly joke about it [0] [1] [2]. "Free speech for me— but not for thee" is also the title of an excellent book by Nat Hentoff [3] Personally I like how ACLU founder Roger Baldwin put it to historian Arthur Schlesigner, Jr.: > Arthur: "What possible reason is there for giving civil liberties to people who will use…

> Well that is contrary to our experience. In a democratic society, if you let them all talk, even those who would deny civil liberties and would overthrow the government, that's the best way to prevent them from doing it. This isn't empirically true though, as someone else mentions in this thread there's a fair amount of evidence that past a certain point, more free speech makes fomenting a populist revolt to end de…

> I don't trust the free speech advocacy org to have an objective view on the dangers of unrestricted speech.

Where is the evidence of this?

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#320

Post by mcv »

denton-scratch wrote: post #270
jevgeni wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just FYI, hate speech being free speech is an American thing. Other democracies in the world have frameworks for limiting/prioritizing basic rights, right to free speech included (take, for example, German moderation laws) and have not become a totalitarian dystopias yet. One opinion I've heard in Germany is that the free speech absolutism and value neutrality of the constitution of the Weimar Republic allowed NSDAP…

> hate speech being free speech is an American thing It's the constitution, innit? It's a confusing document, with many compromises. But many US citizens treat it like the Shroud of Turin. The German laws are tied up with Germany's history in the 20th C. In other parts of Western Europe, restrictions are less stringent and less specific. Obviously there are types of "harmless" speech that are likely to provoke a viol…

> > hate speech being free speech is an American thing

> It's the constitution, innit?

Is it? I wasn't aware that hate speech was explicitly singled out as protected in the Constitution.

> Do people really think that speech that's likely to cause public disorder is OK?

Public disorder, no. But innocent people getting heard? Well, maybe. Lots of speech that hurts innocent people is already banned. Things like libel/slander. Threats. Blackmail. All of these can hurt someone, silence someone, inspire someone else to hurt someone. I don't think anyone ever objected to these being banned, and even punishable with real prison sentences.

> Arresting that guy who protested Charles III's accession by holding up a blank sheet of paper: that's not a good thing.

Did that happen? That's a silly thing to arrest someone for. It calls back to Putin arresting people for holding up blank sheets of paper.

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