Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

popehat.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 189 posts

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#41

Post by Obscurity4340 »

I wonder to what extent we can establish a common dialogue of "just don't be a hateful asshole" where you just don't have any interest about random personal crap you have zero entitlement to be involved in or are not entitled to retain any say in.

The same way if I don't pay your electricity bill, I can't tell you what to use your electricity on. If I'm not having sex with you and I don't want to have sex with you, surprise! I don't have any right or should be expecting influence in that department cuz I have zero standing to demand it, and more importantly, why should I have any standing?

And why do I care in the first place unless I have an agenda like my gay conversion camp I'm headmaster/captain of +/or I'm a closet homosexual and I want to distract from the obvious ensuing hilarity of me trying to reinforce and hide that I'm a totally not gay-"straight" fellow...Like by riding a horse shirtless...That PROVES im not gay :/

Let's call it "mind your own business". If only that was a minted expression, they already love business...What's the rub?

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#42

Post by SenAnder »

sgnelson wrote: post #28
SenAnder wrote: post #4

Musk's incoherent stance aside, the author is afaik a lawyer, and has a habit of conflating the ideal of free speech, with the 1st amendment. Placing advertisers and billion-dollar corporations as arbiters of what may enter the public sphere is counter to the spirit of free speech, even if it complies with the 1st amendment. There may be no simple legal means to prevent it (to get ahead of the usual "oh so you want g…

Yeah, no. You can say a lot of things about Ken White, but saying that he conflates the 1st Amendment and Free Speech is one thing he does not do. There's a ton of evidence out there where he is very specific about the differences between the 1st amendment and free speech. A 10 second google found: https://popehat.substack.com/p/our-fundamental-right-to-sham...

Let me be more precise then: he shows little concern for free speech outside a legalistic understanding. From https://popehat.substack.com/p/my-free-speech-means-you-have...

People who are sincerely concerned about free expression, people I admire and respect, argue that we must avoid “manipulative” and “ad hominem” criticism to protect speech — without really engaging the problem that both the critic and the criticized are people with free speech rights and interests.

Where others see a problem (e.g. cherry-picking content from Twitter and framing it as the norm, or any other dishonest, manipulative framing, or complaining about the general culture of shaming), he throws his hands up with "technically not libel I guess". He wants a precise definition that could be written into a law or contract, before acknowledging any complaint as valid.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#44

Post by mcpackieh »

paulddraper wrote: post #23
Pat_Murph wrote: post #7

" In my view, too many critics of “cancel culture” are recklessly promoting not the speech of the powerless, but the censorious resentment of the powerful." Yep, to often when i see these anti woke, cultur war, anti cancel culture critics. What they are actually doing is attacking people's free speech and defending the authoritarians that are actually trying to limit speech and other rights. They convinced themselves…

> What they are actually doing is attacking people's free speech and defending the authoritarians that are actually trying to limit speech and other rights. Huh, I'm lost? Can you cite an example? To be clear, "___ is a lunatic and advocating for bad things" is a criticism. "___ is a lunatic and their message should not be permitted" is limiting speech

> "___ is a lunatic and their message should not be permitted" is limiting speech

No. That advocates for limiting speech, but is not itself limiting speech. If I say meat should be banned, that doesn't actually prevent you from eating a burger. The distinction here is important.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#45

Post by carlosjobim »

lmm wrote: post #17
jmye wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “ideal” of free speech would uphold everyone being able to speak in whatever manner they choose. If you’re an economic loser as a result, that is not a failure of free speech, that is a failure of society to protect you from free speech. You’ve inadvertently stumbled on the exact reason that “free speech absolutism” is absolutely asinine nonsense (Musk’s incoherent/idiotic implementation aside), and why some spee…

> The “ideal” of free speech would uphold everyone being able to speak in whatever manner they choose. If you’re an economic loser as a result, that is not a failure of free speech, that is a failure of society to protect you from free speech. Not even the most repressive societies physically prevent people from speaking - they just impose distinctly unpleasant consequences on those who speak in undesirable things. T…

> Not even the most repressive societies physically prevent people from speaking - they just impose distinctly unpleasant consequences on those who speak in undesirable things.

Help me understand what you mean by this. To me it sounds like saying somebody was not shot, he just didn't step out of the way of the bullet. Do you mean people are not prevented from speaking because their mouths aren't literally sewn shut?

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#46

Post by carlosjobim »

mcpackieh wrote: post #13
SenAnder wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you’re an economic loser as a result, that is not a failure of free speech This neatly avoids the question of whether we should want advertisers and multi-billion dollar corporations to be gatekeepers of the public sphere. As usual, laissez-faire when things are going my way, anti-discrimination and disparate impact laws when they're not.

Our "public spheres" are in fact not public, but rather are private property. Advertisers having control over them is a consequence of this. If you actually go into town IRL and talk in the public square, no advertiser will be able to silence you because the public square is actually public. Or if you use an actually public means of communication like the postal service, again you won't be cut out because some corpor…

> Our "public spheres" are in fact not public, but rather are private property.

You have misunderstood the meaning of the word "public", because it is often used for government provided things. Many private establishments are public spheres, the most common example are Pubs - short for Public Houses.

So you have completely misunderstood the word and arguing from your mistaken assumption.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#47

Post by uoaei »

ryandrake wrote: post #26
bad_username wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me divert from Musk specifically for a moment. The "anti woke cancel culture critics" are in fact concerned with the inorganic, overwhelming influence that a specific family of ideologies has today over the means of modern communication. Observe the similarity with the left themselves, who are concerned with the inorganic, overwhelming influence that a specific class of wealthy people have today over the means of…

Could you please be more vague? What “specific family of ideologies”? What “specific narrative”? If it is so specific, surely you could say what it is…

Reminds me a lot of the Let's Go Brandon crowd. The explicit and literal point of the First Amendment is that you're allowed to say "Fuck Joe Biden" loud and proud with no repercussions. Ditto for any other politician. Self-censorship to prove a non-existent point is totally backwards and self-defeating and demonstrates the level of civic understanding at play there.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#48

Post by paulddraper »

mcpackieh wrote: post #44
paulddraper wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What they are actually doing is attacking people's free speech and defending the authoritarians that are actually trying to limit speech and other rights. Huh, I'm lost? Can you cite an example? To be clear, "___ is a lunatic and advocating for bad things" is a criticism. "___ is a lunatic and their message should not be permitted" is limiting speech

> "___ is a lunatic and their message should not be permitted" is limiting speech No. That advocates for limiting speech, but is not itself limiting speech. If I say meat should be banned, that doesn't actually prevent you from eating a burger. The distinction here is important.

Oh sure, supports limiting speech.

Point is, I got lost in the parent's gyrations.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#49

Post by zmgsabst »

pyvpx wrote: post #35
bad_username wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You mean when the advertising companies pulled their money from Twitter after its owner said Jews "pushing [...] hatred against whites" was "the actual truth"? Not really, because I specifically stated that my response was not about the Musk situation. "Jewish communities hate whites" does sound pretty antisemitic to me. But so does the equivalent trash of "all whites are racist", which for some reason is a-ok for…

bad_understanding_of_racism

Many racists proclaim people “misunderstand racism” when their different standards for different races are denounced for being racist.

After 160 years of the same political party fighting to rebuild racism, generation after generation, people are done hearing the moralizing excuses for why this time Democrats have the magic formula for virtuous bigotry.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#50

Post by medler »

zoogeny wrote: post #29

> Musk is also a fan of the theory that when he speaks, your criticism of him violates his rights I hate to use such trite debate bro topics, but isn't this a motte and bailey fallacy [1]? The motte is "we're just criticising Musk" while the bailey is "we're systematically contacting all of his advertisers and letting them know that if they continue to support him then we will campaign against them as well". The whol…

> The motte is "we're just criticising Musk" while the bailey is "we're systematically contacting all of his advertisers and letting them know that if they continue to support him then we will campaign against them as well".

As a free-speech absolutist, I genuinely don’t see any difference between criticizing a person and telling other people (advertisers) that that person did something bad. That’s what criticism is, telling someone you disapprove of something.

Post reply on HN