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My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

popehat.substack.com

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Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#51

Post by zmgsabst »

uoaei wrote: post #47
ryandrake wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let’s Go Brandon became a meme because a news anchor censored the crowd obviously chanting “fuck Joe Biden!” on air.

People were mocking actual censorship in the media, by repeating the phrase — often accompanied by “fuck Joe Biden”, as in the numerous tracks about the meme. Which were also censored at first (eg, on iTunes).

How you got from that to “self-censorship to prove a non-existent point” is mystifying.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#52

Post by snapplebobapple »

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…

He's talking about the frankfurt school, and its use of the Critical theory (aka the ouija board of social theories that you can analyze any minor difference with as long as you want the outcome to be there's an oppressor/oppressed situation here and it requires a bloody revolution) to foment radicalism and revolutionary violence in any group it can get its hooks into. The schools influences include the greatest hits of 18th and 19th century quackery, including marxism and Freudian psycho analysis, along with special guest, a blast from the past Idealism! Notable members of the Frankfurt school include Herbert Marcuse who is most known for being one of the three authors of Repressive Tolerance, a 123 page exercise in how to say we need to kill a whole bunch of people until the repression free utopia emerges from the pools of blood, without actually saying we need to kill people outright.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#53

Post by somenameforme »

vaidhy wrote: post #3
explain wrote: post #2

You'll notice he has not banned them from X. Free speech does not come without taking legal responsibility for that speech.

The same holds true for the other side, right? Everyone's speech has consequences and only some can afford to silence others through the power of money, law, personality or just being an asshole.

I'm not sure there is an other side on this? There are a limited handful of legal exceptions to free speech including for unlawful or criminal acts such as defamation, libel, and fraud. I think relatively few people would oppose strengthening these.

Where people diverge is when people want to censor, hurt and ideally destroy people who make unpopular but otherwise completely kosher comments. For instance Martin Kulldorff [1] and Jay Bhattacharya [2] are a couple of people who were censored/shadowbanned on old Twitter for expressing opinions about the best way to approach COVID, that were different than the 'official opinion.' One is a Harvard biostatistician, the other is professor of medicine at Stanford.

In general I think anybody should be able to express their opinion, but we live in a society now where even the most qualified cannot freely express themselves when their opinion runs contrary to whatever the official narrative of a time is. That's highly dysfunctional for any society, but words cannot express how stupid this is in a society where freedom of speech has been held as a fundamental value for centuries.

And the biggest threat is not even the overt censorship, but the self censorship that's the endgame goal of censorship. You make an example out of a handful of people, to ensure the other millions keep their mouths shut, in an effort to try to make opinions that made be otherwise widely held, look fringe.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kulldorff

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Bhattacharya

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#54

Post by eapressoandcats »

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…

Boycotts are unquestionably free speech from a legal perspective and definitional perspective.

From a moral perspective, Popehat’s main consistent point is that you need to be very specific about what behaviors cross a line and actually apply that fairly, which Elon pretty clearly does not. He has no problems asking people to boycott companies: https://sfstandard.com/2023/08/28/elon-musk-calls-for-boycot...

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#55

Post by zoogeny »

medler wrote: post #50
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,…

I disagree that organizations like the ones Musk is railing against are “telling that person someone did something bad”

I mean that in the sense that a group of thugs might show up to a business and mention “this is a bad neighborhood, it would be a shame if someone were to break your storefront window”

They might argue they were just letting the business owner know a fact. They may even claim to be proponents of free-speech in an absolutist sense. But they are being manipulative and their claim to inform is an implied threat.

Further, the threat’s being made to Twitter’s advertisers aim to materially harm Musk, not to address or counter the bad thing he is claimed to have said.

I actually believe people have the legal right to do this. They often have a defensible moral reason. I just dislike that they obfuscate their tactics behind euphemism.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#56

Post by threeseed »

bad_username wrote: post #9
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…

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…

> Massive advertising companies banding together

Except companies don't communicate with each other and coordinate strategy.

They all saw the Media Matters report and individually responded.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#57

Post by eapressoandcats »

javajosh wrote: post #22

Disturbingly myopic. As if the problem were simple! It's not. People will self censure if they fear retribution. This is particularly true when that retribution takes the form of ostracism, personal or professional. This used to be very rare! Now it is common. The concern about "first amendment rights" are a total red herring. Who cares about the law? Ostracism doesn't and never needed a trial. What this boils down t…

I don’t think it used to be as rare as you think. The internet mob phenomenon has made it easier for random people to be bizarrely piled on for one bad comment but in the recent past famous well-liked people had to completely hide that they were gay or have their careers ruined. Additionally, McCarthyism was a thing and certainly being an atheist in most of the country wasn’t exactly pleasant until very recently.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#58

Post by threeseed »

bad_username wrote: post #37
shusaku wrote: post #33

I think that people of certain generations need to be taught the beauty of a burner account. You get to say whatever you want, and are invulnerable to criticism. The downside is there’s no ego boost to seeing your name in the news or using your fame to get impressions. But that’s the double sided sword of reputation. When I was growing up on the internet, everyone understood the value of pseudo anonymity. But then Fa…

> doxing, at least that’s universally viewed as going over the line. Not really. When the user database of Parler was dumped, the media covered that event quite widely and favorably.

They would and have cover that event if any major user database was leaked.

But unless you have some evidence I've not seen any news organisations deliberately reveal PII data.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#59

Post by EarlKing »

medler wrote: post #50
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,…

So you'll have no problem if I start digging through your posting history for clues about your identity and contacting your employer to let them know what a horrible person you are, right?

.....or is that sort of thing only ok when it's done against enemies of the state?

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#60

Post by eapressoandcats »

SenAnder wrote: post #42
sgnelson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 critici…

I think he is merely pointing out that you can’t just say “someone is doing something that harms me as a result of my speech” and call that censorship. Otherwise literally no one could ever make any decision based on someone’s speech, which is insane. The reason he is asking for precision is because ultimately it is helpful to actually engage with the question of how do we allow debate without turning things into a mess, and that likely requires making some normative statement about what should and should not be ok to do in response to speech.
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