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My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

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Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#71

Post by djbusby »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #61
zmgsabst wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It started at an Oct. 2 NASCAR race at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. Brandon Brown, a 28-year-old driver, had won his first Xfinity Series and was being interviewed by an NBC Sports reporter. The crowd behind him was chanting something at first difficult to make out. The reporter suggested they were chanting “Let’s go, Brandon” to cheer the driver. But it became increasingly clear they were saying: “F—- J…

Its like the Danny-Wah event in that show Veep.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#72

Post by pcwalton »

EarlKing wrote: post #59
medler wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

You've successfully formulated the reasoning behind the legal "public figure" [1] standard from first principles.

Elon Musk, especially when speaking in his capacity as owner of X, is unquestionably a public figure in a way that Hacker News commenter "medler" is not. (So is Media Matters.)

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_figure

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#73

Post by bad_username »

threeseed wrote: post #58
bad_username wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The first result of the "Parler user data" search for me is this publication

https://gizmodo.com/every-deleted-parler-post-many-with-user...

containing a direct link to the dump.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#74

Post by vacuity »

rpmisms wrote: post #36
kstrauser wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"Jewish Communities" doesn't mean "All Jews", and that's obvious to anyone not looking for a reason to be angry. Muslim communities just bombed the hell out of Israel, and that's not islamophobic to say, because it doesn't implicate all Muslims.

You say "that's obvious" but your terminology is ambiguous. I wouldn't say "Muslim communities bombed Israel". To me, that sounds something along the lines of "the predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East teamed up and bombed Israel".

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#75

Post by Freedom2 »

mindslight wrote: post #21
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…

I'm just sitting here as a small-l libertarian that's in tune with the concept of logical reductions (eg Turing completeness, NP-completeness, etc), wondering when people will wise up to the idea that sufficiently coercive corporations are indistinguishable from government and vice-versa. Arguing over this false dichotomy uses up all the air in the room, when we should actually be focusing on the amount of control be…

As a big-L Libertarian, I totally get where you're coming from. It's spot on - focusing on this government vs. corporation debate is missing the forest for the trees. What really matters is how much power any entity has to stomp on our liberties, whether it's the feds or big tech.

The richest guy can say whatever he wants; he's got the means to bypass the usual channels. But what about the average Joe? That's where our concern should be. It's not about agreeing with what's said, but making sure everyone can say it. We need to keep our eyes on the real issue: preventing anyone, government or corporate, from getting too much control over our free speech. It's all about that freedom, not getting bogged down in who's the bigger threat.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#76

Post by b112 »

mindslight wrote: post #21
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…

I'm just sitting here as a small-l libertarian that's in tune with the concept of logical reductions (eg Turing completeness, NP-completeness, etc), wondering when people will wise up to the idea that sufficiently coercive corporations are indistinguishable from government and vice-versa. Arguing over this false dichotomy uses up all the air in the room, when we should actually be focusing on the amount of control be…

people will wise up to the idea that sufficiently coercive corporations are indistinguishable from government and vice-versa

I will 100% agree that large-corp is a threat to democracy, and specific freedoms. But indistinguishable? Come on.

A government can prevent you from speaking your mind, via legislation and the judicial branch. In terms of raw power, they have the capability to throw you in jail, they can detain you, they can prevent protest, pass laws to make your specific actions literally result in incarceration, they have armies, and police, and state spies, and on and on and on.

Corporations may sometimes avail themselves of some of that power, but it is still the state wielding it. Corporations by themselves have little direct power, compared to states themselves.

And yes, corporations will perform tasks for the state, and the state will sometimes perform tasks for corporations. But that's not my point.

My point is, having a large corporation does not immediately provide for a massive army at the direct control of a CEO. It's just not indistinguishable, at all.

So yes, looking at the specific powers of each entity is a good idea. Just.. keep it in perspective.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#77

Post by eapressoandcats »

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…

If you think people in oppressive regimes get due process in court then I have a bridge to sell you.

I think trivializing harm is bad but at the end of the day I think you will concede that there is a speech line which can be crossed beyond which you will be fired. Otherwise people could just be cruel and mean to everyone around them and face no consequences. Once you believe that then really all we are doing is haggling about where the line should be… which is something we’ve been doing for generations.

Even if we’re not talking about official action and are talking about group vigilantism, I think we’d agree that if someone had well documented nazi and racist activities outside of work that it would be ok for people to ostracize that person? That just leads back to haggling about boundaries and that’s very hard to sort out without being very specific.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#78

Post by vacuity »

rpmisms wrote: post #67
Yoric wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that. As a reader, I find that "Jewish Communities" very much sounds like "All Jews" and "Muslim Communities" very much sounds like "All Muslims". If that's not what the authors mean, I'm sure that there are much, much better phrasings.

That may very well be your own bias. If I say "Christian Communities hate gays", you'll probably think of one or two specific communities. When I saw "Jewish Communities" in gp's headline, I immediately thought "oh, the ADL", because they're bigots and don't really hide it.

Everyone has biases, and you're not exempt. If you know that your language might be grossly misinterpreted, consider changing it, if only for your own image.

> If I say "Christian Communities hate gays", you'll probably think of one or two specific communities.

That might be true for me, but I'm thinking of "Protestant Christian evangelicals and co." as one community, so...

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#79

Post by colinsane »

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…

i'm hyped for federated social media if for no reason other than that it forces the free-speech people to confront the world in which they unambiguously have free speech, and find themselves ignored more than before.

but that only works for the everyday free-speech libertarian, not the actual egotistical. i watched the CTO of a prominent defense contractor cry "censorship" when they weren't allowed to present at an open source tech conference unless they removed all company branding from their slides. as if the arms dealers are the ones at the wrong end of the power struggle; as if Elon Musk with an audience of tens of millions is the victim of society. i don't know what to call that view toward individual liberties except for literal delusion.

Re: My Free Speech Means You Have to Shut Up

#80

Post by whatshisface »

Unfortunately, it's a scale. Where do you think criticism ends and censorship begins?:

1. Tweeting that someone is wrong.

2. Tweeting that someone is bad.

5. A corporate Twitter account saying someone is bad.

4. One hundred thousand people tweeting that someone is bad.

6. A company withdrawing advertising from a businessman whose tweets they disagree with.

8. A company withdrawing twitter service from a customer whose tweets they believe are bad.

9. A company withdrawing email service from a customer whose (public) emails they believe are bad.

10. A bank refusing to process donations for a person known to speak things the management of the bank does not want themselves to be associated with.

11. An online marketplace refusing to sell to a public speaker they do not want to be associated with.

12. Most banks and marketplaces refusing to serve an unpopular public speaker, in such a way that they cannot obtain the basic necessities of life.

13. The government imposing a $1 fine.

The constitution kicks in at #13, but most people would cry out at an earlier step.

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