Can “Free Speech” Be “Moderated”? Yes. (2016)
medium.learningbyshipping.com
medium.learningbyshipping.com
So no, free speech can’t be moderated and still be considered free speech. Not for long anyway, the rules get tighter and tighter and the punishment for stepping out of line gets more and more severe.
I think people are picking up on this though and we’re starting to see a resurgence of old fashioned liberalism. The challenge is always how to allow free speech and not have everything turn into a sewer, but that’s a problem as old as the Enlightenment.
I'd love to imagine a fruitful discourse that would happen in the reddit posts you quoted, with everybody arguing their points about society rationally and topic oriented without verbally hurting anybodies human dignity. But if it was like that, it would probably not be locked.
Now it has been locked, and as I see it probably nothing of particular great value has been lost, no rare intellectual gems, no thoughtful debate or great discussion — on the other hand however a few people had a nicer day because they didn't have to read stuff that attacks their human dignity.
I am all for free speech. In a country where Nazi paroles are actually banned I am the one that would say talking to Nazis is not useless. What is useless however is to try establishing good discourse in the communicative equivalent of a gas station robbery: Everybody is screaming and all for different reasons.
But over here in Europe we have a fundamental human right to our human dignity. If someone tells you you should die because of your religion, skin color or sexuality, this is a breach of someone elses rights. You have the right to speak freely, but you don't have the right to rob others of their dignity.
If someone can't lead their discourse without robbing others of their dignity, maybe their voice is not one a free society should be willing to hear?
Free of unintended consequence? Free of unintended consequence from state powers?
If you want to truly speak free, without consequence you shout into the empty woods — this however would be a little pointless: We want what we say to matter, to impact others, we want it to have consequences — it is just that there are certain consequences we want to avoid.
A society can decide to control these consequences either by law or by culture in collective decisions. E.g. publicly saluting Hitler in Germany is not only illegal, but can also have a ton of consequences socially (some of them good, if your ingroup is neo nazis, some of them bad if you are around regular people). This law however does not stifle discourse around the Nazi past of the country — in fact it is the opposite, there is probably no nation on earth that has an perspective on its past as well researched and discussed as the Germans.
So laws against certain kind of speech certainly don't have to harm discourse. Of course a German neo nazi would probably feel more free if Germany allowed them to hail the genocidal failed artist that lead their grandparents into an unwinnable attack war against the free world – but would it really improve the free discourse on ideas that allow any free democratic society to adapt to the world? I doubt that.
The question I am not clear about is: Where precisely to draw the border? Unintended consequences are certainly not something that can ever be ruled out as we live in social environments. If we say something the people that hear it don't like, they are free to react in a number of possible ways, most commonly deciding not to listen, to argue against, call you an idiot etc. What about the content of the speech? Is it a statement of fact that is shunned? Is it an opinion? Is it calculated polemic? Hate Speech? Harassment? Threats? A book? Fiction?
It is quite clear no free society could call itself free if statements of facts or books are banned or their publication lead to fines or imprisonment (e.g. calling an attack war "war", stating your findings on global warming). So much is clear. But is a society more free or less free when any minority is allowed to freely harass, threat and vilify others? I really don't think so either.
If you would have such a society, that by law not only allows, but protects harassment, threats and similar things, wouldn't it lead to a "weaponization" of the consequences people can let each others feel in the social space? From the European perspective one of the most valuable of the fundamental human rights states have to protect is the dignity of a person. If you critique a politician for their decisions, this is not attacking their dignity. If you harass them sexually, utter racist comments or threaten to kill them, very much so. People know that hurting others dignity is wrong – and if there is no law that protects human dignity, social conventions will have to do.
I'd rather have it codified in law tho, because otherwise speech will in fact get less free.
TL;DR: Some law controlling certain destructive kinds of speech will lead to more free speech, because there is less need for a society to come up with social consequences for destructive speech. No law however will lead to less free speech, because society will come up with their own, social consequences where a law is missing.