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Comment by playpause | Hacker News Reader

Free speech absolutism doesn't mean you can get away with any crime just because it involved you saying something.

Even free speech absolutists agree that falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre in order to cause a fatal stampede is (and should be) a criminal act. But the crime is not the utterance of the word. You could commit the same crime by setting off a fire alarm. In either case, the crime is in the action of tricking a group of people into stampeding.

Similarly, impersonating a police officer is illegal. You could do this by lying (telling a gullible person that you are a police officer), or by wearing a police uniform in public. The criminal action is tricking people into thinking you're a police officer, whether you do it with lies or clothes. Lying itself is not illegal, but a lie may constitute an action that is criminal.

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> Even free speech absolutists agree that falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre in order to cause a fatal stampede is (and should be) a criminal act.

Then they are not really 'absolutists'. Either you are free to speak or not. If you are considering something as criminal act and some other not then you are not 'free speech absolutists'. Words can have consequences yes, but you are here just arbitrary choosing which one can and which one can not have consequences.

In what point in time or space has a human had the ability to communicate all of their ideas and not have consequences from them? There has never been a time in history in the United States where you could say or publish absolutely anything you wanted and were immediately absolved of all responsibility, government or otherwise, by invoking the first amendment. The US obscenity law still exists on the books today. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_obscenity_law

John Stuart Mill is considered an absolutist and he invented the harm principal.

This is because shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater is not a free exchange of ideas, it’s enticement of injury.

Here’s the gist of it: “Mill argued that even any arguments which are used in justifying murder or rebellion against the government shouldn't be politically suppressed or socially persecuted. According to him, if rebellion is really necessary, people should rebel; if murder is truly proper, it should be allowed. However, the way to express those arguments should be a public speech or writing, not in a way that causes actual harm to others. Such is the harm principle: "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."”

A lot of potentially harmful political speech on social media seems to avoid actual incitement, though. If there is a kind of speech such that the intent is to cause harm, and the effect is to cause harm, but its form allows it to be categorized as “free exchange of ideas”, I’m not sure how I can support this kind of view.

Oh for sure, but I think you and Mill might not be too far off:

“The example Mill uses is in reference to corn dealers: he suggests that it is acceptable to claim that corn dealers starve the poor if such a view is expressed in print. It is not acceptable to make such statements to an angry mob, ready to explode, that has gathered outside the house of the corn dealer. The difference between the two is that the latter is an expression “such as to constitute…a positive instigation to some mischievous act,” namely, to place the rights, and possibly the life, of the corn dealer in danger.”

I just don’t think philosophers back then realized our society was going to become so polarized, with global reach. His views do presuppose a progressive society to be able to host this speech, so it’s possible we’re no longer a progressive society. (re: more and more “opinion” speech winding up being harmful to others, both left wing overzealousness, and right wing opinions inciting harm)

Yeah, I think we're not too far off in principle, you rightly guess that the key difference for me is how society has changed since that time.

Now, you can make these kinds of claims about the corn dealer on television, on twitter, in dark-money facebook ads, to angry mobs gathered anywhere but the corn dealer's house, all while knowing that online forums are circulating rumors of the corn dealer running a pedophilia ring, and still be afforded plausible deniability when violence results.

I don't have a solution, because if the corn dealer _is_ starving the poor, we should be able to discuss that openly, and I don't think I want to give the State the power to make such a discernment, because it would be too easy to abuse.

Mill is wrong. because he ignores the extremely strong negative effects of sustained disinformation campaigns, and immediate and obvious harm should not be the bar. Society could never handle that, it just thought it could.

Such an attempt to force feed any and all uninformed or malicious opinions down society's proverbial throat, plays right into the hand of the very active disinformation campaigns that are quite actively reshaping politics and opinion in countries around the world.

And an un-nuanced promotion of supposed 'free speech' in the context of such clear and widespread societal harm that is currently occurring, including as the backdrop for real wars with people dying, does not at all resemble a sincere effort at improving the state of affairs. At all. It frankly stinks of yet another billionaire attempting to make sure this simple, malicious, gaming of public opinion remains easy in the near future.

It makes sense, but how can you possibly reconcile that with reality.

Reality is much more complex. The effects that have been sought through the manipulation of "free speech" on platforms like Twitter are so dangerous because they are insidious. They are insidious because they are matrix, they are not linear (like "go kill that guy"). The bad actors seek to leverage it to gradually sway opinion into such a state that everyone is shouting exactly what they want them to shout.

This isn't arcane knowledge anymore, it's been the subject of exposé after exposé over the past decade.

Those kinds of effects weren't possible at scale over other forms of communication. It's the immediacy and the context-less nature of the communications that enables them.

Applying Mill's argument here is like trying to apply Earth's physical constraints to actions on the moon.

The rules governing those platforms aren't perfect, but they're like a gardener spotting new weed growth and clipping it off.

If you want freedom, it was never in Jack Dorsey's (or now Elon's) garden, man. (or, What freedom was there ever in the courts of kings?)

I believe that labelling people as absolutist confuses the issue. JSM advocated liberty up to the point of harming others. Almost everyone in the Western world agrees with this as stated. The differences lie in the vagueness of defining "harm". I don't think JSM defined it explicitly. For some people, harm means physical bodily harm. For others, social triggers legitimately count as harm.

being offended isn't being harmed. People who want to control others who offend them claim they're being harmed, when they're just offended. Allowing those people veto powers on others speech is antithetical to freedom.

Wouldn't defining "harm" that narrowly mean defining "harm" for a lot of people in a 1984 way? Why should your definition of "harm" supersede theirs?

(Mostly rhetorical; I don't necessarily disagree with you on this, but I think your take is callous and ignores an inherent contradiction of free speech maximalists).

your take on harm harms me, change or be guilty of harming others...(j/k)

your take is essentially an endless take of "why shouldn't we include offending as harm" and the answer is because its not harm. Or we can just proclaim other people's opinions I don't like as harm and stand in a circular firing squad, which is what society seems to be doing now.

Opinions such as offense is not harmful? He's asking why you feel empowered to define someone being upset at some comment as something other than harm. As am I.

Is it not possible that your unilateralism on this issue has galvanized the will of the victims of the conduct you espouse to oppose you via controlling speech?

Seems that what we have now, which is essentially Isiah Berlin's negative liberty would be a good compromise. Negative liberty:

"liberty in the negative sense involves an answer to the question: 'What is the area within which the subject—a person or group of persons—is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons" --Isaiah Berlin

Basically working to eliminate coercion of individuals as much as possible.

This state would serve everybody except, of course, those who were seeking to coerce people either overtly or covertly, instead of persuade them, which I feel is something different.

Thoughts?

> Opinions such as offense is not harmful? He's asking why you feel empowered to define someone being upset at some comment as something other than harm. As am I.

Being offended is an emotional reaction that has nothing to do with whether you're harmed or not. Being upset is not a constitutionally protected class or situation. It's just someone who thinks their emotions are more important than other people's ideas. Why do you feel empowered to pretend being upset means you've been harmed? It's a fiction that has nothing to do with reality.

It's unclear what your definition of harm is. It sounds like you take it to mean only physical harm, and not e.g. psychological harm? Are death threats or racist/sexist abuse harmful or not?

Hopefully the poster finally explains why _their_ definition of harm which excludes emotional harm, should be considered an authoritative definition, and others' should not

It does indeed seem like their entire view on this issue depends on said definition of theirs being correct, because if it isn't, the view completely falls apart. And yet, they haven't well explained _why_ it's correct

It's the veto that's the problem, right? You feel they are claiming harm in order to escape the offending situation. In fact, perhaps they would take exception to your assertion that they are actively seeking control, is that not a possibility?

How do you know they are not being harmed by those who actively utter speech designed to be hurtful? Is it not also antithetical to freedom to allow such people to attempt to make existing in what's left of the commons as painful as possible?

What qualification can you present that would make me trust in your assessment of some other person's level of tolerance to abuse?

And really, "tolerance to abuse" here means "inability to escape abuse."

Sorry, offense, you said offense, of course your willful offending never becomes abuse. In my experience that is a difficult line to always see clearly. Can you share how you maintain that balance always? Your insight into other people must be incredible, I eagerly await your reply.

>In fact, perhaps they would take exception to your assertion that they are actively seeking control, is that not a possibility?

Why would them taking exception mattered if they couldn't control the speech of others? Let them take exception and do whatever they want with it so long as it doesn't affect the rights or ability of others to speak.

>How do you know they are not being harmed by those who actively utter speech designed to be hurtful?

Is speech hurtful or offensive? That's the crux of the issue, and you've assumed the end before you argued a position, so you've put the cart before the horse and assumed your intended consequence. It's not a logical argument.

>What qualification can you present that would make me trust in your assessment of some other person's level of tolerance to abuse?

Who are you again, that I need to provide qualifications to you? And why do you keep assuming the conclusion by saying offensive speech is 'abuse', when it isn't? What qualifications do you have that let you do that?

>And really, "tolerance to abuse" here means "inability to escape abuse."

again, assuming being offended is the same thing as being abused. Nonsense.

>your willful offending

I find your bad faith argument offensive, so we'll take your definitions and say they're abusive and you're being willfully abusive to me - please stop abusing me.

>Is speech hurtful or offensive? That's the crux of the issue

Agreed (well, "can it be", but otherwise same thing)

We heard some arguments that it can be (encouraging suicide, dehumanizing minorities, inciting insurrection,etc).

Do you think it cannot be? What are your arguments to support this position if so?

>assuming being offended is the same thing as being abused. Nonsense

Do you belive, even if the speech were to rise to the level of abuse, it would be harmful? If not, the distinction seems meaningless. If so, it seems a tacit admission that speech can be harmful.

>We heard some arguments that it can be (encouraging suicide, dehumanizing minorities, inciting insurrection,etc). Do you think it cannot be? What are your arguments to support this position if so?

Some of these claims are stupid, and some of these claims apply to speech that is already illegal even with freedom of speech. It doesn't apply to twitter, given the majority of the speech being censored has nothing to do with that. It's like arguing about abortion by using a motte and bailey involving abortion post rape - its an emotional argument that accounts for something like 1% of all abortion if that. It's not an honest argument as to what is going on.

I think speech in general should be legal. I think speech can be offensive. I don't think most speech is hurtful. Are the founding fathers of the united states guilty of being hurtful, and should they have had their speech censored? They incited an insurrection.

Such blanket approaches and nonsense examples (compared to what's actually being censored) are just the work of people looking to use misleading examples instead of the common examples.

>o you belive, even if the speech were to rise to the level of abuse, it would be harmful?

This is again putting the cart before the horse. "if speech rises to the level of abuse..." assumes that speech is abuse, which it isn't.

It is widely accepted that speech can be used to inflict emotional or psychological abuse.

You're very concentrated on people simply being "offended", as if the law can be used to prosecute you for once calling someone an idiot. It can't as far as I'm aware, and very few people want that.

Speech can be harmful if it deliberately and consciously exploits or invokes trauma, undermines identity, or inflicts significant anxiety, depression or PTSD. Intimidation and harassment are often carried out via speech. It is illegal in most states if carried out on the basis of race, religion, colour or sexual orientation.

Again, my point is that there is a grey area around the line where speech becomes harmful and ought to be censored. The problem is that we don't have a coherent definition to determine where exactly the lines is in that grey area, and John Stuart Mill didn't either.

It seems that our fundamental disagreement is that you do not believe speech can cause harm OR rise to the level of abuse, something which, I as a random dude disagree with, but moreover, people qualified to evaluate harm to people disagree with, and the people who wrote our laws criminalizing multiple forms of harmful speech disagree with.

So, I guess nothing really left to discuss, unless you want to make a convincing case in advocacy of your position.

If you include social triggers as harm then free speech becomes meaningless. Only the most vapid and inane speech would be protected under such a definition. The reason speech needs protection is because there will always be some group wanting it suppressed because they believe it will cause harm.

Fine, I don't disagree. Either way "harm" needs to be defined before the boundaries of free speech can be delineated.

I love how you claim the word harm is vague and hard to define in one sentence then apply bias to your definition claiming only your view as legitimate.

Maybe harm isn't hard to define? Maybe you people just keep making shit up?

I didn't claim anything is legitimate, I said that there are people who consider that a legitimate view.

> the way to express those arguments should be a public speech or writing, not in a way that causes actual harm to others

The assumption here is that expressing those arguments as public speech or writing does not cause harm. I think this is wrong. Arguing for extermination of the Jews did, in fact, cause harm. Bullying someone into suicide does, in fact, cause harm. Spreading propaganda can, in fact, cause harm.

> This is because shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater is not a free exchange of ideas, it’s enticement of injury.

Many people who say they are free speech absolutists aren’t exactly known for appreciating this nuance. Hence why every open forum ultimately degrades into anarchy. I’m not saying an absolutely open forum couldn’t survive (let alone thrive), I’m just saying we haven’t seen one yet.

> the way to express those arguments should be a public speech or writing

When we have a society that actively ignores expert opinions, it makes it hard to take arguments for absolute free speech seriously. And online forums tend to not appreciate “quality” arguments over high-volume “quantity” one-liner rebuttals. Online forums tend to see users eventually switch over to mob mentalities, where normal rules of argument and civil discourse don’t hold any weight. You can reason with a person. You can’t reason with a mob. This is why online speech, absolute or not, is such a tough problem.

I guess my take is that this is an issue of theory vs practice.

Bravo! He absolutely fell into his own trap! An this is why free speech is a complicated issue. And besides - one person would say "you get people to stampede", meanwhile the perpetrator will say "that's only your opinion, I'm a comedian, here is my Youtube Jackass channel where I do things like that all the time and my intention is never to hurt anyone!". How you gonna prove if he's genuine or not? Jury that has their own opinion? And what if he really IS genuine in just being a stupid joker? Okay, so now you gonna tell him "you cannot say that!". Then we back to square one - controlling free speech.

That’s why democracy and actual meaningful exchange of ideas is important.

When you allow human discourse to be reduced to Id driven animal urges, democracy doesn’t function well.

Funny that Musk is famous for catering to those human urges. Fast car! Big rocket! He even talks about rewarding limbic impulses and I am convinced that is why he is so successful.

This is a ridiculous twisting of what people are talking about, with no nuance, which life has. It's not just 0 or 1.

There are very clear rules that have been worked out in the legal system for what constitutes incitement to violence for example. It has to be actual call to cause physical violence, right where violence might happen, soon or immediately. If you are standing outside a house yelling burn it down, that is incitement. Yelling burn down the capitalist system on Twitter is not incitement, because it is not direct and it's not immediate.

What many silicon valley techies have now done is move things beyond the legal system, which has worked reasonably well for decades, and thought that they can create a better system. Except it seems in practice this is much more difficult than it seems. Posting pictures of the severed head of Trump seems fine them with them (legally, I think this is ok anyway), but posting a satire article of a transgender woman military officer is not, and gets your silenced. Oh, and let's just block the legitimate story of the president's son's laptop.

In a way this is an extremely arrogant and elitist way of acting, you are saying you are going to create a better legal system than the evolving common law one we've used for a very long time.

It's also pretty obvious in the last 5 years that this leads to all sorts of conflicts of interest, and Silicon Valley elites really don't seem to be doing a fair job. Surprise suprise, what legal experts and judges have refined over decades works better.

>Even free speech absolutists agree that falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre

I would really want this stop being quoted so often, because the context in which it was originally used didn't advocate free speech at all.

It's also logically inconsistent. Of course you want people to have the freedom to yell fire in a crowded theater. What if there was a fire??

I said falsely yelling fire

Free speech absolutism, to me, means that the speech cannot be punished, but if the speech causes direct and immediate harm to others, you can be held accountable. Shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater is fine, but if there's a stampede and someone dies, you can be held liable at some level. I think that's a reasonable balance between zero suppression of speech and consequences for actions.

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