I wonder if these free-speech absolutists will rail about this? Something tells me probably not.
It is actually very banal.
The group now being themselves jailed still argue against those who categorically oppose jails.
You don't need to agree in order to understand the logic.
One side believes it is the "why" in the act that determines rightness or wrongness, the other side believes (if that is their genuine position) the act by itself is categorically wrong.
- If the answer is yes, then the parent poster would excoriate the respondent for being a horrible person.
- If the answer is no, then the parent poster would triumphantly crow that the respondent is not actually against deplatforming / pro-free speech after all.
Astute HN readers should immediately be able to spot the problem: the false dilemma fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma). They have set up an imaginary "free speech absolutist" who must be 100% against any and all speech restrictions if they do not support deplatforming, which is obviously nonsensical; few, if any, such people exist.
So we see that it is an attempt at a gotcha but it doesn't hold up when examined. I have no idea why people think it's clever.
The parent's post is the one who took an absolute stance on deplatforming. I did not invent the stance. You didn't say "I condemn deplatforming", you specifically added a clause that seems to specify that your belief disregards circumstance.
> "They have set up an imaginary "free speech absolutist" who must be 100% against any and all speech restrictions if they do not support deplatforming"
I did not do this. In fact, it would exclude my own belief, which is that I am generally against deplatforming, but admit there are extraordinary circumstances that should be exceptions, like the case of child porn.
Astute HN readers should immediately be able to tell that I am ironically doing the opposite of the accusation, which is pointing out how absolute binaries on this issue don't hold up to scrutiny. Now poster is falling back on a textbook motte-and-bailey claiming to not have said what they did and has retreated to an easier position to defend.
Or perhaps they meant something different by "regardless of who it's being done to", say, that some deplatforming is justified by the exceptional nature of the circumstance but not by preconceived notions of the one being deplatformed. If that's the case, then clarify it rather than attacking me for interpreting your statement in a reasonable way.
Sometimes the trolling took the form of high-volume contrarian posting, but the trolls would also post porn and pictures of gendered violence in the comments on nearly every single article.
The way Jezebel dealt with it was through a variant of commenter whitelisting. Unapproved commenters (including yet-to-be-banned trolls) would have their comments in a purgatory until approved, visible only to those who have opted in.
A community like Jezebel cannot exist when supposed free-speech absolutists have their way and protect the trolls. When the free speech of trolls is prioritized, their targets are denied freedom of assembly and freedom of association.
These are all private fora so the US Bill of Rights doesn't actually come into play. But what episodes like today remind us is that the commitment of platforms like Meta and X to ensuring full participation by their political enemies is weak.
When meeting in an actual, physical town square, a group like the Jezebel.com commenters (or to pluck a group from elsewhere on the political spectrum, second amendment activists) doesn't have the right to be free from criticism. They could hold a rally there, or they could protest other groups, but they don't have the right to shut down those who would protest civilly against them.
What unpopular groups need is a private forum where they can congregate and exercise their right to freedom of association by excluding those who would disrupt their activities.
I personally don't think hate speech should be illegal. If someone feels that way I'd rather know it and act accordingly than them keep it to themselves.
Others may well disagree with my view there and that's totally fine, but they do want limits to what one can say which means they don't want free speech.
However there is a difference. A balance of free speech on social media could look like
1. Anyone can say anything they want
2. The algorithms are simplified such that they are chronological and your direct network, rather than the anxiety boosting, "editorial" choice in promoting or limiting the speech of others, especially with how reposts and quote tweets amplify a given post.
We need to rethink and regulate algorithms while we are working on Ai regulation. Let's not let the tech companies that brought us the mess we are in slip by in this moment of seemingly bipartisan cooperation.
Let us also make targeted advertising illegal to remove the incentives that make the "anxiety algorithms" so profitable. Go back to a world of context based advertising like magazines.
We can debate where the line on regulation should fall, but that isn't a free speech debate.
They have been abusing their power, something has to change
I haven't seen anyone show that here yet, though the Twitter files did show that for example.
We have considered algorithms to be a form of speech, because it is an "editorial" process, but this does not seem to be what they actually do. Similar to how Ai output is not copyrightable, social media feed algorithms that work on big data should not be considered an "editorial" process. There is no human involved in making decisions, just like Ai. Thus, if we regulate algorithms, we are not regulating speech, we are regulating a process, albeit a digital one with less case law.
Much simpler would be to clarify that algorithmically curated feeds of user content do not fall under the protections shielding the hosting company from liability. It seems reasonable to me that the intent of said protections was was to avoid scenarios where the website is in no way directly involved in the content creation itself, once the company decides what and how to show it that seems outside the original intent.
Perhaps instead of putting bounds (through laws) on what they cannot do, perhaps we list only what they are allowed to do (for algorithmic feeds), eg. can only show content from direct connections in chronological order. I do expect many people (currently believe) they like being able to discover new content outside of their network.
Whatever we come up with, which would benefit the people, I suspect will have big impacts on their profits. At the same time, if they do not have to spend vast resources to understand our nuances and target ads specifically to use, their cost centers would also be impacted.
I'm a growing proponent of ending targeted advertising. If we start with that, much of the incentives for our current algorithms (social, search, news) would seem to be removed from the equations.
There is always a balance, always a line. Every priority exists in the "in between".
Nothing has 100.00..% priority.
Reality forces choices. Choices force legal, structural, cultural and (last, but unavoidable) contextual prioritization.
huh, but everywhere in the world where they put value on having free speech, the situation is "somewhere in between"
I could care less if someone wants to say they're going to hurt me. My beef is when they actually try to do it.
Words aren't terrorism or violent. That doesn't mean people can't interpret them that way and feel harm, but a word alone can't harm anyone.
Because words carry weight based on who says them. Which is based on power/privileged. The president making an announcement about MedBeds would cause a much bigger conversation than a crackpot conspiracy group on Facebook. And that's sadly not belittling the FB group (give who I've seen fall for it), that's demonstrating how much more authority the president's words have.
>but a word alone can't harm anyone.
In the same way a pebble can't harm you, but it can be holding back a rockslide that can cause mass damage.
That analogy doesn't hold. For one thing a pebble can in fact hurt you by itself. For another, the words still wouldn't be what harmed you, the actions people took later are what harmed you and those are what would be illegal.
Don't forget that we also learned in the 20th century that millions can support and die for genocide while only a few dozen will be charged while the rest returned home. We also learned that the winner of said conflict can wipe out entire cities and go home the victor without consequence.
Both? It’s not hard to share the blame.
Where does that put someone calling out a public hit? It is just words after all.
> I could care less if someone wants to say they're going to hurt me. My beef is when they actually try to do it.
They say there’s no atheists in foxholes.
Vaguely saying "someone should" is very different from offering a bounty or plotting to do it yourself.
My point wasn't that money had to change hands or be offered, I was responding to an earlier comment. A person directly taking part in plotting to commit murder I'd also likely breaking the law and likely to lose a jury trial if they are actively plotting a murder whether money I'd involved or not. Saying "someone should" simply isn't a plot.
Your distinction that money has to be offered seems completely arbitrary. It implies people only do things for money and are otherwise impervious to influence. You really underestimate the level of stan culture America has.
When you believe that is okay and libel is also okay, by your standards, I can tell the world my neighbor is a pedophile who assaulted me as a child, and ask people to decapitate his whole family. And as long as I don't offer money, that's fine.
But, strictly speaking, neither of those are threats. In English law, they'd be more likely to be prosecuted as Soliciting to Murder or Conspiracy to Murder - I imagine there are similar offences in America.
I don't cast free speech in absolute terms, I take issue with those that do since it isn't a spectrum.
No one wants "true" free speech anyway. an age of social media + deepfakes means true free speech is legalizing slander/libel. And we know the lies will persist much longer than it deserves.
As well as inciting violence. We don't even need to reach "hate speech" on the spectrum in order to talk about intolerable speech everyone agrees should be punished on.
I take issue with any law that limits speech, including libel, regardless of who says it. Such laws remove agency, and therefore a level of responsibility, from those who hear the speech and choose to act on it.
In the same way that I strongly disagree with laying any blame on a woman for dressing a certain way before being attacked, I don't blame a person for saying something before another person takes an action we've deemed illegal.
Right, like everywhere on the planet, hence why I ask if you're saying it doesn't exist. It sounds like your answer is yes.
Or are you trying to elicit emotions?
What most people seem to miss is that companies like Facebook aren't the government and therefore aren't held to the standard of free speech. Signal ng up for an account and agreeing to their terms gives them authority to censor.
It's similar to how neoliberals say they care about humans when in reality they only care about corporations. Messaging doesn't always match optics.
You can claim no true Scotsman, but you need to back it up with reasonable alternatives to alternative definitions of the same term.
Political movements don't care what a single individual thinks.
Once again the optics doesn't match the messaging.
except for everywhere in the real world, where you have "free speech, kinda"
Germany may not have free speech, and if the German people don't want it that's totally fine.
Watching the pro-deplatformers get burned by their own illiberalism is very satisfying; watching some of them not having learned any lesson from it, doubly so.
Definitely not on the scale you're implying. People disagreed on who should be deplatformed. People generally didn't call you a "free speech absolutist" if you didn't self identify as such. That was a term people dubbed themselves (and often failed to live up to).
You're making it sound like there's a large group of people that were concerned about deplatforming in general and they were randomly and derogatorily labeled free speech absolutists against their will, to shut the conversation down. Maybe that happened in a few very specific places on the internet, but that's not what the broader conversation was.
It just seems like these comments want to stir the pot
My experience is that, for the most part, the people who criticized woke censorship are also critics of the Trump administration and its lawlessness.
Just look at the signatories of the Harper's letter: https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
The vast, vast majority have gone on to criticize Trump in his second term.
And even if your description did apply to everyone on this list, so what? A small handful of academics write a letter condemning Trump. How did you spin that into "People that criticize woke censorship don't like Trump." Are you under the impression that the world is comprised of ivory tower academics, and everyone else is a non-entity?
If you were paying attention at all, you'd see the entire anti-woke movement has become a young person's game, and it's completely divorced from censorship. It's more about open, malicious resentment towards anything non-white, now.
It's very clear to observers of reality that the vast, vast majority of prominent people and organizations who criticized wokeness have moved on to criticzing Trump. For the most part, "free speech advocates" are just normal liberals with principles, but that doesn't stop people in every one of these threads calling out "free speech" like it's something insidious.
> It's very clear to observers of reality that the vast, vast majority of prominent people and organizations who criticized wokeness have moved on to criticzing Trump
Definitely not. What kind of claim is this? You can't think of anybody that complained about Woke censorship that still supports Trump? You are pointing out the exceptions.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/meta-says-suspe...