
Hate Speech vs Freedom of Speech - freddyym
https://write.privacytools.io/freddy/hate-speech-vs-freedom-of-speech
======
dgrin91
I read this hoping for a good discourse on the topic... instead the author
barely dove into the topic. There is nothing novel or of value here.

Free speech is good, hate speech is bad. Great. But what is hate speech? What
is the line that you draw? The author vaguely alludes lack of evidence, but
99% of discussions are opinion based. Are all lies hate speech?

Honestly I wish I hadn't wasted 5 minutes of my life on this.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
Even worse is that the author doesn't even get the definition of "freedom of
speech" right; at best he can be said to have defined the US First Amendment.
A few moments with Wikipedia provides a variety of historical definitions of
what freedom of speech was intended to be.

This article is simply devoid of any understanding of the topic or even the
most basic attempt to do so.

------
conradfr
It's fascinating to me how this battle against "hate speech" became global so
quickly.

I disagree entirely with this article.

He doesn't define hate speech. "There is no place in this world for blatantly
false allegations or denying historical evidence", what does it have to do
with hate speech?

Also saying that freedom of speech "is about being able to speak out against
your governments without fear of oppression." is a very limited and US centric
viewpoint.

It's funny how people don't see the danger of supporting these soft-censorship
feel-good policy while more and more authoritarian politicians get elected,
surely these laws won't backfired?

And that quote of Voltaire is apocryphal (but he said something close).

~~~
oliwarner
> denying historical evidence ... what does it have to do with hate speech?

He's talking about holocaust denial, the [broadly] antisemitic conspiracy
theory that Jewish peoples seized on WW2 as an opportunity to advance
themselves, exaggerating the facts and inventing others.

You haven't defined hate speech either, but this meets _my_ criteria.

~~~
conradfr
"theory that Jewish peoples seized on WW2 as an opportunity to advance
themselves"

How would you definitely prove or refute that?

I prefer a society where anyone can ask "did the gas chambers exist?". In a
healthy one you should have all the information and replies to make you
conclude yes.

In my opinion making it illegal just fuel conspiracies.

Also this thread is a glorious reminder of Godwin's law.

~~~
oliwarner
> How would you definitely prove or refute that?

I wouldn't dare do either. I don't need to. There are simply enough people
_who were there_ still alive [on all sides] to testify what happened. If
first-hand reports from every angle aren't enough, nothing will be.

Asking questions is okay. But we're talking about people with their own
answers, not questions. Not just questions, they're sharing pointedly racist
motives.

And leave Godwin alone. We're literally talking about Nazis.

------
sabarn01
"Hate speech, on the other hand, is not. There is no place in this world for
blatantly false allegations or denying historical evidence."

The issue is you can't pick the arbitrator of what is true. Once you do you
create the tyrant. For once you have someone who will determine that which is
true they can determine criticism of their decisions are also hate speech.

~~~
danharaj
You don't need to decide up front for every possible statement whether it's
true or not. You don't need to decide up front for every possible statement
whether it's hate speech or not. When you come across a proposition, it's your
responsibility to decide whether it's true or not. You have to be open to the
possibility that you can make mistakes, even really bad ones. That's part of
the responsibility.

Likewise it is an abdication of responsibility to just pretend like speech
can't be destructive. It's your responsibility and the responsibility of your
community to deliberate on what sort of speech is destructive to the purposes
of that community. And you have to admit that you can make a mistake and deal
with it. That's part of the responsibility.

Free speech absolutism is obviously on its face a dogshit principle because it
is unlimited and thought-ending. Yes, the suppression of speech can cause
harm, but this harm is not infinite and permanent. Any principle that does not
allow thought, deliberation, and thus necessarily the ability to make a
mistake and the ability to make up for mistakes is a stupid principle.

The harm of suppressing speech without good justification must be measured and
balanced against the harm of allowing harmful speech. The existence of harmful
speech is hardly debatable: If speech wasn't powerful then we wouldn't
consider free speech important. If speech is powerful, then its power can
cause damage and harm. Deal with it.

~~~
brigandish
> Likewise it is an abdication of responsibility to just pretend like speech
> can't be destructive.

How is speech destructive to anything other than ideas? Just one, very precise
example would do.

~~~
afiori
Lies, deception, memetic contagions, going into what is already illegal
slander and fraud.

The argument on the side of free speech is that the negative sides of such
restriction outweigh the potential safety they grant; not that they do not
exist.

~~~
brigandish
They're not _destructive_. Which object do they destroy?

We're discussing speech, precision is a precursor for that, no?

~~~
danharaj
Your ignorance of the distinction between cause-in-fact and proximate cause is
not a matter of precision.

~~~
brigandish
So says you but I disagree. Would you ban me saying so? At least I'm able to
give an explanation where you make a bare assertion. Maybe not bare, you added
some snark.

Maybe that's why I wouldn't have your speech denied, I'm quite sure I'm able
to defend my position. Maybe that's also why you wish for others to have their
speech denied, because you aren't able to defend yours.

------
mixedCase
> However, hate speech doesn't have reliable sources.

It is my opinion that all your sources are unreliable, therefore you should
not be allowed to speak.

> Hate speech isn't freedom of speech. Hate speech is hate.

Hate speech is hate. Hate _speech_ is also part of freedom of speech. It's
very easy for me otherwise to label your opinions as hate.

And as it always bears repeating: Freedom of speech isn't freedom of
consequence, and platforms where freedom of speech is respected we can respond
to hate and if the platform is any good, we can also simply block it and
promote block lists aimed at specific speech criteria.

~~~
freddyym
You can label anything as hate. It doesn't take much for me to say your
comment is full of hate (which it clearly isn't). If you understand what hate
is then you can distinguish the two.

Hate speech, to me, is expressing hatred towards others, be it online or in
person, with no reason or justification.

If you are willingly being spiteful or intending harm with no reasoning then
this is hate.

There is a fine line that I should have talked about more, so I'm sorry.

------
surround
What is hate speech? It’s actually very difficult to define. One culture and
ideology might come up with a very clear distinction of what hate speech is,
but a different culture and ideology might disagree entirely.

------
johndevor
Problem is the author never defines hate speech.

~~~
livre
Hate speech is like porn. It's a case of "I can recognize it when I see it."
It's certainly not something objective and it depends on the cultural
background of people to define it. The author can't define it because the very
definition of hate speech will vary from place to place and person to person.

The author makes other mistakes too such as thinking history that was already
written is an absolute truth when it's actually something subjective written
by the "winners." I lived through that once, the history that I was taught as
truth in my school many years ago was proven to be false a few years ago and
the lies were based on what today you'd consider hate speech.

I think the moment we can solve detecting hate speech using a machine will be
the same a machine can pass the Turing test because it's impossible to define
hate speech in objective terms. Meanwhile we have two equally incomplete
solutions: allow all speech or let some people subjectively censor things.
Neither of those things will satisfy the author of this post (well maybe the
latter will).

~~~
freddyym
I completely agree with your first point. You've put it much better than me.

History is written by the winners, however, even if the Nazis had won the war,
I think people would still understand that discrimination against any
particular group is wrong. Who knows?

Censorship isn't something I stand for. However, in the UK I can be vocal
about my opinions as long as I'm not harassing certain groups for no reason.
Sure, thats censorship, but I can speak out against my government without
showing hatred if they were to take the policy too far. Its a fine line.

~~~
livre
>History is written by the winners, however, even if the Nazis had won the
war, I think people would still understand that discrimination against any
particular group is wrong. Who knows?

I think that had that been the case the people who remained alive would be
people with ideologies aligned with Nazism and would consider discrimination
against a particular group the right thing to do. Of course there will always
be people who stand against the winners, real life proves this: Nazis still
exist.

~~~
freddyym
> Nazis still exist

Sadly, they always will. There will always be people with ill intent in this
world, because the world isn't perfect. However these neo-Nazis use free-
speech to get a voice that they otherwise wouldn't have.

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
'The problem is that while the actual product is great, the people behind it
aren't.'

I have a genuine problem with this approach to anything. I have zero need to
vet whether someone likes midget porn, believes a radical political theory or
even espouses unpopular opinions. If their product is great, do I really want
to support crappy product with 'right opinion' people?

~~~
freddyym
Considering the alternatives, such as mastodon, I don't see any need to
support them. If I can use products that don't condone this sort of action
then I probably will.

------
jariel
The author is conflating 'hate' with 'facts'.

Denying the holocaust is one thing.

Saying 'I hate group X' is altogether another.

And saying 'I hate group X and we should go and harm them' is yet another.

But this is all academic because few people support any of that kind of stuff
really.

The concerns around hate speech are on the margins:

Making jokes about sensitive things (i.e. comedian in Quebec fined $30 000 for
making joke about a man in a wheelchair)

Policies which have possibly a racial angle, and yet which may or may not be
racist (i.e. banning travel from China, complaints that top Canadian Health
bureaucrat who is Chinese native and deep ties to the WHO is 'compromised'
being perceived as specifically racist)

Policies which affect some groups more than others like those intended to
ostensibly help groups (i.e. UCal system banning teachers from language that
could be perceived as 'microaggression' like telling someone of African
American descent who is being too aggressive/lound in class ... that they are
being too loud/aggressive in class, or things like affirmative action, Quebec
banning certain religious garb which affects specific groups)

Requiring 'affirmative' language for controversial things (i.e Jordan Peterson
complaint that he must legally refer to someone given whatever of any number
of genders they someone chooses to describe themselves as).

Racially oriented identity politics policies such as 'Black Lives Matter'
trying to address real problems of racism, while requiring white people to
'march at the back of the line' given that they are ostensibly secondary to
the nature of their status concerning the issue and their presence could
overwhelm the authenticity of the message ... could be perceived as a form of
hate speech.

Casual aggressive language which is really tantamount to 'very crude speech'
but sometimes 'actual hate speech' sometimes not really hatefully oriented,
but which could be categorized as hate speech. (You hear this in online game
rooms a lot, occasionally some _very crass_ language that I don't think is
meant to be hateful so much as crass, but maybe it is by some definition)

These are where the streams cross and things get harder.

~~~
afiori
> Making jokes about sensitive things (i.e. comedian in Quebec fined $30 000
> for making joke about a man in a wheelchair)

I feel like many people do not know about some more of the context.
Essentially the fine was in terms of damages, as in those jokes fueled
bullying from many of his classmates.

Personally I feel that this is more properly part of a conversation about the
boundaries of defamation rather than the boundaries of free speech.

~~~
jariel
That's a good thought, but 'defamation' is right in the centre of free speech
conversations.

It's a good example you bring up because it's as old as time and there doesn't
seem to be a universal way to think about it just yet.

~~~
afiori
I would say that defamation is different as it is about damages between
individuals. There the concept is directly related to proving that damages
have occurred, and a fine is in part meant to "correct the records." It is
less about an abstract of what is the limit of free speech.

------
claudiawerner
This is the sort of article which would usually garner a few hundred comments
on HN in which the same arguments are exchanged back and forth, usually around
a very small number of central themes (stated as follows in the most neutral
way I can think):

\- Who decides what's true and what isn't?

\- Who decides what's hate speech and what isn't?

\- Freedom of speech isn't only a legal principle, you're thinking of the
first amendment.

\- Should YouTube or other platforms be forced to carry certain content?
There's simply no other way to get your message heard. Why does
YouTube/Facebook/Google get to decide what's the truth?

\- Hacker News has a pretty strict moderation policy. Is that censorship too?!

\- Ah yes, but Hacker News is niche. Nowhere near the scale of YouTube or
Twitter.

\- So you're saying scale matters? Who decides what the scale is?

In the end, a lot of these questions seem to focus around a common
denominator: "who decides?". In my judgement, we already have a pretty good
idea of "who decides" in most matters that affect the whole of society, but
not in some others. It's the government, which is supposed to be accountable
and elected by the populace, or at least take into account their wishes. This
kind of democracy largely does not extend to the economic sphere, which
several economists through history have described as the "anarchy of the
market".

 _If_ the answer to the central "who decides" question is a country's
government, whether or not the government is competent enough to make those
decisions. This is at least in part a subjective question, as people evaluate
all policies depending on their ideological views. But bear in mind that
saying "the government decides" is not necessarily an argument for regulation.

There is usually a lack of sources being cited, perhaps because they're
philosophical or legal arguments and this is a very tech-oriented forum. I'll
provide a few I know of, ones likely to be the most surprising, and if anyone
has better pointers I'd be happy to find out about them.

\- Susan Brison (2018), "Free speech skepticism" in which the author discusses
and attempts to rebut several arguments in favor of a special constitutional
amendment to free speech[0]

\- Susan Brison (1998), "Speech, Harm and the Mind-Body Problem in 1A
Jurisprudence" in which the author provides several compelling arguments that
the harms that can be caused by speech can be no less involuntary and in fact
can be more severe than physical hurts in a variety of situations. To that
end, it's worth asking why "harm" in the interpretation of laws on speech is
defined in such a way that it only includes physical assaults. The author
argues that to separate "mental" harms from "physical" harms rests on a theory
of mind-body dualism, which is generally rejected by philosophers of mind
today.[5]

\- Brian Leiter (2016), "The Case Against Free Speech" in which the author
argues that certain places speech is restricted in the search for truth (such
as in the courtroom) offer insights into how speech can be regulated in
society as a whole[1]

\- Rae Langton, "Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts" in which the author argues
that the free speech of pornographers interferes with the free speech of women
(if speech is to be interpreted more than 'scrawls and sounds', which all
protections of the right to freedom of speech are based on) in a way that
classical liberals should care about[2]

\- The Stanford Enyclopedia of Philosophy article for _Freedom of Speech_ ,
including a discussion on Mill's popular "harm principle" and the lesser known
offense principle[3]

\- Steven D. Smith (2004), "The Hollowness of the Harm Principle" in which the
author argues that the harm principle as it is frequently invoked on the
principle that governments should only regulate acts which cause "harm" is a
vacuous principle which the holder can fill with their own "baggage" simply by
equivocating on "harm"[4]

[0] [https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2018/11/Bris...](https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2018/11/Brison-Free-Speech-Skepticism-Nov.-11-2018-copy.pdf)
(With apologies to the author for citing this draft paper. As far as I know it
has not yet been properly published, but it is available publicly at
berkely.edu.)

[1]
[https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...](https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12563&context=journal_articles)

[2]
[http://web.mit.edu/langton/www/pubs/SpeechActs.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/langton/www/pubs/SpeechActs.pdf)

[3] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-
speech/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/)

[4]
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=591327](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=591327)

[5]
[http://susanbrison.com/files/B.16.-speech_harm_and_the_mindb...](http://susanbrison.com/files/B.16.-speech_harm_and_the_mindbody_problem_in_first_amendment_jurisprudence.pdf)

(Quick edit: Looks like I took too much time in writing this comment back when
the post had 0 comments, and the discussions I anticipated have already
started :))

------
rhizome
If I can XKCD for a moment, you are one of today's 10,000 people to learn
about The Tolerance Paradox!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

Note: "a society" is not necessarily the public at large, it can also be a
subculture, a set of subscribers, and so on.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
The paradox of tolerance is utterly vacuous. "Group X is justified in not
tolerating group Y because of Y's intolerance of X." Fine, except it doesn't
even matter what X and Y is; it works just as well for your opponents as it
does for you.

It's amazing that people still quote that XKCD despite the glaring logical
fallacy.

~~~
rhizome
What is the fallacy in saying you have to draw the line _some_ where?

~~~
erik_seaberg
People are all too eager to grant powers (to their favorite vendors as well as
politicians) that can later be misused against them. They seem to forget that
the other team also bats.

~~~
rhizome
Ah, "people." What are we going to do about them, right?

I'm not sure you and Mr. Throwaway & Hide are talking about the same thing,
but what I'm talking about is _not_ to grant powers, to leave the game.

I'm not sure how freezing someone out is supposed to give them more power, or
increase their audience, or make their ideas any more viable, but using your
enemies actions to determine your own is a form of ressentiment, what has been
called a ruling principle of the lowest sort. It's related to reactionary
behavior, tit-for-tat debate. There's nothing that says you have to
participate in any of that.

