

Can free speech survive the internet? - gruez
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2015/08/can-free-speech-survive-the-internet.html

======
glogla
I think free speech can't survive the internet for a different reason -
because everything is someone's backyard.

You can say whatever you want in public space, but nobody has to let you write
in his newspaper, post on his notice board, put passages in his book, let you
speak in his living room or broadcast what you say through radio. That's okay,
because there are public places.

There are no public places on the internet. You can't say what you want on
Facebook, because it's Facebook's property and that's like speaking in
someone's living room or in someone's newspaper. You can't say what you want
on Google+, because that's Google's property. If you want to create your own
message board, hosting provider can refuse you service - it's their property.
If you make your own server, the ISP can refuse you service, because it's
their own property.

There are no truly public spaces on the internet, everything is someone's
backyard.

~~~
btrask
Great comment. Another aspect is that you can only rent space (hosting,
domains, connection, etc.) on the internet, you can never own it. If you have
a landlord they can kick you out, but if you own your own place then you have
a much greater deal of freedom.

~~~
chronial
This depends on where you live. In Germany, the landlord can not kick you out
([http://library.fes.de/pdf-
files/netzquelle/awo/awi762.pdf](http://library.fes.de/pdf-
files/netzquelle/awo/awi762.pdf)) – Government intervention can solve a lot of
problems.

------
belorn
The question that seems to be on peoples mind lately (at least in Swedish
media) is if people are more prone now to lynch mobs because of social media.
We see public campaign to fund mobs to assault/murder people. We have people
being harassed out of their jobs because of a single less than 140-character
message on twitter.

I don't think that the Internet is dooming free speech, but government does
seem to be a bit confused on how to deal with lynchmobs that operate online
rather than forming up in the street (you can't just have your mounted police
gallop into them in order to have them disperse). Police also seems less
incline to take campaigns on social media serious, even if the campaigns goal
is to encourage crime.

~~~
jsf666
From what I've heard from native Swedes they are fed up with the amount of
propaganda thrown by the media. I've seen photos of criminal immigrants
"whiten-up" so there is no outcry against the crazy immigration. I think the
IKEA stabbing and the grenade attacks are getting harder to cover up. The
point is that if you oppose the massive immigration in Sweden (or say Germany)
you're gonna get lynched (loose your job for example, become a persona non
grata) so there is no effective free speech.

------
dalke
> As has been shown by recent scandals involving Nobel biologists ... we are
> all of us now in the same boat as the politicians, one failed joke away from
> pariahdom and unemployment.

Watson had been increasingly 'a pariah' over the last few decades because of a
long series of racist and sexist comments. It was not due to "one failed
joke."

> apparently in the Nobel biologist's case only one person in the audience
> chose to interpret his remarks literally

What does a literal interpretation have to do with anything? If I say that
someone is "a son of a bitch", no one thinks I am literally saying that a
human was sired by a female dog. Yet it will still cause many to be mad with
me - using the terms of this essay - because I 'said something offensive.'

> The internet has enhanced our free speech in an imbalanced way

There is nothing new about the internet for that. The telephone, newspaper,
radio, tape recorder, phonograph, and television have all been imbalanced in
exactly the same way. Look to all the gossip columns of a century ago for
examples of people spreading accounts that may originally have been meant to
be limited to a select few.

Hunt's comments were made in a room that included international journalists.
Ever since the 1880s (I use Krakatoa as my date), journalists have been able
to publish stories that made it around the world within a day. There's nothing
special which required the internet to make the Hunt story happen.

The essay uses "shame mob" many times, without describing what that means. If
someone does make horribly racist comments, what is the appropriate way to
respond that cannot be described as a "shame mob"? Avoid making comments on
the internet?

~~~
zamalek
> of a long series of racist and sexist comments.

It doesn't matter if you say things like that once or a million times.
"Quantity" forms no part of the wording that defines free speech _or_ limited
speech.

> what is the appropriate way to respond that cannot be described as a "shame
> mob"?

Technically or practically? Technically nothing should be done (up until the
point of fighting words): that person should be left to spout their vitriol as
much as they please. People will dismiss him as a crazy racist (a natural
consequence) but that does not mean he should be punished/disciplined for
being what he is (an additional synthetic consequence).

Practically a friendly hand goes a lot further in changing people's opinions.
The only thing these "shame mobs" are doing is inciting more anger: their
behavior is as bad, often worse, than the people that they are criticizing.

~~~
dalke
What is a "shame mob"? Does it include the people who started
#DistractinglySexy ? Does it include people who post "I thing Hunt's comment
was sexist"? Does it include people who say "I do not think we should invite
Hunt for our next 'Women in Science' conference"? Does it include the UCL
ruling council?

Or is it a much more limited set of people who, say, send death threats? As a
reminder, and quoting from [http://www.theguardian.com/uk-
news/2015/jul/09/tim-hunt-sexi...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk-
news/2015/jul/09/tim-hunt-sexism-controversy-ucl-attempts-to-draw-a-line-
under-saga) :

> One female scientist who commented in the media after the story broke told
> the Guardian she had received “such a torrent of abuse” on social media and
> blogs that she could no longer face speaking publicly on the matter. Other
> female scientists who spoke out had apparently also received death threats.
> “We’ve all been silenced. It’s quite shocking really,” she said. “It’s just
> not worth the aggro of waking up to calls for me to be sacked on Twitter and
> hundreds of messages. It was so frustrating to see the perpetrator becoming
> the victim.”

~~~
zamalek
The classical "they've done worse" retort. I'll let you in on a little secret:

Two wrongs don't make a right.

The internet is rife with tu quoque. Even, if in the specific case of Hunt and
his bigotry, death threats were not made against him it does not mean that
this has been the case of all similar internet arguments.

> Does it include people who post "I thing Hunt's comment was sexist"?

No. Just like Hunt is free to be bigoted/racist/sexist, so are people allowed
to have opinions about him: _so long as those opinions are not designed in
such a way to disrupt his personal life or in any way limit his own rights._

> Does it include people who say "I do not think we should invite Hunt for our
> next 'Women in Science' conference"?

No, so long as Hunt has the right to have his own 'Men in Science' conference
without being picketed/harassed or what-have-you.

> > Other female scientists who spoke out had apparently also received death
> threats.

Much of that paragraph contains content that I would take the man to court
over. The objective and irrefutable conclusion is that he actively limited the
rights of those female scientists and that behavior is unconstitutional,
inhumane and needs to be corrected.

However, "writing a blog post" and the best-case-scenario examples that you
cherry-picked are a far cry from what "shame mobs" do on the internet. Indeed,
if you believe that mob (of any kind) would resort to such rational and
sensible measures then you simply do not know what a mob actually is - it's
not a group of people that simply disagree with another group of people.

~~~
dalke
I did not say "they've done worse". I said "what constitutes a shame mob?". I
should have made clear my implicit question - how is "shame mob" relevant to
what happened with Hunt? Which actions constitute a "shame mob" response, vs.
'rational and sensible' ones?

Without clarification, "shame mob" is a meaningless term because anyone will
be able to read into it a wide variety of definitions, including ones that you
and I think fall solidly under 'free speech'.

As a historical example, when Republicans supporters shouted "Ma, Ma, where's
my Pa?" because presidential candidate Cleveland fathered a child out of
wedlock, was that a 'shame mob'? (When Cleveland made it to office despite
attempts to use shame to sway public opinion, his supporters responded with
"Gone to the White House. Ha, ha, ha.")

If it wasn't, why wasn't it?

~~~
zamalek
> was that a 'shame mob'?

I'm not actually sure. The supporters of each opponent certainly seemed to be
a bunch of morons acting like juvenile runts; which is indicative of mob
psychology. I'm not sure if either went as far as what I would define as a
"shame mob" \- I simply don't have enough information about the events. Were
they harassing by e.g. picketing outside of the opponents' personal
residences? Then possibly yes. Merely protesting against [what they believed]
an immoral person, in a public place, is perfectly acceptable: especially if
that person were a presidential candidate.

~~~
dalke
The article requires that you accept that 'shame mobs' are real, and a threat
to free speech on the internet.

If you, like me, don't know what that term means, then did that article make
sense to you? Here are the uses of the term 'mob':

"You may be liable to legal sanctions or a twitter shame mob." \- in the
context of 'like-minded souls [who] via social media ... hold you answerable
to their moral standards'.

"The shame mobs that spontaneously form" \- that being those people who
learned about Hunt's sexist comments at a meeting to support women in science,
and attended by international journalists, and who then spread the word. It
did not qualify _which_ actions were mob actions.

"The internet allows ordinary people to exercise 18th Century mob justice in a
20th Century way, destroying people's lives bloodlessly from their mobile
phones thousands of miles away." \- That's an analogy .. and really should be
the 21st Century, not? Plus, we've got 20th Century lynch mobs, so there's no
real reason to reach back a couple centuries.

"Full scale shame mobs are still rare or course, but that is not all we have
to fear.". I think it's appropriate to quote Alice's Restaurant here:

> And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in,
> Singing a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an
> Organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said Fifty
> people a day walking in singing a bar of Alice's Restaurant and Walking out.
> And friends they may think it's a movement.

"Third, we could call on the government to save us from the mob [... for
example] installing fire-breaks in social media networks that make the
formation of flash mobs less likely making it illegal to fire the target of a
shame mob without cause and due process" \- "flash mob" are also considered
good things, like the dance flash mobs that sometimes appear. So "mob" itself
isn't the issue, but something more specific.

The author wants there to be legal job protections against the targets of a
shame mob. There are already projections for those who complain about
discrimination (on the basis of sex, race, religion, and a few other protected
categories) in the workplace, so many of the people who protest against sexist
comments are already protected.

It's mostly only those who advocate sexism which don't have these protections.
So if I read this correctly, it's arguing for more protections for those
making sexist and racist comments. And I wonder how the law might define what
"shame mob" means in an actionable way.

~~~
zamalek
> twitter shame mob

For that I do have a very clear definition and know exactly what the author is
talking about. What I've determined from this debate is that the "Hunt shame
mob" is incredibly subjective. Hunt is the type of discussion about this
matter which won't come to a conclusion, possibly because his opponents acted
in a mature and humane way - it's possibly completely irrelevant to this
discussion.

This[1] shame mob is very clear cut: if you are on that list you will have
problems being employed in certain industries (read: your rights are now
limited). Being placed on to that list is easy: question the common moral
compass or fall into demographics that fall within the maintainers' personal
bigotry (e.g. religion).

> So if I read this correctly, it's arguing for more protections for those
> making sexist and racist comments.

Correct. Here's a thing: some years ago (let's say 500) we lived in a world
where certain demographics had no rights: up to and including being able to
hold a job. This included women, homosexuals and certain races. Freedom of
speech was introduced in order to liberate these people: they were given a
voice in order to contest the system that was discriminating against them.
Specific examples, especially homosexuality, were deemed immoral by the
mainstream moral compass. Yet, thanks to freedom of speech, modern people find
it hard to believe how people were ever discriminated against like that.

The price of freedom of speech is that you simply can't tie a moral compass to
it: because if that had been done, homosexuality would still be immoral today.
Who's to say what primitive beliefs our moral compass has? Who's to say what
moral battles we'll be fighting in another 500 years time? Will we ever fight
those moral battles and enlighten ourselves if we take steps to discriminate
against ugly beliefs (such as racism)? Most definitely not. We'd be the same
pathetic race who makes pathetic little block lists that affect people's
livelihoods; and because of that, the same pathetic race which spreads misery
instead of happiness.

To have rights for homosexuals we had to have rights for racists. No human is
sufficiently advanced enough to conjure up the perfect moral compass: we prove
that day after day. The only solution is, for now, to have no standard moral
compass. The mainstream moral compass is _not_ right because it is, itself,
still rife with bigotry.

[1]:
[http://www.theblockbot.com/sign_up/connect.php](http://www.theblockbot.com/sign_up/connect.php)

~~~
dalke
> To have rights for homosexuals we had to have rights for racists.

Yes, we have decided that there rights that apply to everyone. I don't know
why that's relevant.

We've long established that there are not universal rights in all things. We,
for example, prohibit certain types of religious practices, even with the
right to one's own religion.

There is of course a tension, but I don't see why this discussion of rights is
relevant for this case. In the US case, the issues are the civil rights laws
that prohibit discrimination in the workplace, on the basis of race, religion,
and several other protected classes. These have long been adjudicated as being
constitutionally valid. If someone speaks up in public against sexual
discrimination in the workplace, that person's employer cannot (legally) use
that as a firing offense, and cannot let that statement influence job related
decisions.

We do not extend the same right to other sorts of discrimination, so there
isn't a quid pro quo set of rights, which is what it appears that you have
suggested.

And we recognize that culture and laws change, so we don't "tie a moral
compass" to something and leave it there. Otherwise we would still have
slavery.

------
chronial
I think it is important to understand who's problem this mostly is: Our
children's.

And they will just solve this themselves by method 4 as stated in the article.
But nobody will do any “reconfiguring” – our children will just grow up in a
world where things are different and come to different conclusions. Most of
them won’t see a change, they will just one day notice that their parents have
a weird perception of this topic.

~~~
mirimir
Yes, we'll just learn to not care so much.

Compartmentalization is also important. Especially for those with poor impulse
control. Having one invariant online persona over a lifetime is just insanely
unworkable.

------
task_queue
Centrally controlled and switched systems are ripe for censorship.

------
jsf666
It is really amusing to see the amount of downvoting in the comment section
when the article is about free speech and censorship

~~~
evgen
ObXKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

~~~
acheron
That is such a terrible comic. "Free speech" is a broader cultural concept
than "legal first amendment rights", and conflating them like that is at best
ignorant but more likely a deliberate tactic for those in favor of censorship.

~~~
norea-armozel
So does the freedom of speech include you being able to invade my home to
scream at me? Or force me to go to a church? Or listen to you while I'm
walking by? Seriously, I'd love to see this form of extreme speech survive a
day in any big metropolitan area. It's likely its adherents would wind up with
broken jaws in less time than that.

~~~
jsf666
Are you seriously comparing expressing ones opinions in a more or less PUBLIC
space to assaulting someone on his private property? Or enslaving you so you
got to church? Are these the mighty arguments madmen such as I need to refute?

~~~
norea-armozel
No one is preventing anyone from expressing their opinion. Just expect people
to call you an ahole for expressing it. Or in other words: deal with reality
and stop pretending you're exempt from criticism (noticed that I was free to
post my opinion on here and you were free to criticize it without getting
hurt, right? My feelings and body are intact and I hope yours are too.).

