
Free Speech Defenders Don’t Understand the Critique Against Them - rstarast
https://arcdigital.media/free-speech-defenders-dont-understand-the-critique-against-them-4ed8327c0879
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hackermailman
I'll summarize this article.

"You say you want free speech, but it is free speech and expression for us to
decide and exclude you from our society both economically and socially".

Probably interesting things could have been said and investigated but none of
that is to be found. I also find this article confuses countries just to make
a point about hypocrisy, for example Jordan Peterson can get away with suing
for defamation in the commonwealth because no other country except the US has
real freedom of speech/expression laws. In the commonwealth you can just claim
you were defamed and the onus is on the defendent to prove they didn't defame
you. There was already a famous case about this involving some holocaust
denying author who sued a critic and the federal government (note: not US
government, we're talking about foreign countries) came down on this critic
with the full force of unlimited resources and power forcing them to defend
their criticism.

If you write an article like this it would be nice to try and run test cases
against your own hypothesis that it is freedom of expression for a vocal
majority to exclude somebody economically and socially they disagree with,
like what if the comments were socially acceptable when they were made, but no
longer are, should you still be removed from society and is this still freedom
of expression. Classic example that could have been used is politicians
signing petitions in their naive young past that are now socially
unacceptable, which are brought out in the current political climate and used
as a weapon. Another hypothesis that could have been explored is what if the
current social climate is overtly racist, like it's acceptable to hate a
specific group, then is it still freedom of expression to cancel that hated
group from society using Rwanda as an example and numerous other ethnic
conflicts.

tl;dr it would be nice if somebody put some rigor into these kind of articles,
like negating your hypothesis and seeing if your claim still holds ie: some
signal in the noise. It would also be nice if these author's at least read
Orwell's classic essay on how to do political writing:
[https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...](https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit)
while you read this article, look for tired methaphor's like 'preach to the
choir'.

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tssva
I encourage everyone to read the article themselves because this summarization
of the article is incomplete and misses the actual point of the article.

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hackermailman
I assume everybody reads articles here yo. The authors proposition is spelled
out "You say you value free speech and oppose social penalties for bad speech,
but your actions show that you don’t. You value free speech for you and people
who agree with you and oppose social penalties for expressing things you agree
with. You’re open to disagreement on some topics, sure, but when it comes to
things that are important to you, social penalties for speech you identify as
bad — such as “Bari Weiss sucks” — are not just acceptable, but good,
something to be proud of, something to broadcast on a public forum so others
know that you did it, encouraging them to do it too." but his arguement is
actually my summary.

But then my summary stands when he summarizes: "It's drawing the lines of
socially acceptable expression" and claims an angry mob coming after you is
indeed what the definition of free expression is and comes with the territory
of a free society. My snarky Orwell comment still stands too with his "social
penalties" newspeak.

