Posting false statements about someone molesting children would be libel, so it would not be protected under the First Amendment.
Censorship of ideas, even demonstrably false ones, is completely different (and much more dangerous because you have to appoint a censor who decides what is false).
How Censorship of lie A fundamentally different from Censorship of lie B?
Picking arbitrary facts as somehow political issues is very dangerous waters. I honestly have less problems with someone saying a Holocaust was a good idea than I do when people say they aren’t happening.
People seem to be upset by my comment, but I am just stating what the actual law is regarding free speech about ideas and about libel. These rules are very well established in terms of what they encompass and don't.(IAAL, FWIW.)
I would recommend checking out Professor Volokh's series of YouTube videos on the First Amendment. [1]
That’s irrelevant to this discussion. Saying free speech excludes a limitation on free speech as defined by a specific country means anything that country excludes is therefore perfectly acceptable.
It’s the same Doublethink that defines income taxes as exclusive of payroll taxes by naming a subset of income taxes as income tax.
Wrong on both counts, actually (I am a former tax lawyer, so your second example is right in my area of expertise). The exception for libel is in the First Amendment in the US and in many other countries. This is not just about the US.
And as for payroll taxes, they are still taxes, but they are not applied on all income. For example, they do not apply to capital gains, or to income above ~$140k. Also, social security is (at least in theory) a forced savings plan, and people who pay into it more over their career then receive more out when they retire.
Income taxes, on the other hand, are not capped at a certain level, and you never get money back later based on how much income tax you paid in the past.
There are times where it is silly to refer to them in the aggregate, but it is not "Doublethink" to talk about them separately. They are different in important respects.
The US definition of income taxes also excludes gifts received even though that’s also “income.” As such by your definition they aren’t income taxes. Of course you could just define gifts as not income and things are ok, except if you continue to define income taxes as taxes based on a specific system then the definition is only applicable to that system at a specific point in time.
For example, is money received by tax free investments income? That’s now undecided until you determine the specific source, time period, and country involved. And as soon as you have statements that are both true and false you have a problem.
Even if you want to stick with US definitions, the states and federal government have different rules. As such the exact same transaction can be both income and not income. Which is about the clearest example of Doublethink I can think of.
PS: Instead, if you say for purposes of X it’s defined as Y then you don’t have this issue. But, then it’s very clear that specific things are exceptions. (To be clear I kept adding to this comment.)
Exactly. There's a familiar pattern to this debate. Someone categorically declares there can't be any exceptions to free speech.
Inevitably, someone brings up a counterexample.
Then the original person replies that it doesn't count, because it's not speech and there's a different word for what it is. Libel, incitement, terrorism, whatever word is needed to cover the example.
But in doing that, you've carved out a category for things that are excluded from protections afforded to speech.
Then the next thread comes around, someone declares there's no exceptions to speech, and the cycle continues.
If you're going to confine this conversation to the first amendment, then that's not relevant to youtube. For many the concept of speech in the sense pertinent here is broader than just U.S. law.
I've been on many HN threads where free speech absolutists make explicitly this point because they want to apply the concept of unfettered speech to private platforms, and they square the circle by insisting it's bigger than just the first amendment.
It's not all about the First Amendment, but if someone is going to equate two things that are treated differently under both American and other (UK, for example) laws, it's a relevant point. Also, Google is a company headquartered in the US, so US law is somewhat more relevant than other law.
>but if someone is going to equate two things that are treated differently under both American and other (UK, for example) laws, it's a relevant point.
It's relevant insofar as legal distinctions between US and UK are relevant, which is to say, not relevant at all so far as I can tell. I don't think anyone's argument here hinged on such a distinction. If it did, and to that extent, it's relevant. But the heartland of this whole conversation has to do with a conception of speech as a principle that's broader than just U.S. law.
So we should be clear about the extent to which this is, or isn't, speaking to the conversation that everyone else is having.
Good point. We allow judges and juries to do this. It is much more tractable problem in the case of statements about individuals. Also, it avoids questions of legal standing (who has suffered injury and is allowed to sue).
Libel is a statement that damages the reputation of a person. Libelous statements are not protected under the First Amendment.
Ideas about election fraud do not fall into this exception to the First Amendment unless they refer to individuals and make defamatory statements about them.
For the record, I'm not saying there couldn't be a reason to ban these statements, just that a libelous statement is not a good comparison because it is one of the established exceptions to the First Amendment.
In other words, a but. Which is the whole point - the original statement was you can't have freedom of speech with "buts". We already have "buts", and most people would agree we have freedom of speech.
A functioning society can't have the unbridled "freedom of speech" op is insinuating we should have. You aren't free to lie in a court of law, that's infringing on your freedom of speech. You can't falsely accuse someone of a crime - also an infringement on freedom of speech. Add countless other exceptions to the rule. And all of that is ignoring the fact that "freedom of speech" doesn't mean: other people are forced to listen to you or repeat what you said.
Censorship of ideas, even demonstrably false ones, is completely different (and much more dangerous because you have to appoint a censor who decides what is false).