The issue with banning speech for being "offensive" or "hateful" is that the definitions of those things and especially who can break the law without being prosecuted for it are largely determined by what is politically convenient. One government might decide that calling for a boycott of Israel is hate speech, while another might decide that calling for an end to refugee acceptance is hate speech. I prefer that myself and my ideological opponents are allowed to speak freely without concern for who's in power at the moment or what group is the current societal scapegoat. If you don't believe in freedom of speech for people you despise you don't believe in it at all.
I am skeptical of giving the government the power to censor speech and to determine what is hate speech, because this power can be abused. But at the same time, hate speech is a real thing and allowing it does not promote freedom of speech.
For example, suppose someone says "I think that everyone who does not believe in my religion should be killed." That type of speech is intimidating and comes with the threat of violence. Therefore any non-believer might pretend to believe and censor themselves out of fear for their lives. In this way, the speech itself acts as a form of censorship, and allowing it to occur silences more people than banning it.
Such is the case with all hate speech: hate speech is never about expressing oneself, it is about censoring the opposition through intimidation and organizing violence against them. In extreme cases, a single demagogue spewing hate can silence millions.
One example- until relatively recently, the vast majority of gay people would keep it to themselves because they were afraid of homophobic backlash, even though they were still afforded free speech under the law. This is an example of extreme censorship, which demonstrates that censorship can happen without any government involvement. Today the situation is somewhat reversed, where lgbt expression is increasingly acceptable but homophobia is not. This is a victory for free speech: lgbt expression does not come at the expense of straight people's expression, and banning homophobia is merely banning violent censorship of lgbt people.
> I am skeptical of giving the government the power to censor speech and to determine what is hate speech, because this power can be abused. But at the same time, hate speech is a real thing and allowing it does not promote freedom of speech.
No.
> For example, suppose someone says "I think that everyone who does not believe in my religion should be killed." That type of speech is intimidating and comes with the threat of violence. Therefore any non-believer might pretend to believe and censor themselves out of fear for their lives. In this way, the speech itself acts as a form of censorship, and allowing it to occur silences more people than banning it.
You are conflating things. Hate speech isn't about threats of violence.
Hate speech is when you have specially classified groups of protected people that you are not allowed to offend or mock or belittle. It is also about making it illegal to talk about subjects that are not approved by the government. Like how you are not allowed to show nazi flags in video games.
You can go ahead and offend, mock, or belittle people that are not part of a protected class. That isn't illegal under "hate speech laws".
Nobody is defending or claiming that threatening people with violence is "free speech". Trying to claim this is grossly misrepresenting the entire argument. Either for, or against, hate speech.
You are misrepresenting the definition of hate speech in order to create a strawman. Here is the definition from Google search card:
>abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice against a particular group, especially on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation.
So it's not just "offend or mock or belittle", but rather "abusive or threatening".
And if you think "offend or mock or belittle" are the same as "abusive", then you just don't get it yet.
> You are misrepresenting the definition of hate speech in order to create a strawman. Here is the definition from Google search card:
I don't give a shit what Google has to say about it.
What I do care is what the laws actually are. We are talking about Hate Speech Laws. The law is what matters. Not your cherry picked definitions that help prop up your misrepresentation/misunderstanding of what is going on.
> So it's not just "offend or mock or belittle", but rather "abusive or threatening".
The issue is that 'abusive' is nonsense.
If it's a legitimate threat then it's illegal no matter what person or group it is targeted at.
When it's legal to do it against one political classification of persons, but it's illegal to do it against another one... That is a big freaking problem.
For justice under the law it needs to be universal in application. If you can be "abusive" against one person, but not another because of politically defined group classifications or you are not allowed to talk about or discuss or bring up certain projects because protected classes of people might find it "threatening", then that is objectively immoral.
> And if you think "offend or mock or belittle" are the same as "abusive", then you just don't get it yet.
Well there isn't much to get here. So I get it. Do you?
Euphemistic usage and strange definitions of "abusive" and "threatening" doesn't change anything. It's just abusing the language to obscure a position.
If it's real abuse, if it's real threats... then it's illegal universally. Nobody is arguing against that.
This disconnect is due to a lack of understanding the difference between individual and collective rights. People pushing collective rights are inherently in opposition to those who value individual liberty, and the dillution of this largely via education has vast swaths of people trying to apply more and more collective rights structures on an American foundation of individual freedoms in the Declaration of Independence sense. Hence why even as an atheist I find solace and value in the founders justification of The Grand Architect giving us these rights in the more gnostic sense. As it serves to emphasize that the desire of individual rights is an inherent part of being an individual human, something universal. This was the true revolution of the enlightenment and renaissance embodied in the imperfect but first nation state to buck monarchy and theocracy that is America, and the fad-of-the-moment haters who so blithely dismiss not just the Constitution but its foundational philsophical concepts from the enlightenment are increasingly dooming us to repeat history. Censorship, stasi-level totalitarianism, etc are the end result of collectivism, forever in opposition to true, stripped of its faults, Americanism.
> What I do care is what the laws actually are. We are talking about Hate Speech Laws.
And yet you define Hate Speech laws as those disallowing others from "offending, mocking, or belittling" those in designated protected classes. Is that truly what these laws you are referring to are targeting? I don't see that in the UK's bill. Sincerely: am I missing it? Am I misreading? It's long, I relied on a summary for this comment.
> If it's a legitimate threat then it's illegal no matter what person or group it is targeted at... If it's real abuse, if it's real threats... then it's illegal universally.
The chilling effect of violent rhetoric will exist and persist whether the threat is legitimate or not. That's the debate. Should you be able to stoke those sentiments freely? The individuals who are stigmatized certainly don't have the capacity to fact-check every threat.
I'm not an advocate for these laws, I don't know what's best, but I can't see it as black and white as you seem to. The person you replied to had what I thought to be a very good perspective I hadn't considered.
I am not the person you were responding to, but I picked (at random) the Australian hate speech laws to look up and they do not seem to be about language that is threatening, and are more about protected classes:
I don’t believe the UK has the concept of a “hate speech crime”. Rather, first a crime must be committed, and then that crime may be classified as motivated by hate, which attracts higher penalties.
Also, intent matters, and it is a defense if the allegedly criminal conduct can be proven to be reasonable.
> I don't give a shit what Google has to say [...] I do care is what the laws actually are
Well this time it happens to be one and the same.
> When it's legal to do it against one political classification of persons, but it's illegal to do it against another one... That is a big freaking problem.
That's exactly what the laws say. And for good reason most times.
Here's [0] a handy guide for people who care about what the laws are just slightly less than they care about their own personal opinion. It will hopefully help you understand that what you consider to be "logical" or "common sense" is not necessarily accurate. I highlighted the parts which make the laws very targeted ("one political classification of persons"):
> "There are laws that criminalize speech because of the particular content of that speech. The prohibited content differs widely: in some jurisdictions speech that incites hatred or is insulting about certain groups is penalized. Other common prohibitions are on speech which denigrates a person’s or a nation’s “honour” or “dignity”. There may also be restrictions on specific historical subjects, the most notable being laws which prohibit Holocaust denial or glorification of Nazi ideology. This category of speech regulation is described as “hate speech”."
Here's [1] another handy piece of info, the EU is extending the list of EU crimes to hate speech and hate crime.
But... Hate speech laws do open the door for abuse. What's hate speech today because the target is legitimately vulnerable, can be abused by a not so vulnerable group tomorrow (politicians incriminating any kind of attack on them). Then again you always have to rely on the regime applying the laws to not abuse them. This doesn't change the fact that as it stands today Google has it pretty accurate but your understanding of the situation and reasoning behind it is lacking.
The key here is in the vagueness of "abusive". Is using the term "pedo" in a derogatory fashion abusive? What about not using someone's preferred pronouns?
> hate speech is never about expressing oneself, it is about censoring the opposition through intimidation and organizing violence against them.
This is simply untrue. Both in terms of how the term "hate speech" is commonly used and the actual practice of the law. Was nazi pug guy trying to censor other people's speech?
> Today the situation is somewhat reversed, where lgbt expression is increasingly acceptable but homophobia is not. This is a victory for free speech:
This confuses me, though I suppose your meaning of "homophobia" might be different from the one I am familiar with (like many politically charged words its meaning is vague and varies).
Would saying things like "Fags will go to hell, homosexuality is wrong and unnatural and homos should be kept away from children so they don't pass on the gay." be homophobia or hate speech? What about "we should imprison gays so they repent their evil ways and stop infecting our children"?
I think this is bad advice, what follows the "but" can be on a spectrum. It can run from struggling with one's own beliefs, to empathizing with the real-world consequences of others, to all-out advocating for an abandonment of the beliefs that came before the "but". Life is complicated, trite quotes like this don't leave much room to explore the corners - personal and social - of nuanced topics.
I think the context here is important. Rushdie was nearly killed multiple times for speech, and during his travails may people he knew who who claimed to support free speech were saying thing to him like, "I support free speech, but maybe you shouldn't have [insulted Islam]...". He was talking about people making excuses for his would be murderers.
He's spoken about it at some length and contextualizes what he means and how when people say it they almost never have anything nuanced to say after the but.
I suppose all I can say is that I like the quote in context, and think most people who use the quote to dismiss the perspectives of others outright deserve an exasperated eye-roll. Life is not as simple as many want to make it.
>banning homophobia is merely banning violent censorship of lgbt people.
'violent'?
If I say "I don't like gays". How is that violent?
If we have freedom of speech that applies to everyone. LGBT or homophobic. Each have the same right to speech, neither has the right to threaten with violence. Redefining speech you don't like as 'violent' isn't right though.
Also "Redefining speech you don't like as 'violent' isn't right though." That's exactly what you're doing with the word 'violence' in your post. You're claiming it doesn't have a meaning that it definitely does, in the literal look-it-up-in-a-dictionary sense.
I read the piece. Leaving aside the weighty issue of whether Milo Yiannopoulos' presence can violently shorten people's telomeres or methylate their CpG sites, there's the question of whether broadening a definition licenses broadening a prohibition. People who accept without question that the govt should stop interpersonal violence in the narrow sense may well not accept at all that it should stop it in its broader senses. Think about the friar's famous line from Romeo and Juliet, "These violent desires have violent ends". "Violent" has two different meanings in this line. It should be clear to anyone that the violence of Romeo and Juliet's love or sexual attraction for each other is not susceptible to the same legal sanction as the clan warfare that erupts in its consequence.
The common law prohibition of violence pertains to physical violence. Defining speech as "illegally violent" is absolutely a redefinition.
> Speech can cause a physical reaction just as much as a punch in the face can
This is farcical on it's face. There is simply no evidence that being offended or made a little uncomfortable is going to hurt you. You do after all have great power to control your own mental state, emotions, and reaction to negative externalities. This is a cornerstone of some of the oldest philosophical traditions in the world and well supported by experimentation. Cultivating a mindset of fragility only hurts yourself. But being called bad names will never hurt you like being physically beaten, words can't break bones or rupture your internal organs.
1. Behavior or treatment in which physical force is exerted for the purpose of causing damage or injury.
2. Intense force or great power, as in natural phenomena.
3. Extreme or powerful emotion or expression
Which? Because it isn't physical force. And I don't think 3 applies as that tends not to be directed at anyone, and there's no requirement for the 'expression' to be hateful.
Further. That means saying "I hate homophobes" is also violence. So we can't say that either. And then we're on a slippery slope where if you say anything that anyone disagrees with is violence.
In the last paragraph you're ignoring the part where the protected categories are based on a logical analysis of the problems in society. Homophobes aren't a protected class because they aren't systematically persecuted for something outside their control.
It should be completely irrelevant whether something is outside of one's control. The persecution of someone for something arbitrary is the morally wrong thing here.
And choice doesn't really exist, which is why I find that requirement so distasteful. I didn't really choose to have my political views. I didn't choose to like the color green. It's the culmination of my genetics, life experiences and so on and that's just how I turned out.
I agree with you about free will, but we still run society as if it exists. If that's the argument we're going with then we literally shouldn't punish anyone for anything.
Free will isn't required for a justification for law enforcement.
Deterrence, rehabilitation and other reasons still apply with or without free will.
All that changes is the mindset. You're no longer a perpetrator with agency. You're a broken machine and we need to fix you or isolate you from society so you don't do more damage.
>Homophobes aren't a protected class because they aren't systematically persecuted for something outside their control.
You cannot assert that if you cannot demonstrate that homophobia is 0% genetic (I am using "genetic" loosely here). In reality, like most complex human traits, it's partially genetic and partially environmental, hence it is outside the control of at least a subset of those exhibiting it.
So what? Being a serial murderer could be outside the control of at least a subset of serial murderers, but that doesn't mean we don't make laws about it. Society is still built on the axiom of free will, whether it is true or not.
You're also skipping over the "systematically persecuted" part. I guess you could say the modern liberal distaste of homophobes is "systematic", but it's such a weird example to choose given the paradox of tolerance.
This is exactly the type of reaction I expect from modern leftists when they are proven factually wrong and logically inconsistent. Thanks for being an epitome.
>You're also skipping over the "systematically persecuted" part
Homophobia is a crime in the EU. So much for not being "systematically persecuted". Homophobes fit that description far better than homosexuals today.
If something is violence, it's violence. You could say violence towards homophobes is ok because they aren't a protected class. But if you make the case that hate speech is violence, then it's violence regardless of who it's directed at.
I wasn't really arguing the "hate speech == violence" position, which is pretty silly. That doesn't mean hate speech shouldn't be an add-on offense to other crimes though. Or the idea that all targets of "hate speech" are equal. (Because it's only true "hate speech" if the targets are protected).
This is kinda like the question, "can white people experience racism?" One school of thought says no, because (in the USA) non-white people cannot wield the psychological threat of systematic persecution against white people. You could offend a white person, or be prejudiced against them, but not really "commit racism". Partly this is just a semantic argument about what "racism" means - it is not merely a superficial difference in race between parties, but rather an encapsulation of the historical and systemic forces at play. Racism is a more powerful tool for white people than it is for others.
Do people argue that white people can't experience racism?!?
If a black person applies for a job and doesn't get it because of his race, that's racism. The same applies to a white person. The same power dynamic is at play.
Note that the way you phrased that, "You are evil unless you pay me reparations." makes it so that the person isn't considered evil if they pay. That is significantly different to "You are evil therefore you pay me reparations.", in which the burden of proof of evilness is not based on payment. The person is still considered evil if they pay; they pay because they accept that and want to make things right. That's important.
Your link doesn't support your assertion that the phrase "I hate evil people. You are evil unless you pay me reparations." meets the definition of the crime of intimidation.
Speech can cause a release of hormones that make you feel negative emotions. That is not violence any more than causing the same effect by, for example, teaching someone about how their ancestors committed a genocide is violence. You do not have a right to not hear things that make you unhappy.
Excessively loud noise in residential areas is banned because it releases hormones that make you feel bad. Although there's less room for such a ban to go wrong, obviously.
I agree that the label "violence" is manipulative. Using the label "harm" instead would be more accurate.
I know it isn't. I'm saying there's precedent for things being banned merely because of a stress response. And the kinds of noise that get banned aren't just ones that damage your hearing.
And I just said it is not only sounds that damage hearing that are banned. If I am stomping on my floor for six hours straight and propagating noise pollution to my downstairs neighbor, I am getting a police visit. No hearing damage perpetrated.
>Excessively loud noise in residential areas is banned because it releases hormones that make you feel bad. Although there's less room for such a ban to go wrong, obviously.
"Excessively" loud noise in residential areas is banned for a bunch of reasons, none of which have anything to do with hormones:
1. It's annoying and disruptive to the residents of the area. No hormones required;
2. It's often selectively applied to harass members of less-favored groups, to make them uncomfortable living in that area with the hope that they'll move out.
1. "annoying and disruptive" is just cortisol, adrenaline and so on. It's the health damaging physiological stress response that's the reason for the ban.
>1. "annoying and disruptive" is just cortisol, adrenaline and so on. It's the health damaging physiological stress response that's the reason for the ban.
You're retconning[0] here.
Many (most?) noise regulations were implemented before anyone other than endocrinologists and a few neuroscientists (and many before even that) knew that cortisol even existed.
I assume that those regulations are in place because of the stress response that victims feel. Isn't it besides the point whether or not they knew about how that stress response was generated in the body?
So somehow learning more about how stress is generated changes whether or not stressors should be banned? How does that make sense? If anything, we now know more about how damaging chronic stress is, so our justification to ban stressors should be even higher than it was in the past.
The only good argument is that speech shouldn't be banned even if it leads to a large stress response, because of the slippery slope risk and so on.
Taking the position that either (i) speech can't generate a large stress response that's physically harmful to the individual, or that (ii) our knowledge of how stress is generated somehow changes whether or not stressors should be banned -- these are both not good arguments.
According to the article some forms of "adversity" can be violence. You disagree with my view and expressed it.
If I make the claim your post caused my blood to boil, that could be considered a symptom of inflammation mentioned in the article.
As the article points out, that can shorten my life and as such is tantamount to violence.
Therefore you have committed an act of violence towards me. I would ask you to please turn yourself into the appropriate authorities and inform me of the court date so I can testify against you.
Can't read that article because it's paywalled, but you seem to be implying that provoking a physical reaction in someone else is tantamount to an assault. Is that really what you are saying? Is this not an inevitable part of interacting with each other?
That is the argument, yes. That speech can cause harm because we have a social nervous system and chronic stress can shorten life span.
A better argument is to appeal to the history of genocide. There's a causal connection between speech and culture on the one hand, and genocide on the other.
But aren't we trying to break the causal link by banning incitement to violence? Surely the discussion is about whether to move one step back on the causality chain.
If you have a culture where everyone hates Jews due to memes propagated by speech, then you get 40 percent of people wanting to vote for a Hitler, who then brings the violence part after he's in power.
Or you get lone wolf terrorists that are motivated by speech that isn't technically incitement.
What speech laws were in place in Weimar Germany? What was Hitler advocating for before he took power? Without that this isn't the evidence you say it is.
Lone wolf terrorists seems a better example. I assume you're referring to school shooters. The problem is that's an issue of the US, not of speech laws. To me it seems more like the psychology of people jumping off golden gate bridge.
> What speech laws were in place in Weimar Germany? What was Hitler advocating for before he took power? Without that this isn't the evidence you say it is.
Hitler's rise has many causes. One of those causes was that anti-semitic racism was part of everyday culture. It was a meme that was propagated across generations via speech. Then Hitler weaponized that meme (again, using speech) to rally support after the Great Depression + fears of Bolshevism + WW1 grievances made people's minds more pliable to scapegoating.
Weimar Germany did have hate speech laws, albeit not ones that were properly enforced. That's moot, though, since it's not my claim that a specific speech restriction is effective at preventing the hate speech -> genocide causal path. My only claim is that that causal path exists.
> Lone wolf terrorists seems a better example. I assume you're referring to school shooters. The problem is that's an issue of the US, not of speech laws.
I'm really referring to hate crimes perpetrated by lone wolves, of which shootings are a subset. For example, the supermarket shooter that wrote the N word on his gun barrel. I read his manifesto, and his grievances were ones that he'd adopted from online ethnonationalist forums.
Again, I'm not trying to claim that some speech law can stop hate crimes. Maybe they can, or maybe they'll backfire. I'm just claiming that this notion that speech that isn't direct incitement hasn't historically partially caused hate crimes and genocide is a fantasy. The above case is some evidence backing that position, and there are others like it.
Ideas are extremely powerful. They can inspire unhinged people to take drastic action on their own terms, when perhaps they may not have otherwise done so. They can be part of the fuel for the rise of demagogues. That's what appears to be the reality.
> For example, suppose someone says "I think that everyone who does not believe in my religion should be killed." That type of speech is intimidating and comes with the threat of violence
this is exactly the situation we are in now with wokeness. Say the wrong thing and get cancelled, fired, banned even if your point is valid and intensions are good
This is a victory for free speech: lgbt expression does not come at the expense of straight people's expression, and banning homophobia is merely banning violent censorship of lgbt people.
There is a difference between hate speech and calls for violence. "X is awful and you should be ashamed" is not equivalent to "X should be lynched", whether X is members of the queer community or anarcho-capitalists or left-handed people.
What's the difference? As I understand it, you've just drawn an arbitrary line which reflects your personal views about stuff that's okay to say, and stuff that's not okay to say.
Why is is not okay to say "X should be lynched"? Is is specifically just calls to murder that should be restricted? General physical violence? Or is it more generally calls to perform illegal actions – is it okay to say "X should all be deported" or "X should be burgled" or "we should round up all the X and put them into camps"? Does the manner of the speech matter – if it's targeted at an individual versus a group, or private communication versus public?
The interesting questions are about how we build a tolerable consensus across society that most people can live with. The underlying principles are important to that, but black-and-white answers are rarely, if ever, correct.
I would point out that in constitutional law, in both Canada and the USA, it is decided by its proximity to violence, basically. The specifics vary, but that's the core of it. The more immediately linked the speech is to violent illegal action, the more likely it falls outside constitutional protection.
The American standard is called imminent lawless action [1], and so yes, openly encouraging a murder that might realistically happen can be illegal, and so is encouraging rioters to riot harder. Canada uses the same basic framework, with a somewhat less strict threshold for immediacy which is how laws there about inciting hatred squeak by constitutionally, while they don't in the USA.
Still not quite sure where the line should be, but such criteria seems like how we should decide where it is.
And indeed what about advocating for state sanctioned violence? E.g. if you're saying that buggery (or pedophilic cartoons) should be illegal you are advocating for men with guns to use violence or threat of violence to imprison those who do it.
E.g. Joseph Kelly was sentenced this year to 150 hours of unpaid work and 18 months of supervision for a “grossly offensive” tweet which went viral (he deleted it after 20 minutes).
This the first I've heard of this and I assumed there must be more to it. After some Googling I'm shocked that someone can be sentenced in the UK for a mildly offensive tweet (IMO) that went viral before it was deleted in 20 minutes.
The USA only has such extreme freedom of speech because of a 1969 Supreme Court decision, Brandenburg v. Ohio.
Technically it's as easily overturned as Roe v. Wade was, but I doubt the Trump-stacked Supreme Court would even try. If it were overturned, we could finally pass sensible hate speech laws even in the USA.
> The USA only has such extreme freedom of speech because of a 1969 Supreme Court decision, Brandenburg v. Ohio.
This really highlights the creeping cancerous nature of 'speech as violence'. It was Bradenburg v. Ohio that partially overturned Schenck v. United States, in which protesting the draft was considered a sort of violence against the state (creating a "clear and present danger" to the government.) The premise of 'speech as violence' always starts out with examples most people find reasonable, but its way too easy for authoritarians to expand the scope of what speech constitutes violence inch by inch until one day you can no longer protest your own government forcing young men into a meat grinder.
It's way too easy. "Your words offend me, causing a stress reaction which shortens my life. Anything that offends me is ipso facto violence." There needs to be a line drawn in the sand to prevent this escalating madness. Brandenburg v. Ohio does that fairly well.
... then, after it's overturned, the political winds can shift hard to the right and talking about homosexuality or trans or other issues like that can be branded speech-violence and prosecuted.
Power, once given to the state, is hard to take away and political winds change.
Do people not get this?
I say the same thing to right wingers who advocate giving more power to the state in other ways. "We should give Trump unilateral power to fire government employees!" "Okay, then you're fine when President Pelosi inherits those powers?"
The constitution is quite clear that the constitution is not immutable. On the contrary, the constitution describes processes by which the constitution may be changed.
There's a great segment in The Dawn of Everything[1] that discusses how speech we a check on the rise of authoritarian power in many pre-modern societies.
The different between the UK and the US is that the UK is trying to limit free speech via a law. In the US free speech is limited by the revolving door between silicon valley, government and political activism.
> the definitions of those things and especially who can break the law without being prosecuted for it are largely determined by what is politically convenient.
Don't forget "hate speech" laws about criticizing royalty, elected officials, or the police. These are things that will be inevitable, and hate speech/hate crime laws to protect police have already sprung up in US red states.
So the heart is the double standards. I think that's very fair.
"Kill All Men" is something you see pretty often on twitter, but "Kill All Women" would be hateful.
I'm a woman, and yea I'm not a fan of "kill all women", but I also have a son and husband. I don't want "Kill All Men" to be something normalized.
I think that should be considered Hate speech too.
If the standards weren't so obviously double or triple, I think people would have far less of a problem with it.
I agree that government-level banning of hate speech is problematic for the reasons you describe.
However, as a member of a minority group who grew up being the butt of many racist jokes, I would like to have the freedom to participate in an online community where hate speech is moderated. It’s fine to me if other people want to participate on platforms where hate speech isn’t banned, but I will stick to ones that are less unpleasant for me personally. I don’t think I’m alone in this point of view.
No one who advocates against hate speech laws doesn't want you to have that freedom. What we do want is for the government to stop trying to make it illegal (as in throw-your-ass-in-jail illegal) to make those jokes online.
I also disagree with government level censorship. At least in the American right, there is some political pressure and discourse around pushing free speech as a principle from the government level (where I agree with it) down into the platform level (where I do not agree with it).
It seems like you are not one of those people advocating for that, but this is why I would push back on the statement
“No one who advocates against hate speech laws doesn’t want you to have that freedom”
I think this is a bit tricky when computers are involved. "Facebook" is not a community; it's a technological encapsulation of millions of communities. So if Facebook bans something globally, that's not the same as keeping your individual community the way you'd like it.
If some on the American right is saying "Facebook is too big to moderate all communication, and it should allow everyone to speak", that doesn't disallow you from having one or more communities that are moderated more locally in whatever way is allowed there. It's just that Facebook the corporation won't be able to reach into any community and have veto power over speech.
It’s certainly not true that Facebook has a monopoly on communication (here we are communicating without Facebook involved)
I do have some agreement that when a platform gets very large, it makes sense to have some regulation around the censorship decisions they take. Specifically, rules around transparency make the most sense to me. On the other hand, a blunt regulation such as saying that large tech platforms are not allowed to do any platform or country-wide moderation doesn’t make as much sense to me. My experience with all unmoderated online communities is that they devolve into something extremely unpleasant, and forcing Facebook to push ALL of the moderation work down to specific groups or users themselves is not a workable approach to this problem.
Company towns weren't a monopoly either. You could always walk outside town and enjoy your free speech there. But free speech laws applied because they functioned as public places.
Facebook is such a public place.
Additionally, Facebook and the rest did function as a cartel when they coordinated to ban Alex Jones from all platforms, even the ones where he wasn't present.
In a very real sense a lot of people had no choice but to stay in company towns. There are certainly similarities between a company town and Facebook, but choosing not to use it is not a matter of survival for anyone.
I agree that Facebook, like company towns, should be regulated given the scope. But I think we should evaluate bannings like Alex Jones more from first principles such as whether there is more harm in allowing him to stay on these platforms or in banning him rather than being strictly adherent to the principle of free speech.
> It’s certainly not true that Facebook has a monopoly on communication
For sure - I didn't say it did.
The rest of what you say I don't really agree with. Expecting a professional moderator from Facebook to moderate a community is the unworkable approach. It has to be done by those communities.
Here's another issue: if someone breaks the law in their country that bans them from using some/all of Facebook then should Facebook comply? In some cases it makes sense (e.g. someone convicted of something related to children should probably be banned from communicating with children) but not in others, say where lower caste/class people are legally banned from speaking.
Facebook is a big enough place that these things really matter, and I don't think we or Facebook should assume that the decision to veto speech is Facebook's.
To repeat my key point: people demanding that Facebook not be the veto decider are not trying to threaten your online communities. They're just looking at the power dynamics and concluding that that power should be held by those communities (or the law of the land(s)), and not by Facebook.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you but it seems like you are arguing for a fairly hard-line stance of: Facebook shouldn't be allowed to censor or take down any content, and all decisions to do this should be pushed down to individual users or group moderators.
This is certainly unworkable given the level of bots, spam, etc. that would be untenable for a volunteer moderator on a Facebook group, or an individual user, to deal with.
Maybe I am misunderstanding you and your point is more subtle: the government should have some rules around what Facebook can and cannot censor. Then I don't disagree with you in principle, I think we would have to get into specific proposals and weigh their pros and cons.
A blunt approach of "free speech, no censorship" isn't a convincing argument, but given the scale of impact that site-wide or nation-wide moderation decisions have on Facebook, I could be convinced that government oversight in certain cases makes sense.
Bots don't get any speech because they're bots. I'm all for people who we know are people talking, and no-one else (although if their identity is hidden I don't mind so much, as long as it's one account per person). Then we can moderate people.
Highly non-partisan issues such as not allowing explicit images of children is important, along with any other general enforcement of the law of the land.
The fact that there are multiple laws and lands makes this tricky, so to some extent I would say Facebook should decide where they want to operate, and if their fundamental values contradict the country then they shouldn't operate there (e.g. one rule could be "if a country bans a group - other than children without their parents' consent - from using Facebook, then we don't operate there).
Note that in the above system, it allows people with values I don't like to speak. That includes people whose values are pro an American corporation censoring the world. Sadly for me, that is one of my values (-:
I see what you mean. Yes, I agree, it’s in some sense suboptimal for a community to outsource moderation to a larger entity.
However I think moderation is difficult (and this fact is under-appreciated) and so the limit of “perfect moderation per community” is probably not practical. (Indeed I’m not even sure that’s a possible thing, since each community member might disagree, even though there are emergent norms at any given time within a community.)
> No one who advocates against hate speech laws doesn't want you to have that freedom
I've recently heard a number of "free speech" advocates try to expand that to be a right to be heard, i.e. a right to a captured audience & other people's attention.
These same advocates also additionally argued that their rights were being trampled upon when certain communities rejected them due to disagreements on the contents of their speech.
His argument was "No one who advocates against hate speech laws doesn't want you to have that freedom" -- while saying "No one.." is always dangerous (as there is always someone, somewhere), I'd say it is fairly common in my experience for people in favour of laws against free speech to also think companies like Twitter should be forced to also allow free speech.
People who say "no one" or "everyone" do not mean 100%. That isn't how English works. It's why English provides qualifiers like "absolutely no one", or "100% of people".
Just like if I say "everybody likes ice cream", you and I both know that there's somebody, somewhere who loathes ice cream.
> I've recently heard a number of "free speech" advocates try to expand that to be a right to be heard, i.e. a right to a captured audience & other people's attention.
You're confusing two different aspects: free speech as a guaranteed right and free speech as a principle.
As a right, it means the state shouldn't prevent you from communicating something. An example is the US's First Amendment.
As a principle, it means you support speech, even when you disagree with it. An example of this is "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
As a publisher, you have the free speech right to NOT publish something you disagree with, but you can't then say you support free speech as a concept.
It's quite an imposition to force someone to say something he doesn't desire to say. But the free speech advocates you speech of (like me) only want the law to be changed for quasi-public-square entities such as Facebook and Twitter.
I'm not confusing anything, I merely stated my observations on people expanding (if your distinction applies,to both the right and the concept).
That statement should be amended to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it to those who choose to listen"
Just as real-life town squares allow people to walk away, boo or shout back at speakers, the same rights should be preserved for audiences on Facebook and Twitter.
* I would like to have the freedom to participate in an online community where hate speech is moderated. It’s fine to me if other people want to participate on platforms where hate speech isn’t banned, but I will stick to ones that are less unpleasant for me personally.*
That's great, but it doesn't have anything to do with government-mandated censorship. I too wouldn't exclusively use unmoderated online communities.
I was responding to the parent comment and tried to make clear that I too am against government mandated censorship. I’m talking about platform level censorship because I thought it would be interesting to the discussion to clarify these two different levels. At least in American discourse about tech platforms I often feel these two levels are conflated.
I can’t say for certain, but most likely you do personally feel that there should be some limitations on freedom of speech. You might think it should be unlawful to incite violence against someone, or to shout racist slurs at your bus driver, or for your manager to book a daily meeting to talk about how the gays are going to hell. Whatever; it doesn’t matter. There are some likely some scenarios in which you’re going to think “hey, you shouldn’t be able to do that”, where that thing involves expressing some idea.
It would obviously be silly to say this means you “don’t believe in [freedom of speech] at all”. That’s why this sort of “absolutism” argument is a bit weak. The most interesting questions are about balancing the rights of different people - how to we ensure people are free to speak their minds, while trying to protect the rights of others. Simplification to the point of parody doesn’t really help advance that.
There is enough stupid stuff to pick apart in this stupid legislation already and we don’t need to muddy the waters further; it makes me a bit worried to see so many people get tied up the abstraction of freedom of speech while ignoring the practical challenges - like the increasing privatisation of the public sphere.
The rest of the quote is "at your bus driver". Most people would agree that the bus driver has a right to do their job without being the victim of verbal abuse, even if they are a public employee. In this case the crime is "verbally abusing the bus driver", and if the contents of that speech include racial slurs then there could be an add-on offense for hate speech.
If you are just yelling obscenities at your friend in the driveway then it is a different situation.
Unfortunately your article is not proof that "it’s worse in many cases".
First, the article is talking about rejections (primarily in relationships) not racial slurs.
Second, I read the article fast so maybe I missed something, but I didn't see anything saying the emotional is worse than physical other than this sentence "Third, it is important to remember that we recall emotional rejection more strongly than physical pain, and it can therefore cause longer-term sensitivity". The article didn't provide any proof of this, they just made the claim. Also, recalling past pain may or may not happen frequently. How many people recall something mean a random person said on the internet?
Third, the average person likely won't feel strong feelings of emotional rejection if some random person on the internet says something mean to them. The article is clearly talking about rejection from family, friends, spouse, etc.
Based on your argument it seems like we should ban breakups since it can be worse than sexual assault. Would you be fine with that? If not then why are racial slurs different?
Because breakups are a necessary part of life, hurling racial insults at someone isn’t?
Emotional pain is in general on par with physical pain. That can be inflicted in a variety of ways and hurling racial slurs at people is unnecessary. There is no situation you should do it. It’s only purpose is to inflict pain, so it should be criminalized.
You never really addressed my points. I don't believe racial slurs cause emotional pain in the same way sexual assaults do. The article didn't prove anything and this post hasn't provided any proof to the contrary.
If all it takes is a random person on the internet saying something mean to cause the equivalent of physical pain, then maybe we should ban arguments on the internet. Disagreeing with people on the internet is not a necessary part of life. Whoever posts first gets to be the only one who makes a point. Anybody else who disagrees is doing something unnecessary and as such should be criminalized.
Yes and no. Hate speech can be arbitrarily defined, but speech inciting violence has a solid definition. There's a line between calling out refugee acceptance and questioning immigration to calling for all refugees to be hanged and for illegal immigrants to be physically harassed. There is an overlap between the two categories, but accepting hate speech and not accepting speech inciting violence is a very tough line to walk for any legislative body, and we're talking about human made bureaucratic institutions which need to make laws that can be clearly defined and followed. I don't think there's a one size fits all law here, and everything needs to be taken on a case by case basis, but free speech purists always ignore the fact that speech inciting violence can have a material impact on the world.
Of course, all of the recent anti-speech movements have been pushing way beyond inciting violence. It's even going beyond 'hate speech' to merely offensive. That's why it's so controversial.
There's also the concept of "speech is violence". The parent comment makes the assertion that there is a difference between hate speech and speech that incites violence.
While the line seems very clear, the issue becomes when you start redefining what "violence" is, or start extrapolating. Say you go out and make a disparaging comment about a protected class, the comment is disparaging but it does not directly call for violence.
An argument will be made my some that even though your comment does not cause violence, a crazy person will hear your comment and then proceed to commit violence based off of that. You can extrapolate that to almost anything.
I can say "I think Javascript is a terrible programming language". Some crazy will take that to mean: "JS is terrible, therefore all JS devs are terrible, therefore I need to go out and commit violence against JS devs". The argument could be made here that the comment "I think javascript is a terrible programming language" is actually a call to violence because someone interpreted it that way.
"always ignore the fact that speech inciting violence can have a material impact on the world"
Not as much as you think. In the US (I know that this story is about the UK but bear with me), speech inciting violence can be charged criminally already, as you can see by the investigations into the former president over whether he incited violence with his Jan 6 remarks. Whether I agree with that is irrelevant, I'm making the point that remarks inciting violence aren't 1st Amendment protected.
The second problem is that Hate Speech regulation is, actually, being used against religious people in the countries with Hate Speech laws. In Finland, there was a criminal prosecution for a pastor who quoted the Bible that Men-who-have-sex-with-men is "abominable" even though none of the violent passages were mentioned, nor did the pastor have any violent comments regarding the quote. This was openly admitted by the prosecution, who said the charge was not that it was violent, but that it was "hateful."
>The second problem is that Hate Speech regulation is, actually, being used against religious people.
Why is that a problem? Why should it be any better if you quote hate speech from the Bible rather than mein kampf?
Further, you say it was quoted without the violent passages. But the implication is still there, if you quote the Bible saying gay people are evil, it stands to reason that you also stand by the following passage that they should be stoned to death. So I'm not even sure this is that far from inciting violence anyway.
Because, when you like it or not, religion is a protected category just like sexual orientation is. Members of protected categories are allowed freedoms which are not allowed outside those categories, one of these being the citation of scripture. Rest assured that there are plenty of people who think the same about the displays of obscenity which pride parades have turned into but since these are also part of a protected category they can't do anything about it either.
The solution to these problems is to do away with protected categories altogether and just apply the law to all in an equal fashion - I'm all for it.
> Members of protected categories are allowed freedoms which are not allowed outside those categories
That's not really how it works in the US. Except for age, every protected category applies to everyone. Even if your answer is "none", that's protected as much as any other answer.
Plus I still don't see the problem. Surely protected categories are there to protect people, not give them cover to do otherwise illegal things.
People can discuss mein kampf without getting to hate speech, the same should be true of a religious text. And if that is impossible maybe that religion shouldn't have special protections.
> This IS violence and it's a way of silencing gay people. Dehumanization is violence. This type of speech is why gay people are marginalized and why they feel the need to keep their sexuality a secret.
I'm against dehumanisation, silencing and marginalisation. I don't agree that speech can be violence.
I think it's important to make this distinction. Do you really want to disslove the distinction between someone beating you up, and someone saying nasty things to you?
Violence is beating you up. Saying nasty things may be bad, but it's not bad because it's violence, whoever you say it to.
It may change someone's logic, but whether the nastiness is addressed to one person or a multitude doesn't change my logic. Verbal "violence" isn't violence.
>Think of it this way. If you're a gay person, and the people around you say that men having sex with men is "abominable," does that make you more or less likely to freely express your sexuality?
>This IS violence and it's a way of silencing gay people. Dehumanization is violence. This type of speech is why gay people are marginalized and why they feel the need to keep their sexuality a secret.
There's a long history in many places of criminalising and discriminating against those who are gay.
That's wrong.
And it's understandable that folks whose liberties have been infringed by such laws and cultural repression would treat their orientation as a political issue and push their elected representatives to support their liberty.
And that's generally a good thing. But legislators have one primary tool -- legislating. Which is why we get laws that criminalise one thing or another, whether that may be appropriate or not.
At the same time, there's an old saw:
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will
never hurt me.
And that's, for the most part (patterns of harassment are a small subset of unpleasant speech and are already criminalised in many places), the truth.
I am a practitioner of BDSM. Which is often demonised as "abuse."
It isn't, of course, as everything I do with a partner is consensual.
I generally don't publicly discuss my sex life, because it's private.
But if I did (as I am now), and you were to say that I'm a "rapist" or an "abuser" or a "criminal" because of my practices, you'd be wrong. But saying such things isn't "violence."
Rather it's just ignorant, unpleasant and busybody[0] behavior.
If we accept your argument, then we'd need to ban any speech that anyone finds objectionable, uncomfortable or unpleasant/nasty.
And if we were to do that, I imagine you'd find yourself sharing a jail cell with the pastor you're deriding for his "violence."
Is that the sort of world in which you want to live? For me, the answer is an emphatic "no."
> does that make you more or less likely to freely express your sexuality?
If the law operates on subjective criteria like this, then literally anything could conceivably be labelled a crime by somebody. Can society function on this standard?
> Free speech doesn't mean you only get to hear what you want to hear.
(I'm assuming you're speaking of US 1st Amendment free speech) I don't think it means anything about what I hear. I choose what I hear: I take in a bit of TV news, and some radio. I follow a few blogs. Nobody is obliged to consume Faceache and Twaddle.
Your question: No, being ostracised isn't violence. Boycotts are not violence. If I prefer not to meet you or deal with you, that isn't violence. Violence would be forcing me to deal with an anti-gay bigot when I don't want to. Does that help?
But even inciting violence is not perfect: If you call for the ouster of a powerful person or an unpopular person, or we look at the anti-Wallstreet movement in the late aughts, there was 'hate speech' in lots of the megaphone speakers's words. Even calling for the death of a mass murderer, in some cases that can be a call to violence. Even inciting a protest can be a call to violence.
It's getting close to "I can say down with Reagan and I won't get arrested --Me too, I can yell down with Reagan in Red Square and will not get arrested" territory.
There was time we considered the "Go fuck yourself Mr. Cheney" guy during Katrina(?) symbolic of free speech...(unlike France till recently) but today "Let's go Brandon" in some circles is "hate speech".
I don't think it's as clear as you think it is. Consider that nearly every law and government policy is enforced by means of violence. Therefore, most political advocacy is in fact advocacy for violence. People who are "questioning immigration" are usually calling for state violence against migrants. How else are they going to reduce immigration? When the government bans inciting violence, it's not all violence, just the violence that's against the interest of the state in enforcing its monopoly on violence. It doesn't make any difference for the people who are being incited against whether it's a government or some other violent group that ultimately acts on the speech.
Another thing to note is that laws against inciting violence ban advocacy for defensive violence against the state's offensive violence. It's legal to advocate for all people of a particular demographic to be executed by the state, but it's illegal to advocate for those people shooting the cops who come to arrest them.
I think the wall is just a political symbol. Everybody understands that a wall alone won't reduce immigration as people can easily go over, under and around a wall. At most, a wall might slow down or redirect migrants, making the violent enforcement more effective.
> free speech purists always ignore the fact that speech inciting violence can have a material impact on the world.
Free speech but only when it is impossible that speech may have any material impact on the world is not free speech, it is maximally restricted speech.
This is irrelevant because the wording of the OLHB and the Equalities Act etc are specifically to allow a single self report of "harm" or anxiety unestablished by any further investigation as a basis for a criminal conviction.
How "direct" does the direction need to be? "Hey, here's a knife, use it to go stab this person" is pretty direct. What about "So-and-so ought to be stabbed" or "Golly I sure wish someone would get around to stabbing $whoever"
1 and 2 are clear incitements to violence, and are clearly illegal already. I don't know about 3; that appears to be a possibly truthful statement about the speaker's state of mind, and truthful or not, it seems legitimate to me. IANAL.
> [That is a] clear incitement to violence, and [is] clearly illegal already.
Not in the US it's not. Clear and present danger, not hypothetical horseshit. I'm shocked at how unfamiliar censorship maximalists are with the current state of speech rights. I think it's why they think that censoring anti-vanilla ice cream speech or anti-Nolan Batman films speech is such a small step.
Every single would-be censor thinks it's illegal to shout fire in a crowded theater, and don't realize that phrase was used to jail someone for anti-war speech.
What makes you think that "incitements to violence" are illegal? Is is that "incitement" is a very legal-sounding word?
The law in both the UK and the USA is that it's a crime to tell other people to commit violence. I think these are sensible laws.
[Edit] I'm no censorship maximalist! But populist politicians can stir up real violence just by speaking through their megaphone, and people die as a result. I think it's perfectly proper to forbid speech that exhorts violence.
So are you stating that President Roosevelt (a populist politician) should have been forbidden from telling other people to commit violence against German and Japanese people during WW2?
You are free to call yourselves whatever you like; I prefer to distinguish between inhabitants of the USA, inhabitants of Canada, and inhabitants of Guatemala.
And for clarity: no - I'm not trying to wind anyone up.
"We" can speak for ourselves, I guess. I think anyone that knew me would laugh at the suggestion I was "woke".
Yes, I understand the derivation of "American" from USA. Thanks for explaining it to me, though; I'm sure most people here had no idea that's how it is derived.
And yes, there are other ways to refer to various different inhabitants of the American continent. "Chileans", for example.
I'm not telling others how to speak; they can speak however they choose. I was berated for referring to inhabitants of the USA as USAians, because I consider "Americans" to be the inhabitants of the American continent.
Feel free to call me a pedant. I'm a proud pedant. You can even call me "woke" if you like; it's water off a duck's back.
I think calling for someone to kill someone in a serious tone or from a position of power generally meets the requirements.
Eg, a politician saying citizens need to take to the streets and kill someone, or an average citizen saying quite sternly that we should meet up at 10 PM outside someone’s house.
That case doesn't require additional legislation nor justifies diminishing freedom of speech. Anyone should be free to say stupid things or self-incriminating things at their own peril.
What about speech inciting violence against Russian soldiers in Ukraine? Many in the western world support this sort of speech. Some of them even lobby their governments to send weapons to Ukraine for killing Russian soldiers. Should this sort of speech be banned?
Hate speech can be narrowly defined in law enough to avoid most of these issues. For example, it could be restricted to “speech which calls for the death or other specific violence against a protected group.”
Why should speech which calls for the death or other specific violence against anyone be allowed? Threats or urges to violence are already illegal almost everywhere.
First because sometimes violence can be used towards a good cause, for example Ukrainians killing Russian invaders to defend their lives and freedom. Second because even if a thing is wrong it does not follow that it should be forbidden.
So only when one incites people to kill those who you dislike? Is it not hate speech for Russians to talk about murdering Ukrainians, if they believe that NATO expansion and hostile nukes on their border represents a threat to their lives and freedom (whether or not you agree with this)?
If I think that somebody is going to get a gun control law passed which I think restricts my freedom, am I allowed to advocate killing them?
I don’t know where exactly the line should be drawn. My comment was simply an answer to the question “Why should speech which calls for the death or other specific violence against anyone be allowed?”
That mindset may have applied in a pre social media world but the rules have changed. It’s relatively easy to see objective evils in society and I for one am ready to tentatively police hate speech online.
That is true, however, certain people when surrounded by "hateful" speech for long periods of time can easily become the actual law breakers who attack foreigners or trans or whatever other things some people hate.
Although this Bill is garbage for variou reasons, I do understand that people want to try and fix things before they get out of hand, not just after somebody has stabbed somebody else when it is objectively a crime.
Do we progressively move the line backwards from 'actual crime' towards 'incitement to commit crime' towards 'this type of opinion leads to incitement to commit crime' towards 'this kind of upbringing breeds criminals'.
As you say, this appears to be driven by 'the people want...' and therein lies the conundrum.
Enacting something resembling what the people want doesn't result in something the people want when they happen to accidentally step in it.
Honestly, I don't know. Incitement is already a crime in many scenarios but I think there is a relatively clean line between what might be called free speech like "I hate women" and incitement or 'hate speech' like "We should kill women".
We should accept that there are very vulnerable people who can't distinguish clearly between "he said that but I won't do it because it's wrong" and "yes, we should do that thing because you suggested it"
There's a whole lot of very vicious 'hate' directed at politicians, presidents, and prime ministers (on both sides of the political spectrum) by online activists or just normal people with strong opinions. Should this be cracked down upon too?
Or should you be able to freely say nasty/profane/hyperbolic things about members of the ruling class, and maybe even tweet it directly at them, particularly when they enact very controversial policies?
There is a difference between someone's opinion and something that is offensive and potentially conspiring or inciting a crime.
"I hate Boris because he doesn't run the country properly" could be called hateful but wouldn't be taken seriously by anyone, whereas, "We should kill Boris because he doesn't run the country properly" is at least borderline.
I haven't seen many examples of something that would be considered criminal but look like they should be covered by "free speech" laws i.e. examples where a legitimate statement of opinion would be considered illegal.
That's the price you pay for freedom. If our ancestors were willing to pay hundreds of thousands of lives a year for liberty eighty years ago, how cowardly of us to declare that our principles must crack under the weight of a tiny fraction of that.
> That is true, however, certain people when surrounded by "hateful" speech for long periods of time can easily become the actual law breakers who attack foreigners or trans or whatever other things some people hate.
I'm connected to a few British people on social media who seem to just spew constant dehumanizing vitriol and hate against the Tories, for years and years. They're traitors, they're nazis, they're destroying the country, they all hate the poor, women, gays, etc. Do you think this kind of rhetoric has caused a significant increase in violence against "Tories", and do you think it should be criminalized?
Isn’t that because people have internalised the value of free speech regarding politics and therefore don’t react with violence or aggression when their side is strongly criticised?
In Britain we have a phrase beliefs “worthy of respect in a democratic society” (WORIADS) - ideally people should be able to express, and more importantly hear, these with zero inclination to violence - more tolerance, more moderation of emotion, less censorship - would be my ideal.
> Do you think this kind of rhetoric has caused a significant increase in violence against "Tories", and do you think it should be criminalized?
No - not significant.
No - I don't think rhetoric should be criminalized.
FWIW, I don't think a Twitter post about a Tory can be violent. Potentially it's an incitement to violence; but that's already illegal (quite rightly).
No, but I was specifically asking the OP who believes that a person surrounded by "hateful" speech for long periods of time can easily start breaking the law and attacking people.
This to me indicates there is a serious cultural problem in the police force, where they think this kind of policing is okay. We do not want the kind of people on the front line who think this behaviour is acceptable or beneficial for society.
I find your posts throughout this thread offensive and I think you should be arrested and jailed for them. Very few things are as violent and hateful as attempting to strip people of their rights.
We can’t have true freedom of speech anyways. You can’t say you’ll murder the head of state, you can’t slander, you can’t lie in a court etc. It’s a sensible addition to the rules like all the others in place right now.
Is anyone surprised? The UK so desperately wants to spy on everyone's internet usage. We're just lucky that Theresa May was too busy to bring in as much spying as she wanted while she was PM
Remember, this is the government that banned peeing in porn. That's how far they want to go to block "offensive" content
Correction: the Daily Mail and Daily Express newspapers' editorial directors would prefer ten innocents suffer than one bogneyman[1] enjoy free roam of the nation.
[1] Substitute "paedophile", "Islamic terrorist", "asylum seeker" as per this weeks' dim-right-wing national outrage.
Only if they're extremely naïve. A common theme I see in pro-censorship people is they assume the ability to censor will never fall into the hands of horrible people, that somehow the government will always remain in the hands of people they find reasonable and agreeable. Ultimately, the government is an apparatus of power with a tendency toward tyranny. It is neither inherently good nor bad. In democracies we try to limit this tendency toward tyranny through checks and balances within the governments' various branches and departments, as well as making politicians answerable to the people through election and referenda, and holding everyone equally accountable before the law (in theory). In this context, the freedom of expression is important for keeping the government answerable to the people. If publicly available information is restricted to only what the government allows to be published then the people are incapable of making informed political decisions, and democratic process ceases to provide any meaningful franchise to the people, completely undermining the entire point of a democracy.
Given the caravan of clowns we currently have in government who’d rather debate the meaning of nouns than deal with a cost of living crisis unprecedented since the 1970s, this is not at all surprising.
I'm not sure about the accuracy of the article, the problem with the Online Censorship Bill is that it allows the Secretary of State and OFCOM to define what is "harmful", it doesn't specifically mention "offensive" speech.
The UK's police haven't solved a single robbery in 8 out of 10 neighborhoods in the past 3 years but they have been more than happy to spend time monitoring social media and charging people for thought crimes.
May be part of it, but from what I've been reading it is also the case that the UK criminal justice system has been severely underfunded at every level — police, lawyers, courts, prisons, and parole — for a while now.
Maybe, maybe not, but I'd take many of these claims with a grain of salt. I'm pretty sure that in the entire history of bureaucracy, you're not going to find too many organizations that claim that they're overfunded.
That's all about burglary; I'd sooner be burgled than mugged.
And all the links in that Telegraph article seem to be to other Telegraph articles. It's not clear who these "victim's watchdogs" are. It's not clear what they mean by "neighbourhood".
And you seem to be relying on the Tory house newspaper.
>I agree it's disgusting how the Labour house newspaper and state broadcaster have ignored this.
The "state broadcaster" would presumably be broadcasting material favourable to the state. Perhaps you didn't notice, but Labour has been out of power for a decade.
The Labour house newspaper is generally said to be The Guardian. AFAICT they represent the extreme right of the Labour Party. As such, you'd expect them to be wittering on about crime statistics, and they aren't; so you have a point.
But this isn't a new thing; solving burglaries has been a problem for decades. There's no news here, so move along - BBC and Guardian, there's nothing to report.
> The "state broadcaster" would presumably be broadcasting material favourable to the state. Perhaps you didn't notice, but Labour has been out of power for a decade.
This is so disingenuous. The government doesn’t edit stories for the bbc. The right has been complaining about the bias of the bbc for years.
> The right has been complaining about the bias of the bbc for years.
Everyone complains about the bias of news organisations. It's true that most people working in news have some kind of liberal arts degree, and have leftish proclivities. But anyone with their eyes open can see that the BBC is strongly biased to the government of the day (10 years of Tory rule, and counting), and strongly biased toward the establishment (judges, rich people, royals, corporations).
I didn't say the government edits BBC stories; you've imputed words to me that I didn't utter. If you want "disingenuous", that's disingenuous.
> part of a wave of legislation around the world that seeks to control the internet
This wave of legislation was always inevitable; the internet has no intrinsic controls for content, it doesn't really even know that content exists. So it quickly became a place where anything goes ("became" might be wrong; I guess it was always like that).
Authoritarian people have opinions about what can and can't be said. It's not surprising that those people have all kinds of problems with the internet. Unfortunately for them, there's not much they can do about it; apart from supressing internet access, people are going to use the internet.
Oh, sure, you can shut down websites by authoritarian diktat (e.g DNS changes, hosting takeover etc.) But the internet is bigger than the WWW, and I don't think the authoritarians have the means to control this animal; it can't be decapitated because it has no head (it's sort of a Hydra).
Bad stuff happens on the internet. Bad stuff happens in schoolgrounds, too. I got punched and knocked down once, just stepping out of my own front-door. You can't stop all of the bad things.
One part of the bill which is being overlooked is Part 4, Section 1: the requirement for all user to user services to provide the option for User Identity verification. It's easy to write it off as an "option" now, but this is 100% trying to normalize mandatory online identification.
* Appeal to morons, a key voting block of the current government
* Appease all sorts of crazies from the religious to the billionaire tabloid owners.
* Allow selective prosecution of people the government wants to make an example of
* Distract from the total failure of government policy in basically every area (defence, energy, foreign affairs, trade, treasury, education, health, transport, justice and others).
I read an article a while back that said adults don't learn or change their opinions, old people just die and new people who learned as kids gradually come to be the majority. I don't know true that is, but I think it's very true for anything internet tech related. We just have to wait 50 years (Ill be dead by then) and it will be common knowledge all these claims are BS. At least that's my source of hope.
I keep seeing these Censorship laws all the time but something always gets in the way of it being put into law or practice. Is there anything different this time or is it another terrible attempt by our government to look like they're doing something instead of eating Michelin Star quality food for under £15 a meal subsidised by good people of this country?
No sh*t... UK, Canada & Australia really disappoint when it comes to civil liberties, rights & online privacy. Especially since the start of Covid(not to say the unlawful imprisonment of Assange or even sooner).
But then again, it's the place that solves everything with "banning"(see knives).
Here in the UK the problem is substantially a structural one. First-past-the-post elections and the lack of a legislative revising chamber with a democratic mandate result in governments having very little restraint on their powers. This tends to result in bad laws, which often pander to the worst instincts of the governing party's membership (see: "something must be done"). Because we have no written constitution, and because it has recently become apparent that the precedent-based system that we have instead is much more bendable than was previously thought (see: brexit), governments can pretty much do what they want. And they do. And this kind of "strong government" is actually quite popular with some people, particularly on the right at present.
I don't know about Canada or Australia, but at the national level I believe their systems are at least partly patterned on the one they inherited from the UK.
>I don't know about Canada or Australia, but at the national level I believe their systems are at least partly patterned on the one they inherited from the UK.
According to Twitter, the proposed Canadian bill is...
>comparable to drastic actions used in authoritarian countries like China, North Korea and Iran.
"Recently become apparent"? Tony Blair won 43% of the popular vote and made major constitutional reforms like the Lords reform of 1999. It's crazy to have such a low bar for reforming the political system.
It was Germany that really got the ball rolling on this, with its Network Enforcement Act (commonly called "NetzDG"). NetzDG is being used as a model for policymakers in the UK, Canada and Australia. This is pretty astonishing to me, given that there are serious, systemic problems with how NetzDG operates, some which are clearly evident from its mandatory annual reporting.
Of course, also Germany. I was gonna ask if NetzDG was the means through which you could have been arrested for speech(i.e opinions for example, not "spreading fake news") on social media. After a quick search I've seen that it passed after 2017, which is chronologically after the cases I remember that happened in UK&DE. In any case, not exactly an ideal law for western values.
They are slowly catching up with Putin's Russia. He started jailing dissidents years ago on this exact pretext. His government pioneered the corresponding legalese (known as rule 282) as early as 2002. And of course initially it was applied to literal Nazis only.
It boggle my mind to think that former democracies so want to become second-rate authoritarian regimes. The country that started it all with Magna Carta 800 years ago just abandons hard-won freedoms without a major war or famine powerful enough to distract the populace.
It's also worth mentioning that rule 282 is only a small part of the Russian media control regime at this point; it's expanded dramatically in recent years, particularly post-2017. One could write a whole book about the current constellation of Russian media control legislation.
> But then again, it's the place that solves everything with "banning"(see knives).
The approach has it's pros and cons. Knife restrictions may have gone too far, but nobody in the UK worries about gun crime, interactions with the police are much less scary, and it's very rare that anybody is killed by the police.
Yes, the most serious criminals can still get hold of guns, but not the low-level thieves, drug dealers, or angry homicidal school kids.
Except knives aren't banned. It's just if you're stopped and have one with a blade over a certain length (an inch?) You can be required to give a reason why you're carrying it.
I don't doubt there's instances of this being abused, but it does seem useful to be able to do something if someone's carrying a knife and you have a reasonable suspicion.
Folding knives that lock are also banned; I don't know why. I own a Buck Hunter knife, and I'm not allowed to step out of my home with that thing in my pocket.
It would be really awkward to pull that thing out and extend the blade in the middle of an altercation. Perhaps the ban on lock-knives is that it's easier to stab someone with a lock-knife without cutting off your own fingers?
As far as I'm aware, it's legal in the UK to carry a folding knife with a blade shorter than 3", as long as it doesn't lock.
Fixed blades (e.g. a chef's knife) are prohibited for carry, unless you have a reason for carrying it (e.g. you just bought it).
AFAIK, Having a knife in your car, even in the boot, counts as 'carrying it'.
So you can potentially be done for having a Leatherman multi-tool (with locking blade) in your car.
The question is what would count as a valid reason for 'carrying' it. Is simply 'keeping a few tools around in case of emergency' enough if you encounter a cop who's having a bad day?
> Is simply 'keeping a few tools around in case of emergency' enough if you encounter a cop who's having a bad day?
Yes. It's the UK, not the US, we don't make a habit civil asset forfeiture stops to see if police want a free car in the first place.
That excuse probably wouldn't get you anywhere if you walked around thrusting the pointiest blade of your Leatherman at everyone, or if each member of your gang had a sharp-bladed tool in their pocket just in case they needed it on the way to the neighbouring estate but "I might go to jail if the police find the toolbox in my car" is not a problem British people face.
One thing I've noticed in all the debates around freedom of speech in the last decade is that literally nobody favors actual free speech. When freedom of speech touches some of the things you consider "sacred" or when it can make a noticeable dent in your wallet, people usually scream for restrictions.
It will be better to stop pretending that debates about free speech and hate speech are about principles and not just group signalling and power demonstrations. This will take the moral non-arguments (that are currently mostly advanced by those that call for direct government censorship, although historically that hasn't been the case) out of the equation.
The problem here is that it isn't attempting to prevent harm. The whole purpose for it is that it gives the government more power over people online. Harm prevention is just a front.
The crackpot village sandwich committee are in charge in the U.K. rn. This typify's it. These people are fully ENGERBRAINED and dangerous (Ameribrainer's more stuffy and polite transatlantic cousins).
Here is the thing. Most online speech is garbage and very little is going to be lost if it's regulated. The hypothetical argument that after banning tons of racist scumbags some government agency will accidentally ban the wrong website is just that - a hypothetical. I've been hearing about this hypothetical for as long as the web exists.
If you want "free speech" so much, then why aren't you on 4chan and instead post on a highly moderated website like this one? It's the pinnacle of hypocricy.
I agree with you, but let me offer an opposing viewpoint.
If HN's moderation and censorship becomes unbearable in some manner, I might indeed set out to find myself a different community to engage with.
But if it's the governmental censorship that makes my online interactions unbearable (say, by requiring that I provide every online platform with my RL identity in the name of keeping children safe), what am I gonna do?
>But if it's the governmental censorship that makes my online interactions unbearable[...], what am I gonna do?
If the majority of people agree with you, you can petition and possibly elect a different government. UK is a democracy.
At its core, the augment for "free speech" is anti-democratic. Someone will control the content online. The real question is who will it be? Democratically elected government or some nutjob like Alex Jones?
I want free speech. And I want social norms. They're not incompatible. Recognizing your innate right to voice your ideas, no matter how offensive (or cough blithely disingenuous), doesn't mean that private organizations can't sanction you or refuse to publish what say. That's moderation.
>I want free speech. And I want social norms. They're not incompatible.
Yes, they are. and the way you're trying to square the circle here is by creating an arbitrary distinction between censorship (which is the evil government doing scary bad things) and 'moderation' (which is private groups doing the same thing, but in like, a good way).
There is no material difference between the two other than the size of the institution doing the censoring. Social norms, by their very definition constrain and civilize people by telling them what not to do or what not to say, either explicitly or implicitly so we don't all behave like a bunch of monkeys in the banana factory.
If there really was such a thing as an 'innate right to voice your ideas', censorship here on HN would be as vile as the government doing it, possible even more so because you at least elect the latter. Clearly it isn't vile though, because without strict censorship discourse here would not be possible.
> There is no material difference between the two other than the size of the institution doing the censoring.
Norms mean "we don't want to listen to you say that". Censorship means "we don't want anyone to hear you say that".
Say a church installs a porn filter on their network. That's moderation: the members of that community have a set of shared values they are protecting. Members are free to access the content elsewhere or leave the group altogether. By contrast, when they pressure the local library to remove books they don't like, that's censorship.
Conflating the two creates an absurd duality where you either support censorship or you support groups being held hostage to society's vilest elements.
The church members are also members of the community that hosts the library, it's probably where their kids get their books. And the people who go the library possibly are also part of the church, and they're all part of the same school board where they argue if little Timmy gets to read books on sex education they got at the library. All these institutions intersect, and everywhere people fight over which norms should prevail. Nobody governs half a community.
There's no absurd reality here. Everyone supports censorship, people just disagree about where or what to censor. They disagree on their shared norms. The true absurdity is to pretend that there is even one person that is religious in the church but secular in the library, as if the two institutions could be separated because they're buildings in different locations.
Ask any gay person who is a member of a homophobic religious community if they're not being censored or discriminated but merely 'moderated'. Sure they can leave, you can also leave your zipcode and move to one with more liberal libraries. This is the 'twitter is just a private company' line of argument that is farcical on its face.
