It seems to me a repeating pattern that once freedom of thought, speech and expression is limited for essentially any reason, it will have unintended consequences.
Once the tools are in place, they will be used, abused and inevitably end up in the hands of someone you disagree with, regardless of whether the original implementer had good intentions.
As such I’m personally very averse to restrictions. I’ve thought about the question a fair bit – there isn’t a clear cut or obvious line to draw.
Please elaborate and motivate your answer. I’m genuinely curious about getting some fresh perspectives.
In terms of public speech, specifically:
- Anything that can be or has been demonstrably proven cannot be subject to denialism. For example: the holocaust.
- News orgs cannot knowingly air falsehoods, and need to correct any falsehoods during subsequent broadcasts. Knowingly airing falsehoods should come with draconian financial punishments with no ability to appeal.
Proving works only if everyone agrees on the underlying definitions. If a group defines fire as being cold, there is no proving anything.
Science wouldn’t function by this metric. We aren’t in a universe where opinion shifts reality, we can make very solid axioms that are broadly true and testable.
It’s why science relies on the test of disproof. If a premise survives the test of disproof, it graduates to a hypothesis because it is seen as a reasonably accurate description of reality, in that nothing else comes as close.
Your premise that any restriction on any thought, speech, or expression can cause unintended consequences is nonsensical.
You would have to prove this and while I may be inclined to agree with you what is the problem with unintended consequence? Why should we care considering everything we do causes unintended consequences.
All tools as well as laws can be abused. A poster here pointed out that anti-hate speech laws are being used against pro-palestine protestors. Does this make the law itself the problem or its application. Should we eliminate the law because a few corrupt politicians are abusing it.
There is nuance though. Like if every country was abusing anti-hate speech law and not enforcing it when its application would be beneficial for society. In this scenario you may have an argument for the law being the problem. Ultimately though if you have a bad actor it is hard to judge a tool or law unless it helps to create the bad actor.
Do anti-hate speech laws create the atmosphere for hate to proliferate? This is how you would judge it in my opinion. If the tool or law creates the problem it purports to solve then it is likely an issue.
I think your personal aversion is fine. I personally don’t like to be controlled and I don’t like to control people. Obviously what your personal opinions are and what it takes to run a team, a corporation, or a country are not in the same realm. You simply can’t run a country like you would run your life.
Everyone who claims this is a hypocrite, you absolutely have limits on the freedom of speech and expression, and no one can limit your thoughts with the current technology so that’s irrelevant to the discussion. You don’t believe me? Ok, in that case I think you should be okay with my freedom to express myself by dismembering you slowly while streaming it online, oh, I shouldn’t be allowed to legally do that? How DARE you limit my freedom of expression.
So, now that we’ve established freedom of expression is already limited by other laws we should focus on which laws should be allowed to surpass the freedom of expression, and the answer is essentially all of them, otherwise “I was expressing myself” would be a valid legal defense. The whole point of a law is to prevent people from expressing something, be it murder intent or unwillingness to pay taxes. We must watch our government so that laws are not oppressive and that they’re used to protect the people and not to abuse power. But laws against racism and homofobia are not abuse of power and serve to protect people from other people.
I think it’s disingenuous to group freedom of thought with speech and expression. Limiting the first is impossible, while every country on earth limits the other two to some degree.
My personal opinion is that you shouldn’t be able to hurt people in stupid, hateful, predictable ways.
They are tied, because the other two freedoms are intrinsically linked to the first. If a thought is not permitted to be expressed, then it is, for all intents and purposes, prohibited.
Consider how often you forget something. I write things down to remember them. If that thought, expressed, were considered criminal, then it becomes a limitation also on thought itself.
Can you define “hurt”. Do you mean physically or emotionally? If the latter then I think it is too restrictive.
In this context I pretty much mean advocating for genocide or fascism. That and I don’t think you should be able to lie out your ass and call it news.
Who gets to decide what “hurt” means? The person hurting or the person being hurt? And how do you get both of them to agree what hurt means?
It would be defined as part of the law, hopefully with something reasonable and robust.
Take genocide advocacy - it pretty clearly leads to people getting hurt even if we don’t know exactly who.
But what if the news rephrases everything as the opinion of an expert? They wouldn’t be lying, or at least not demonstratingly so. Yet they can claim pretty much anything.
They’d be lying if they present an „expert” who isn’t.
It just rubs me the wrong way that the only people with a claim against Fox News for the big lie was the voting machine company over lost profits. We can at least solve the standing issue.
Personally, I like Simone Weil’s idea that total freedom of thought and expression are only truly possible in the absence of propaganda, political parties, and deception.
That is to say, it’s not really free thought if we’re just parroting what the party, news, etc. say.
A government that’s democratically elected by the people should have the ability to restrict hate speech and threats of violence, but there shouldn’t be criminal penalties, because then that could get abused. Such laws should require 2/3 supermajority in legislature to pass, (or 60% if its via referrendum).
Example: The government should be able to take down a website saying “[Race] is superior than [Another Race]”.
The reason why no criminal penalties is because many countries in the EU are now abusing hate speech laws to jail anti-genocide protests. If something is a good cause, naturally the message will still spread despite censorship. Conversely, white supremacist groups would have a harder time spreading their hatred from their basements if their websites keep getting taken down and they have to go outside to do it. (Yes they could use VPNs, but its harm reduction. Less people will go on those sites, less people radicalized.)
TLDR: Hate speech websites, newpapers, tv channels, should be taken down. But no criminal punishment should be imposed. That’s would be my compromise to avoid anti-hate-speech laws from being abused to jail dissent.
should have the ability to restrict hate speech and threats of violence
Who decides what is considered hate speech and threats of violence?
The rest of your comment indicates you’re aware of the vagueness of these terms (and existing instances of regulatory abuse).
Ideally it should be the legislature that propose these laws, and the people should vote on it via refereendum (60% supermajority is a good idea to prevent tyranny of the majority).
As for actual enforcement, an attorney of the state (“state” as in polity) would present a list of websites, news articles, video, video games, news channels, etc… to the judge of an independent judiciary, and demonstrare why they qualify as “hate spech” to be taken down, and the judge reviews it and either grants the “takedown warant” or refuses it. Then it can get appealed to higher courts if the losing side disagrees.
I’m not a lawyer, so the specfic wording of the law would need more legalase, but that’s the general concept of it.
I’ve been giving this some thought and the only line I can see is banning the calls for violence against a individual or protected group.
I think anything more or less restrictive causes trouble.
Example points:
- Cannot discuss declaring war (voilence) on another country.
- Can never lie or can not cause harm = can not tell a joke.
- Cannot ban misinformation = who decides? In the 1960 being gay was illegal, should the gay right movement have been banned as misinformation?
Societies grow by challenging norms.
I think our weird society can be fixed by teaching critical thinking in schools and introspection. However, philosophers have been saying similar things for at least 2000 years and it hasn’t caught on yet.
Happy to discuss the above as I’d like to work the angles for a better line, if we think there is one.
If it wasn’t for a certain south African man child, I would have called myself a free speech absolutist.
I believe that free speech is a vital component of a healthy democracy. And as it is the most fragile one that is easy to take away, it’s also among the most important ones.
But like any other tool, it can be abused. Of course freedom of expression is not the same as freedom from consequence, and certain things should therefore be illegal. Exactly what should be, and the definition of such, needs to be determined by some of ne smarter than I.
For example, stochastic terrorism should not be legal, but that’s a very Grey area that can be very prone to abuse - Who determines what is and isn’t stochastic terrorism?
There should be no restrictions on freedom of thought. Simple reason: One cannot control their thoughts.
I think speech and expression should be limited in ways that prevent negative outcomes for individuals or populations of people based on immutable characteristics like sexuality, skin colour, ethnic background, etc.
I can see no reason why anyone should ever be allowed to use free speech to incite violence, or expressing oneself in a way that is destructive to others. There should be no reason why we allow people to target others with slurs.
There are already laws restricting speech and expression in numerous ways. For example: one cannot utter threats to another person, even though they are not physically doing anything and operating with “free speech”.
If one cannot speak or express themselves without hurting others I see no reason why that should be tolerated in modern civilizations.
From whom? A corporation hosting things on a site or the government deciding what’s legal to say?
IMO any sufficiently large online platform should constitute a public space for purposes of these freedoms, essentially removing the ability of individual organizations to direct public discourse through platform ownership.
The bigger online platforms get the more I agree with this. It’s hard to put into words because I haven’t thought about it a ton, but basically it’s like public speech is becoming a utility in a way. I don’t know what it should look like and I don’t know where the lines are, but I don’t necessarily believe speech should be banned because corporations who own platforms don’t like it. The hard part is aligning that with my belief that things like nazi rhetoric shouldn’t be allowed.
I will repost something I wrote a few months ago here on Lemmy.
My ethos boils down to…
- The Golden Rule: Your rights end where other’s rights begin, and vice versa.
- Natural Rights: Any action or inaction, thought, or word, spoken or written, that does not cross the line of the Golden Rule is a natural right.
- Ethics: All ethics are founded upon, and entirely dependent upon, points 1 & 2.
- Morality Is Unethical: Morality, allowing for arbitrary precepts, is inherently unethical.
- Effort: Strive to live ethically.
- Inaction is Action: Inaction is, itself, an action. If your inaction results (even indirectly) in someone’s natural rights being infringed, your inaction is unethical.
- Consideration: Actions often have cascading, indirect consequences, and you bear full responsibility for them. Therefore, failure to consider the indirect consequences of your (in)actions is also unethical.
- Graciousness: Treat others the way they wish to be treated. Recognize the dividends that gracious behavior has on preserving the natural rights of both yourself and others.
- Defend the Social Contract: Ethical behavior is a contract between individuals. Aggressors and instigators who violate that contract are not subject to its protections. As such, adherents are obliged to defend both themselves and others from such infringements to preserve the greater social stability.
- Imperfection: Acknowledge that no body, no thing, and no system is perfect. Not you, not others, not nature, not these precepts. Mistakes are inevitable, it is the effort and intention that matters. Accept and treasure imperfection, and be faithful to the spirit rather than the letter.
Can you give us an example of point 1 with regards to hate speech? Or a call for violence against another?
You’re responsible for substantive harm you cause in the physical world and that can be proven. This is the only constraint. It is ugly and at times unpleasant. This is the fundamental threshold of democracy. If absolutely any information fails to be disclosed openly for the citizen to be fully informed, that is a fundamental failure of democracy and is authoritarianism. Fuck all fascists. Citizens have a right to be skeptical, a right to share that skepticism, and a right to be wrong. There are no exceptions, only precedent that erodes into authoritarianism.
Are you saying that there should be no limits to free speech and free expression, with no exceptions?
