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Comment by JumpCrisscross

4 years ago

> de-shrine free speech above all else or entrench hatred

False dichotomy. We have always punished some speech (e.g. fraud) while sanctifying others (political speech).

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JumpCrisscross

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hbrundage  4 years ago

Practical dichotomy — that’s why this thread exists. You either platform it or you don’t, and you’re either legislated to do so or not. What middle ground do you see that allows this degree of free speech without platforming hate?

  • JumpCrisscross  4 years ago

    > either platform it or you don’t, and you’re either legislated to do so or not. What middle ground do you see that allows this degree of free speech without platforming hate?

    Nobody has been legislated to do anything here. Cloudflare is dumping Kiwifarms. There are other hosts. That's one middle ground: a diversity of opinions on what constitutes unacceptable speech. Here's another: the government has no right shutting down Kiwifarms in the absence of a true threat [1], but Cloudflare is free to.

    If you look at the history of communication technologies, particularly public ones (e.g. the printing press and television), this pattern recapitulates. An idealistic explosion of creativity. Weaponisation. Scrambling alongside states over-reacting. Then a middle ground.

    We don't have anything close to consensus on the Internet, save perhaps for X-rated content. So private actors are figuring things out. We'll probably see a government response carving out protections for both speech and platforms, though hopefully nothing as onerous as what was done with TV [2]. And then over decades an equilibrium will arise. An equilibrium between "de-shrining free speech" and "entrench[ing]hatred."

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_threat

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_State...

  • krapp  4 years ago

    The middle ground that already exists - the right of free speech doesn't guarantee an audience, and the right to assembly doesn't guarantee a platform. Censorship is permitted within the marketplace of ideas as an inevitable consequence of the fact that coerced speech cannot be considered free, but the government is far more limited.

    If Kiwifarms wants to continue "this degree of free speech" it's up to them to find someone willing to tolerate their bullshit, and then to not step over the line, as they apparently just did with Cloudflare.