Comment by lawn
5 days ago
Free speech doesn't allow you to say anything at all you know?
Calling for the eradication of people with certain sexual preferences or skin color for example.
5 days ago
Free speech doesn't allow you to say anything at all you know?
Calling for the eradication of people with certain sexual preferences or skin color for example.
Free speech does protect you to say whatever you want from government censorship. That's getting blurred here with most of the discussion circling around Twitter censorship.
I would still argue, though, that saying literally anything should be legal. Acting on hate speech, by plotting to commit a crime, may be illegal. The problem there is that you plotted a crime and in certain case that plot itself is illegal, it isn't about what you said but what you did.
Free speech doesnt have asterisks. If certain people say things that are undesireable to other certain people, they have to power to ignore them.
In that case, even as an ideal, free speech does not exist. Someone can proclaim that I should be killed because of a certain opinion that I voice. Now there are only four outcomes to that scenario: (a) I take the threat seriously and stop voicing that opinion, in which case they have suppressed my freedom of speech; (b) I take the threat seriously and use it to suppress their freedom of speech, (c) I ignore the threat, yet someone else takes it seriously and, as a natural consequence of being dead, they have suppressed my freedom of speech; or (d) I ignore the threat and nothing happens, so nobody's freedom of speech is violated. The problem is, there is no guarantee of scenario (d). This leads to the freedom of speech being used as a tool to suppress the freedom of speech.
This is not a simple matter of people saying things that are undesirable, or even heretical. It is not a matter of someone saying something hateful, then ignoring them as a hater, because chances are they want to suppress the speech of those they hate.
Free speech is a legal construction and it does in fact come with exceptions.
Child pornography, slander, and death threats are other examples of exceptions.
Anyone who has considered child porn speech is smoking something. We have agreed the act of taking pictures or videos of children in those situations to be illegal, it isn't about the meaning or speech a person may apply to that final product.
Slander and death threats are harder to define. You have to show an active plot to commit the crime, not just a statement. At that point the plot, the action you took, is the crime rather than your words.
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Deciding what a company should say, or behave about speech, is subverting THEIR freedom of speech.
This is why the no asterisk position sets itself to implode.
The core defense of Free speech, one of the better articulated points is from Oliver Wendell Holmes. He articulates that free speech serves the search for truth, but the search for truth via the competition of ideas.
>that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,
This was his articulation in a sedition case brought by the government against citizens.
It is specifically in the case of government using its power to become a player in the market of ideas.
I does, like any other fundamental rights. Absolutely none are absolute.
You clearly don't know anything about actual law and rights.
Well, according to Free Speech Absolutist Elon Musk it does. Which is why we're here, discussing this topic. Right now. And is the point of the person you quoted.
When Musk and people similar to him say "free speech", what they mean is their ability to say and do things without consequences. To them, the world only exists for them and their benefit, so someone disagreeing with them or them facing consequences for something they said is "silencing their free speech".
They also feel like they should be allowed to shut down other people's speech, because that is part of their idea of free speech. They should be allowed to tell you that you're not allowed to talk.
The more people understand that when people talk about "absolute free speech", it isn't a serious position, and is mostly held by people with this view, the better. I'm sure there are actual "free speech purists" out there, but they are few and far between. Instead it is mostly people using the guise of free speech so they can say and do what they want without consequences.
> Free speech doesnt have asterisks.
Yeah it does, at least in America. You can't yell fire in a theatre and incite panic.
Also there is the paradox of tolerance.
Well that isn't quite right. The original idiom came out of an earlier supreme court ruling that was partially overturned by later rulings on the matter:
> Ultimately, whether it is legal in the United States to falsely shout "fire" in a theater depends on the circumstances in which it is done and the consequences of doing it. The act of shouting "fire" when there are no reasonable grounds for believing one exists is not in itself a crime, and nor would it be rendered a crime merely by having been carried out inside a theatre, crowded or otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
Incitement to violence is also permitted as long as it isn't immediate and/or likely. This is known as the Brandenburg Test:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
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You can actually call for the eradication of certain groups in the US under the 1st amendment.
The limit is basically “speech which threatens imminent violence”.
So saying “we should kill all group X” is fine. Saying “lets go kill those people from group X standing on Main St at 2pm” is not ok.
Or burning a flag you don't like…
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