Comment by rich_sasha
4 months ago
I see no reason why hate speech should be given the benefit of the doubt. And no, it's not because my government told me so, I have my own opinion, which is that freedom of speech ends where threats of violence appear.
If you don't want it tolerated online, which I don't, you need some kind of legal statement saying so. Like a law that says, you can't do it, and websites can't just shrug their shoulders and say it's not their problem.
I don't line this legislation as it seems to be excessive, but I disagree that the root issue it tries to address is a made up problem.
EDIT it just struck me that in speech and otherwise, the US has a far higher tolerance for violence - and yes I do mean violence. Free speech is taken much further in the US, almost to the point of inciting violence. Liberal gun laws mean lots of people have them, logically leading to more people being shot. School shootings are so much more common, and it appears there is no widespread conclusion to restrict gun ownership as a result.
Maybe that's a core difference. Europeans genuinely value lower violence environments. We believe all reasonable things can be said without it. That doesn't make this legislation good. But at least it makes sense in my head why some people glorify extreme free speech (bit of a tired expression in this age).
> I see no reason why hate speech should be given the benefit of the doubt
Because a lot of speech people don't like gets relabeled as hate speech - which is's not. Or a lot of discussion/debate topics that are sensitive get relabeled as hate.
And that's where the cultural difference lies between the new and the old world...
I agree that threats of violence cross a line, but I think that many countries interpret hate speech to be much broader than this, and there's certainly room for people to disagree, or for one person to say something in a neutral and non-hateful way that another person interprets as a hateful attack.
Some edge cases might include: arguing about interpretations of historical events (eg. Holocaust denial, colonialism, nuclear bombings); arguing about the economic effects of immigration policy; suggesting that one country or another is currently committing genocide; suggesting that one country or another is not currently committing genocide; expressing support for a country or political party that some consider to be committing genocide; arguing that travel restrictions should be imposed on certain countries to contain an epidemic; writing "kill all men" on reddit; publishing a satirical political cartoon depicting the prophet Mohammad; advocating political independence for some geographic region; expressing support for the police in an instance in which they took a state-authorized violent action; expressing support for a vigilante; expressing support for one's country during a violent conflict; expressing sympathy with the opposing side during a conflict; demanding stronger legal penalties for criminals (eg. supporting Singapore's death penalty for drug dealers); publishing a fiction novel in which the villain is a member of a minority group and acts in accordance with a stereotype.
Personally, while I think limits are necessary, the guidelines should be extremely specific and the interpretation extremely narrow to minimize any chilling effect on legitimate expression and discussion. Even where speech can verge into hurtful or offensive territory, I think it's important to allow it in the open, because I think dialogue builds more bridges than it burns. I am concerned that a lot of internet hate-speech legislation goes too far into leaving hatred open to interpretation, which results in conversation spaces being closed down because of the potential liability.
The problem is that policing hate speech creates a police state worse than allowing hate speech to exist. The system you need to create to police the hate speech will result in more violence against people than letting the hate speech exist. To me, your very statement "freedom of speech ends where threats of violence appear" is a form of hate speech. You are hating on my principle of free speech. It actually makes me physically sick to read those words, because I know where they lead.
Generally on the Internet you would make use of existing tools to prevent people from talking to you if you find them hurtful. For example, I could just block you and not deal with you any more. Sometimes people get around those to harass others. That is definitely bad and we already have laws against harassment and ways for law enforcement to find those individuals without creating a full police state on the Internet. Posting your opinion once is not harassment, no matter how much it makes me want to puke. Or as we used to say in a more civilised time, I abhor your speech, but I will fight to the death for your right to speak it.
I don't know where you got your conclusion from - I am European and I don't mind violent speech. In fact I think we generally need a lot more freedom since many countries give their citizens barely more freedom than serfs had. School shootings have been a perennial favourite for your type to parade around so you can rule over a disarmed population, but e.g. Czechia lets you have a gun at home as easily as the USA and they do not have that problem. USA's problem is mostly societal.
Your opinion sounds like it was formed in the ivory tower of university with no connection with reality. Please get more varied life experience and reconsider your position.
> To me, your very statement "freedom of speech ends where threats of violence appear" is a form of hate speech
How on earth did you conclude that? Where is the emotional charge you are implying? What about the other party feelings (of being intimidated)?
> To me, your very statement "freedom of speech ends where threats of violence appear" is a form of hate speech. You are hating on my principle of free speech. It actually makes me physically sick to read those words, because I know where they lead.
Hmm. Well, it's the US that has liberal freedom of speech and freedom of violence. It also has a "free speech absolutist" as a first buddy and that's going great too. To me that is a picture of where this kind of "absolute free speech" leads to, and I'm frankly happy with going in the opposite direction.
> Your opinion sounds like it was formed in the ivory tower of university with no connection with reality. Please get more varied life experience and reconsider your position.
You have literally no idea. I could easily say the same to you - except this is highly impolite. But suit yourself.
The US is full of bans of free speech, from pornography to piracy, from banning books to banning talk about kidnapping Donald Trump.
Its just that Americans think that that is the default level of free speech, any extra restrictions are an affront, and any lesser restrictions are irrelevant
> You are hating on my principle of free speech.
Do you really think you are contributing to the conversation when you say things like this?
that is a genuine contribution to the conversation, it points out the opposing argument doesn't make any sense and that the rules are just applied arbitrarily
instead of applying them arbitrarily (which you won't like when your political party isn't in power), just apply them fairly across the board regardless of whose in charge so we can coexist in a civilized manner without the kind of extreme psychological aggression that takes place in the heart of censorship
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> Liberal gun laws mean lots of people have them, logically leading to more people being shot.
Explain Czechia and Switzerland, then, please.
Switzerland has a strong permit system allowing the government to control who can purchase a firearm. Automatic firearms and concealed carry permits are given sparingly and only for a good reason.
Basically unlike the U.S. Switzerland doesn't view background checks and permits as a slippery slope to a dictatorship and implements them effectively.
The US, contrary to your implication, has much stronger controls on automatic firearms than Switzerland does, in the forms of the 1934 National Firearms Act (makes them illegal to manufacture or purchase without a permit and exorbitant tax), the 1968 Gun Control Act (Massively regulates gun stores that are allowed to sell), and the 1984 Hughes amendment to the FOPA (makes new production machine guns illegal for civilians to buy)
Meanwhile, in Switzerland, I could have a fully automatic SIG 550 in about two weeks with some paperwork. In fact, the harder part is finding a range to shoot the damn thing at!
"Good Reason" carry permits, meanwhile, are looked down on due to their messy history of being Jim Crow laws. Generally, the "good reason" was "being white" and this was used to ensure that the Black community was disarmed when the Klan rolled in.
This is largely incorrect or misleading. The US has had strict laws on automatic weapons since the 1930s. Its almost impossible to own an automatic weapon in the US unless you are very wealthy.
The Swiss... since the 2000s
The US has had strict background checks since the 60s
The Swiss.... 1997? Maybe later, the EU forced them to change their gun laws.
The questions stands: more Swiss households have guns than the US, yet gun violence does not exist.
Why?
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You don't seem to understand US gun laws . . . especially in the bluest of blue states, which have restrictions which make Switzerland and Czechia look like Somalia in comparison.
> Free speech is taken much further in the US, almost to the point of inciting violence.
Yes, that's where we (here in the U.S.) draw the legal line. But almost inciting violence is not inciting violence. Since the U.S. made free speech the focus of the very first rule in the constitution, an enormous amount of jurisprudence and precedent has emerged around exactly how to make those tricky case by case judgements. Whether one agrees with it or not, it's easily the most evolved, detailed and real-world tested (over many decades) body of free speech law humanity has. Because it's deep, complex and controversial, there's also quite a bit of misunderstanding and misinformation about U.S. free speech law. I see incorrect assertions and assumptions quite often in mainstream media outlets who should know better. Here's a good primer on some of the most common misunderstandings: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/free-speec...
I've studied and read a lot about free speech and the first amendment as I find it fascinating. It took me quite a while to really understand how and why the U.S. implementation got to where it really is (and not the exaggerations and extrapolations that sometimes get amplified). In terms of free speech current practice and precedent, I now think the U.S. has got it just about right in the tricky balance between ensuring the open exchange of ideas (even unpopular ones) against preventing actually real and serious defamation, libel and incitement. To be sure, the U.S. system is based on the principle that it's not the job of the current government in power to force adults to be nice, reasonable or respectful in either words or tone. Freedom of speech means the freedom to be wrong, stupid, or mean, to be insulting or offensive - even to provoke or inflame should you choose to.
While the government won't send men with guns to force you to shut up, other citizens are also free to exercise their rights to tell you (and everyone else) you're an asshole, that you're wrong and exactly why. They are equally free to be rude, offensive and even hateful against your ideas and you. One of the key ideas behind the U.S. constitution is every fundamental right granted to all citizens comes with matching responsibilities for all citizens. In other words, no right is free - they have actual, personal costs for each citizen. In the case of the first amendment, the responsibilities include tolerating speech that's wrong, boorish, offensive or even hateful. As well as the responsibility to exercise your own good judgement on which speech to ignore, reject and/or counter. The open marketplace of ideas, like all markets, is two-sided. Another responsibility is accepting the consequences of exercising your free speech unwisely. Your fellow citizens are free to ignore, argue, yell back, openly mock or just laugh at you. Ultimately, the framers of the constitution believed the majority of citizens can figure out for themselves who's an idiot and who's worth listening to. Which ideas are worth considering and which are important to stand against.
What defines hate speech? Who defines hate speech? Does hate speech result from the speech or the actions of those against the speech? Should the speech of protestors have consequences for disturbing the peace? What consequences should the state force onto individuals for speech, or actors affected by speech?
Americans for lack of a better description grapple with violence of the state differently than Europeans, but it seems neither are without consequence.
This act itself, I believe, does not reference "hate speech", which as you seem to point out is ambiguous, and I in turn only use it as short hand.
For the most part, this act says that content already considered illegal by existing and new laws must be policed by platforms. What is illegal is actually quite well defined, it seems. This article covers it nicely: https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/aug/08/what-is-...
Indeed, the controversy is, it appears, not about what is illegal, but about how the onus on policing this, and other things like the restrictions, is put on platforms. There are no major changes to what content is and isn't illegal! There are some additions, like "revenge porn", which is likewise easy to define and hard to see as a fundamental freedom of speech issue.
The practical impact is the self censorship and suppression of all sorts of speech because it's too onerous and burdensome to maintain. This effectively centralizes control, in as blatant and evil a way as the Great Firewall. Decades old forums and communities have been destroyed, all for the sake of... what? Things that were already criminal and offenders could be held to account?
Freedom of speech is a binary choice for a society. When you introduce politically motivated discretion and ambiguity, then instead of protecting people, such laws serve only as tools of power and control. With freedom of speech and press, the laws preclude any attempts at control like this. Freedom of expression and press supersede responsibility for the potential of other people doing something bad.
This is why they can't have nice things. It's the equivalent of shutting down businesses because you impose a law that 20 armed guards must attend every building 24x7, just in case some bad guys with guns try to get in.
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