To discuss does not legitimize. If you are fearful of an idea being debated, that says more about you than the idea.
Then you can pretty easily ask: civil rights protests? Using speech--and violence!--but not violating that contract. They tolerate all who extend that contract to them. LGBT activists? Using speech--and violence!--but not violating that contract. They tolerate all who extend that contract to them.
The daily st-literalnazipropaganda-ormer? violating that contract. Suppress it. Destroy it. No platform should allow it. Nazis in Charlottesville shouting "Jews will not replace us"? violating that contract. Suppress them. Make them fear. They do not tolerate all who extend them that contract.
So wait, when someone says "kill all Jews" that's an idea to be discussed, but when someone says "let's censor people who call for that" that's somehow worse, and not simply also speech you can also discuss?
Someone has to determine what constitutes 'inciting violence'. There will be some websites that are targetted for shut down while some won't be; there is no way to get around this. What gets targetted will be the ones that go against the group who has the ability to choose the targets (a government agency or perhaps a private ISP).
Second, what stops a false flag from getting a site shutdown? If a site allows comments, a person hostile to the site could post a violent comment, and then you would have justification for shutting the site down.
Third, you will get false accusations. Take, for example, the civil rights movement in the sixties. You don't think state governments in the south wouldn't have accused the various protest groups as inciting violence? It doesn't matter that they were peaceful protests, they would have certainly argued that organizing sit ins and protest marches was a form of violence. While we might say, "Well clearly those were peacful and would be allowed to have their protest", that doesn't mean a court run by that same government wouldn't see differently. You don't think a southern court in the 60s would have sided with the government when they accused the civil rights groups of being violent?
Once you give the government an out to get around free speech requirements, they will take it whenever they can.
The current "out" is to let private companies run the entire infrastructure of speech itself. That's worrying.
Free speech isn't responsible for genocide; the electorate is.
Excuse me while I enjoy the benefits of our fascist socialism.
You're obviously pro-free speech. But surely, if speech is so important, it is also important to make sure it can be effective. If one waters down definitions like that, the ability to speak effectively against dangers diminishes.
I'm an european, way too young to have seen WWII. But I deal with its broad consequences, that still permeate society and psyche in subtle ways, daily. To see the evil of fascism repurposed to mean something else, just makes me sad. Don't screw up our heritage please.
Then how, as an American, do you justify Ag_gag laws?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag
It seems to me that free speech values in the US are not quite as absolute as you make them out to be. Especially when the interest of powerful people or big corporations come to play.
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1357
Free speech isn't just a paragraph in the American Constitution that appeared there out of nowhere. It's a larger cultural norm that allows you to share your ideas and, much more importantly, allows you to hear other people's ideas without censorship. Whether censorship comes from the government, university, or some megacorp is completely irrelevant to whether it is an infringement on free speech.
Right.
> Whether censorship comes from the government, university, or some megacorp is completely irrelevant to whether it is an infringement on free speech.
Wrong, unless you mean a university or corporation literally physically censoring you from communicating something. See sib response by dragonwriter. If a university disinvites a speaker or a corporation stops hosting someone customer's website, nobody's right to free speech was infringed upon. Sure, you may accuse them of acting against the spirit of the value of free speech, but that's their prerogative and they are in fact simultaneously exercising their own right to free speech by choosing not to host/amplify another's speech they find repugnant.
Private censorship of what is transmitted by the censors' own resources is not only not an infringement of free speech, it is central to the essence of the concept of free speech.
Likewise, criticism of others' speech and advocacy against others amplifying or supporting it is also a central part of the idea of free speech.
Calling humans "monkeys" is not debate.
Why should Cloudflare be morally obligated to offer free speech to Daily Stormer, when Daily Stormer doesn't offer free speech to non-racist non-murderers?
Freedom of speech is a core democratic principle. You can't have a democracy without freedom of speech. It doesn't really matter if the censorship is done by a few big corporations or the government. The effect is the same. If some ideas become wrongthink and can't be distributed or discussed, democracy dies.
Sure, it starts with the most extreme, least defensible things. Like stormfront. But it won't stop there. Before you know it any speech even mildly critical of immigration is silenced and you get the situation going on in Europe.
What happens when the next red scare happens? Politics is like a pendulum - it goes back and forth. Just a generation ago Communism was the persecuted ideology. People on the far left were blacklisted, silenced, and discriminated against. Was that ok with you? You want it to be 10x worse next time, by establishing a culture with no tolerance of differing opinions? Because that is where we are heading.
Defending freedom means defending undesirables first. Because undesirables are always the people who benefit most from freedom. Copyright violaters are the first people to adopt torrents. Pedophiles are the first people to adopt tor. Hackers and drug dealers are the biggest adopters of bitcoin. Undesirable extremists are going to be the group to benefit the most from free expression.
This seems... odd. I don't think right now there's any (western) European country where this occurs. Sure: it has occurred and has contributed to a backlash against 'political correctness'. But this doesn't sound like a description of the Europe I live in. Just the stereotypical Europe shown on some american TV, where muslims run a lot of cities and all ghettos are offlimits to non-muslims.
It was the result of a weak, young democracy that couldn't/wouldn't stop political parties raising private armies and beating the crap out of their opponents, combined with deep seated cultural problems (resentment at the outcome of WW1, latent anti-semitism etc).
If you really believe suppression of free speech stops dictators committing horrible crimes, explain Stalin.
The communist rise to power was an actual civil war. Hitler rose to power by democratic election (assisted by violent thugs and demagoguery and ultimately corruption but still an election).
