Yes. There is no contradiction. Freedom or speech is the freedom to discuss or criticise as part of a discussion, in particular the freedom to criticize those in power without the fear of repercussion. Discuss sensitive topics to all your hearts desire. Hate speech does not intend to discuss anything. Hate speech is there to target, to threaten, to belittle, to dehumanise, to attack. Hate speech is violence.
Edit; As usual with this topic “free speech absolutists” emerge, often accompanied by elaborate use of language and a thesaurus. And as usual they are not really into the entire “free speech” as in “freedom of discussion”, but rather “freedom of consequences” for themselves. Well boo hoo, ain’t that a pearl clutching shame of a slippery slope to the strawman of “who are the real Nazis” when not supporting your freedom of unadulterated hatred to run free into the world.
It’s essentially a practical application of the paradox of tolerance. And like with that one, the paradox goes away when the offending party breaks the social contract.
"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise." - Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
Everyone seems to forget the second paragraph of the quote.
Also a contract by definition cannot be valid and signed under duress thus the social contract is an invalid assertion. At the end of the day only thing that actually matters is Darwinian evaluation.
Everyone seems to forget the second paragraph of the quote.
No. The “as long as” does the necessary lifting there. Far-right rhetoric is a denial of reality and of any argument with a complete lack of shame or self-reflection, therefor this second part doesn’t apply.
There was a time when we thought rational argumentation and logic were good enough to convince, but that has been dead for a few decades, and the US just paid that price.
signed under duress
I didn’t ask to be born the point is if you don’t sign the contract you’re not protected by it and you get no benefit, that’s not duress. If you sign it but break it, you pay. No one is forcing you to sign, but if you don’t, you can fuck off.
I would be careful with phrases like, “there is no contradiction.” There is a comprehensible tension between free speech as the ability for anyone to say what they wish, and a prohibition on hate speech as a prohibition on saying specific things. Denying that risks damaging one’s credibility because it can appear that we are merely refusing to acknowledge that tension.
I argue it’s better to admit these tensions. And that’s not an admission that the arguments for prohibition of hate speech are weak, but it is an admission that as real people in the real world, we can never have the comfort of a tension-free, contradiction-free theory for anything of significance.
That’s free speech with an asterisk. It also means you have this big gray area and someone policing and deciding what is and isn’t hate speech, so you won’t ever see completely free speech thoughts from everyone.
You can’t have your cake, and eat it too. Having rules against what can be said or talked about means you’re in a bubble, for better or worse.
Oh no, policing. Like in everything else in a functioning society because people do things they are not supposed to. You’re free to drive wherever but you’re but free to ram your car into pedestrians. Oh my god the oppression.
Yes but one is words, and the other has a guaranteed tangible impact? I don’t think thats a viable analogy
Well how do u define hate speach? Is misgendering someone hate speach or free speach? Is burning a flag hate speach or free speach? Is calling for the death of elon musk hate speach or free speach?
Its impossible to define hate and free speach in a way everyone agrees with ans thus impossible to have both symultaniously for everyone.
The fediverse is beautiful cos u can choose an instance that defines both in a manner u choose fit or even spin up ur own server and do it however u want.
Misgendering on purpose, hate speech. “On purpose” might be a fuzzy term, but patterns of behaviour will usually make it obvious. Burning a flag, free speech. Calling for death of Elon Musk, hate speech. Calling him out on his bullshit, free speech.
Not actually that hard.
Misgendering on purpose, hate speech.
So ur definition of hate speach can include something that is purly a subjective experience of being offended? The subjective is by definition whatever one claims it to be. Thus i could claim that subjectively u speaking at all is hate speach? Ohh and dont try claiming its not subjective cos i dont give a fuck if u misgender me (my existance is a counter example of any possible proof).
And here we are disagreeing about what is free/hate speach thus both symultaniously is impossible.
Free speech as in, the freedom to express valid political speech and criticize the current government? Sure. Easy.
Free speech as in, the ability to say whatever the hell you want, including threatening, harassing, or inciting hatred and genocide against people? No. No you cannot.
I think it may be possible if you understand a difference between the right to speak and the right to be heard.
Ie the right to say something doesn’t create an obligation in others to hear it, nor to hear you in the future.
If I stand up on a milk crate in the middle of a city park to preach the glory of closed source operating systems, it doesn’t infringe my right to free speech if someone posts a sign that says “Microsoft shill ahead” and offers earplugs at the park entrance. People can choose to believe the sign or not.
A social media platform could automate the signs and earplugs. By allowing users to set thresholds of the discourse acceptable to them on different topics, and the platform could evaluate (through data analysis or crowd sourced feedback) whether comments and/or commenters met that threshold.
I think this would largely stop people from experiencing hatespeech, (one they had their thresholds appropriately dialed in) and disincentivize hatespeech without actually infringing anybody’s right to say whatever they want.
There would definitely be challenges though.
If a person wants to be protected from experiencing hatespeech they need to empower some-one/thing to censor media for them which is a risk.
Properly evaluating content for hatespeech/ otherwise objectionable speech is difficult. Upvotes and downvotes are an attempt to do this in a very coarse way. That/this system assumes that all users have a shared view of what content is worth seeing on a given topic and that all votes are equally credible. In a small community of people, with similar values, that aren’t trying to manipulate the system, it’s a reasonable approach. It doesn’t scale that well.
I think you misunderstand the point of hate speech laws, it’s not to not hear it, its because people rightly recognize that spreading ideas in itself can be dangerous given how flawed human beings are and how some ideas can incite people towards violence.
The idea that all ideas are harmless and spreading them to others has no effect is flat out divorced from reality.
Spreading the idea that others are less than human and deserve to die is an act of violence in itself, just a cowardly one, one step divorced from action. But one that should still be illegal in itself. It’s the difference between ignoring Nazis and hoping they go away and going out and punching them in the teeth.
I support robust enforcement of anti hate speech laws. In fact I’ve reported hate speech/ hatecrime to the police before.
We’re not talking about laws, we’re talking about social media platform policies.
Social media platforms connect people from regions with different hatespeech laws so " enforcing hatespeech laws" is impossible to do consistently.
If users engage in crimes using the platform they are subject to the laws that they are subject to.
I don’t care that it’s legal to advocate for genocide where a preacher is located, or at the corporation’s preferred jurisdiction, I don’t want my son reading it.
The question was: is there a way a platform can be totally free speech and stop hate speech. I think the answer is “kinda”
Says who? Who decided that free speech got an asterisk? Who makes and enforces the rules and limitations?
Another comment explained it pretty nicely:
But you can’t have [a platform with absolute free speech] while allowing for hate speech either because hate speech silences the voices of its target.
It’s basically the tolerance paradox but with free speech.
In general it’s the wider community that decides all that.
There are consequences in holding and sharing views that are disagreeable with the community in which people share them.
People are free to air those thoughts, but others are also free in shunning them for those thoughts.
It’s pretty exhausting having to block everyone all the time though. That’s one small benefit with Lemmy. You can block instances.
I mean, yeah. But also not everyone.
It worked well for so long because it is a good solution. Allow users to block and let everything fly as long as it’s not a personal attack. The community will relatively quickly sort itself out.
Sadly, today there are exception to block button working >:(
Edit: Hell. isn’t BlueSky pretty much riding this today? People made blocklists and give fuck all about the less nice side of the site. And people who are intersted can keep seeing stuff.
Look into the of Paradox of Tolerance.
Freedom is always relative. No one has absolute freedom. No matter how much I want to go without sleep, I can’t do that. No matter how much I don’t like gravity, it limits me (or liberates me, depending on my view). I have the freedom to jump off a highrise, but will that freedom actually do me good? Absolute freedom is not necessarily a good thing as it can harm myself and others.
Therefore free speech doesn’t mean I can say whatever I want. It means that I have the right to express my opinions publicly. But there must be restrictions to balance the right to free speech with the need to protect individuals and society from harm (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech).
Edit: formatting
This thread alone is showing me how divisive this question is for a lot of reasons. Just the meta-question of “what’s the definition of ‘free speech’ in this context?” on its own makes it a shitshow to answer, let alone the rest of it.
It says in the name. ‘Free’, ‘speech’. If I can say it, you can’t silence it. Anything more restricted is not ‘free’.
If that’s what it means to you, then no, “hate speech”, whatever it may be, is included by definition. There is no ambiguity. But that’s a pretty inflexible answer that doesn’t satisfy.
Well that’s a stupid and useless definition of “free speech”. Obviously some things that can be spoken aren’t ‘free speech’, because they aren’t constructive, they’re not good-faith conversational, they are a form of harm, etc."
Sure. Under that definition, it’s totally possible.
But congratulations, by restricting what ‘free speech’ is in any way whatsoever, you’ve invented an implicit judge who rules what is and is not free speech. (And, likely as well, rules what is and is not “hate speech”.) That only kicks the can down the road to the question of, “Is this a fair judge?” And now we are back in the shitshow where we began, we just painted the walls a new color.
“Free speech” as Americans in particular are so worked up about is a nickname given to one of the amendments of their constitution, which is a clause about disallowing the government from punishing anyone for their speech. Any implication of rights relating to speech outside of this context is a gross misunderstanding.
If that’s the definition you’re going with, then yes, obviously it’s possible, because that’s where many of us are at right now and have been at for ages. That makes it a rather nothingburger of an answer because it dodges the implicit question of whether we should uphold “free speech” as a principle outside of this context, whatever that may mean.
The way I see it, the two answers on the extreme ends are cop-outs that don’t actually help anyone, and any answer that exists in the middle just becomes politics. Is it possible to allow “free speech” and simultaneously stop “hate speech”? Yes, with adequate definitions of both. Will any solution that does so be satisfactory to a critical mass of people, randomly selected from all people? Haha no.
Even the American constitution contains exceptions. There’s a whole wiki article on the subject!
