Substack notes is wild because you can spend ages scrolling through wholesome milquetoast banter between middle-aged authors and then out of nowhere the algorithm throws you the most headass "woke...
Substack notes is wild because you can spend ages scrolling through wholesome milquetoast banter between middle-aged authors and then out of nowhere the algorithm throws you the most headass "woke agenda transin our kids" diatribe you've ever seen, followed by another twenty minutes of wholesome author banter.
Similar to every other large site. Network effects are hard to overcome, as I'm sure Tildes has experienced. There's also the general mentality of "why do I have to leave? I hate nazis". You feel...
Similar to every other large site. Network effects are hard to overcome, as I'm sure Tildes has experienced.
There's also the general mentality of "why do I have to leave? I hate nazis". You feel like you're suffering from the consequences of someone else's existence and POV. And most people aren't billion dollar corporations that can advertise wherever they want.
I feel that with tech platforms "The Moderation Is The Message" Regardless of the specific board or the specific threads you participate in, spending hours a day on 4chan will have an effect on...
I feel that with tech platforms "The Moderation Is The Message"
Regardless of the specific board or the specific threads you participate in, spending hours a day on 4chan will have an effect on your psyche. The kind of speech that is tolerated will slowly colonize your mind, and you will begin to see the world in ways that only one deeply ingrained in 4chan discourse can understand. You will play out arguments in your mind that, while insane and radical to anyone else, are part of your daily discourse.
This is self-evidently true with X/Twitter. It was true before the change in ownership: Twitter fundamentally altered the way people thought about public discourse. People spent their lives trying to fit their perspective, their identity, their pain into a hopefully viral set of 140 characters. Entire political movements have been mediated by tweets. Since the change in moderation, the discourse is undergoing a structural change that in the end (I predict) may look something like 4chan.
The kind of moderation on a platform fundamentally affects how we think more than the specific content we go to the platform for.
Yeah, that's another issue indeed. Manual moderation is simply too expensive at the scale of twitter, and since entire livelihoods are at stake you can't just try to automate all that away (even...
Yeah, that's another issue indeed. Manual moderation is simply too expensive at the scale of twitter, and since entire livelihoods are at stake you can't just try to automate all that away (even if tech keeps trying. I'll leave my YT rant below). Of course, the situation here of "not even trying to oppose it" is different, but I can somewhat sympathize with the ability to properly respond to issues in a timely matter when you are receiving terabytes of information a day, and likely reports in the thousands (many of which are barely worth pursuing).
At the same time, we are talking about billion and trillion dollar businesses. They already have protections via section 230, but if society is shifting more towards a model that does place the voice of the user onto the platform (a point I'm admittedly ambivalent about. But that's a whole other topic), they should hire the staff to properly address that.
I've seen more than enough times where a large creator was mysteriously banned, took a week+ to get reinstated, and Google goes along as if nothing happened. I'm sure smaller creators without contacts at Youtube weren't as fortunate. It's not just disrespectful but bordering on gross negligence. I genuinely wonder if someone is going to take that kind of action to court one day on the content creator side.
I read the book the Chaos Machine by Max Fisher which documents Facebook ignoring and failing to respond to hate speech on platform that ultimately led to riots, murders, pogroms. If they don't...
I read the book the Chaos Machine by Max Fisher which documents Facebook ignoring and failing to respond to hate speech on platform that ultimately led to riots, murders, pogroms. If they don't spot it, it's understandable on a large platform, but they have a responsibility to investigate when alerted repeatedly about problems by reputable people and organizations.
I wonder how long will it be until the company that does the payment processing threatens to cut ties with them that SubStack will reverse this mind blowing stupid policy of allowing f-ing NAZIS...
I wonder how long will it be until the company that does the payment processing threatens to cut ties with them that SubStack will reverse this mind blowing stupid policy of allowing f-ing NAZIS on their website. Because I would imagine that would be bad for business for the processor.
I'm not a fan of payment processors being the arbiter of what gets to exist and what doesn't, and in a way that same premise applies to advertising as well since they kind of get similar power...
I'm not a fan of payment processors being the arbiter of what gets to exist and what doesn't, and in a way that same premise applies to advertising as well since they kind of get similar power over what gets to exist and what doesn't too. Of course with advertisers, they're actually paying in a way to keep a service alive, where payment processors are just powerful middlemen, so the dynamics are slightly different, but since advertising is such an intrinsic component of most online services it also has a power dynamic similar to payment processors.
In any case, I read Substack's stance on freedom of expression
While I find it does make some compelling points, it also lacks a great awareness that they're profiting off speech that they claim they don't agree with and they don't point out the conflict of interest in their support of free speech and profiting from it.
It doesn't negate their argument, like I said I think there are elements of it that make sense regardless of who takes that stance, but this to me is the part of the ethical equation that they're not acknowledging. It'd be one thing to argue that all people, whether they're neo-nazis or whoever have some moral right to free speech or right to gather in public within other parameters of the law, but it's another thing to profit off of them. As a business, it's a bit easier to make an argument of what is ethical when it also aligns with your profits. This also gives you incentives to boost their reach in a way that doesn't have a similar equivalency in an offline world. I suppose megaphone manufacturers or large sign display makers could in theory have considered to profit off morally questionable or repugnant speech and in a way boosted their reach, but it still seems far more limited than what online services can accomplish.
I think free speech as a concept (not the US amendment) doesn't work the same in an offline world and online world. I don't know how you rectify that in a world that is increasingly online, but it needs a radical shift in approach rather than just applying the same principles we've applied to free speech in an offline world.
In my experience, people will say, and like to think, they're in favor of free speech. They'll say and think that right up to the moment you say something they don't like. Then, suddenly ......
Exemplary
In my experience, people will say, and like to think, they're in favor of free speech. They'll say and think that right up to the moment you say something they don't like. Then, suddenly ... they're not actually in favor of free speech.
I hate bigotry. It's one of the base evils of humanity. Hating someone for who they are is a whole mess of things that are negative, wrong, evil. Period. There is no valid, honest, just reason to hate someone for something as arbitrary as a genetic factor. Doing so demonstrates a fundamental lack of reason, and inevitably results in evil. Bigotry is evil.
I say this because it's quite incredibly common for anyone who supports absolute free speech in a situation like this to be accused to supporting the disagreeable speech. It's a debating tactic designed to move the focus off the concept of speech and onto "you're just like those evil fuckers if you disagree with me."
Free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. Someone who owns property isn't required to allow someone to be on it against their wishes. You can't stand in a busy mall speaking to passersby if the mall doesn't allow it; and likewise Facebook or other online companies aren't required to host an entity they don't want to.
These would be examples of private entities exercising their right to not support someone else's speech. Where I draw the line is if "the state" wishes to start stepping in to quash speech.
The online version would be if the companies that maintain and provide the actual connection (Comcast who runs the wire to your house, a backbone company) want to refuse the connection. Comcast refusing you a connection simply because they disagree with what you'd put on your server ... in today's world that's fundamentally and functionally the same as if you empowered government to quash speech.
I feel free speech is an important aspect of modern humanity. It's essential to the flow of ideas. Free speech does not mean you will agree with everything someone else says. Some of that speech will be disruptive. Possibly evil. Speech that doesn't find agreement and support will struggle to find an audience. People stop listening when they realize they disagree. People withdraw support, or make a point of purposefully not offering support, when they disagree. If enough do, eventually the speaker might give up, because no one's listening.
This is how it's supposed to work. Free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
In a mythical perfect world, it'd be lovely to think everyone would be nice and generous to one another. That honest and truthful and worthy speech would find fertile listening ground, be supported, and lift us all up to the next step humanity will take along its collective track of rising out of the mud. And that evil would be vanquished as we walked hand in hand toward our next wonderful destiny.
But a lot of things we now consider to be obviously not-evil, that we consider to be of honest value, were once considered heresy. Which is one of the biggest reasons I consider myself a staunch adherent to free speech, even when the speech is something I patently disagree with (like bigotry).
Science, for example, is full of examples where an innovation or discovery was considered heresy. Or outright evil. Often because the discovery clashed with existing views and conclusions.
Galileo brought up heliocentrisim (sun at the center, rather than Earth) and even though anyone could look through a telescope and find out "oh, yeah, he's right" he was ridiculed, outcast, and ended his life under long-term arrest.
Semmelweis observed (and then formally researched) germ theory and discovered if medical personnel simply washed their hands and practiced what would later become sterile procedure, patients were remarkably less prone to infections and complications. He was, wait for it, ridiculed, outcast, and imprisoned (in an asylum since he was exhibiting chronic high stress causing him to act in a mentally deficient manner; I wonder why he was so stressed?).
We like to think, believe even, scientists (of all people) would be rational, calm, and investigative in pursuit of actual fact. Of honest truth. Turns out, scientists are humans, and humans fear change. They like what's comfortable, and what is often most comfortable is that which doesn't require change. If you've learned a fact or set of facts, a method, a way, and then here comes someone else saying "wait, all that's wrong" ... people lash out. They reject it. Because that's easier than calmly considering and investigating whatever's going on.
So when I say I'm a supporter of free speech, things like that are why. And one of the side effects of supporting free speech is going to be evil assholes who want to use (abuse?) it. Who want to try their luck with spreading something as evil and hateful as bigotry. Some will try to spread greed and selfishness. Some might try to spread violence.
These are bad things. But in my view they're not bad enough to go in the other direction.
Because if you go down that alternate path, you're left with someone having to preemptively decide what to and not to allow. Which speech is "good", and which is "bad"? I, like most people, agree that bigotry is bad. Evil. But the way to handle it, in my view, isn't to set up some agency or entity or whomever, to nip it before anyone is exposed to it. Not because I want bigotry to spread (I don't), but because when you give someone that kind of power they will abuse it.
Just like, for example, the Catholic Church did to Galileo. His view threatened them, so they acted to cast him out and suppress him. At the time, the Church was more or less a state level entity. They even put him on trial, surely an argument for them having state level power.
Do you want the government to have power over speech? I know America is fairly unique in the world by having a "fundamental right of free speech", but it was written into the US Constitution because England (among other European countries) had a history of abusing oppression (of speech) to ill effect and for ill intent. Even today, we see governments and agents of it (ministers, representatives, etc) attempting to use the power of the state to beat aside those they wish to label "troublemakers."
If the "troublemaker" is murdering and raping and pillaging, thieving and assaulting and vandalizing, if the targeted individual is in fact violating existing law ... there is certainly a case to contain, try, and deal with them under those laws. But as we know, suppression of speech will often come because the government agent in question fears what might happen if the speech takes hold. They'll abuse their power to uphold a damaging or dangerous status quo, or to prevent one they dislike from having a better chance to come about.
The Civil Rights movement in America was a function of free speech. It was punished in opposition to the concept of free speech. Proponents of civil rights were threatened, accosted, jailed, even murdered for attempting to exercise their free speech rights to speak up and voice their views and opinions on their lot without civil rights. Many people, who would tell you straight faced they were good and upright American citizens who admired and supported The Constitution, violated that creed when they lashed out against those speaking in favor of civil rights.
History now shows us those who opposed civil rights were in the wrong. That they were often even evil. Maybe not all of them who spoke and acted against it were evil, but surely not all of them weren't.
How can using violence against people who have a disagreement with their government, and who wish to peacefully voice that disagreement, not be evil? At least a little evil? And more than a few people, who heard about violence having been used against a peaceful assembly, didn't object, or even approved of it. That's at least a little evil too.
There are good and valuable reasons to support free speech. It's not just a pithy catch phrase for me when you hear what is so often voiced when free speech is brought up. That tried and true maxim about defending the right even when you vehemently disagree with the speaker.
No one is required to listen. But preemptively shutting someone down just because "someone" has decided the speech is "wrong" is a very, very, very slippery slope. It is so easy for that to lead to full, outright evil, in the blink of an eye, if you don't support free speech. If you just stand by and let the government quash someone you disagree with. Not quash someone being criminal (by breaking an actual law), but quash someone who's simply speaking.
Is it right that bigots want to preach hatred? No, not in my view. But they have the right to stand up and voice their view. If they commit violence, they need to be dealt with under the laws of society. And some societies even have laws about advocating for violence, which would make a speech inviting such violent acts two crimes instead of one. Arrest them, try them, punish them for violating these laws.
No one is required to listen just because someone has something to say. But anyone acting to remove the right to speak is highly unlikely to be doing it for a good and just reason. And the people they'll seek to empower to enforce that lack of speech, history has repeatedly shown us, definitely will not use that power in a good and just manner.
If Substack doesn't want to host speech, I'm fine with that. If an advertiser or anyone else who offers support (be it financial or other) wishes to withdraw it, I'm fine with that. Where I would draw the line in an online world would be the fundamental ability to connect to the internet.
Basically, if someone wants to set up their own server, and plug it into the internet, and people want to go after Comcast or any basic internet connection provider for not refusing them service, I consider that the same as enabling the state to decide who should or shouldn't be allowed to speak.
That's the online version of the slippery slope. If you support free speech, you support the right for someone to speak even when you disagree. Because that's what free speech means. The freedom to speak. Not freedom from consequences, but the right to speak. And a basic connection to the global internet is too fundamental to modern life to be allowed to become arbitrary.
What if Comcast disconnects union organizers? Or a budding Internet connection company start up? Once you empower someone, they start using the power. Abusing the power. The slippery slope.
Having some asshole Nazis spouting off in their little microscopic speck (hopefully a nonexistent one someday) of a corner of the Internet is a small price to pay to keep us off that slope. Because history shows us what lies on the bottom half of such a slope is worse than sometimes having to sigh and stop listening.
The slippery slope is considered a logical fallacy, and for good reason... it's not an inevitability, and many things can prevent it from ever occurring. So basing your entire stance on free...
Exemplary
The slippery slope is considered a logical fallacy, and for good reason... it's not an inevitability, and many things can prevent it from ever occurring. So basing your entire stance on free speech and censorship around that fear of the worst case scenarios seems pretty flimsy and ill advised, IMO.
And while I don't have the constitution, or inclination to address every individual thing I disagree with in your comment, I just wanted to point out that most governments around the world (including the US) already practice censorship to varying degrees when it comes to issues like harassment, libel/slander, discrimination against identifiable groups, threats of physical harm, sedition, national security and state secrets, etc. And many countries also already have explicit laws against hate speech as well.
But on the opposite end of the spectrum, I think you also vastly underestimate just how many hate groups there are, how enticing and convincing their rhetoric and misinformation often is, how quickly it can spread, how quickly their communities can grow as a result, and therefor how legitimately dangerous it is to allow them to continue promoting their hateful beliefs/ideas, even in the dark recesses of the internet. You only need to look at the recent Rohingya genocide, which was largely fostered on Facebook, to see a perfect example of that. Or for another recent set of examples, the Indian WhatsApp lynchings. Or the 8chan mass shootings. Or the spate of Elliot Rogers inspired Incel community murders. And sadly, I could go on and on with countless more examples.
Free speech is hard to address when you don't know if the person spouting it is some edgy kid, some unhinged conspiracy theorist, an ignorant conservative man in a rural area, a cult leader, or...
Free speech is hard to address when you don't know if the person spouting it is some edgy kid, some unhinged conspiracy theorist, an ignorant conservative man in a rural area, a cult leader, or the president of the United States. The reaches and implications of that speech vary wildly from each person, each with varying levels of "redeemability", but they all look the same under the handle JoeBob523, and they can post to dozens of communities in a day as opposed to maybe wearing a mask in one city "uprising" . International boundaries also don't exist, so the degree of accountability is blurry even if they get revealed.
It doesn't cause everything, but Anonymity is definitely a big driver of this stuff online. I feel those ages may come to and end on larger websites. Meta already tries very hard to make users use their real name or phone number (and outright ask for ID when your password "fails"). Who's to say others won't follow suit in the name of "fighting harassment".
I also agree that levyijg this duty to middleman is another road to hell. We're seeing in real time how those adverts can (inadvertently or not) suppress information about war, and Payment processors have infamously blurry lines in what's okay to sell.
But I don't have any better ideas for the US since companies have long abandoned pride and embraced shame for a few extra cents in their earnings call. That kind of stuff does work well in Asia and in parts of the EU, but not in the US and a few other western countries.
I definitely agree that the anonymity of the internet makes speech and just interacting with people online challenging to say the least. Just as a point of discussion and not meant to be pushing...
I definitely agree that the anonymity of the internet makes speech and just interacting with people online challenging to say the least.
Just as a point of discussion and not meant to be pushing for any type of law or anything, it's just related to what you brought up about not knowing who says what online, one thing that I often think about is just knowing the age of other people who you may be reading or conversing with online could substantially change how you perceive what they say. It's one thing to say that every idea stands on its own merit regardless of who says it, but I like to think that if you're relatively open minded you don't immediately jump to conclusions of merit to something, or at least I think sometimes I come at things that way. Like maybe initially I read an idea and I might slightly mentally recoil because in my thoughts I've always thought of something different to that, but at the same time I try to find some way that it has merit and maybe let it simmer awhile before I come to any stronger conclusions about it.
That leads me to the age thing, because there are times where I do actually believe that pretty much everyone might have some phases of learning or education in different aspects of life, and I sort of find it a waste of time to go through a whole process of arguing with someone who is 18 years old why X, Y or Z doesn't work for one reason or another, and I can remember back to when I was 18 and had similar thoughts to that person that now I look back on and realize how naive I was. At the time I wasn't necessarily able to understand what other people were talking about or it wasn't going to register for me as my limited years of life and individual experiences wouldn't necessarily allow for it at that time. Of course the flip side to that is, I was definitely discussing some of those things online and no one knew what age I was then, so it's possible that my development away from those thoughts later on was in part due to those anonymous individuals that wasted their time telling me something I wasn't able to fully understand yet.
But it is something that in the back of my mind I sometimes wish I could see, like oh this person posting is 17 years old? I'm not going to waste my time responding, they'll be in a better position to understand 5 years from now or so on. If you think about it as a comparative to the offline world, you probably wouldn't engage in such debates if you knew it was someone that you didn't think was at an age yet to understand.
Conversely I'm sure there's younger people who might think, "Oh this person is 60 years old, they're ancient and from a different century, what they have to say isn't relevant to us anymore" could be something that others might think in an alternative scenario to that. It's not to say every older person knows more than every younger person, and not all experiences of life stay relevant as time goes on.
Substack notes is wild because you can spend ages scrolling through wholesome milquetoast banter between middle-aged authors and then out of nowhere the algorithm throws you the most headass "woke agenda transin our kids" diatribe you've ever seen, followed by another twenty minutes of wholesome author banter.
Kind of like Twitter. All sorts of big famous liberal progressive names have been very slow to respond to the platform turning bigoted.
Similar to every other large site. Network effects are hard to overcome, as I'm sure Tildes has experienced.
There's also the general mentality of "why do I have to leave? I hate nazis". You feel like you're suffering from the consequences of someone else's existence and POV. And most people aren't billion dollar corporations that can advertise wherever they want.
I feel that with tech platforms "The Moderation Is The Message"
Regardless of the specific board or the specific threads you participate in, spending hours a day on 4chan will have an effect on your psyche. The kind of speech that is tolerated will slowly colonize your mind, and you will begin to see the world in ways that only one deeply ingrained in 4chan discourse can understand. You will play out arguments in your mind that, while insane and radical to anyone else, are part of your daily discourse.
This is self-evidently true with X/Twitter. It was true before the change in ownership: Twitter fundamentally altered the way people thought about public discourse. People spent their lives trying to fit their perspective, their identity, their pain into a hopefully viral set of 140 characters. Entire political movements have been mediated by tweets. Since the change in moderation, the discourse is undergoing a structural change that in the end (I predict) may look something like 4chan.
The kind of moderation on a platform fundamentally affects how we think more than the specific content we go to the platform for.
Yeah, that's another issue indeed. Manual moderation is simply too expensive at the scale of twitter, and since entire livelihoods are at stake you can't just try to automate all that away (even if tech keeps trying. I'll leave my YT rant below). Of course, the situation here of "not even trying to oppose it" is different, but I can somewhat sympathize with the ability to properly respond to issues in a timely matter when you are receiving terabytes of information a day, and likely reports in the thousands (many of which are barely worth pursuing).
At the same time, we are talking about billion and trillion dollar businesses. They already have protections via section 230, but if society is shifting more towards a model that does place the voice of the user onto the platform (a point I'm admittedly ambivalent about. But that's a whole other topic), they should hire the staff to properly address that.
I've seen more than enough times where a large creator was mysteriously banned, took a week+ to get reinstated, and Google goes along as if nothing happened. I'm sure smaller creators without contacts at Youtube weren't as fortunate. It's not just disrespectful but bordering on gross negligence. I genuinely wonder if someone is going to take that kind of action to court one day on the content creator side.
I read the book the Chaos Machine by Max Fisher which documents Facebook ignoring and failing to respond to hate speech on platform that ultimately led to riots, murders, pogroms. If they don't spot it, it's understandable on a large platform, but they have a responsibility to investigate when alerted repeatedly about problems by reputable people and organizations.
I wonder how long will it be until the company that does the payment processing threatens to cut ties with them that SubStack will reverse this mind blowing stupid policy of allowing f-ing NAZIS on their website. Because I would imagine that would be bad for business for the processor.
Edit: pressed post too soon.
I'm not a fan of payment processors being the arbiter of what gets to exist and what doesn't, and in a way that same premise applies to advertising as well since they kind of get similar power over what gets to exist and what doesn't too. Of course with advertisers, they're actually paying in a way to keep a service alive, where payment processors are just powerful middlemen, so the dynamics are slightly different, but since advertising is such an intrinsic component of most online services it also has a power dynamic similar to payment processors.
In any case, I read Substack's stance on freedom of expression
https://on.substack.com/p/society-has-a-trust-problem-more
While I find it does make some compelling points, it also lacks a great awareness that they're profiting off speech that they claim they don't agree with and they don't point out the conflict of interest in their support of free speech and profiting from it.
It doesn't negate their argument, like I said I think there are elements of it that make sense regardless of who takes that stance, but this to me is the part of the ethical equation that they're not acknowledging. It'd be one thing to argue that all people, whether they're neo-nazis or whoever have some moral right to free speech or right to gather in public within other parameters of the law, but it's another thing to profit off of them. As a business, it's a bit easier to make an argument of what is ethical when it also aligns with your profits. This also gives you incentives to boost their reach in a way that doesn't have a similar equivalency in an offline world. I suppose megaphone manufacturers or large sign display makers could in theory have considered to profit off morally questionable or repugnant speech and in a way boosted their reach, but it still seems far more limited than what online services can accomplish.
I think free speech as a concept (not the US amendment) doesn't work the same in an offline world and online world. I don't know how you rectify that in a world that is increasingly online, but it needs a radical shift in approach rather than just applying the same principles we've applied to free speech in an offline world.
In my experience, people will say, and like to think, they're in favor of free speech. They'll say and think that right up to the moment you say something they don't like. Then, suddenly ... they're not actually in favor of free speech.
I hate bigotry. It's one of the base evils of humanity. Hating someone for who they are is a whole mess of things that are negative, wrong, evil. Period. There is no valid, honest, just reason to hate someone for something as arbitrary as a genetic factor. Doing so demonstrates a fundamental lack of reason, and inevitably results in evil. Bigotry is evil.
I say this because it's quite incredibly common for anyone who supports absolute free speech in a situation like this to be accused to supporting the disagreeable speech. It's a debating tactic designed to move the focus off the concept of speech and onto "you're just like those evil fuckers if you disagree with me."
Free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. Someone who owns property isn't required to allow someone to be on it against their wishes. You can't stand in a busy mall speaking to passersby if the mall doesn't allow it; and likewise Facebook or other online companies aren't required to host an entity they don't want to.
These would be examples of private entities exercising their right to not support someone else's speech. Where I draw the line is if "the state" wishes to start stepping in to quash speech.
The online version would be if the companies that maintain and provide the actual connection (Comcast who runs the wire to your house, a backbone company) want to refuse the connection. Comcast refusing you a connection simply because they disagree with what you'd put on your server ... in today's world that's fundamentally and functionally the same as if you empowered government to quash speech.
I feel free speech is an important aspect of modern humanity. It's essential to the flow of ideas. Free speech does not mean you will agree with everything someone else says. Some of that speech will be disruptive. Possibly evil. Speech that doesn't find agreement and support will struggle to find an audience. People stop listening when they realize they disagree. People withdraw support, or make a point of purposefully not offering support, when they disagree. If enough do, eventually the speaker might give up, because no one's listening.
This is how it's supposed to work. Free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
In a mythical perfect world, it'd be lovely to think everyone would be nice and generous to one another. That honest and truthful and worthy speech would find fertile listening ground, be supported, and lift us all up to the next step humanity will take along its collective track of rising out of the mud. And that evil would be vanquished as we walked hand in hand toward our next wonderful destiny.
But a lot of things we now consider to be obviously not-evil, that we consider to be of honest value, were once considered heresy. Which is one of the biggest reasons I consider myself a staunch adherent to free speech, even when the speech is something I patently disagree with (like bigotry).
Science, for example, is full of examples where an innovation or discovery was considered heresy. Or outright evil. Often because the discovery clashed with existing views and conclusions.
Galileo brought up heliocentrisim (sun at the center, rather than Earth) and even though anyone could look through a telescope and find out "oh, yeah, he's right" he was ridiculed, outcast, and ended his life under long-term arrest.
Semmelweis observed (and then formally researched) germ theory and discovered if medical personnel simply washed their hands and practiced what would later become sterile procedure, patients were remarkably less prone to infections and complications. He was, wait for it, ridiculed, outcast, and imprisoned (in an asylum since he was exhibiting chronic high stress causing him to act in a mentally deficient manner; I wonder why he was so stressed?).
We like to think, believe even, scientists (of all people) would be rational, calm, and investigative in pursuit of actual fact. Of honest truth. Turns out, scientists are humans, and humans fear change. They like what's comfortable, and what is often most comfortable is that which doesn't require change. If you've learned a fact or set of facts, a method, a way, and then here comes someone else saying "wait, all that's wrong" ... people lash out. They reject it. Because that's easier than calmly considering and investigating whatever's going on.
So when I say I'm a supporter of free speech, things like that are why. And one of the side effects of supporting free speech is going to be evil assholes who want to use (abuse?) it. Who want to try their luck with spreading something as evil and hateful as bigotry. Some will try to spread greed and selfishness. Some might try to spread violence.
These are bad things. But in my view they're not bad enough to go in the other direction.
Because if you go down that alternate path, you're left with someone having to preemptively decide what to and not to allow. Which speech is "good", and which is "bad"? I, like most people, agree that bigotry is bad. Evil. But the way to handle it, in my view, isn't to set up some agency or entity or whomever, to nip it before anyone is exposed to it. Not because I want bigotry to spread (I don't), but because when you give someone that kind of power they will abuse it.
Just like, for example, the Catholic Church did to Galileo. His view threatened them, so they acted to cast him out and suppress him. At the time, the Church was more or less a state level entity. They even put him on trial, surely an argument for them having state level power.
Do you want the government to have power over speech? I know America is fairly unique in the world by having a "fundamental right of free speech", but it was written into the US Constitution because England (among other European countries) had a history of abusing oppression (of speech) to ill effect and for ill intent. Even today, we see governments and agents of it (ministers, representatives, etc) attempting to use the power of the state to beat aside those they wish to label "troublemakers."
If the "troublemaker" is murdering and raping and pillaging, thieving and assaulting and vandalizing, if the targeted individual is in fact violating existing law ... there is certainly a case to contain, try, and deal with them under those laws. But as we know, suppression of speech will often come because the government agent in question fears what might happen if the speech takes hold. They'll abuse their power to uphold a damaging or dangerous status quo, or to prevent one they dislike from having a better chance to come about.
The Civil Rights movement in America was a function of free speech. It was punished in opposition to the concept of free speech. Proponents of civil rights were threatened, accosted, jailed, even murdered for attempting to exercise their free speech rights to speak up and voice their views and opinions on their lot without civil rights. Many people, who would tell you straight faced they were good and upright American citizens who admired and supported The Constitution, violated that creed when they lashed out against those speaking in favor of civil rights.
History now shows us those who opposed civil rights were in the wrong. That they were often even evil. Maybe not all of them who spoke and acted against it were evil, but surely not all of them weren't.
How can using violence against people who have a disagreement with their government, and who wish to peacefully voice that disagreement, not be evil? At least a little evil? And more than a few people, who heard about violence having been used against a peaceful assembly, didn't object, or even approved of it. That's at least a little evil too.
There are good and valuable reasons to support free speech. It's not just a pithy catch phrase for me when you hear what is so often voiced when free speech is brought up. That tried and true maxim about defending the right even when you vehemently disagree with the speaker.
No one is required to listen. But preemptively shutting someone down just because "someone" has decided the speech is "wrong" is a very, very, very slippery slope. It is so easy for that to lead to full, outright evil, in the blink of an eye, if you don't support free speech. If you just stand by and let the government quash someone you disagree with. Not quash someone being criminal (by breaking an actual law), but quash someone who's simply speaking.
Is it right that bigots want to preach hatred? No, not in my view. But they have the right to stand up and voice their view. If they commit violence, they need to be dealt with under the laws of society. And some societies even have laws about advocating for violence, which would make a speech inviting such violent acts two crimes instead of one. Arrest them, try them, punish them for violating these laws.
No one is required to listen just because someone has something to say. But anyone acting to remove the right to speak is highly unlikely to be doing it for a good and just reason. And the people they'll seek to empower to enforce that lack of speech, history has repeatedly shown us, definitely will not use that power in a good and just manner.
If Substack doesn't want to host speech, I'm fine with that. If an advertiser or anyone else who offers support (be it financial or other) wishes to withdraw it, I'm fine with that. Where I would draw the line in an online world would be the fundamental ability to connect to the internet.
Basically, if someone wants to set up their own server, and plug it into the internet, and people want to go after Comcast or any basic internet connection provider for not refusing them service, I consider that the same as enabling the state to decide who should or shouldn't be allowed to speak.
That's the online version of the slippery slope. If you support free speech, you support the right for someone to speak even when you disagree. Because that's what free speech means. The freedom to speak. Not freedom from consequences, but the right to speak. And a basic connection to the global internet is too fundamental to modern life to be allowed to become arbitrary.
What if Comcast disconnects union organizers? Or a budding Internet connection company start up? Once you empower someone, they start using the power. Abusing the power. The slippery slope.
Having some asshole Nazis spouting off in their little microscopic speck (hopefully a nonexistent one someday) of a corner of the Internet is a small price to pay to keep us off that slope. Because history shows us what lies on the bottom half of such a slope is worse than sometimes having to sigh and stop listening.
The slippery slope is considered a logical fallacy, and for good reason... it's not an inevitability, and many things can prevent it from ever occurring. So basing your entire stance on free speech and censorship around that fear of the worst case scenarios seems pretty flimsy and ill advised, IMO.
And while I don't have the constitution, or inclination to address every individual thing I disagree with in your comment, I just wanted to point out that most governments around the world (including the US) already practice censorship to varying degrees when it comes to issues like harassment, libel/slander, discrimination against identifiable groups, threats of physical harm, sedition, national security and state secrets, etc. And many countries also already have explicit laws against hate speech as well.
E.g. Here in Canada we've had our hate propaganda laws on the books since 1970, and so far none of the "slippery slope" fears you've expressed as your rationale for not censoring hate speech have yet come to pass:
Hate speech laws in Canada
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-319.html
But on the opposite end of the spectrum, I think you also vastly underestimate just how many hate groups there are, how enticing and convincing their rhetoric and misinformation often is, how quickly it can spread, how quickly their communities can grow as a result, and therefor how legitimately dangerous it is to allow them to continue promoting their hateful beliefs/ideas, even in the dark recesses of the internet. You only need to look at the recent Rohingya genocide, which was largely fostered on Facebook, to see a perfect example of that. Or for another recent set of examples, the Indian WhatsApp lynchings. Or the 8chan mass shootings. Or the spate of Elliot Rogers inspired Incel community murders. And sadly, I could go on and on with countless more examples.
I'd just like to add the Paradox of Tolerance to your list of very good counterarguments.
Free speech is hard to address when you don't know if the person spouting it is some edgy kid, some unhinged conspiracy theorist, an ignorant conservative man in a rural area, a cult leader, or the president of the United States. The reaches and implications of that speech vary wildly from each person, each with varying levels of "redeemability", but they all look the same under the handle JoeBob523, and they can post to dozens of communities in a day as opposed to maybe wearing a mask in one city "uprising" . International boundaries also don't exist, so the degree of accountability is blurry even if they get revealed.
It doesn't cause everything, but Anonymity is definitely a big driver of this stuff online. I feel those ages may come to and end on larger websites. Meta already tries very hard to make users use their real name or phone number (and outright ask for ID when your password "fails"). Who's to say others won't follow suit in the name of "fighting harassment".
I also agree that levyijg this duty to middleman is another road to hell. We're seeing in real time how those adverts can (inadvertently or not) suppress information about war, and Payment processors have infamously blurry lines in what's okay to sell.
But I don't have any better ideas for the US since companies have long abandoned pride and embraced shame for a few extra cents in their earnings call. That kind of stuff does work well in Asia and in parts of the EU, but not in the US and a few other western countries.
I definitely agree that the anonymity of the internet makes speech and just interacting with people online challenging to say the least.
Just as a point of discussion and not meant to be pushing for any type of law or anything, it's just related to what you brought up about not knowing who says what online, one thing that I often think about is just knowing the age of other people who you may be reading or conversing with online could substantially change how you perceive what they say. It's one thing to say that every idea stands on its own merit regardless of who says it, but I like to think that if you're relatively open minded you don't immediately jump to conclusions of merit to something, or at least I think sometimes I come at things that way. Like maybe initially I read an idea and I might slightly mentally recoil because in my thoughts I've always thought of something different to that, but at the same time I try to find some way that it has merit and maybe let it simmer awhile before I come to any stronger conclusions about it.
That leads me to the age thing, because there are times where I do actually believe that pretty much everyone might have some phases of learning or education in different aspects of life, and I sort of find it a waste of time to go through a whole process of arguing with someone who is 18 years old why X, Y or Z doesn't work for one reason or another, and I can remember back to when I was 18 and had similar thoughts to that person that now I look back on and realize how naive I was. At the time I wasn't necessarily able to understand what other people were talking about or it wasn't going to register for me as my limited years of life and individual experiences wouldn't necessarily allow for it at that time. Of course the flip side to that is, I was definitely discussing some of those things online and no one knew what age I was then, so it's possible that my development away from those thoughts later on was in part due to those anonymous individuals that wasted their time telling me something I wasn't able to fully understand yet.
But it is something that in the back of my mind I sometimes wish I could see, like oh this person posting is 17 years old? I'm not going to waste my time responding, they'll be in a better position to understand 5 years from now or so on. If you think about it as a comparative to the offline world, you probably wouldn't engage in such debates if you knew it was someone that you didn't think was at an age yet to understand.
Conversely I'm sure there's younger people who might think, "Oh this person is 60 years old, they're ancient and from a different century, what they have to say isn't relevant to us anymore" could be something that others might think in an alternative scenario to that. It's not to say every older person knows more than every younger person, and not all experiences of life stay relevant as time goes on.