I never liked this comic. There's a big difference between the first amendment and the belief in free speech as a human right and an ideal to strive for. Should we not fight for the free speech of...
I never liked this comic. There's a big difference between the first amendment and the belief in free speech as a human right and an ideal to strive for. Should we not fight for the free speech of say, Chinese citizens, because they don't have a first amendment?
Not sure how I feel about this move. What the guy said was pretty vile and I wouldn't ever defend it. But what if ISP's could shut off your internet for perceived speech or actions they didn't like? Microsoft is a hosting provider platform. If Gab was doing something illegal, they should be taken to court, not shut down by a multi-national tech company.
We should fight for the general principle that governments should not censor citizens. That's separate from the argument made by that XKCD about free speech not being free from consequences. Then...
Should we not fight for the free speech of say, Chinese citizens, because they don't have a first amendment?
We should fight for the general principle that governments should not censor citizens. That's separate from the argument made by that XKCD about free speech not being free from consequences.
But what if ISP's could shut off your internet for perceived speech or actions they didn't like?
Then get a different ISP. That's difficult, but the real problem there is that there's so little competition in the US for last-mile broadband providers. That's something we should solve independently of this issue.
If Gab was doing something illegal, they should be taken to court, not shut down by a multi-national tech company.
Free speech can and does have consequences before you get into the realm of civil or criminal law. The guy from Papa John's dropped the N word on a conference call. That's led to a ton of business partners breaking ties with him. Saying that word isn't illegal (nor should it be) and taking him to court is not an option.
Disclaimer: I support what MS did here. But we still need to have a discussion about censorship. The reason we have constitutional protections from the government is because of the...
Disclaimer: I support what MS did here. But we still need to have a discussion about censorship.
The reason we have constitutional protections from the government is because of the disproportionate power between rulers and citizens. This is well. The trouble is, the founding fathers had no way to anticipate similar power imbalances between individuals and corporations. We're in uncharted territory now, and it's up to us to decide how to proceed. Do we write a new bill of rights guaranteeing certain liberties to individuals? If so, threatening Jews probably shouldn't be a granted freedom, but we should ensure that similar unilateral enforcement cannot occur outside narrow boundaries (such as existing restrictions on incitement or obscenity).
I mean, the Dutch East India Trading Company was a thing, and they exterminated, enslaved and suppressed a huge number of individuals over their long, ruthlessly efficient tenure. I don't disagree...
The trouble is, the founding fathers had no way to anticipate similar power imbalances between individuals and corporations.
I mean, the Dutch East India Trading Company was a thing, and they exterminated, enslaved and suppressed a huge number of individuals over their long, ruthlessly efficient tenure. I don't disagree that we probably need a debate about what rights platform owners have to terminate / suppress content and in particular, whether something like Facebook is a public forum, or a privately owned marketplace, and the legal / free-speech implications there-in. But it's not because the founding fathers didn't understand power imbalances between companies.
That's a damn fine counterexample. I've honestly always thought of the Dutch East India Trading Company as state-sanctioned, and it ended with all assets being nationalized, but if that's a...
That's a damn fine counterexample. I've honestly always thought of the Dutch East India Trading Company as state-sanctioned, and it ended with all assets being nationalized, but if that's a misunderstanding then fair point.
Yeah, it was nationalized at the very end, but as far as I (or wikipedia, for that matter) know it was a private company for the majority of it's existence. I don't know if the company had an...
Yeah, it was nationalized at the very end, but as far as I (or wikipedia, for that matter) know it was a private company for the majority of it's existence. I don't know if the company had an outsized influence on European politics however, one would assume they had a large pull given their size and wealth, but is it comparable to Facebook, say?
I like that comic just fine. It's amazing how many people mis-use the right to free speech, thinking that it protects their right to spew hate when it does not. I also support the right of private...
I like that comic just fine. It's amazing how many people mis-use the right to free speech, thinking that it protects their right to spew hate when it does not.
I also support the right of private companies that host content to judge whether or not they want to provide a platform to people that promote various ideas. (For example, Gab is perfectly within its rights to deny me an account on their service)
Taking people to court is complex and costly. It is far simpler to just to say in the terms of service that using the service for anything considered hateful or objectionable by the service at their sole discretion is grounds for account termination.
Even if you separate the ideal of free speach from government legislation, racism is inherently anti-free speech, because it advocates for the silencing of minorities. Free speech as a concept is...
Even if you separate the ideal of free speach from government legislation, racism is inherently anti-free speech, because it advocates for the silencing of minorities. Free speech as a concept is not a valid defense of bigotry.
Bigots are the first people whose speech I would defend. Advocating for the silencing of anyone is absolutely protected by free speech ideals and the first amendment of the USA. I would defend...
Bigots are the first people whose speech I would defend. Advocating for the silencing of anyone is absolutely protected by free speech ideals and the first amendment of the USA. I would defend anyones right to call to silence me, because they do not have the power to silence me, due to my freedom of speech which I only have because bigots like them can say stupid vile hateful things.
Bigots might not have the power to silence you specifically, but they absolutely have the power to silence minorities. Look at Reddit, if you want to bring up trans issues or BLM in a mainstream...
Bigots might not have the power to silence you specifically, but they absolutely have the power to silence minorities. Look at Reddit, if you want to bring up trans issues or BLM in a mainstream subreddit you're almost guaranteed to be harassed, and very likely downvoted in an attempt to silence you. Bigots create a hostile environment in which free speach simply cannot truly exist.
Also, the fact you'd defend their free speech first is frankly disturbing. I think you should rethink your priorities, because by that logic you're explicitly and directly siding with them over minorities.
Many of you on the left are confusing me. On one hand you are going to tell me that Alex Jones should be banned from twitter because twitter is a private platform and is not limiting free speech....
Many of you on the left are confusing me. On one hand you are going to tell me that Alex Jones should be banned from twitter because twitter is a private platform and is not limiting free speech. But on the other hand getting downvoted on reddit and arguing against your progressive movements and identity issues are silencing free speech.
I find it disturbing that you only defend the free speech of those you agree with.
Okay it's important to establish whether we're talking about the ideal of free speech, or the legal right. The private platform argument is to do with the legal right, my point about Reddit was to...
Okay it's important to establish whether we're talking about the ideal of free speech, or the legal right. The private platform argument is to do with the legal right, my point about Reddit was to do with the ideal.
And as for only defending "those I agree with", there's plenty of topics I'm happy for my opponents to have a platform to discuss. What is not okay is bigotry, anti-science and anti-democracy, because all of those viewpoints essentially serve to erase the truth, or the opinions of others.
That's a pretty strong implication to throw around, considering the correlation cited in that study is a pretty meager Additionally, the authors themselves note: Further from the Tildes docs:
That's a pretty strong implication to throw around, considering the correlation cited in that study is a pretty meager
(Pearson r = .43)
Additionally, the authors themselves note:
"It would be irresponsible to say that everyone who makes this 'free speech' argument is prejudiced," White said. "However, our data do show that racial prejudice is one of the many attitudes that go into people deciding to make this argument. We should not ignore the 'free speech' defense, but we shouldn't assume that the motives are purely based on an abstract democratic principle, either."
If you are incapable of imagining that someone may believe in freedom of speech as a foundational principal of discussion such that the only way (most likely, according to you) one can support a...
If you are incapable of imagining that someone may believe in freedom of speech as a foundational principal of discussion such that the only way (most likely, according to you) one can support a bigots right to expression is in fact if they are bigoted themselves, than this is more indicative of your own intolerance than anyone else's.
You're right, you just said that most free speech defenders are bigoted, based on a relatively low correlation in one scientific paper without other corroborating evidence, not understand that...
I literally just said that I dont think all free speech advocates are bigots, I even pointed out one as an example of someone who I don't believe os one
You're right, you just said that most free speech defenders are bigoted, based on a relatively low correlation in one scientific paper without other corroborating evidence, not understand that this correlation means that at most 18.5% of the variation in the author's dataset is accounted for by free-speech defenders who might have bigoted ideas, nor did you state any sort of error bounds (neither did the article you linked, in yet another big red flag) nor did you (or the article) give any sort of understanding of what the 'Henry and Sears Symbolic Racism 2000 scale' is, it's strengths or weaknesses, or even prevalence of use in the field. Once again, you didn't mention that the JSPS was recently shown to be one of a number of major social psychology journals to have published many articles of dubious replicability. I imagine all this information (hopefully error bars at least!) were in the original article, but if you're going to cite scientific articles to levy very strong accusations against someone, the onus is on you to understand the ways that the science might not mean exactly what the sensationalized hot-take says it does.
In response you give me a bunch of screenshots of terrible things from Reddit. There I will not argue, we both know that Reddit has been fundamentally corrupted with hate, and if you read my other comments in this thread, I think you will find that I have argued for positions closer to your own than OP's. But yet, you blatantly ignored my original quotation from the Tildes docs:
If people treat each other in good faith and apply charitable interpretations, everyone's experience improves.
I understand being shell-shocked from the vitriol stew of Reddit, but this is not Reddit. If you want this place to be free of hated and bigotry, then you too have a role to play in ensuring this doesn't happen, and it's not to keep trying to call people bigoted because of poorly summarized articles of dubious implications. At some point for Tildes to work, we most trust that the system is not yet fundamentally broken; if the OP (or anyone else for that matter) went off and started spewing hate-speech they would be dealt with, and eventually those bans will have long, sharp teeth.
It's a nice idea, but our messages will be filtered out by the Chinese censors so why bother? I could put my money where my mouth is and protest in China on behalf of Chinese citizens, but that's...
Should we not fight for the free speech of say, Chinese citizens, because they don't have a first amendment?
It's a nice idea, but our messages will be filtered out by the Chinese censors so why bother? I could put my money where my mouth is and protest in China on behalf of Chinese citizens, but that's a good way to get jailed and beaten for a few months, then kicked out and banned from re-entering the country when my government demands my release.
But what if ISP's could shut off your internet for perceived speech or actions they didn't like?
I believe this is different because hosting companies are a dime a dozen. You can even pay for a business connection, get a static IP, and host all the racist, anti-Semitic stuff you want from your home if you can't find a hosting provider to do it for you.
But ISPs (in my mind) should be treated like public toll roads that are privately owned, and to my knowledge you can drive down toll roads all you want with swastikas painted on your car, even joining up with other neo-Nazis and have a little convoy driving along expressing admiration for Hitler and preaching about how the Holocaust was actually a Jewish plot that needs to happen a second time. As long as you're paying the tolls and aren't violating any traffic laws, there's nothing the toll road owners can do about it.
And as more and more of our lives goes online with actual penalties to pay for not being online (my bank charges $2/month for paper account statements), ISPs should not be able to cancel contracts with users just because of hate speech. But given how greedy ISPs are, I don't think we have to worry about that - if Richard Spencer uses Spectrum and I use it too, what am I going to do, call Spectrum and cancel? My apartment has an exclusivity deal with them, and they're a shitty company that's used to bad PR at this point, like all major ISPs. When I move to an apartment, I'm not going to look at ISPs and choose based on who they serve- I just want a decent ISP, and I'll take what I can get.
Wasn't Voat hosted on Azure as well? Did they move off it at some point? Do you know, @go1dfish ? (I feel like you're probably the most likely to know)
Wasn't Voat hosted on Azure as well? Did they move off it at some point? Do you know, @go1dfish ? (I feel like you're probably the most likely to know)
In this case, it’s not threatening shut off because of hate speech, but rather because they were calls to violence. From what I understand, gab was created to be a haven for hate speech, Microsoft...
In this case, it’s not threatening shut off because of hate speech, but rather because they were calls to violence. From what I understand, gab was created to be a haven for hate speech, Microsoft just doesn’t want the calls to violence similar to Reddit’s policy of not allowing calls of violence.
From the article:
"Microsoft received a complaint about specific posts on Gab.ai that advocate ‘ritual death by torture’ and the ‘complete eradication’ of all Jews," the company said in a statement. "After an initial review, we have concluded that this content incites violence, is not protected by the First Amendment, and violates Microsoft Azure’s acceptable use policy.”
But they are wrong. Listen, I am Jewish and I don't want this guy to be listened to by anyone, i'd rather he be mocked for being a vile piece of shit. But calling for complete eradication or...
But they are wrong. Listen, I am Jewish and I don't want this guy to be listened to by anyone, i'd rather he be mocked for being a vile piece of shit. But calling for complete eradication or torture of a group without specifics is narrowly protected by free speech because it is not a credible imminent threat. The court has ruled many times that calls to violence in the future are not imminent.
Microsoft still has a right to remove Gab from their hosting platform if they wish to do so, but calling it not protected by the first amendment is wrong.
Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969),[1] was a landmark United States Supreme Court case based on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Court held that government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
While the precise meaning of "imminent" may be ambiguous in some cases, the court provided later clarification in Hess v. Indiana (1973) in which the court found that Hess's words did not fall outside the limits of protected speech, in part, because his speech "amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time,"[1] and therefore did not meet the imminence requirement.
I know you made the point above that you support free-speech more broadly than just first amendment rights (i.e., you believe it should apply to more than just government censorship of speech). So...
But they are wrong. Listen, I am Jewish and I don't want this guy to be listened to by anyone, i'd rather he be mocked for being a vile piece of shit. But calling for complete eradication or torture of a group is narrowly protected by free speech because it is not a credible imminent threat. The court has ruled many times that calls to violence in the future are not imminent.
I know you made the point above that you support free-speech more broadly than just first amendment rights (i.e., you believe it should apply to more than just government censorship of speech). So clearly there is some debate to be had about this statement from MS:
concluded that this content incites violence, is not protected by the First Amendment
and it's pretty clear to me that unless Gab was (say) organizing a rally to commit violence on minorities or something, that MS is wrong in their assessment (not that it applies anyways, since MS isn't the government).
However:
and violates Microsoft Azure’s acceptable use policy
(which I know you disagree with, as stated previously) is pretty much all they need to take a site down. Further, Twitter post Gab made is pretty clearly takedown in response to Azure's acceptable use policy, and not anything to do with the first amendment.
Further, it's very clear by that the person who's posts caused this issue (see the screenshot Gab posted) how bad actors on the right attempt to weaponize the first-amendment (to situations to which it clearly does not apply) to justify their hate remaining online ("we have no rights until the jews are expelled").
There is a broader debate to be had on what the limits of free-speech on private platforms on something as ubitquitous as the internet, but until the web is treated as the public utility that it really should be, I don't know that we will have that debate. Besides, proposing regulation on how internal corporate policy should be conducted seemingly would be anathema to those on the right (or at least, those who at least have some sort of principle)
I appreciate your view on the matter even if I disagree in large part. I'm really not sure where I stand on the AUP, I don't disagree that they can do it, but I also don't like that upstream...
I appreciate your view on the matter even if I disagree in large part. I'm really not sure where I stand on the AUP, I don't disagree that they can do it, but I also don't like that upstream providers necessarily have that kind of power. I believe they should be neutral platforms unless the content expressly violates the law. I don't believe there is such thing as weaponizing speech, as speech can not hurt anyone unless it is tied to a direct action like calling for a riot or screaming fire in a crowded theater. As for public utility I completely disagree, but I won't start that debate here right now because i'll be late for work! Too much time on tilde. ;)
And I appreciate your willingness to rationally debate from the other side, a viewpoint I often notice we lack here on Tildes. The rest of this is for you to look at after work, if you feel like...
And I appreciate your willingness to rationally debate from the other side, a viewpoint I often notice we lack here on Tildes.
The rest of this is for you to look at after work, if you feel like it.
So, interestingly enough I see a lot of parallels between a case like this and the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision a few months back. Essentially (and I'm not a lawyer, so don't hold it against me if I botch this) Phillip's argument boiled down to his right to express himself (via the first amendment and specifically the free exercise clause), stating that he should not be forced to make a cake for a marriage he believed was against his religion.
Now, I could easily imagine the flip-side of this situation, where a web-hosting service owned by a Jewish person discovered that one of their clients was a website where users with anti-semitic or Nazi beliefs posted and discussed their vitriolic content. Would that owner be forced to keep that client in their private business? Or would removing that website count as an act of speech, and gain legal protection (at least, if take the small step of imagining that public accommodation laws in the US included webhosts, and thus had non-discrimination clauses attached)?
This particular analogy fascinates me, because of how many people on Tildes or Reddit I think strongly disagreed with a similar argument in the first case, but I suspect would agree with (what I see as) the same argument in the second.
Next, we get to the issue of scale. The example I just provided clearly is a very different situation than what's happening with Gab & Microsoft. Clearly Microsoft is an enormous multi-national tech giant, and hence the idea of the owner (or even manager?) of the Azure hosting service having a strong moral objection to some of the content they host is therefore a bit harder to swallow (because really, if they're just now figuring this out, they clearly weren't looking too hard at what they were hosting).
That said, this is where I'll turn to a free market argument (exciting new territory for me :P). There's theoretically nothing stopping you, me, or anyone else from starting up a hosting service that has as a foundational policy what you suggest, namely that they will not remove anything "unless the content expressly violates the law". Hence, while I agree that it is concerning that we have such a system where multi-national companies, with frankly woefully inadequate systems of abuse detection / prevention, are the final arbiters of what can and can't be online (or at least, unless you're willing to hunt for more boutique hosting services), I don't see much we can do about it*. I am very aware that if the shoe was on the other foot, say, if you had some more extreme Peter Theil operating AWS, and that person decided to start taking down liberal or minority owned websites because they did not believe in letting people potentially become liberals, that people on Tildes and Reddit would be screaming bloody murder. And if anyone thinks that this is too far fetched, look no further than State Rep. David Lewis of NC, who stated:
"I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats," State Rep. David Lewis, the GOP leader of the state Assembly, said two years ago when the district lines were being redrawn. "We want to make clear that to extent we are going to use political data in drawing this map, it is to gain partisan advantage," he said, adding that is "not against the law."
It's only a hop, skip and jump from there to "I think people talking about Republican virtues is better than liberal or Democratic virtues", etc.
* And not to put too fine a point on it, but this right here is why a public utility-esque ISP and web-hosting are the only ways I see out of this dilemma for you and me, as then first amendment protections will apply to speech made on that platform. Then again, the legal implications there would be bannanas.
As a final point, I'd like to address your argument:
I don't believe there is such thing as weaponizing speech, as speech can not hurt anyone unless it is tied to a direct action like calling for a riot or screaming fire in a crowded theater.
I agree generally with this, but I can also imagine situations where it is not true. To do so, we need to recognize that speech in the internet age is very different from say 30 years ago. Back then, you needed to be on a radio station, published by a newspaper, on TV, etc. to get your voice heard. Nowadays you can simply be an underpaid Russian slaving away in some (I assume) dimly lit room posting troll comments on the internet where-ever you damn well please.
So let me again pitch you a not so hypothetical, the case of the Unite the Right rally last year in Charlottesville. Here you have rally organizer specifically calling out the Brandenburg decision:
[Organizer] Mosley says he is careful to hew to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brandenburg vs. Ohio, a landmark 1968 case that said the government cannot punish even hateful speech unless it incites “imminent lawless action.”
Meanwhile, you have participants in the rally discussing when and how to utilize force / assault people:
Participants on one call debated when it would be permissible to use riot shields as weapons. “Some screaming little Latina bitch comes at you and knocks your teeth on your riot shield, that means you hit her, and you’re going to get in trouble for the weapons,” one participant says.
People in charge telling people how to obey the exact edge of the law on what is acceptable speech
Large numbers of people discussing weapons, defense, spewing hate, etc. and,
People assaulted, injured and killed.
Now, I'm not saying that there is a direct connection between these items, clearly that's for the courts to decide. However, I think if you look at these logs, it is much harder to make the case that:
there is not such thing as weaponizing speech
organizers blandly repeating the imminent danger ruling while blatantly ignoring potential threats or other dangers, and:
as speech can not hurt anyone unless it is tied to a direct action
clearly, it's hard to point to some particular discord chat and say this is what got Heather Heyer killed, but at some point does creating the expectation for violence, and discussing / planning how to react to it encourage (or at least, not dissuade) violence from occurring the future?
Clearly this is a very difficult issue, and I have mixed feelings on this (and they are not set in stone either)... tl;dr, I think these people ultimately must be allowed to say what they wish, but discord is by no means obligated to allow them on their platform, and may even be morally obligated to remove them from it
For those wondering, these posts are what Microsoft demanded to be removed. I hope that regardless of our views on the first amendment, we can agree that calling for the systematic torture and...
For those wondering, these posts are what Microsoft demanded to be removed. I hope that regardless of our views on the first amendment, we can agree that calling for the systematic torture and murder of Jews and threatening to destroy Holocaust memorials should not be considered free speech.
See, things like that is why I think that some internet services should be considered a public utilities. I really don't care what gets censored there, but I really don't want any hosters, ISPs,...
See, things like that is why I think that some internet services should be considered a public utilities. I really don't care what gets censored there, but I really don't want any hosters, ISPs, DNS servers and such to hold ANY power to censor anyone or in any way moderate what is being posted online. We already have the biggest social media websites acting like a cabal. I want to see companies like these removing someone or something only by a court order, and not in any other case. It just wrong that these companies hold the power to essentially censor even the independent websites like gab - I understand that the community there is not a pleasant one for a lot of people, but it's the principle that counts, not the instance.
To claim to have the hope of seeing Jews raised as livestock to be tortured to death for centuries is somewhat ludicrous. The implementation of this scheme will undoubtedly raise some eyebrows. No...
To claim to have the hope of seeing Jews raised as livestock to be tortured to death for centuries is somewhat ludicrous. The implementation of this scheme will undoubtedly raise some eyebrows. No one but a provocateur would engage in such rhetoric. Even taking this rant so seriously as to argue against it is in my view to give it more thought than is warranted.
Low-effort, but relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1357/
I never liked this comic. There's a big difference between the first amendment and the belief in free speech as a human right and an ideal to strive for. Should we not fight for the free speech of say, Chinese citizens, because they don't have a first amendment?
Not sure how I feel about this move. What the guy said was pretty vile and I wouldn't ever defend it. But what if ISP's could shut off your internet for perceived speech or actions they didn't like? Microsoft is a hosting provider platform. If Gab was doing something illegal, they should be taken to court, not shut down by a multi-national tech company.
We should fight for the general principle that governments should not censor citizens. That's separate from the argument made by that XKCD about free speech not being free from consequences.
Then get a different ISP. That's difficult, but the real problem there is that there's so little competition in the US for last-mile broadband providers. That's something we should solve independently of this issue.
Free speech can and does have consequences before you get into the realm of civil or criminal law. The guy from Papa John's dropped the N word on a conference call. That's led to a ton of business partners breaking ties with him. Saying that word isn't illegal (nor should it be) and taking him to court is not an option.
Disclaimer: I support what MS did here. But we still need to have a discussion about censorship.
The reason we have constitutional protections from the government is because of the disproportionate power between rulers and citizens. This is well. The trouble is, the founding fathers had no way to anticipate similar power imbalances between individuals and corporations. We're in uncharted territory now, and it's up to us to decide how to proceed. Do we write a new bill of rights guaranteeing certain liberties to individuals? If so, threatening Jews probably shouldn't be a granted freedom, but we should ensure that similar unilateral enforcement cannot occur outside narrow boundaries (such as existing restrictions on incitement or obscenity).
I mean, the Dutch East India Trading Company was a thing, and they exterminated, enslaved and suppressed a huge number of individuals over their long, ruthlessly efficient tenure. I don't disagree that we probably need a debate about what rights platform owners have to terminate / suppress content and in particular, whether something like Facebook is a public forum, or a privately owned marketplace, and the legal / free-speech implications there-in. But it's not because the founding fathers didn't understand power imbalances between companies.
That's a damn fine counterexample. I've honestly always thought of the Dutch East India Trading Company as state-sanctioned, and it ended with all assets being nationalized, but if that's a misunderstanding then fair point.
Yeah, it was nationalized at the very end, but as far as I (or wikipedia, for that matter) know it was a private company for the majority of it's existence. I don't know if the company had an outsized influence on European politics however, one would assume they had a large pull given their size and wealth, but is it comparable to Facebook, say?
We need a real historian up in here!
I like that comic just fine. It's amazing how many people mis-use the right to free speech, thinking that it protects their right to spew hate when it does not.
I also support the right of private companies that host content to judge whether or not they want to provide a platform to people that promote various ideas. (For example, Gab is perfectly within its rights to deny me an account on their service)
Taking people to court is complex and costly. It is far simpler to just to say in the terms of service that using the service for anything considered hateful or objectionable by the service at their sole discretion is grounds for account termination.
Their virtual house, their rules.
Even if you separate the ideal of free speach from government legislation, racism is inherently anti-free speech, because it advocates for the silencing of minorities. Free speech as a concept is not a valid defense of bigotry.
Bigots are the first people whose speech I would defend. Advocating for the silencing of anyone is absolutely protected by free speech ideals and the first amendment of the USA. I would defend anyones right to call to silence me, because they do not have the power to silence me, due to my freedom of speech which I only have because bigots like them can say stupid vile hateful things.
Bigots might not have the power to silence you specifically, but they absolutely have the power to silence minorities. Look at Reddit, if you want to bring up trans issues or BLM in a mainstream subreddit you're almost guaranteed to be harassed, and very likely downvoted in an attempt to silence you. Bigots create a hostile environment in which free speach simply cannot truly exist.
Also, the fact you'd defend their free speech first is frankly disturbing. I think you should rethink your priorities, because by that logic you're explicitly and directly siding with them over minorities.
Many of you on the left are confusing me. On one hand you are going to tell me that Alex Jones should be banned from twitter because twitter is a private platform and is not limiting free speech. But on the other hand getting downvoted on reddit and arguing against your progressive movements and identity issues are silencing free speech.
I find it disturbing that you only defend the free speech of those you agree with.
Okay it's important to establish whether we're talking about the ideal of free speech, or the legal right. The private platform argument is to do with the legal right, my point about Reddit was to do with the ideal.
And as for only defending "those I agree with", there's plenty of topics I'm happy for my opponents to have a platform to discuss. What is not okay is bigotry, anti-science and anti-democracy, because all of those viewpoints essentially serve to erase the truth, or the opinions of others.
That's a pretty strong implication to throw around, considering the correlation cited in that study is a pretty meager
Additionally, the authors themselves note:
Further from the Tildes docs:
If you are incapable of imagining that someone may believe in freedom of speech as a foundational principal of discussion such that the only way (most likely, according to you) one can support a bigots right to expression is in fact if they are bigoted themselves, than this is more indicative of your own intolerance than anyone else's.
You're right, you just said that most free speech defenders are bigoted, based on a relatively low correlation in one scientific paper without other corroborating evidence, not understand that this correlation means that at most 18.5% of the variation in the author's dataset is accounted for by free-speech defenders who might have bigoted ideas, nor did you state any sort of error bounds (neither did the article you linked, in yet another big red flag) nor did you (or the article) give any sort of understanding of what the 'Henry and Sears Symbolic Racism 2000 scale' is, it's strengths or weaknesses, or even prevalence of use in the field. Once again, you didn't mention that the JSPS was recently shown to be one of a number of major social psychology journals to have published many articles of dubious replicability. I imagine all this information (hopefully error bars at least!) were in the original article, but if you're going to cite scientific articles to levy very strong accusations against someone, the onus is on you to understand the ways that the science might not mean exactly what the sensationalized hot-take says it does.
In response you give me a bunch of screenshots of terrible things from Reddit. There I will not argue, we both know that Reddit has been fundamentally corrupted with hate, and if you read my other comments in this thread, I think you will find that I have argued for positions closer to your own than OP's. But yet, you blatantly ignored my original quotation from the Tildes docs:
I understand being shell-shocked from the vitriol stew of Reddit, but this is not Reddit. If you want this place to be free of hated and bigotry, then you too have a role to play in ensuring this doesn't happen, and it's not to keep trying to call people bigoted because of poorly summarized articles of dubious implications. At some point for Tildes to work, we most trust that the system is not yet fundamentally broken; if the OP (or anyone else for that matter) went off and started spewing hate-speech they would be dealt with, and eventually those bans will have long, sharp teeth.
It's a nice idea, but our messages will be filtered out by the Chinese censors so why bother? I could put my money where my mouth is and protest in China on behalf of Chinese citizens, but that's a good way to get jailed and beaten for a few months, then kicked out and banned from re-entering the country when my government demands my release.
I believe this is different because hosting companies are a dime a dozen. You can even pay for a business connection, get a static IP, and host all the racist, anti-Semitic stuff you want from your home if you can't find a hosting provider to do it for you.
But ISPs (in my mind) should be treated like public toll roads that are privately owned, and to my knowledge you can drive down toll roads all you want with swastikas painted on your car, even joining up with other neo-Nazis and have a little convoy driving along expressing admiration for Hitler and preaching about how the Holocaust was actually a Jewish plot that needs to happen a second time. As long as you're paying the tolls and aren't violating any traffic laws, there's nothing the toll road owners can do about it.
And as more and more of our lives goes online with actual penalties to pay for not being online (my bank charges $2/month for paper account statements), ISPs should not be able to cancel contracts with users just because of hate speech. But given how greedy ISPs are, I don't think we have to worry about that - if Richard Spencer uses Spectrum and I use it too, what am I going to do, call Spectrum and cancel? My apartment has an exclusivity deal with them, and they're a shitty company that's used to bad PR at this point, like all major ISPs. When I move to an apartment, I'm not going to look at ISPs and choose based on who they serve- I just want a decent ISP, and I'll take what I can get.
Wasn't Voat hosted on Azure as well? Did they move off it at some point? Do you know, @go1dfish ? (I feel like you're probably the most likely to know)
From doing a bit of reading, yes they were, but they haven't moved off of it, AFAICT.
If Microsoft does this, why doesn't AWS pressure reddit to stop the hate speech?
In this case, it’s not threatening shut off because of hate speech, but rather because they were calls to violence. From what I understand, gab was created to be a haven for hate speech, Microsoft just doesn’t want the calls to violence similar to Reddit’s policy of not allowing calls of violence.
From the article:
But they are wrong. Listen, I am Jewish and I don't want this guy to be listened to by anyone, i'd rather he be mocked for being a vile piece of shit. But calling for complete eradication or torture of a group without specifics is narrowly protected by free speech because it is not a credible imminent threat. The court has ruled many times that calls to violence in the future are not imminent.
Microsoft still has a right to remove Gab from their hosting platform if they wish to do so, but calling it not protected by the first amendment is wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio#The_decision
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
I know you made the point above that you support free-speech more broadly than just first amendment rights (i.e., you believe it should apply to more than just government censorship of speech). So clearly there is some debate to be had about this statement from MS:
and it's pretty clear to me that unless Gab was (say) organizing a rally to commit violence on minorities or something, that MS is wrong in their assessment (not that it applies anyways, since MS isn't the government).
However:
(which I know you disagree with, as stated previously) is pretty much all they need to take a site down. Further, Twitter post Gab made is pretty clearly takedown in response to Azure's acceptable use policy, and not anything to do with the first amendment.
Further, it's very clear by that the person who's posts caused this issue (see the screenshot Gab posted) how bad actors on the right attempt to weaponize the first-amendment (to situations to which it clearly does not apply) to justify their hate remaining online ("we have no rights until the jews are expelled").
There is a broader debate to be had on what the limits of free-speech on private platforms on something as ubitquitous as the internet, but until the web is treated as the public utility that it really should be, I don't know that we will have that debate. Besides, proposing regulation on how internal corporate policy should be conducted seemingly would be anathema to those on the right (or at least, those who at least have some sort of principle)
I appreciate your view on the matter even if I disagree in large part. I'm really not sure where I stand on the AUP, I don't disagree that they can do it, but I also don't like that upstream providers necessarily have that kind of power. I believe they should be neutral platforms unless the content expressly violates the law. I don't believe there is such thing as weaponizing speech, as speech can not hurt anyone unless it is tied to a direct action like calling for a riot or screaming fire in a crowded theater. As for public utility I completely disagree, but I won't start that debate here right now because i'll be late for work! Too much time on tilde. ;)
And I appreciate your willingness to rationally debate from the other side, a viewpoint I often notice we lack here on Tildes.
The rest of this is for you to look at after work, if you feel like it.
So, interestingly enough I see a lot of parallels between a case like this and the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision a few months back. Essentially (and I'm not a lawyer, so don't hold it against me if I botch this) Phillip's argument boiled down to his right to express himself (via the first amendment and specifically the free exercise clause), stating that he should not be forced to make a cake for a marriage he believed was against his religion.
Now, I could easily imagine the flip-side of this situation, where a web-hosting service owned by a Jewish person discovered that one of their clients was a website where users with anti-semitic or Nazi beliefs posted and discussed their vitriolic content. Would that owner be forced to keep that client in their private business? Or would removing that website count as an act of speech, and gain legal protection (at least, if take the small step of imagining that public accommodation laws in the US included webhosts, and thus had non-discrimination clauses attached)?
This particular analogy fascinates me, because of how many people on Tildes or Reddit I think strongly disagreed with a similar argument in the first case, but I suspect would agree with (what I see as) the same argument in the second.
Next, we get to the issue of scale. The example I just provided clearly is a very different situation than what's happening with Gab & Microsoft. Clearly Microsoft is an enormous multi-national tech giant, and hence the idea of the owner (or even manager?) of the Azure hosting service having a strong moral objection to some of the content they host is therefore a bit harder to swallow (because really, if they're just now figuring this out, they clearly weren't looking too hard at what they were hosting).
That said, this is where I'll turn to a free market argument (exciting new territory for me :P). There's theoretically nothing stopping you, me, or anyone else from starting up a hosting service that has as a foundational policy what you suggest, namely that they will not remove anything "unless the content expressly violates the law". Hence, while I agree that it is concerning that we have such a system where multi-national companies, with frankly woefully inadequate systems of abuse detection / prevention, are the final arbiters of what can and can't be online (or at least, unless you're willing to hunt for more boutique hosting services), I don't see much we can do about it*. I am very aware that if the shoe was on the other foot, say, if you had some more extreme Peter Theil operating AWS, and that person decided to start taking down liberal or minority owned websites because they did not believe in letting people potentially become liberals, that people on Tildes and Reddit would be screaming bloody murder. And if anyone thinks that this is too far fetched, look no further than State Rep. David Lewis of NC, who stated:
It's only a hop, skip and jump from there to "I think people talking about Republican virtues is better than liberal or Democratic virtues", etc.
* And not to put too fine a point on it, but this right here is why a public utility-esque ISP and web-hosting are the only ways I see out of this dilemma for you and me, as then first amendment protections will apply to speech made on that platform. Then again, the legal implications there would be bannanas.
As a final point, I'd like to address your argument:
I agree generally with this, but I can also imagine situations where it is not true. To do so, we need to recognize that speech in the internet age is very different from say 30 years ago. Back then, you needed to be on a radio station, published by a newspaper, on TV, etc. to get your voice heard. Nowadays you can simply be an underpaid Russian slaving away in some (I assume) dimly lit room posting troll comments on the internet where-ever you damn well please.
So let me again pitch you a not so hypothetical, the case of the Unite the Right rally last year in Charlottesville. Here you have rally organizer specifically calling out the Brandenburg decision:
Meanwhile, you have participants in the rally discussing when and how to utilize force / assault people:
and asking what weapons they could bring (warning: raw discord chat logs, probably NSFW) (and again, NSFW), and then of course, someone died after being run over with a car (among the many other terrible things that happened).
So putting all these things together, you have:
Now, I'm not saying that there is a direct connection between these items, clearly that's for the courts to decide. However, I think if you look at these logs, it is much harder to make the case that:
organizers blandly repeating the imminent danger ruling while blatantly ignoring potential threats or other dangers, and:
clearly, it's hard to point to some particular discord chat and say this is what got Heather Heyer killed, but at some point does creating the expectation for violence, and discussing / planning how to react to it encourage (or at least, not dissuade) violence from occurring the future?
Clearly this is a very difficult issue, and I have mixed feelings on this (and they are not set in stone either)... tl;dr, I think these people ultimately must be allowed to say what they wish, but discord is by no means obligated to allow them on their platform, and may even be morally obligated to remove them from it
For those wondering, these posts are what Microsoft demanded to be removed. I hope that regardless of our views on the first amendment, we can agree that calling for the systematic torture and murder of Jews and threatening to destroy Holocaust memorials should not be considered free speech.
Also, some very...insightful...comments from the Gabbers on this.
See, things like that is why I think that some internet services should be considered a public utilities. I really don't care what gets censored there, but I really don't want any hosters, ISPs, DNS servers and such to hold ANY power to censor anyone or in any way moderate what is being posted online. We already have the biggest social media websites acting like a cabal. I want to see companies like these removing someone or something only by a court order, and not in any other case. It just wrong that these companies hold the power to essentially censor even the independent websites like gab - I understand that the community there is not a pleasant one for a lot of people, but it's the principle that counts, not the instance.
To claim to have the hope of seeing Jews raised as livestock to be tortured to death for centuries is somewhat ludicrous. The implementation of this scheme will undoubtedly raise some eyebrows. No one but a provocateur would engage in such rhetoric. Even taking this rant so seriously as to argue against it is in my view to give it more thought than is warranted.