Re:Facebook to ban white nationalist content
by james_s_tayler on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @02:15PM
(#19504099)
It's a centuries old debate initially had out by Hobbes and Rousseau.
Hobbes' famous phrase from Leviathan "bellum omnium contra omnus" (the war of all against all) describes absolute freedom as being problematic indeed. Rosseau provides an answer in The Social Contract to say you can't have a war of all against all, you instead need the state to be responsible for being able to imprison people and collect taxes on them and this alleviates (generally speaking, to a large degree) the problems absolute freedom present.
Re:Facebook to ban white nationalist content
by int_19h on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @07:53PM
(#19507554)
He's not talking about absolute freedom in general, though. Only about absolute freedom of speech.
And there's no paradox of tolerance with speech - you can tolerate intolerant speech just fine, so long as you police the actions.
Absolute freedom is a contradictory concept. How can you kick an unwanted visitor out of your house because you don't like what he's saying? Aren't you infringing on his rights? Someone needs to draw a line.
So what about a social media oligopoly? How dominant does Google need to be before you have to tell them to allow freedom of speech.
What about network neutrality?
Etc etc...
It's not so easy to answer this question.