Everything you just said is essentially untrue when it comes to government censorship of speech in the US. Hate speech is certainly protected by the first amendment, with only a few narrow exceptions. Personally addressed, face-to-face insults, if deemed likely to start an imminent fight is not constitutionally protected.
(This is sometimes called the "fighting words" exception, and it's much narrower than you might think. The law is quite clear that just because the words might yield a violent reaction, they're still protected. Cantwell v. Connecticut involved anti-Catholic "hate speech", as we'd now term it, expressed in public in a neighbourhood that was 90% Catholic, enraged many listeners, and almost started some violence. Still protected.)
> You can still have freedom of speech while implementing moderation to make sure that hate speech, bigotry and fake news don't spread
Only if done, as here, by private organisations. Regulating bigotry on message boards is the precise thing type of things that the first amendment prevents.
There is no hate speech exception in the constitution. Hate speech is generally an example of what is most protected.
In India, the governments are known to use sedition and other laws pretty liberally to silence free speech.
I'd rather that this "serious flaw" remain, than the US too become the same as any other nation, where posting a joke on the PM can lead to jailtime.
But intentionally inciteful hate speech against racial/religious minorities can (and occasionally does) lead to fines or jailtime.
> On 15 April Merkel announced in a press conference that the German government had approved Böhmermann's criminal prosecution, but would abolish the respective paragraph 103 of the German penal code before 2018. Intense criticism followed the Chancellor's decision, with speculation that she decided to allow the prosecution in order to protect Germany's refugee deal with Turkey.[3] The case was dropped in October 2016.[4]
https://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledgebase/206-you-can-s...
https://www.dw.com/en/is-it-illegal-to-call-someone-a-nazi/a...
We already know the answer: they will claim that attacks on them are racially motivated (regardless of the truth) and shut them down. Plenty of examples of that sort of thing going on today outside of politics.
Though if the target is a politician, I'd expect them to prefer to err on the side of allowing it.
We see outrage here when a site like 8chan is rightfully lambasted for sparking various terroristic attacks. But not when a woman is arrested for laughing at a politician. Or when a black man is killed for acting or saying the wrong thing to a police officer. Or the local government deciding not to step in and display an episode of a TV series showing a gay couple which is textbook viewpoint discrimination.
These freedoms only go in one direction and I only wish those who were ardent fighters of freedom of speech would be consistent in what and who they fight for.
I don’t consider being against that a flaw.
Reference: https://abovethelaw.com/2019/08/should-the-north-carolina-gu...
Apartheid, DDR, Nazi Germany, and slaver states all used variations of public safety to restrict free speech as part of their systems of oppression, and none invoked anything close to "hate speech".
Wait, let's not think about hypotheticals. Let's think about actual restrictions of rights and how they've played out. Who gets arrested for racist speech in the UK? Nigel Farage? UKIP members? Nah. Some college student who, as admin of an organization, said white people shouldn't come to her minority events.[1]
Well, that's a bummer. But surely Germany knows how to handle hate speech right? Well, unless you offend a friendly head of state; then my dear, it's a legal process for you! [2]
Man, you know what's awesome? Ensuring that the state doesn't take religious sides. For that, we shall ban all religious symbols in schools, as France did. Surely this will not affect members of a minority religion, right? Certainly Muslim schoolgirls won't be suspended over headscarves. [3]
If you give the state the power to deny rights, they will deny them to the people it's easiest to deny them from.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahar_Mustafa_race_row
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Böhmermann_affair
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_scarf_controversy_in_F...
I guess I should not be surprised by the cherry picking that follows, where you appear to find one discontinued investigation among the 66000 recorded that year[1] a compelling story on how hate crime legislation is only used to persecute minorities.
It is depressing how you use examples of prejudice by state representatives as a basis for arguing against the protection of those being persecuted.
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
I started out convinced I’m right. You haven’t changed my mind, but I need to look up some info to have a firmer grasp of consequences.
Informally, hate speech laws are a tool that can be wielded by whoever is in power. Either that power is trustworthy enough, or it isn’t. You haven’t given me reason to believe it is, but you’ve made me seriously question why I think it isn’t.
Re: Nazis—again, it’s a tool for whoever has power. If hate speech had been a concept in the 30s, I can’t imagine Nazis not prosecuting dissenters for hate speech against them.
Just look at this very article:
> we draw the line at platforms that have demonstrated they directly inspire tragic events and are lawless by design
Freedom, like the song says, isn't free. But the cost isn't the wars we fight, the cost is the potential for that freedom to be used for nefarious ends.
I'll take hate speech. Slurs. Insults. Incitements to violence.
If it means that I cannot be arrested for voicing my displeasure of the government when my government steps out of line.
That's not how libel law works in the US, or indeed, in the UK. It applies to specific statements of fact about specific people, and does not cover opinions. For libel law to apply, you'd need specific false statements of fact about specific named people that led to damages to those named people, eg, "John Smith has done X, Y, and Z deplorable acts, and someone should kill him", which someone then read and proceeded to kill John Smith. In this case, of course, the conduct would violate a ton of much more serious laws (that is squarely in one of the exceptions to the first amendment, for obvious reasons!), and to the extent that the above conduct did not happen (and as far as I know, it did not) libel law is simply one more of the many laws that don't apply.
Not all things which are against the law are evil. Not all evil things are against the law. Just because you really think something is evil does not mean that if you look hard enough you can find a relevant law.
Consider Zodiac killer's letters or Breivik's manifesto. If copycat killers arise saying they were inspired by reading their letters/manifestos in San Francisco Chronicle/BBC respectively, should these media outlets be closed and/or deplatformed?
This seems to be no different than wanting to ban/close car manufacturers for 2016 Nice truck attack in France, leaving 87 dead.
Those are civil issues, not criminal.
Simple example: if a person wrongly claims, that some local artisan's business is insolvent, and the artisan can prove that a potential customer withdrew an order for that reason, the person who spread the fake news has to pay for the artisan's loss. Entirely.
Talking someone into commiting a crime is never treated as free speech, either.
So, this is the legal construct in Germany:
- you are free to have any opinion you like ("Meinungsfreiheit") and
- you are free to express those opinions to the public ("Redefreiheit")
Free speech, here, is limited to opinion. There is no such thing as "i am free to lie, blame, insult, taunt, threaten, defame, verbally harass, berate, incite etc..." with the excuse of free speech.
In Germany, if you say: "The president of the United States suffers from narcissistic personality disorder", AND you cannot prove this as a fact, and the POTUS goes after you for that statement, you will have to compensate for the damages of that claim (this will become very expensive, if the POTUS can prove that he lost reelections because of that statement). If you say: "To my conviction (in my opinion/I believe), the president of the United States suffers from narcissistic personality disorder", this would be completely legal in Germany.
And yes, the distinction matters!
"Pres. Reagan: Mr. Brezhnev, in the USA we have free speech- anybody can say in public: President Reagan is a fool!"
"Secretary Brezhnev: Pres. Reagan, in the USSR, we also have free speech- anybody can say in public: President Reagan is a fool!"
(Would be interesting to know the details of that lawcase. I investigated some of those incidents in Germany and in most cases they turned out to be quite different from the initial aggregations that I read in public).
https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/eric-zemmour-condamne-pour-pr...
The logical relation between (a) and (b) is the important detail here.
If the majority of drug dealers are either black or arab, this does not logically conclude, that the majority of blacks and arabs are drug dealers!
The only logical reasoning for racial profiling would be, if there was a significantly higher probability to catch a drug dealer if you randomly pick someone from that group.
The math:
Let's assume a population consisting of 20 percent group A and 80 percent group B. 0,1 percent of the population is drug dealers. 60 percent of the drug dealers belong to group A, 40 percent belong to group B. Group A therefore makes the majority of drug dealers.
With the majority of drug dealers in group A and only 20 percent share of the population, there is a six times higher probability that a random pick of group A will be a positive hit. In absolute numbers: the chance to make a positive random hit in group A is 0,3 percent, in group B it is 0,05 percent.
But: the likelihood to make a negative hit in group A is 99,7 percent (99,95 percent in group B), so even with a six times higher probability for a positive hit, the overall change for a positive hit - on a random basis - in both groups is still extremely small.
The small chance to catch a drug dealer on a random pick out of a population (not regarding race) does not qualify for an effective police procedure – to begin with. The small difference in probability of 0,25 percent between the groups does not qualify for racial profiling either. Any other visible attribute of a person that correlates with drug dealing with a higher value than 0,25 percent (clothing, cars, peer groups, haircut, jewelry, behaviour, slang, provenance and and and) is a better qualifier for random picks than racial profiling.
So, back to the case:
- France has good reasons, to forbid racial profiling under its law. It IS discriminatory, because you cannot define 99,7 percent of a group by 0,3 percent of that group.
- (b) does not conlude from (a), as it does not significantly rise the success rate, but at the same time feeds prejudices and harasses innocent people.
- Insisting on (b) clearly shows the will to ignore data and a will to feed prejudices and having innocent people harassed, so government decides to stop this behaviour.
Did they really sentence him for (b), or was he rather obliged not to repeat that statement?
In this case he was sentenced to a suspended fine of €1,000 and to damages of €9,000 to various pressure groups.
I agree with your position on the moral implications of racial profiling and I am not advocating it. But whether one supports racial profiling or not, merely discussing the merits should not constitute an offense, I think this is clearly violating free speech. And if we cannot disagree publicly with existing laws, why do we even bother having a parliament to change those laws?
Whether I have to make 1000 controls for a 39 percent chance to catch one dealer, or 1000 controls for a 95 percent chance to catch one dealer – both are incredibly ineffective. This is exactly the problem.
If I am only capable of random controls with low chances, I have to control very, very many people to make a hit (and each control of an innocent person is something, that should be avoided if possible, because it is a form of harassment). Now by going from one low probability to a somewhat less lower probability by ignoring the group of the lower probability and putting all the burden of unjustified control to the other group you create a huge sense of frustration, stress, injustice and anger. For good reason! You make a 60:40 relation to a 100:0 relation with this approach. The problem is not with the dealers, but with the false positives. 600 innocent people of group A have to be harassed for one true positive, but 0 innocent people of group B get harassed and 0 people of group B get busted, because they are not even controlled anymore (as hits are less likely). And now, by making hits only in group A, the ratio of convicted drug dealers gets pushed even more into the direction of group A, allegedly confirming the efficiency of racial profiling. It is utterly wrong. Morally and mathematically. It is a pseudologic abuse of science to discriminate a group of people. And the desire for discrimination arises from hate. That is, why racial profiling is forbidden in modern democracies and it is not a matter of free speech, in my eyes.
If you wish for a more efficient handling of your police with drug dealers, you really do not want them to perform random controls (whether racially biased or not)!
Though in reality, I mostly hear about racial profiling in France in the context of looking for illegal immigrants where the odds are even more skewed against a population than your example.
The moral argument is orthogonal from the efficiency argument, and I totally agree with the frustration generated by misguided checks (and am reminded of those every time I take a plane).
This is such a double-edged sword. In the first impulse, I would say, of course you can discuss the merits of racial profiling (as we did in this thread) and it should not constitute an offense. But you can wrap anything in a "discussion". We could also "discuss" the merits of eliminating religious minorities in concentration camps and I think this should constitute an offense. Free speech, all to often, is taken as an excuse.
I have no idea how such a differentiation can be put into law in a fair way for everyone.
For me personally, I have very clear criteria. Most importantly, I distinguish between discussion and discourse, in the sense, that discussion is just talking and discourse is a rational, sane exchange of arguments, following common sense and logic. I enjoyed very much the discourse with you about the merits of racial profiling, because it was not driven by prejudice, whinery or political agenda, we sticked to the facts, came to (not so much) contrary conclusions and this is absolutely fine.
In the case of Eric Zemmour I do not like the semantic aggregation in the community:
- he demanded something unconstitutional (racial profiling).
- in his attempt to justify the demanded unconstitutional measurement, he quoted a fact, but failed to prove the causality between the fact and the demand (he did not even try. He mistook the fact as the causality - a common mistake).
- he gets sentenced for demanding something unconstitutional.
- His followers publish their aggregation in the form: although the fact was true, he was sentenced, therefore it is not possible to say the truth in France.
This is not what happened.
His case is not about "telling the truth gets you punished". His case is: "should our society accept, for the ideal of free speech, that someone demands unconstitutional measurements, like racial profiling or putting minorities in concentration camps". I absolutey agree, that this last question is debatable!! I have no final answer for myself! But this is not, how the causa Zemmour was laid on the table in this thread.
It may be that certain groups are pursued more vigorously, less likely to mount a strong defence (therefore more likely to be convicted), or just more narrowly focused on.
The difference is that in Germany, "AlphaGeekZulu is an asshole", while clearly a statement of opinion, will allow you to go after me. Some restrictons to Meinungsfreiheit are right there in the constitution - protecting personal honor or protection the children.
So you are talking to the wrong person. You should reply to user "rlonn" who does not believe that there are (or should be) types A and B in free speech.
[...]"AlphaGeekZulu is an asshole", while clearly a statement of opinion, will allow you to go after me.[...]
Yes - diatribe exception. In that case, unfortunately, it is also not enough to transform it into "In my opinion, AlphaGeekZulu is an asshole". Granted, it is so much more complicated than free hate speech ;-)
This is incorrect. (Its inverse is also incorrect.) There isn't a legal consensus on false statements.
There is no such thing as a "natural right of freedom of speech". If one sovereign in the history of mankind decides to allow unrestricted freedom of speech in its constitution, it is just that: an episode in the history of legal systems established by humans. It can turn out as a bad idea, or a milestone for better societies. We will see. In no way is it a "natural right". Not even would it be a natural right, if it was mentioned in the bible as one of the 10 commandments from god (disregarding the FACT, that there are some serious restrictions of freedom of speech in that: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour").
In fact, there is no such thing as a natural right at all. Rights are derived from value systems, and the choice of value system is mostly based on aesthetics. There is no way to say whether the Western Christianity-based value system is "better" than, say, the Confucian value system, because the word "better" cannot be defined from first principles (without invoking a particular value system).
The most obvious first principle is that a better value system should keep you alive. Being alive is foundational.
From that you can derive other principles, like value systems should result in the production of food, clean water, protection against wild animals and invaders, disease, etc.
From that you can derive yet more principles, like the value of efficient resource allocation, stable governance and so on.
And judged by basic things like "is this set of cultural values good at keeping people alive and healthy" you can quickly conclude that some are better than others, objectively so.
To deny this is to argue that wishing to be alive rather than dead is merely an aesthetic preference - an absurd starting point, lacking any intellectual merit.
Is it?
There are plenty of people that sacrify their lives for all sorts of principles. There exist quite some value systems that explicitely do not hold "being alive" for their foundational first principle!
What about immortality, if it becomes a medical reality one day? A better value system by definition, just because we are staying alive for longer?
I won't go into your derived principles, because it is not even possible to reach mutual consent about your axiomatic first principle.
But anyway, do you have a better first principle? If you don't care about staying alive why get out of bed at all, why not just starve to death? It's more work for sure.
Furthermore, you present no argument for your particular first principle beyond aesthetics (aka "I prefer this one"). You build on the implicit assumption that human life is valuable (and apparently more so than other forms of life) for which you don't provide justification. Well, you do argue that it keeps people alive. But again, that's a circular argument. "My value system is the best one because it fulfills the goals of my value system."
I'd think the merits of being alive would be unarguable but this is HN after all :)
You're perfectly entitled to feel that certain rights should be universal and inalienable. It's also clear that nobody agrees on what those rights are, and that they get violated all the time.
* Shouting fire in a crowded theatre
* False advertisement
* Medical or legal advice (allowed, heavily regulated by the Government)
* Advocacy of force or criminal activity
And I assume, many others that I do not know of.
Unless you are arguing that there is no such thing as free speech in the US, then it must be that you can have "free speech" while still having some limitations.
* threats of violence
* blackmail
These may be entirely verbal, and yet are considered serious crimes.
Yeah, why are you allowed to play tennis but you aren't allowed to kill people? Why can you say John's a good person but you can't say he molests children? Why can you shout "fore" on a golf course but not "fire" in a movie theatre?
There's always a limit. Choosing to stop your for-profit web service from enabling bigotry and murder seems a pretty low bar here. Let me know when it's being used to prevent the discussion of ideas such as Marxism or veganism or solar power or whatever which might upset the current power structure.
Discussion of all of those topics has taken place on cripplechan which MITMflare just terminated business with.
Yes. If the speech isn't terrible it doesn't really need advocating for or protecting does it? Arguing for free speech is inextricably linked to arguing for people to be able to say despicable things.
So you are free to send spam. I'm free to refuse it. I'm not required to transport your junk if I don't want to.
That is a baseless and offensive statement. Very unhappily, this kind of irrational hatred (and polarization) is on the rise in many parts of the West. It is not a problem with Americans.
I live in China, a textbook totalitarian state.
What you say is awfully similar to what CPC puts as their justification of censorship.
The prevailing narrative among the "dotcom" community in the West, and what you have said wrote is very similar to their position.
The dream of the perfect context free golden rule does not exist. We have to pay attention and make hard decisions. None of this is simple.
You cannot win anything if you position yourself against freedom of speech and fascism. It is just not a winning strategy and the problems will slowly escalate from there.
Any civil right can and will be abused. Be that freedom of speech or just general social security services. That are the disadvantages you have to accept. If you restrict peoples ability to express themselves, you just handed your political opposition exactly what they wanted.
Yes, they are allowed to spread their message because they are allowed to. And that they did. 5 years ago even anime weaboos made fun of them for it. It never spread further than a few bad threads.
Now we have this fucked up situation where liberal political parties argue against civil rights. Worse, they do it in the name of minorities, which is just plain ridiculous. They elevated people nobody would have taken seriously to something more.
Not saying that being the victim of trolls is not embarrassing. But it is time to get over it. There are also parties that have a certain interest in shutting down platforms that are free from governmental control. I still think that is a very bad thing as it would undo a lot of achievements we won with the inception of the net.
I doubt that only Americans are the problem in this case. I think what has happened is that hate speech and other undesirable (subjective word but bear with me) content is a hack into human psychology and a small percent of human beings regardless of nationality will always be influenced by hate speech and caste-ism and what not. The problem is that as the internet has reached the masses, the lone fanatic has a very large soapbox to shout and a very loud speaker to listen from.
That's an incredibly offensive and hateful comment. Fortunately for you, in America the first amendment protects your right to say it. Maybe you can see where allowing the government to decide what is and isn't acceptable speech might be problematic.
It's an oddly pervasive delusion that hate speech is not protected by the first amendment.
As has been brought up in a different comment branch, there is no single perfect definition of "hate speech." It's nice while a hate speech ban matches everything you agree with, but too easy to pivot into something worse.
I believe advocates of these laws just want to quench dissent, since hate can be defined as anything.
This kind of argument always strikes me as a rather poor defense that basically reads: we cannot find a perfect solution/system, so we're not going to do anything.
In reality, no system is perfect and can be abused one way or another. The task is to find a cost/benefit trade-off that most people are comfortable with. Instead of arguing that nothing should be done because it can later be abused, just own up to your value system and acknowledge that this is the cost of the way you frame/uphold your values and you are prepared to pay it.
And those peoples children. And their children. And their children's children.
> just own up to your value system and acknowledge that this is the cost of the way you frame/uphold your values and you are prepared to pay it.
And our value system is that while I may not agree with what you say, I will defend to death your right to say it. And sites like 8chan is the cost we have to pay. I don't believe attempting to silence it would stop shooters, like other commenters say, they would just move into tor and telegram groups. And I think having hate speech be allowed publicly is a adequate cost to ensure that what I say today doesn't have to agree with what someone thought was okay 200 years ago, and that 200 years from now the current political opinions won't affect other people's rights to speech.
> and you are prepared to pay it.
You'll pay it, but also your children. And their children. And their children's children. Except it's shown time and time again that the way values are framed and upheld changes, while the "payment" of it doesn't.
> arguing that nothing should be done
It's not doing nothing, it's the exact opposite. You suggest we suppress it, I suggest we encourage anyone be able to speak their mind and then decide individually if they're worth listening to.
There are obvious pros and cons to nebulous hate speech laws. They codify assumptions about what is currently culturally sacrosanct into law without regard for consequences.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4075328/Man-jailed-...
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-surrey-47638527
https://www.france24.com/en/20181031-blasphemy-middle-east-a...
So do I, but outside essential utility monopolies, I also believe that no one should be forced to facilitate those opinions. That Cloudflare choose not to do so is ultimately an expression of their own opinions and values.
Oh, and you ever thought that Cloudflare should stop providing their services to 8chan, and that your opinion was worth a damn, guess what—your opinion was worth a damn.
The First Amendment protects three rights: Speech, Religion, and Assembly
Cloudfare used its right of assembly and chose not to associate with 8chan any longer.
Cloudfare is not required to host anything.
It can have consequences while not being worth anything.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/31/facebook-...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/08/it-fe...
The Treason Felony Act 1848 [1] is something that is still technically a part of the law in the United Kingdom even if not actively enforced. In 2001 The Guardian made a legal effort to finally have it officially removed from the books, and failed [2]. The act makes it illegal to call for the abolition of the monarchy within the United Kingdom, even "imagining" such is sufficient to conviction. The max penalty is life imprisonment -- quite progressive as it used to be death. This is a stark reminder of why and where the desire for free free speech came from. Imagine our past without freedom of speech. There undoubtedly would have been numerous states that would have made the mere advocacy for abolition illegal, others that would have made advocating for suffrage of various groups also illegal, and so on.
You may think it simple to demarcate a line between 'reasonable' and 'unreasonable' speech but it's not so easy and ultimately the individuals that get to decide as such are those with the most power in society. The lines end up being drawn as fairly and reasonably as our states draw the lines laying out their voting districts. Laws against free speech invariably end up being exploited to help entrench whatever political ideology happens to get a grip on power within a nation, as the UK laws past and present are a reminder of.
Such laws can even be used to enforced bigoted views. For instance in the UK in 2017 a 19 year old lady was arrested and convicted, forced to wear a ankle monitoring device, abide a curfew, etc for "sending a grossly offensive message by means of a public electronic communications network." Her crime? Quoting lyrics from a Snoop Dog song on Instagram. That conviction was overturned a couple of years later. In another case (again in the UK) a Christian preacher was arrested for stating that, while he was not homophobic, he believed that the Bible taught homosexuality was a sin. Again it was overturned, yet being arrested, let alone convicted, for such "offenses" is hardly a society any should thrive to emulate.
Ultimately, I think people only see things they disagree with as being affected. In reality once free speech goes it will also include some of your views you find in no way unacceptable. In Germany until 2018 it was illegal to publicly insult any head of state. It was revoked only when it became inconvenient to the powers that be. Following a comedian reading an obscene poem about Turkish president Erdoğan, Turkey demanded and lawfully received prosecution which ultimately led to the law's removal. Laws which make it illegal to "defame" the President of the German Federal Republic remain on the books.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason_Felony_Act_1848
[2] - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/13/calling-abol...
1) In UK law, there is no right to freedom of speech. The only people who are allowed that privilege are MPs in the house of commons.
2) The communications act expressly disallows "grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or false" However, the definition of what grossly offensive is based on precedent, and is therefore not fixed.
3) libel
Libel needs reform. It needs to be modified sensibly to allow for quick, cheap & legally binding judgements, in the same vein as the small claims court.
The point still remains, even in the USA, there is no such thing as freedom of speech. You are not allowed to say whatever, whenever. The problem comes when trying devise a set of rules that allows a society to operate freely, but not get derailed by ne'er-do-wells
You can still have freedom of speech while implementing moderation to make sure that hate speech, bigotry and fake news don't spread - because if those things spread then they leak into the real world as death. 8chan has been shut down not only because it hosted hate communities, but because it refused to apply any moderation there.
However, the problem is not 8chan alone. It's good to shut down websites where hate speech proliferates without constraints, but a couple of days or weeks later new *chan websites are likely to pop up to replace them, or maybe they'd make a Telegram group. The root problem is Americans. And I'm honestly not sure of how to fix the problem with a whole population that has become so irrational, polarized, ignorant and sensitive to hate speech.