Shouting fire in a crowded theatre that could lead to a stampede that puts people in danger. Deliberately misinforming people about the risk of an action they are about to take could be too.
Point is, this exact argument could be (and has been) used to justify some pretty bad ideas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
I think my reply really adequately responds to the core intent of the original comment.
I’d also like to point out that your reply is not helpful. Merely gainsaying something is not useful or informative.
His point being about the critical thinking on the part of the listener, not about the physics of making actual sounds.
If you utter a communication to an insane person, the side effect might be that you are stabbed. You as the person uttering it must take responsibility for what neurophysical response in the mind of the listener might result.
If you emit communications, there can be consequences which are causal. Not strictly the volitional responsibility of the listener.
Now open your mouth and make the sounds "education is bad, our young people are being corrupted by an educational elite that is destroying America".
Thank god those sounds aren't dangerous.
We can cope with people saying stupid things. It happens regularly.
No. Open your mouth and utter the sounds ‘water is wet’ demonstrate how these words are dangerous. It is ludicrous to assert that all sentences are equally liable to be dangerous
In my opinion, prohibition of symbols, under the premise that they're subversive, like the Nazi ones, is one of the biggest cultural blunders of our time. It castrates entire generations of the possibility to experience the difference between ideas and their effect on us. It is ceding to the symbols, saying "you have power over us, with which we cannot come to terms with, the only thing we can do is prohibit your use".
The seeming culture-wide inability to discuss politics, religion or other dividing topics in a constructive way is part of the same phenomenon, in my view.
If we mute people talking about races and skin color, prohibit to single out minorities, do we actually relieve the pressure in the society, or help build it up to a radical level and fuel even more hatred that way?
If Facebook would just stop manipulating and selling your attention it would have a better defense against calls to filter the content on it.
Bad ideas spread through exposure.
If speech can effect change, how can you be sure it is incapable of being dangerous?
This might just be revealing a lack of imagination on your part. I'd argue the opposite: there are sounds you can make with your mouth that can change the course of history.
Which dovetails perfectly with the intent of the OP... police just as much, or arguably even more, than every other person, need to think about what they here and not just knee jerk respond.
So you're arguing that Osama Bin Laden, who did not himself commit violent acts but merely persuaded others to do so, was in fact not dangerous?
(Agree with your other points.)
So Facebook, a site used by hundreds of millions of people, is fine because... you don't see any propaganda?
I don't think so.
> those people are dangerously ignorant.
I think that is a gross oversimplification.
Much of the repulsive vile speech, such as hate speech, is generally festered among a group bouncing their ideas off each other. You may or may not label such groups as echo chambers. Part of the reason for this is that many people find comfort organizing into groups and generally fear/distrust originality. In other words many people value conformance more than the message to which they are conforming because an idea or message gains credibility the less original it appears and because there is security in numbers.
Mild changes of technology will not instantaneously cure original hateful speech any more than it will instantaneously modify behavior in advance or increased originality or critical thinking. It can, however, vastly alter the reach of that speech allowing vile ideas to proliferate or be constrained to faithful believers.
The balance there is if you modify technology to open wider reach then all speech, including vile hate speech and conspiracy theories, are widely available. If you modify technology to restrict reach then all speech is restricted including objective research and educational material.
My personal solution is to just avoid the online swamps where people congregate merely for the point of gathering and try not to worry about the loud volume of amplified stupidity that leaks out. When the stupidity confronts me in the real world I respond as directly as I can without regard for making people feel stupid or embarrassed, because I generally presume when people bring the full force of unoriginal ideas to me conversationally they do so in a quest to solve their personal insecurities. Don't waste time with stupid.
But in the current environment noise and distraction is incentivized and amplified and that makes things like education even more complicated and time consuming.
With reeducation camps reappearing in parts of the world and sensitivity, bias and other types of training in other parts ... that makes me somewhat uncomfortable as idea. The ones in power always want to educate the wrongthinkers.
And judging how easily Democrats learned to hate everything Trump related and before them Republicans - everything Obama, and hating each other - I would say that it is not a problem with education. People hate because it is fun and pleasurable.
The problem we have these days is it's become impossible for the casual observer to separate fact from fiction. Which then just encourages people to take information spread within their own echo chamber at face value (since, rightly or wrongly, that's the network they trust). If we can at least remove the falsehoods from the conversation that is a step forward in having open debates.
Someone will no doubt point out that there's a fuzzy line between a lie and something that is true but intentionally misleading, so where do you draw the line. Unfortunately there's no easy answer to that. However I personally believe things have gotten bad enough where it's now worth the trying.
Like the fact that "Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia" ? Who decides what is fact and what misinformation. Caitlyn Jenner is a woman - this is objectively true for half the society, bullshit for the other half. Who decides?
I've got no issue with subjective content so long as it isn't intentionally harmful but when content is objectively false (the example Cohen used was Holocaust deniers -- there's a body of evidence which proves the Holocaust did happen) it's probably better it was removed. Newspapers, for example, are often forced to write retractions when courts find them to be dishonest.
Where the blurred line lies isn't the "who" behind the moderation but the "where". Where do you draw a line between content that is untrue and content that is technically true but written in an extremely dishonest way? Do we define things as a strictly boolean state (ie only objectively false content gets removed) or is there a state in the middle where content that is not objectively false but still hugely dishonest can also be removed.
For example the UK Brexit slogan "We send £350 million to the NHS, lets fund the NHS instead" was not objectively false (well, the figure they published was untrue but lets ignore that for the purpose of this example) but it was also dishonest because it suggest the EU membership fee would fund the NHS if we left the EU and the actual truth is that almost certainly wouldn't happen. So should dishonest content be removed also when it is as damaging as something objectively false?
That's such a dangerous precedence to take however I'm also not convinced the status quo is working either because people currently game the system and it does have massive repercussions.
What exactly has Cohen ever said that's anti-Semitic? The racism in his work, like Borat, is satire. If anything, he should've offended Kazakhs by implying they ignorantly hate Jews.
> There are no sounds that I can make with my mouth that are dangerous. If people are easily convinced to hate other people, the problem is not dangerous speech or ideas. The problem is a breakdown in fundamental education, i.e., those people are dangerously ignorant.
OK, so let's say we agree that the fundamental problem is lack of education. That's great in theory, but that doesn't solve a problem today.
There are societies where unfettered lies about groups caused genocides. You can lament the poor education that contributed, but that doesn't change the fact that it can happen again.
The real issues are that lies are much harder to undo than they are to create; that many people are resource-poor, under-educated, and susceptible to lies; and that we have a biological tendency toward out-group violence that requires a thick layer of socialization to counteract.
Nothing FB is doing is threatening speech in the US. If you want them to have less power over the broadcast of speech, I'm on your side, and I'll be voting for people who want to break them up and decrease Zuckerberg's power.
Before this, he "bent the knee" with his portrayal of Eli Cohen. Wasn't a terrible film but his reverence for the character was a bit much.
FB is a dumpster fire, I don't think anyone argues otherwise these days. But differentiating between freedom of speech and "reach" is just as dangerous as saying we need to treat freedom of speech on a case by case basis.
We either have freedom of speech or we don't. If we don't, sooner or later we're all fucked.
There are no sounds that I can make with my mouth that are dangerous. If people are easily convinced to hate other people, the problem is not dangerous speech or ideas. The problem is a breakdown in fundamental education, i.e., those people are dangerously ignorant.
We need to work on the fundamental issues, not grant more power to groups with specific political / authoritarian agendas.