“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.”

― Frederick Douglass

Care to elaborate? How do you protect against abuse of any exceptions in the long term? Why do you characterise absolute freedom of speech as an "ignorant" take, which could be construed as a bad-faith discussion tactic on here.

With “absolute free speech”, a couple of us could find your name and address, spread credible and damaging falsehoods about you, and there’s nothing you could do to stop us. And that’s not just in some online soapbox; we could call your employer, make police reports, put ads in newspapers, put posters on utility poles, tell your neighbours, tell the businesses that serve you, etc.

Yes. And we could do the same back to you.

Presumably society would eventually get over itself and evolving into something more tolerant of personal opinions, and questioning internet-sourced information.

Or, from another perspective, the only alternative is that only some people can do that. (E.g. politicians, security services, etc)

I'm not sure that would be preferable.

Choosing to be at the mercy of the people with the best opsec instead of the government sure is a take.

EDIT: I mean “in addition to the government”.

I’m sorry. I really meant “in addition to the government”.

"Ignorant" == you can't be bothered to come up with a genuine refutation

How about: drumming up hatred and demonizing people has a long history of terrible consequences, e.g., rwanda, nazi germany, kkk, ...

You make a good point but you can't in the long term fight against this in a healthy way by stifling peoples access to information. Some people seem to hold the worldview that they know the right answers and must protect the simpletons from the wrong ones, where others would like to make all information available and trust in people to eventually form sensible solutions.

It’s interesting how people like the OP single out the two cures for the diseases of hatred & oppression: censorship and cancellation. And yet lack the courage to couch their ask in plain language: Let us say anything we want but never face any consequence for doing so.

Stop equating strong freedom-of-speech ideals with racism. Nobody should be silenced unless they are directly inciting violence. Remember, any exceptions can be twisted around as social norms change.

>Nobody should be silenced unless they are directly inciting violence.

>Remember, any exceptions can be twisted around as social norms change.

If no exceptions to free speech can be allowed because they could possibly be twisted, then neither can the exception for directly inciting violence. Absolute means absolute.

If you don’t believe in freedom of speech you believe in censorship.

If you believe this then you must believe the US is poor at censorship given the amount of chaos in the past year.

All this really means is China will guaranteed to be the next superpower, they have perfected censorship. Freedom of speech is the only thing giving the US a competitive edge at this point.

Either the US becomes a mediocre censorship state or freedom of speech stays.

I would not call it ignorant. It is extreme, yes, but not ignorant. Unfortunately, you cannot have censorship-resistance with exceptions. Even if you have the greatest moderation team, it will all break apart sooner or later.

"Thou shalt not kill" is also an absolute bedrock principle which is, of course, impossible to literally always follow.

But it's still a very important guidepost around which to orient your principles.

"Freedom of most OK speech is absolute" is a useless principle. Which is why we should not frame the freedom of speech as such.

You sir, are not familiar with the old testament.

I... am?

This is actually my entire point. It's a principle broken on many occasions, but nobody walks around saying "Oh, we shouldn't even TALK about not killing — that's IGNORANT — because there are so many exceptions where it's okay to kill people."

You can still guide around important principles, even if reality imposes exceptions!