There are plenty of very practical ways to legislate speech, we already do it all over the place.

We don't live in this legal abyss, most institutions make decisions for their business, but also for what they view to be higher, civic purposes.

Cable and Broadcast TV standards aren't just about profit maximization, they're kind of there to set a 'decency precedent'.

I mean, for the same reason you don't see 'porn everywhere' - you don't see the kinds of hyperbolic stuff Jones is saying all over the place.

Almost all organization have thresholds of various kinds, certainly Search, Social Media, Netflix, Cable/Broadcast in general, news outlets, Cable carriers, Academia yada yada.

The question will be perennially 'what to enforce and why' but we definitely already have standards.

Aside from fighting about the rules at various institutions, we then have 'legal' rules (a bit different), and of course we probably want to make sure there are at least some forums where anything can be said.

But there are not...

> The question will be perennially 'what to enforce and why' but we definitely already have standards.

Yes, but each of us has a different standards.

In usa for example, they have "the nipplegate" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XXXVIII_halftime_sh... where one nipple (a thing kids hang on for some time, then are disallowed to see for a few years, then want to hang on again,... and well, girls see in the mirror every day) causes such controversy...

...and in the country of my birth (yugoslavia), even in the "dark socialist times", you had nipples on public tv in a milk commercial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYhaHhpLKag&t=21s

It's same with speech, you might agree with your own personal standards, but many others don't, some believe in absulute free speech, and some want to censor what they believe to be "hate speech".

This is again one of those things where people say that they agree to a standard of what is and what should not be free speech, but each has their own standard incompatible with the other ones.

Is posting an image part of your free speech? Absolutely yes.

Then let's see, when was the last time you were exposed to a child pornography image? Hopefully never (though we do have this whole pornhub drama going on).

It is obvious that there are ways of controlling speech and we do it all the time. I think only Americans believe in this absolute negative liberty view of speech.

Child pornography isn’t illegal because of the contents of the speech. It’s illegal because it’s an accessory to the original crime of child molestation. That is why the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that virtual child pornography, even photorealistic, is Constitutionally protected speech.

Okay but you're can surely realise that someone in possession of child pornography images that were taken, say, 20 years ago is no longer accessory to the original crime in any way. In fact, it might very well be possible for that person to not have even been born back then. Of course, that's not really how law works because some crimes don't have a deadline.

But whatever the legal reasoning behind it is, the consequence is that you are pretty much forbidden from distributing this material on the internet and so your right to show something to others is being restricted. I would consider that a limitation of free speech. But of course, I can totally see why you'd have the need to justify it in some other way, because we don't want our freedom of speech to be limited in any way. The law is always open to interpretation after all.

What's the reasoning behind restricting people from sharing copies of copyrighted material? Obviously it is also an illegal action. My point being, there are many ways in which our speech is monitored and restricted already.

> I think only Americans believe in this absolute negative liberty view of speech.

That's a wonderful compliment.

It's really not.

Some groups due to historical or biological reasons require special protection. It is why we protect kids, it is why we protect people with disabilities. But if you take negative liberty to its extreme this special treatment that we offer these groups of people become unwarranted privileges. A world view that is based entirely on negative liberty ends up in a "survival of the strongest" state.

Obviously there is a big discussion on which groups require what sort of positive reinforcement from society to be able to truly enjoy and perform as close to the rest as possible. One simple example is access to buildings for people in wheelchair. When the government requires businesses to put these they're infringing on the businesses liberties to decide how to, well, run their business. But I know very little people who wouldn't agree with this situation.

So, i don't know, I think a purist vision of the state as a non-interfering voice (negative liberty) has for a long while been deemed an inadequate way of structuring society. So I don't think it's a wonderful compliment.

I see it more as hubris then something beneficial. Any society that allows a man like Alex Jones to peddle what he peddles with just a light financial slap on the wrist isn’t a society I consider to be healthy or going in the right direction, even on principle. It creates a dog eat dog world and it doesn’t have to be that way.

Do you believe someone should be able to brigade 1,000 people to post slander and accusations across the internet such that you are fired and ostracized from society, and possibly investigated and bankrupted?

Speech is information, and in the information age there is a lot of speech that can rapidly be brought to bear on someone. We've already seen it happen with internet mobs and similar things.

What happens when someone weaponizes it? Because that's what is going on here, and to pretend it is simply like "speech" from the ages of horseback and paper, much like when "arms" were muskets, is naive from a policy standpoint.

So you agree that Alex Jones is deliberately spreading lies for personal profit, and that this is harmful, but believe there shouldn't be any laws against it or any punishment for the consequences? Does that include the judgement he's facing now?

Governments have been regulating speech since the beginning of governments. Every society doesn't exist in a state of maximal speech oppression as a result, so it cannot be the case that any attempt to regulate speech chills free speech in general.

>so it cannot be the case that any attempt to regulate speech chills free speech in general.

That does not follow. It only follows that it doesn't chill free speech maximally.

No, sorry. I don't mean to imply he shouldn't be penalized in this case. I'm talking about literally everything else he says that doesn't get prosecuted. For example, saying the election was stolen is perfectly legal even though it's a destructive lie. Without a plaintiff who can cite specific harm, there's no crime

> I fervently believe that there's no practical way for government to regulate speech so they shouldn't try.

> I don't mean to imply he shouldn't be penalized in this case.

Those two statements would seem to contradict each other. How can you believe that the government should not try to regulate speech, yet it should still be able to penalize someone for their speech?

Well stated.

There is practical and very much effective way: it is called propaganda: you don't need to regulate speech if you can control what people think (and national security, wokeism will take care of the rest).