The entire idea of free speech really rests on something as shaky as the sticks and stones principle!
There is much “bad” free speech, but “bad” action is intolerable. The distinction between the results of bad speech and bad action are clear - even if it is unfortunately true that speech can inspire action.
It seems to me that there's an obvious alternative option. After all, if the reason we find the idea of free speech intuitively appealing is because we subscribe to some version of "speech can do no harm", why not just base everything upon the more fundamental harm principle ("one is free to V as long as V-ing causes no harm to others") which covers both the cases of speech and of act?
My objection to speech restrictionists is that they rarely give a robust mechanism for deciding which speech should be restricted, a mechanism that's hardened against people abusing it to further their narrow self-interest.
Speech restrictionists also tend to ignore the "circular dependency problem": without anyone to defend a position, how do we know if that position is defensible? For example, suppose you live in a theocracy. You're an atheist. You start making your case for atheism. Just as you're about to make your case, the theocrats interrupt: "This speech is killing people. It's preventing them from reaching the blissful afterlife by converting them to atheism. This person is attempting eternal murder." And then throw you in jail.
I'm in favor of a well-designed terms and conditions for a platform like Facebook. But I also think it's too easy for people to say: "I don't like what you said! You shouldn't be allowed to say it!" The de facto impact of that rhetoric essentially amounts to mob rule.
https://apnews.com/article/denmark-quran-burning-law-proposa...
I grew up in the UK, where teachers at the time were banned by law from saying it was OK to be gay:
> "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship"
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28
And there are socially taboo topics today. I suspect even mentioning some of them here might create a flame war and annoy dang, so I won't.
Instead I'll point to drug references in films and TV, where weed was for a long time as taboo as LSD and heroin; and that in Anglosphere media, sex is more taboo than violence ("Straight up murder? Put that in a kid's film. Nipples, on mammary glands, the defining characteristic of mammals and a thing that infants have a biological imperative to stick into their mouths in order to not starve to death before the invention of fake ones on milk bottles? Banned for being too sexual.")
Despite these examples of mistakes when restricting speech, I am not a free speech absolutist. This is because I'm not an anything absolutist: there are limits to all things, finding the true boundaries isn't as trivial to pointing out the first two examples that come to mind, if that's one on either side saying the standard is half way between them, if they're on the same side rejecting the possibility of the other.
[0] a German word that should exist in English: to be used to deny a negative, where "yes" or "no" might be ambiguous.
Do "ugh" or "uhmm" fit the bill?
If a King said "off with his head", and someone carried out that order in a country where this was illegal, who did wrong? Is the King simply exercising his rights to free speech? What about paedophiles sharing images?
I suspect that it comes down to power imbalances. And that is something difficult to measure. A dictator and an influencer both have power to cause a lot of harm in what they say, as does an adult who shouldn't be near a child.
I agree with your example of the atheist, and in fact that has been the case for hundreds of years. The 'harm' in that case is something that people disagree on. An atheist and most scientists would disagree in the harm caused in that situation.
If I was writing a terms & conditions for a site like Facebook, I would try to distinguish between speech that aims to inform and speech that aims to intimidate. In general, I think the bar for censoring the former should be a lot higher. But it's not a hard rule, e.g. I wouldn't censor intimidating speech like "if you don't stop I'm gonna call the police".
I'm a lot more willing to censor speech directed at children, relative to speech directed at adults. Censoring speech directed at children doesn't run into the problems I discussed in my comment. (E.g. the circular dependency problem doesn't apply, because adults can still argue about what's OK to say to a child.)
I hate it that these megacorps are hiding behind free speech when they are essentially acting like editors and sponsors. They will destroy free speech in order to increase their engagement metrics.
How is that supposed to be specific to speech? This argument generalize to any prohibition: just because a dictator could use a law to put you in jail doesn't mean laws (or even jails) are inherently bad!
As a extreme example: should we allow rape or pedophilia because religious leaders in power are known to put people in jail for their sexual behavior? Obviously being put in jail for what you do in your sexual life is terrible, right, but that doesn't mean that the law has no say in any human sexual behavior either…
No right is absolute, it's always subject to the law. And all you can wish for is having a law for your country that sets the right balance between freedom and protection, and that's why democracy is important: so that the people can actually have a say on the balance, hopefully moving it to match the moral values of the society (though within the society there will always be debates on the balance, this is inevitable).
an extreme example would be to ban all fictional writing because of the actions some reader may possibly take due to reading a about some terrible awful action.
This is a completely arbitrary distinction.
In fact there are many crimes for which speech is enough to get jailed, like if you give instruction for a murder, “all” you did was speech. Racketing? Speech. Scam? Speech. Fiscal fraud? You just lied (=speech) to the IRS. Death threats? Speech. Harassment? Speech. Violation of Secret Defense? Speech.
Should all of the above be legal because speech is supposed to be special?
…, the forces responsible for, and senior to, the Mai Li massacre, …
…, the general civilian population voting for the explicitly racist Nazi party, …
Why? Because these things only happened as a result of the fact that speech is convincing.
Best you can do here is say "those people are not well-adjusted", which is fine except for where the mal-adjustments come from: speech.
Think about it in reverse: if speech had no power to change us, it would not even matter if it was free or not.
The benefits and dangers of free speech are two sides of the same coin: the capacity to convince others to act in accordance with your beliefs.
"Well adjusted adults" as a phrase can only point to those who are within the Overton Window of their society, regardless of whether that society calls for things I condemn, or not.
This means that well-adjusted adults can, will, and have, formed lynch mobs upon hearing rumours that someone has eaten beef.
To be more clear, these regimes arose because of the lack of freedom of speech, not because of the excess of it.
The "Free Speech means I can say anything I want on any platform" stance is actually very new in the United States.
This only started after the counterculture in the late 1960s-70s, when libertarian individualism (yes, the hippies had a very socially libertarian stance) in the New Left and the New Right lead to the revocation of laws such as the Fairness Doctrine, the Comstock Act, etc.
Before the 1970s-80s, American Free Speech doctrine was much closer to what you see in Canada, the UK, or Germany today - you are free to criticize and protest against the US Govt, but that doesn't mean you are free from moderation or censorship on a private or public platform.
Jurisprudence in the 70s-80s changed that by essentially removing the need for moderation, and that's how we have the irresponsible form of free speech that we have in the US today.
I blame Boomers and Gen X.
I think that, rather, it rests on observation that restricting speech is basically jamming the communication in society, which creates ossification and prevents development.
I know that reality has much more nuance, but still, it's not the point. Freedom is speech is not alone.
Words force no one to act. You retain the agency to do what you want. That’s on you when you choose to act.
I'll stay purely factual: Please go read definition of genocide. Please check also history and who systematically refuse doing peace.
Finally please check this declaration from Abbas few weeks ago: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-e...
90% of "refugees" where born in Egypt or Jordan or other arabs countries.
So your propaganda about ethnical cleansing and apartheid make Zero sense when arabs are doctors in our hospitals or members of parlement in our government...
Maybe you should just stop repeating Palestinian propaganda and come see by yourself?
At the same time I will say that your comment on the refugees being born in a foreign country shows that you have written them off. These are humans remember? Their parents were stripped of property and driven to neighboring countries condemned to live as foreigners only hundreds of kilometers away from home. Isn’t it a tragedy when second generation refugees live next door to where their parents lived? All so some European settlers move in and take their lands and homes? We can’t just write them off as “not even born in Palestine”.