Exactly. More generally, no one's rights are absolute, because eventually exercising your rights begins to infringe unduly on others'.

It also makes good sense to me that certain types of speech, such as harassment, result in less freedom overall. (In the case of harassment, because it suppresses speech from the harassed party.)

Is publishing any private fact a person wishes to hide "more than speech", or is it only publishing information about their genitals? I.e., what principle (if any) distinguishes between publishing a picture of Donald Trump's penis and publishing a (hypothetical) private racist conversation of his?

Honestly seems like people trump the word "privacy" and "free speech" when it fits their agenda/world-views.

Well, we do have eavesdropping laws. You can record and publish a conversation as long as one party is aware of the recording. You need a wiretap warrant if you're a third party listening in. I don't think the same applies to photo/video, but I'm not sure how it differs if it does.

Yes. Content-opaque communications mediums are a binary proposition. If we do have some, then the harmful "actions" simply move to the freer networks. If they have all been eradicated, then unpopular speech is easily censored (insert a personal example you feel should be protected, yet isn't worldwide).

I would choose freedom of speech rather than destroy it to prevent some uncomfort. Society will adapt to not seeing such publishing as harmful.

Then go back to Usenet. Its still open.

EDIT: Downvotes. Yall feeling a bit salty? Look, unmoderated "free" discussions exist on the internet in many places. I'm an internet "veteran", I've seen over the years the rise and fall of moderated and unmoderated social networks starting back at Usenet.

Between there and now, there have been an "Exodus" from GameFAQs (LUEsers), Digg, Something Awful, Slashdot and more as each of these communities grew. The "free speech" guys always find another place to take their discussions, and the previous communities usually begin to shrink to some degree.

Reddit is simply going through the _same_ stages. The free speech argument comes up, toxic is spewed forth to test exactly how far the mods / owners are willing to let things go... some back and forth happens and eventually, the "free speech" guys are going to form a new community elsewhere and Reddit's role on the internet will solidify.

Its how it happens. Its how it _always_ happens.

If these communities then see a decline, then maybe that's a sign that Reddit was smart to pursue its free speech policy.

As much as people get outraged by the content, there is no doubting that Reddit has done well for itself due to its radically permissive policies up until now.

All communities pursue free speech policies until some toxic truly is spewed forth that no one likes.

/r/ShitRedditSays has really called into question exactly what "free speech" means. Its like "downvote brigades" are anything new these days. Does anybody remember "message board invasions"???

Its fine to say whatever you like, except you have no right to assemble a downvote brigade. Which is speech. You have complete free speech, except you aren't allowed to make /r/picsofdeadkids, /r/HurtingAnimals, or /r/rapingwomen. Even then, the Reddit owners are looking for a way to cut back on the downvote brigades, which really is the "invasion" problem that has always been eternal on these forums.

There is _always_ a limit to free speech. And when a community figures out exactly what that limit is, then the "free speech" nutters leave. I dunno, maybe they'll leave for 8chan or some "more free" place. Whether or not that causes death for the site... its a question.

The Gamefaqs LUEsers were neutered because of message board invasions, as well as the "shock sites" of Goatse and Tubgirl. Reddit is "free-er" and seems to be accepting of internet shock humor like Goatse and Tubgirl (As well as grossly / weirdly pornographic material like /r/clopclop). But there will be a day when the Reddit admins draw a line and say "No, you aren't allowed to talk about that here".

Has it? In the past 6 months it's been newsworthy primarily due to the worst parts of its community. That may impress a subset of message board nerds, but it probably doesn't do much for revenue.

Don't confuse bad news with bad traffic or bad metrics. I'm willing to be Reddit has seen far more traffic benefits from their "scandals" than they may have ever lost due to "boycotts" of them allowing sometning on the site. I'm also willing to bet the so-called "pressure" from advertisers to appear more mainstream is far less of a financial threat for Reddit than people are making it out to be.

This is particularly true when you consider that NSFW sub-reddits almost never make it to the front page, where the presence of offensive content could threaten traffic.

That's actually a really good idea; Reddit is summarily gentrifying. They are "thirty" now, want to make some money etc. etc.. Users should love it or leave it perhaps for the original "social network,"Usenet.

I've been wondering if it would be possible to make a modern version of Usenet. Rather than everything copied to every news server, it could be peer to peer and you just sub to what you want. Someone picks a name and they 'own' that. Maybe even make it tie back into the web, so that there are browser plug-ins so that you can have boards regarding an individual website (not to mention those not affiliated with any site).

But that's all just idle thinking with no code to back it up.

> it could be peer to peer and you just sub to what you want. Someone picks a name and they 'own' that.

So like Usenet, then.

Few news servers carries every Usenet group. No news server carries every newsgroup, because many of them are private, on private NNTP servers. It's decentralised: Anyone can run a NNTP server, and each NNTP server can take feeds of whatever subset they want, and add whatever additional groups they want for local use, or for distribution.

It has ownership through moderation, though there are certainly weaknesses there in the level of reliance on trust.

And the peering could do with some level of automation.

There is an open source distribution of reddit. Maybe that could be adapted to your new specifications?

>Someone picks a name and they 'own' that.

IIRC, there was an interesting study of decentralising git, that suggested an application of bitcoin's system for deciding who "owned" a name.

Usenet died for a reason. (that reason: spam)

This sort-of exists with mailing lists.