Free speech lets us as a society determine which acts should be restricted.
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.
A lot of the problem is definitions. I'm not a free speech 'absolutist', do I guess I'm 'restrictionist'. But what defines 'speech'. It can cover the spoken word, the written word, communication in art, photograph, video.
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.
I'm a bit skeptical of the "power imbalances" approach. I don't think it becomes fine to say "off with the politician's head" just because the speaker is powerless. Additionally, if "power imbalances" are a core factor in your decision-making, that incentivizes people to argue that they are powerless, and "oppression olympics" discussions of this kind are hard to adjudicate. (For example, arguing for your own powerlessness works better if you already have some power. Impoverished people in developing countries have very little power, and often lack the time, money, and language skills necessary to communicate with us.)
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.)
> 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.
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).
stop mixing together actions meaning done (or doable) deeds, and statements such as speech
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.
> stop mixing together actions meaning done (or doable) deeds, and statements such as speech
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?
Doch[0], never limit yourself to a single example.
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"
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.
I don't think "doch" is particularly fitting, because the GP did not make a negative statement (rather a positive one about not looking further than some limit). Its usage felt weird to me as a response to the GP.
I guess for German speakers it fits in to more places. As a non-German speaker, at home I use it to express agreement with a statement where saying "yes" or "no" would be ambiguous.
I lean towards absolutist position but I think the big problem is algorithms here. If algorithms are promoting something then it is no longer a simple case of free speech.
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.
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.