If you're not willing to defend speech you disagree with, or find repulsive, then you don't support free speech. Popular and uncontroversial speech doesn't need any protection, because nobody is trying to ban it.
Not sure where you live, but a lot of what is quoted in the article would be libel - is libel allowed as 'free speech' anywhere? The anonimity of users allows breaking of rules is a bit beyond anything I'd support.
I'm not trying to make a blanket case for the acceptability of hate speech or libel, but I think there are situations where allowing them is useful.
If you are, deep down, a hateful racist, it's better that everyone else is at least aware. If for the most part you are a nice and reasonable person, there's a chance you'll be corrected and come to accept the incorrectness of your beliefs.
On the other side of things, what if everybody does share the opinion that X comes too close to the sexual harassment line on a frequent basis. It's easy to imagine that libel would appear on Yik Yak about X. But now X has a big red flag and is more careful to respect people's boundaries, fearing legal action.
This doesn't cover all cases, and doesn't pardon all libel. But especially with anonymous comments (it's not a reputable source like The Guardian), a tool like Yik Yak can help to relieve social tension, or at least bring up topics that everyone is otherwise too afraid to approach.
Libel isn't saying disagreeable things, it's knowingly lying about someone in a public context, such that it causes them harm.
It's not saying that you believe people of ethnicity X are inferior, or that gay folks and people who don't believe in your god are evil and deserve to die. It's saying, "John Doe is a child molesting, drug dealing, goat blower who's gonna steal all the shit from your apartment and tank your startup with his shitty code."
I can't see where there's value in society in allowing such speech.
Well, if someone says or implies that these students shouldn't be legally allowed to say the things they say, that's an issue with free-speech consequences. It's really quite patently obvious.
Now with that said, of course, it's important to what we have in the US isn't a constitutionally-given right to Absolute Free Speech, we have a natural right to some very high measure of freedom in our speech and a constitutional prohibition stating "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" (and jurisprudence extending that down to many non-Congress government entities).
Congress and other bodies can and do make laws which, say, prohibit a variety of things like direct incitement to prompt, violent action... or fraud... or malicious mischeif... things which may involve speech, but for which the courts have said certain restrictions can pass muster anyway, if they're limited enough. And our jurisprudence does afford local school boards and principals additional power on their own campuses.
Anyway...
I'll just say that it would be really nice if people used their freedom of speech more nicely than all this.
>Well, if someone says or implies that these students shouldn't be legally allowed to say the things they say, that's an issue with free-speech consequences. It's really quite patently obvious.
HAS somebody said or implied that? I certainly didn't notice it in the article; it seems like what you're saying here is "Well, if somebody makes it an issue about free speech, then it's obviously about free speech", which I'm not going to argue with but is also not really the point.
Hate speech is a different matter, that's why it's not legally protected. I believe in the first amendment, both the freedom it grants and the limitations it imposes. Harassing a kid because he's gay or African American isn't protected, and I'm OK with that.
