Short answer: no. But one should define terms, especially with legal implications.
“Hate Speech” always sounded a bit Orwellian to me. Just like “Homeland Security”. People should be allowed to speak about what they hate, even if it’s bigoted, racist, sexist, etc. if free thought and inquiry are valuable human rights.
In general, I believe the jurisprudence of free speech in our country (USA) essentially says beyond, libel, slander, inciting violence, or sedition, the government can’t imprison you for expression or forcibly silence you in a public forum.
Private organizations and companies can regulate speech within their domains and property to the extent that they don’t violate other laws or rights of other parties within and without their said domains and property.
I think that’s pretty fair.
No. Absolute free speech means allowing people say whatever they like and that means anything. You can spam somebody with messages telling them to kill themselves. You can put a loudspeaker in front of somebody’s house and play a message on loop telling them to kill themselves. You can openly call for somebody to kill another person and not get in trouble for enticing a murder. You can shout down anybody you like and tell them to shut up or threaten them, all you have to do is be louder and look like you have the means to kill them in order to intimidate. And that will all be fine because if someone tries to stop you from expressing your opinion, they will be infringing on your right to absolute free speech.
It does however create a paradox: if someone uses their free speech to infringe on somebody else’s free speech, what can be done? You can’t tell the person infringing to stop because that would infringe on their free speech. After all, they have a right to absolute free speech, don’t they? So, if you say “your right to free speech ends where the right of somebody else’s begins” then it’s not absolute anymore.
It also opens a can of worms as to what counts as expressing free speech and what counts as suppressing it. Does blocking somebody on a platform infringe on their right? Does muting? If the rule is “right to speak, but no right to be heard”, what counts as speech? Does typing and hitting send count as free speech? Well, I could give you an app with a textbox and a send button, disconnect you from the internet, and you could write everything you want, hit send and it never leaves your computer but you did express yourself, didn’t you? Or maybe the sounds coming out of your mouth count as speech / expression ? Well, I could gag you, you can make sounds and that’s speech, right?
So no. I don’t believe absolute free speech can exist.
Depends where u draw the line? Everyone draws the line somewhere different so some people are always going to to unhappy therefore its impossible.
The fediverse has completly sidestepped this issue by giving you the choice of what instance u want to engage with and thus can find one thats draws the line where u would like it drawn.
No. Free speech includes all speech, even the unsavory kind. You can have it as an ideal and aim for it, but unless you allow for every spammer and scam artist, it’s not free speech.
Yes, free speech doesn’t mean necessarily free speech absolutism
I like to remind *free speech absolutists" that child porn is technically a type of speech.
It’s inherently exploitative due to the age difference. Free speech doesn’t cover violating someone else’s rights like that.
Absolutely right, but there is still a limit on speech. Every right must be balanced against other rights
The best way to think about this is https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moderation-is-different-from-censorship
Many good things have already been said, but I want to add one thing.
If you want an coherent framework that allows free speech but no hate speech, look at consequential ethics. As opposed to rule based ethics (free speech absolutionists).
I.e. we want to maximize the amount of common knowledge (flow of information or free speech) because it leads to the best results over time. If we want to maximize the flow of information, we cannot be absolutionists, because that puts us in a local minimum (failing to optimize properly). In other words, we need to restrict certain free speech to achieve maximum effective free speech.
No, because free speech includes all speech. Even the speech we disagree with.
We don’t technically have free speech in the US either. You can’t make death threats or shout “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater.
Thats because once discussion on something concludes, you generally make it law.
“Murder is bad” is very much agreed on to be a good thing. To me it is only logical for the next step to be “verbally encouraging or excusing murder is bad”, which might not need to be law, but it should at least not be state backed.
There is a difference between being allowed to say whatever you think, and having the state guarantee that whatever you have to say is actually heard.
Not being heard or listened to, is not a violation of free speech. Being removed or “silenced” online or even physically in public, is not a violation of your free speech.
Free speech is to be free to say whatever you like, but it does not protect you from what other citizens do in response.
If you insult someone, and they punch you in the face in response, your free speech was not violated.
“Hate speech” is a category of “opinion” that is obviously harmful that anyone thinking straight should immediately dismiss it. The problems have started because thanks to the internet, those “opinions” can now reach all the people who aren’t thinking straight.
For those who do identify hate speech easily, to protect those who don’t, by at least not propagating it (social media, government) is the bare minimum of what they can do.
Taking away the megaphone if someone is using it to encourage murder is not a violation of free speech. And it’s necessary.
With a megaphone, you don’t need to be right. You just need to be heard by enough people that the tiny percentage that will believe whatever you say, is a large enough group to be dangerous.
The free speech absolutism is useless in practice.
Yes. There is no contradiction. Freedom or speech is the freedom to discuss or criticise as part of a discussion, in particular the freedom to criticize those in power without the fear of repercussion. Discuss sensitive topics to all your hearts desire. Hate speech does not intend to discuss anything. Hate speech is there to target, to threaten, to belittle, to dehumanise, to attack. Hate speech is violence.
That’s free speech with an asterisk. It also means you have this big gray area and someone policing and deciding what is and isn’t hate speech, so you won’t ever see completely free speech thoughts from everyone.
You can’t have your cake, and eat it too. Having rules against what can be said or talked about means you’re in a bubble, for better or worse.
Oh no, policing. Like in everything else in a functioning society because people do things they are not supposed to. You’re free to drive wherever but you’re but free to ram your car into pedestrians. Oh my god the oppression.
Yes but one is words, and the other has a guaranteed tangible impact? I don’t think thats a viable analogy
Somebody calling up your family and workplace and tell them you’ve been stealing for your drug habit are also just words.
It’s essentially a practical application of the paradox of tolerance. And like with that one, the paradox goes away when the offending party breaks the social contract.
"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise." - Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
Everyone seems to forget the second paragraph of the quote.
Also a contract by definition cannot be valid and signed under duress thus the social contract is an invalid assertion. At the end of the day only thing that actually matters is Darwinian evaluation.
Everyone seems to forget the second paragraph of the quote.
No. The “as long as” does the necessary lifting there. Far-right rhetoric is a denial of reality and of any argument with a complete lack of shame or self-reflection, therefor this second part doesn’t apply.
There was a time when we thought rational argumentation and logic were good enough to convince, but that has been dead for a few decades, and the US just paid that price.
signed under duress
I didn’t ask to be bornthe point is if you don’t sign the contract you’re not protected by it and you get no benefit, that’s not duress. If you sign it but break it, you pay. No one is forcing you to sign, but if you don’t, you can fuck off.I took “counter them” to imply countering their actions amd thus their indoctrination of new people (as to keep them as a minority).
Far-right rhetoric is a denial of reality and of any argument with a complete lack of shame or self-reflection
Name a single intolerant utterancr that does not fulfill this criterion. Ur welcome to critisize karl popers arguments if u wish. But if u do so u cannot use the same argument to support ur arguments and argue against the second half of that very argument. Classic case of cakeism.
The election in the us has very little to do with extremism or utterance of intoletant ideology. Trump got the same or very simmillar amount of votes as he did last time. Harris lost millions compared to biden. Most people dont read the news and thus are completly uneducated on politics. They hear a sound byte like “make america great again” go “fuck i cant afford bread id like to be great again when i could afford to eat” and vote based on that. The average person is an idiot and half of all people are dumber than that.
the point is if you don’t sign the contract you’re not protected by it and you get no benefit, that’s not duress.
Ur forgetting the most important law of all. Its not illegal if u dont get caught. As long as u dont get caught u can go around breaking the social contract as much ad u want and still get the benifits and protections of it. Eg every billionare or corporation ever.
If you sign it but break it, you pay. No one is forcing you to sign, but if you don’t, you can fuck off.
No. If u sign it and break it and get caught breaking it and cant pay ur way out then u pay. The social contract is a tool the government and elites use to derive legitimacy while also allowing them and their buddies to neglect holding up their end.
I would be careful with phrases like, “there is no contradiction.” There is a comprehensible tension between free speech as the ability for anyone to say what they wish, and a prohibition on hate speech as a prohibition on saying specific things. Denying that risks damaging one’s credibility because it can appear that we are merely refusing to acknowledge that tension.
I argue it’s better to admit these tensions. And that’s not an admission that the arguments for prohibition of hate speech are weak, but it is an admission that as real people in the real world, we can never have the comfort of a tension-free, contradiction-free theory for anything of significance.
Well how do u define hate speach? Is misgendering someone hate speach or free speach? Is burning a flag hate speach or free speach? Is calling for the death of elon musk hate speach or free speach?
Its impossible to define hate and free speach in a way everyone agrees with ans thus impossible to have both symultaniously for everyone.
The fediverse is beautiful cos u can choose an instance that defines both in a manner u choose fit or even spin up ur own server and do it however u want.
Misgendering on purpose, hate speech. “On purpose” might be a fuzzy term, but patterns of behaviour will usually make it obvious. Burning a flag, free speech. Calling for death of Elon Musk, hate speech. Calling him out on his bullshit, free speech.
Not actually that hard.
Misgendering on purpose, hate speech.
So ur definition of hate speach can include something that is purly a subjective experience of being offended? The subjective is by definition whatever one claims it to be. Thus i could claim that subjectively u speaking at all is hate speach? Ohh and dont try claiming its not subjective cos i dont give a fuck if u misgender me (my existance is a counter example of any possible proof).
And here we are disagreeing about what is free/hate speach thus both symultaniously is impossible.
Not imposible if you’re wrong. Which you are.
What about demeaning others is subjective? Do you fear that victimhood will be wielded as a weapon? I believe a good percentage of cases of hate speech are very obvious, and the rest should be handled by good old societal norms and shaming.
Do you feel bad when others correct you?
Didnt u rwad what i wrote?
U don’t have a right not to be offended that is simply the cost of free expression. Its only demeaning if u let it be demeaning i dont give a fuck if u misgender me therefore i have a different subjective experience of the same act therfore it is subjective (i am a counter example to any possible proof, as i said).
The subjective is what u decide it is therefore i can subjectively claim u opening ur mouth is demeaning and thus u should be silenced.
What is wrong with this logic other than u dont like it? U havnt corrected me cos u havnt addressed my argument or points all uve done is make the assertion that missgendering is demeaning for ur subjective opinion.
I’ll grant that there’s no acceptable way to programmatically evaluate some text and infer from the text alone if it’s hate speech.
That’s why I stick to a manual process to evaluate. For example, if enough people report you for misgendering others, and you do not adjust your behaviour it eventuallt becomes hate speech. But a human has to go and analyze this, it is difficult, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.
But your argument is that it’s impossible, and I just illustrated that it isn’t impossible. I do agree that it’s hard. But that’s just life for you. Nuance takes time and effort, as most worthwhile things do.
U missing my point entirely. How can a subjective experience of offence be hatespeach?
The method for evaluation is irrelevant. My argument is that a subjective experience can be anything by anyone.
My argument is not that its impossible to determine but thats since we disagree its impossible to reconcile hate speach and free speach for everyone our definitions of the 2 are different. Thus this answers ops question with a firm no its impossible. This conversion itself is proof. We are the counter example thus the alternative cannot be true. Proof by contradiction.
No. “Hate speech” is an intentionally broad term designed to be abused and weaponized against unpopular speech.
A better approach would be more specific. No racist speech. No homophobic speech. No misogynistic speech. Etc. Leaving it open ended and subjective is setting up for failure.
No. “Hate speech” is an intentionally broad term designed to be abused and weaponized against unpopular speech.
Ur absolutly right.
A better approach would be more specific. No racist speech. No homophobic speech. No misogynistic speech. Etc. Leaving it open ended and subjective is setting up for failure.
Unfortunatly that can be abused just as easily and an overly broad term.
Thus i would personaly draw the line at preventing speach that calls for or incites actionable physical violence.
Makes sense to me.
Leaving it open ended and subjective is setting up for failure.
Having a specific list always misses something, and bad actors will find ways to abuse the gaps in that list.
Bad actors also abuse the rules when they’re too broad.
No they don’t. The argument is that good actors get overly punished for doing things that shouldn’t be illegal yet are. You’re not even being logically consistent in your arguments.
They absolutely do. One of the best ways to get a community banned on these platforms is to get the rules as ambiguous as you can, and then flood the community with bots breaking the rules.
It’s Twitter, there are no communities, what are you talking about?
Speaking broadly about social media.
At the societal level with hate speech laws you can’t use bots though. You’re going to have to waste the courts time by wasting real people’s time dragging them in front of judges for protest actions. Eventually the courts will just make it a fine that police can quickly issue.
Completely and utterly false.
Every single western country outside of America has hate speech laws without issue.
A) they are not that open ended and subjective
B) the idea that laws can’t be open ended, subjective, or governed through intent and spirit of the law, is only the case in the dumbass American legal system that has been intentionally ruined by simple minded Republicans, which insist on every edge case being explicitly covered by a law or legislation because they know that makes it impossible to effectively write laws or govern.
Every single western country outside of America has hate speech laws without issue.
So does the US. Just not for ordinary people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threatening_government_officials_of_the_United_States
Love the timing making it so easy to disprove your argument. Just look at the flood of European countries abusing broad and ambiguous hate speech laws to crush dissent and crack down on criticism of Israel.
You’re talking about the one instance of Germany ruling that a single controversial slogan was hate speech?
These are mostly incidents of people publicly expressing support for Hamas, and being arrested for expressing support for a designated terrorist organization, and pretty much all confined to the UK, which has some of the weakest individual protections in the EU / western world.
They also don’t have Nazi parades down their streets in 2024.
Ahh. You’re a hasbara bot.
Ah, you’re so terminally online that you brand anyone who mildly disagrees with you a ‘bot’.
Tho fair point about the EDL.
You get crazy things in other countries though, like truth not being a defense for libel\slander.
In which countries is that the case?
UK is the notable one.
The UK is the weird outlier but there is still a defense of truth in the UK. The difference is that the person accusing you of defamation doesn’t have to prove that you’re wrong and you do have to prove that you’re right.
First you need to define free speech.
Let’s use Call of duty as an example. People love to think of MW2 lobbies as free speech. Male Gamers used their “free speech” to make any women feel unwelcome the minute they spoke. White Gamers listening for any signs of non-whiteness to ridicule. Was this free speech? Or just a group imposing its views on everyone who stood out on the platform? Activision just wants to sell as many copies as possible. So those Gamers get the boot, now those women and minorities feel the freedom to play and speak again.
If the speech is used as a battering ram to relentlessly berate, shame, silence, and enforce groupthink, then there is a chilling effect on the more truly free speech of others.
Using this logic the only way to have a truly free speech platform is to keep these mobs in check, and remove or limit their hate speech.
In theory.
In practice it would be very hard and you would require very rigorous definitions of what constitutes hate speech that would have to carefully examined on a case to case basis. So basically you’re building a small legal system.
That’s impossible to do with volunteer moderators working for free.
Others have brought up the inherent tension in the idea, but there are some potential avenues that try to avoid the pitfalls of the issue. For example, distributed moderation, where you subscribe to other users’ moderation actions, allows anyone to post something while also allowing anyone to ignore them based on the moderation actions of those that they trust. If you combine this with global moderation of outright illegal content and mandatory tagging of NSFW/NSFL posts, which are generally considered to be necessary or at least understandable restrictions, then you have a somewhat workable system. You could argue that a platform that allows community moderators to curate their own communities also allows free speech and blocks hate speech, but that only works if the mods are always fair, which… yeah, no lol
You are describing Bluesky’s moderation system.
It depends on whether the user in question is bothered by seeing hateful things or by the existence of hateful speech. The latter tends to seek out and share hate speech (to complain about it) where the former would rather block it out completely. Both of these users may believe they want the same thing
No
It depends on how much of an absolutist you want to be. No government allows absolute freedom of speech. Libel, slander, and incitement of violence are all forms of speech that are illegal in basically every country. If your platform refuses to remove these forms of speech, you would be protecting what is generally not considered to be free speech, and it’s possible you could even be held legally liable for allowing that kind of speech to spread on your platform.
If you decide not to be a free speech absolutist, and instead define free speech as legal speech, then things get complicated. In the U.S., the Supreme Court has held multiple times that hate speech is protected under the First Amendment, so censoring hate speech would mean your platform wasn’t allowing all forms of, “free speech.” However, the U.S. has much broader protections on speech than most Western countries, and hate speech is illegal in much of Europe.
So, TL:DR; free speech is a sliding scale, and many countries wouldn’t consider hate speech to be protected form of speech. By those standards, you could have a platform that censors hate speech but still maintains what is considered free speech. However, by other countries’ standards, you would be censoring legal speech.
