Everyone wants free speech for open society but nobody wants X, 4chan, bots, bullies or pundits! You have to hold your nose people. The price to pay is rabid disagreement, dangerous ideas, motivated influence, psychological warfare, public relations, the list goes on. But the alternative is far worse: A civilization where all good ideas go to waste, resentment is momentous, and every problem is intractable without explosive consequences.
By setting one as an alternative to the other, you seem to be implying that rabid disagreement, dangerous ideas, motivated influence and psychological warfare don't lead to momentous resentment, intractable problems or explosive consequences. Rather the purpose of the former is very often the execution of the latter, unless you believe that extremists only ever engage in abstract debate for the sake of pure intellectual exercise. The failure to accept one as an inevitable consequence of the other is intellectually dishonest.
You're ignoring second and third order consequences, and you're insisting people simply tolerate harassment, bigotry and threats of violence against themselves simply because you don't want the even the most excremental of ideals to "go to waste," or more likely because you simply find the chaos entertaining.
If you want the entire world to be run by the standards of 4chan, great. Go somewhere else, find a dark corner of the internet and piss in your own punchbowl. Adults are trying to have a civilization here.
> You're ignoring second and third order consequences, and you're insisting people simply tolerate harassment, bigotry and threats of violence against themselves simply because [ad hominems]
First, nobody is ignoring second and third order consequences as evidenced by the discussion of consequences in the GP comment.
Second, nobody suggested "simply tolerating" because free speech absolutists see speech as a thing they can engage in, not just something that happens to them.
There is room for a more rational discussion of this, but please understand that I think you have every right to your style of discourse, too.
Discourse is never free; in no society. The question is just what kinds of discourse are allowed. Depending on what you care about, different societies will work better or worse for you (or be more free or less free, to adopt the lingo of this declaration). In other words, "freedom" is a subjective quality that depends what an individual cares about.
You can suspect whatever you would like. I don't mind.
Your comment is rather disrespectful and yet, if someone tried to shut you up, I would proportionately respond. You have a right to your disrespectful speech.
They're using such a wide definition of censorship that it'd be impossible to create a tech platform without censorship as there's just too much content for a single individual to consume, so one way or another the design decisions in the platform are going to prioritise which content to show to users in the time they have available. Light touch moderation has the exact opposite effect on public debate than this article is intending: A simple chronological feed prioritises the loudest voices and censors infrequent posters. Voting prioritises shorter snappier content and censors thoughtful longform content.
Some diametrically opposed people on that list. That is the problem with the whole free speech debate. If you got all these people into one room, there would be no agreement on what "free speech" actually means. The result is that any vague declaration like this is meaningless. Completely free speech means allowing stuff like fraud and distribution of child porn so even most "free speech absolutists" aren't actually in favor of completely unrestricted speech. So everyone claims to be for free speech and the debate shifts to changing definitions in order to match their already held opinion.
Diametrically opposed except for on the issue of free speech. Which they define directly in the declaration based on the international definition.
I highly doubt there would be any disagreement between signatories about the legality of CSAM in a free speech regime, to say that this is the issue to be focused on in the light of the loss of rights within the last century is misguided IMO.
> Which they define directly in the declaration based on the international definition.
Does that include hate speech? Does that include the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertising? Does that include the right to
"cancel" someone?
There is no single definition that everyone agrees on. That is what the CSAM example is supposed to highlight. Not that anyone wants to allow it, but that everyone agrees that this speech isn't actually covered by free speech. Once you admit that not all speech deserves to be free, you have to decide what speech should count because it isn't everything.
> Does that include the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertising?
Yes, although this is a bit tangential as this declaration is mostly concerned with freedom of personal political speech, and in most countries companies and individuals are distinguished from each other. Actually this is also the case for the U.S., except for in the case of political speech for reasons.
> Does that include the right to "cancel" someone?
If by cancel, you mean to fire someone for speech, that’s really a matter of employment law, which differs by country and even industry.
If you mean the right to “call out”, yes.
How did I ascertain this? By reading the UDHR, Article 19:
> Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
The only part everyone (everyone here meaning every government and every tech company) hasn’t decided on is whether or not to enforce Article 19, which is why the declaration encourages them to.
I think in general there has been a kind of anemia combined with infantilization introduced into political discourse where people believe issues are too complex or too divisive to be resolved.
When we decide that issues are too complicated to be decided on by the polis, only the most extreme viewpoints will end up seeing their goals accomplished. Which is precisely what has happened on the issue of free speech, as governments ban protest, ban certain kinds of speech, all while ostensibly (but not really) “speaking for the people”.
So much for that clear international definition. Look at the countries that outlaw some form of hate speech. [1] The US is in the extreme minority in the idea that hate speech is protected under a general definition of free speech.
>Yes, although this is a bit tangential as this declaration is mostly concerned with freedom of personal political speech, and in most countries companies and individuals are distinguished from each other. Actually this is also the case for the U.S., except for in the case of political speech for reasons.
No, this isn't about Citizens United. The UK doesn't allow any political advertising on TV or radio for example.[2]
>If by cancel, you mean to fire someone for speech, that’s really a matter of employment law, which differs by country and even industry.
>If you mean the right to “call out”, yes.
I mean whatever a signatory like Bari Weiss means when she bemoans cancel culture[3]. She is a devoted free speech absolutist when it comes to her own rights, but when she is criticized suddenly people shouldn't have their reputation destroyed by backlash to their speech. That is an inherently anti-free speech mindset. If you have the freedom to say anything, I have the freedom to say anything in response including asking your employer to fire you. You can't have it both ways.
>When we decide that issues are too complicated to be decided on by the polis, only the most extreme viewpoints will end up seeing their goals accomplished. Which is precisely what has happened on the issue of free speech, as governments ban protest, ban certain kinds of speech, all while ostensibly (but not really) “speaking for the people”.
Pretending this issue is easy doesn't accomplish anything either. That was my original point. The term has become meaningless because everyone thinks of themselves as being pro-free speech. And no one in the political mainstream advocates against "free speech" even if their policies in actuality restrict speech.
