"I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the deaths of others your right to say it."
How many free speech absolutists have "skin in the game", or whatever? Every alternative to censorship suggested always puts the burden on the victimized. Like, "if you debate it in public you will defeat these bad ideas". Few who are free speech absolutists roll up their sleeves and volunteer to take the action they prescribe.
Or, you have the sophists who believe free speech is the most important thing in the world but will deny that speech has any connection to its consequences. For example, separating the white nationalist rhetoric on 8chan from the white nationalist terrorism perpetrated by 8channers.
It's not that speech doesn't have consequences. If speech had no consequences, it wouldn't be worth defending. Rather, it's that no man is fit to play the censor - not the Government which would censor political criticism of itself, not a king who would censor his opponents, nor even a billionaire who would censor the media when it spurns him.
At the same time, if someone points a finger at you and shouts "I'm going to kill you", then we're getting outside of speech and into actions, and certainly actions can be prohibited. The question we have, really, is whether the content of 8chan was just speech (and therefore should be protected unless you buy into censorship) or crosses into actions (convincing someone to massacre immigrants). From what I've seen, 8chan certainly seems to be in the action category.
> At the same time, if someone points a finger at you and shouts "I'm going to kill you", then we're getting outside of speech and into actions, and certainly actions can be prohibited.
At least in my state, this is not actionable as described.
For it to be actionable, the person saying "I'm going to kill you" needs to reasonably be in a position to do so - i.e. brandishing a weapon, etc.
It's not actionable when it's a rando in an online multiplayer game upset at you. It's absolutely actionable when it's your jilted lover in your face, or even if they're texting you.
The details make the case. Coaxing in detail throngs online to attack immigrants, in my non-legal non-expert opinion, seems to be more in the actionable case.
> It's not actionable when it's a rando in an online multiplayer game upset at you. It's absolutely actionable when it's your jilted lover in your face, or even if they're texting you.
> The details make the case.
That's pretty much what I was saying, as well, I believe.
In and of itself, saying (even in person) "I'm going to kill you" is an idle threat that the police in my state will not do anything about in a vacuum.
However, saying such a thing while also being in a position to reasonably carry out such an action, the Police will step in on those threats.
In the situation you described, unfortunately, the first time they may just tell the couple to stay at different places that night to cool off. This assumes by the time they arrive there are no visible marks on the victim and no weapons out.
Now if they have to come out for several of these calls, it's no longer "in a vacuum", and they can probably detain the threatening person.
Your state or country's police force may operate under different rules and laws.
The purpose of (most) speech is to create action. If the phrase "I'm going to kill you" is intended to alter someone's behavior. If property is involved, whether it's through force or threat of force, it's still robbery. If the threat of violence is delayed, it's still extortion.
For libertarian extremists who, just treat the right to be left in peace to live your life as you see fit... as a property right.
What you say is reasonable, and is not free speech absolutist. This isn't a No True Scotsman sort of thing. There are people on this very forum who reject out of hand any question that 8chan should be censored.
Another reply to my comment supposed my criticism means that the alternative is a Soviet surveillance state. Really?
I think the point is more that there's nuance in preventing speech (like censorship) and punishing the actions as a result of speech. I get that some would call those the same thing.
In the context of 8chan, I think there's a difference between allowing people to say whatever they want online and punishing the people that use that freedom to incite violence.
The part where it gets blurry to me is the hateful rhetoric that doesn't directly call for violence, but the only logical conclusion of the position is genocidal or otherwise racial violence. Talking about "invaders" or "American cities under foreign occupation" for example.
> Rather, it's that no man is fit to play the censor
I agree with this, and I'd further say that no man is really fit to rule or have real power over his fellow men. But human society can't function, or defend itself from tyrants, without some sort of power structure. The best we can do is try to make sure that the people in power aren't tyrants.
>From what I've seen, 8chan certainly seems to be in the action category.
Users on 8chan, perhaps, but no the website itself. 8chan has cooperated with law enforcement against individuals making legally-actionable threats effectively since the website's beginning.
This is not a free speech issue. This is not a censorship issue. This is companies deciding that they will not do business with some parties. Those parties nor the reasons and the actions of the companies today do not fit inside narrow definitions which would make what anyone did today unlawful.
Moreover 8chan posts, though vile, arguably do not fit the narrow free speech exemptions of the US such as true threat or incitement. The law and judicial precedent would require a reasonable reader to take it seriously. All that is moot though as the government has taken no action here.
Well, mass shootings tend to be indiscriminate once they get started.
Those motivated by animus towards a minority group do generally target areas frequented by members of that group, like in the Texas shooting where the gunman targeted a Walmart in a largely Hispanic community. As a non-Hispanic white person (who lives in the US), that does put me at less risk of being a victim of that type of shooting. Also, to the extent that terrorism’s impact is emotional rather than purely rational, I’m less impacted simply
because I don’t feel targeted in the same way.
Nevertheless, I wouldn’t say the risk is zero; it’s not impossible that I could be in a place like that when the next shooting happens. So I have at least a bit of skin in the game.
Edit: Also, while perhaps not 8chan specifically, Internet forums have been implicated in shootings that weren’t targeting ethnic groups and thus would put me at more risk. An example would be Elliot Rodger’s shooting, which was driven by a hatred of women, but ended up killing an equal number of men and women (not too surprising, since people don’t self-segregate by gender to the same extent they do by race and religion).
> Those motivated by animus towards a minority group do generally target areas frequented by members of that group, like in the Texas shooting where the gunman targeted a Walmart in a largely Hispanic community. As a non-Hispanic white person (who lives in the US), that does put me at less risk of being a victim of that type of shooting. Also, to the extent that terrorism’s impact is emotional rather than purely rational, I’m less impacted simply because I don’t feel targeted in the same way.
Isn't this usually where hate crimes come into the picture?
So why don't we continue down the slippery slope and criminalize, like the Chinese do, speech that generally disrupts social harmony? How will you tangibly stop us from sliding down that slope, the absolutists have ever right to ask of you.
Nobody is talking about crminalizing speech. 8chan is a private website and 8chan service providers are private companies who do not wish to do businesses with 8chan because of the 8chan community's endorsement of domestic terrorism. Nobody should be forced to do businesses with 8chan and if nobody will and that means 8chan disappears from the internet, that is a decision society has made within their rights as free individuals.
How many people had to die on 9/11 to protect the free speech rights of Muslims? It is undeniable that those terrorist attacks have a direct connection to the ideas being spread by those Mosques. How many Muslims have "skin in the game"?
I think you are trying to turn the above argument on it's head, but honestly I have no idea what point you are trying to make.
"The free speech of muslims"? It's almost as if you think 9/11 was caused by a domestic terrorist. You do realize the hijackers were mostly from Saudi Arabia right? And there is no free speech there? So... what are you trying to imply? Please use more clear language instead of just trying to meme.
Clearly you understood what I was trying to say, you're just acting dumb to avoid directly engaging with it.
These arguments can be directly used to argue for the suppression of Islamic religious speech. Using the same "guilt by association" reasoning, you can easily argue that 9/11 is proof that Islam itself is a hateful and dangerous ideology which, when spread, has "consequences".
The distinction in this case is that 8chan is simply a “poisoned well” which can be boarded up until the next one takes its place, whereas “Islam” is a whole ideology followed by a billion-odd people.
“Extremist Islamic terrorists” on the other hand, that is a narrowly defined enough population to feel justified in going to war against.
But the point is, no one’s speech in particular is being suppressed. To keep the metaphor, a “mosque got too radical” and was shut down. People who were practicing there will have to find another place to go.
I've heard the same said about r/the_donald etc. That argument falls flat when an overarching theme is a reality. Terrible people always try and lump themselves in with the truly innocent who are oppressed to engender sympathy as victims. There are increasingly common intersections where a duck is a duck.
The truth is that information does not radicalize people - censorship does. That's why the channers are as radicalized as they are - they've been censored everywhere else. Censor their last remaining outlets and you will increase violence by orders of magnitude.
If ethno-nationalists are not allowed to make their political case with speech, what alternative would they have but violence? You obviously can't change their minds with censorship, only harden them.
A lot of people say "censorship radicalizes" but I've never seen any studies or evidence for this claim. Your comment is purely speculative. There is some evidence that banning extremist content reduces its potential to radicalize [1]. Do you have any evidence to suggest it increases radicalization?
Maybe not radicalizes but seems obvious that censorship sort of 'funnels' the extremists onto the same forums which turn into an echo chamber / amplification chamber for their ideas. It seems like if they were tolerated on other forums that there'd be enough mediating comments to prevent the amplification.
I'd also be interested in seeing studies that echo chambers increase radicalization in the first place. That seems to be a given right now.
> If a man can't speak his truth, what alternative does he have to violence?
No one is stopping anyone from speaking their truth. They're just saying they're not going to help you.
If you want to speak your truth, speak it. Go down to a public square and preach. Write your truth down, print it, and hand it out. If its truth and you believe it so much, you'll do the work necessary in getting it out there.
People are used to treating the Internet as the new public square. Obviously, there are many private entities that make up the Internet, but if want it to continue to serve as the public square (rather than a patchwork of corporate fiefdoms) then I think we have to accept the moral (and possibly legal) obligation of these private entities to maintain the Internet as a public square.
I essentially agree. The internet is not the public square, until you legally make it so.
And that essentially is not going to happen. Companies are "people too". They are allowed to express their free speech by not doing business with you.
Cloud Flare is within their rights to protect their stock value by doing business with whomever they choose. If the government declared the opposite, then it would truly require a massive shakeup of law and precedent.
> The internet is not the public square, until you legally make it so.
Culture and custom generally precede law and government. If the Internet is a public square, it is only so as a result of our various social relations. Passing laws would be merely to preserve it as such.
Shallow statistics are never going to replace empathy* when it comes to sound policy making.
That study does show that banning content within a forum means that you will get less of that content on that forum. A useful but not entirely surprising result. As a Reddit user, I'm glad that the site has less of such content.
It does not prove that censorship reduces "radicalization" (whatever that is). As the study says, many of those users just moved their content to Voat.
*By which I mean cognitive empathy: the capacity to infer the motivational states of other people and anticipate their actions.
I don't think that is how they come about. It is about recruitment and ideals and how they spread not about being banned on other platforms. If they could discuss saving the white race with violence on reddit or hackernews nothing would change more than they would have more potential recruits.
What will you do when your plan to censor the alt-right backfires and makes the violence worse? Attempt to start rounding them up? And when that makes it even worse?
You don't have a plan, just a knee jerk impulse to censor.
It's not censorship of the entire alt-right. It's the limited censorship on certain privately-run forums of a small subset that is directly advocating for violence and attempting to tear apart society.
If they want to speak in public, they are free to. They probably won't get a warm reception.
The US president supports and advocates for their cause. A national television syndicate (Fox) echos their talking points. I don't think you can call them censored.
Define 'citation', write a long essay about your criteria for accepting citations, maybe supply an appendix outlining your epistemological views so people know exactly what sort of citations you'll consider acceptable.
If the claim is [Donald Trump supports and advocates for ethno-nationalists causes] ...
I'd like to a source for that claim because it seems like Orange Man Bad delusions, but I'm willing to remain open minded if someone can provide a citation!
And I'd like to know what your standards are so I don't waste my time selecting and offering sources only to have them dismissed because you consider them deficient.
Since you already incline to the view that such assertions are delusional and employ a common political trope to characterize such delusions, I feel nagging doubts about your purported open-mindedness. Discussions like this generally devolve into pedantic quibbling which would be a waste of both your time and mine.
> If ethno-nationalists are not allowed to make their political case with speech, what alternative would they have but violence?
Plenty of nazi sites on the web where they make all sorts of “political cases”. Don’t confuse inability to make the case with repugnance to that case in general public.
How many free speech absolutists have "skin in the game", or whatever? Every alternative to censorship suggested always puts the burden on the victimized. Like, "if you debate it in public you will defeat these bad ideas". Few who are free speech absolutists roll up their sleeves and volunteer to take the action they prescribe.
Or, you have the sophists who believe free speech is the most important thing in the world but will deny that speech has any connection to its consequences. For example, separating the white nationalist rhetoric on 8chan from the white nationalist terrorism perpetrated by 8channers.