What is free speech?

[Narz]

I figure it's any speech except speech condoning violence or blocking the speech of others.

Misleading people is a trickier one to quantify. Screaming fire in a theater and causing chaos is easy to understand. Screaming fire online is more complicated & 'fire denial' even more so.

Are digital platforms responsible for the speech of those who use their services? Should they just have a blanket statement on every communication similar to editorial sections 'this person's opinions does not necessarily reflect ours' and 'they may be wrong, possibly dangerous wrong'.

Unlike in the past most people don't get their knowledge of reality from the town square, now the town square is privately owned by billionaire corporations and controlled by their whims and the algorithms programed to filter information based on their whims and profits.

I didn't mention it in the thread 'what are forums good for' but I suppose one thing they're good for is free expression (albeit within forums rules).

 

[Samson]

Free speech is the government not legislating what speech you cannot make or that you have to make.

I like to remind people that in the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" example the "fire" was that world war one was a bad idea and perhaps you should not go. I think history has shown quite conclusively there there really was a fire, and the state did not want people to know.

It is not that the town square is privately owned, it is that billionaire corporations have made their own properties very easy ways to get ones voice into the town square, and lots of people have decided to only listen to people in those billionaire's properties. That is a decision we all make, and we can change our minds at any point.

It is worth remembering that while it may seem harder to get our voice heard without using fecesbook or whatever, but it is orders of magnitude easier than it was before the internet.

Spoiler The actual shouts of fire :

 

[Remorseless1]

Not sure how the Socialist Party's call to resist the draft is similar to the "fire" argument. For one thing, the Socialists were peacefully protesting the government's decision to reintroduce conscription. The government's crackdown on them was brutal to be fair, but that was not a legal reaction and didn't stop the demonstrations. Contrast that with causing a panic in a crowded, darkened theater or an ex-president inciting a mob to sack the Capitol.

The limits on free speech are hard to define. Personally, I think of certain levels. Ordinary citizens should be allowed the widest latitude - the fire and incitement limits. Public figures, especially those in all levels of government, should be required to be truthful in their public work or face removal.

As to social media, if you don't like it stay off it.

 

[Samson]

Not sure how the Socialist Party's call to resist the draft is similar to the "fire" argument. For one thing, the Socialists were peacefully protesting the government's decision to reintroduce conscription.

It was literally the case that prompted the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" simile. It was used as rational for locking up people who called for resistance to the draft by the SCOTUS.

As to social media, if you don't like it stay off it.

This I agree with.

 

[Fippy]

+100% in all cities.
+2 from Town.

But you need Liberalism.

 

[Samson]

Think before you speak. Read before you think. - Fran Lebowitz

Given this, can we say that freedom of thought is required for freedom of speech, and freedom of reading is required for freedom of thought? If so, is criminalising reading materiel worst of all?

 

[MontyJava]

I figure it's any speech except speech condoning violence or blocking the speech of others.

I define "free speech" as the set of guidelines and principles that best maximize the free and fair contest of ideas in any conversation. Or you could refer to that as "free discourse" to differentiate it from the technical legal guarantees.
I find that it is increasingly hair splitting to differentiate between megaplatforms and the government, whatever the legal distinctions may be, but even that's very questionable when government figures are constantly prodding and threatening those platforms over having "incorrect opinions" aired on them. I doubt that's constitutional, whatever you think of the rest of it.
We haven't had a true culture of free discourse in a very long time, if ever. It has been dominated by traditional news outlets and mass programming for decades now, where dollars have equaled speech, even before Citizens United. There was a facade of open discourse with a rather strictly defined Overton window and heavy spin towards critical viewpoints. Social media, by contrast, remains far freer, even with cancel mobs and corporate diktats.
That's not saying the current path we're going down leads towards free discourse. All signs point to infinite echo chambers, heavy handed moderation, and a mass culture of censorship over whatever the morals of this week's news cycle are.
Free discourse is heavily intertwined with the principles of rational discourse, critical thinking, independent thought, and that sort. Letting everyone air their feelings and opinions is fine and all, but if it never gets beyond that because everyone's lodged firmly in an intellectual crevice, I'm not sure what the point of the discourse is in the first place...

 

[Samson]

The freest social media was before the internet, usenet.

 

[Zardnaar]

Basically means the government won't imprison you for your political opionions.

It's not a blanket right to protect you from the other consequences from your fellow citizens eg a job loss or punch in the face.

So say whatever you like but just be aware of other consequences.

You won't go to jail for saying "your wife's great in the sack" but you might get that punch in the face.

Inciting violence may or may not be legal where you live.

Also my house my castle. What you can say at your job, someone else's house or forums isn't covered.

 

[Kaitzilla]

It was literally the case that prompted the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" simile. It was used as rational for locking up people who called for resistance to the draft by the SCOTUS.

This I agree with.

The absolute best story I heard about the draft was Cheech Marin.

https://themoth.org/storytellers/cheech-marin

Scroll down to "The Artful Dodger 16:52 Listen Now" to hear it.

 

[El_Machinae]

The link to social media and free speech is broader than people realize. The social media platforms are protected by government restrictions on free speech, by their very nature. They have copyright, trademark, and protected software patents ... all of these allow them to do what they do and wield the power they wield, and each of those aspects of their power are defined (by their very description) as things that you may not type or draw or use code to do.

Now, us muggles don't see it that way, and we think that choosing Rumble over Facebook somehow protects our freedom of expression. And, in some ways, it does. We've ceded massive authority to unaccountable technocrats. But all of those technocrats and their profiting shareholders are protected literally by limits on what I am allowed to do with software.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Money has become speech and it shouldn't have.

 

[Narz]

Money has become speech and it shouldn't have.

I'd say 'reach' rather than speech but it's always been that way.

In some ways our day n age gives more upward mobility in terms of influencing others. You don't have to be 'found' by Hollywood, you can make a name for yourself on YouTube or tiktok.

 

[Gelion]

Something that your rights to don't apply here

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Now, us mudbloods don't see it that way, and we think that choosing Rumble over Facebook somehow protects our freedom of expression. And, in some ways, it does. We've ceded massive authority to unaccountable technocrats. But all of those technocrats and their profiting shareholders are protected literally by limits on what I am allowed to do with software.

Okay, I have to ask: What relevance does the word "mudblood" have to this? It's a term used in the Harry Potter franchise that's the equivalent of the "n-word" when a pureblood wizard wants to be disgustingly 'racist' to someone who is muggleborn (has no magical ancestors). As in both Snape and Draco Malfoy used it toward Lily and Hermione, respectively: "filthy mudblood".

 

[Gorbles]

Free speech is an ideal. A goal. A society has to accommodate all of its participants, and unfortunately this includes some less than stellar examples of such. Completely free speech lets some people harm others with impunity. That's what you see on unmoderated forums, or similar kinds of venues online (or even in the real world). It becomes a race to the bottom where the community in question filters its own membership on that axis (of the race to the bottom). People that can't "hack it" are ejected, or leave themselves, leaving a subset that just gets increasingly worse over time until some baseline of homeostasis is established.

On the flipside, imposing limits on speech is inherently authoritarian and can very easily be abused from any context including a small web forum all the way up to national governance. So obviously there's a balance to be struck, and this will always be relevant to the place in question. It's a very hard thing to generalise.

The problem is the extremes. On one side you have no freedom of expression at all, and at the other you have this insistence that free speech must mean complete freedom of speech (/ expression). As much as the latter camp (or examples belonging to the latter camp) don't seem to want to admit it, these are the extremes. We are not at a place in society yet where we can be trusted to not initiate that race to the bottom, if our speech is completely unfettered. If we could ever be, I don't know. But people like to pretend that we are, and that "bad" speech will somehow magically get treated as "bad", and "good" will magically get treated as "good". This, again, is an ideal. If everyone acted in good faith all the time, and nobody fell prey to pettiness or some other emotion that would lead them to act out (however temporarily), then sure. But this doesn't happen. Even the best people have off days.

So free speech in principle is a goal to aspire to. In reality, though, "free speech" is something that is compared on a sliding scale between countries with more free speech, against countries that have less. A lot of countries arguably have more freedom of expression than, say, China, on most topics. A forum about a hyperspecific discipline may have less free speech than another type of online forum. We even see that here on CFC, where game discussion subforums are moderated rather strictly, and the excess of off-topic gets relegated to, well, Off Topic. Another gaming forum may be more relaxed at what is allowed in game discussion subforums, and so on. It's all about finding that balance.

 

[Farm Boy]

Money has become speech and it shouldn't have.

Money is social power and social power has been (anti)speech at least since somebody has had a friend willing to shut somebody else up for them.

What it's become is endowed with human rights through incorporation. And that is super ****ed up.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Okay, I have to ask: What relevance does the word "mudblood" have to this? It's a term used in the Harry Potter franchise that's the equivalent of the "n-word" when a pureblood wizard wants to be disgustingly 'racist' to someone who is muggleborn (has no magical ancestors). As in both Snape and Draco Malfoy used it toward Lily and Hermione, respectively: "filthy mudblood".

it's not a bad analogy for how big tech treats users that disagree with them.

 

[El_Machinae]

Oh, I meant muggle. Looking at my search history, that's the word I tend to use. I edited it in.

 

[RobAnybody]

Okay, I have to ask: What relevance does the word "mudblood" have to this? It's a term used in the Harry Potter franchise that's the equivalent of the "n-word" when a pureblood wizard wants to be disgustingly 'racist' to someone who is muggleborn (has no magical ancestors).

You know how I know "mudblood" is not equivalent to the "n-word"? Because people type out the actual word "mudblood".