Thoughts on freedom/limit of speech?

[VHSMARONITE]

I don't think true freedom of speech is possible, nor desirable. Taking the Lord's name in vain is so common these days, I imagine that at least a third of everyone that will go to Hell will be from their utterance of blasphemies. Life under Catholic blasphemy law sounds like a dream.

 

[_TF]

Hey Agora,
Recently I have been tossing around the idea of how speech and the sharing of information should be treated in a society. My whole life I have been a pretty firm believer of complete freedom of speech, as censorship of ideas is how a society gets controlled. But after exploring forums and imageboards and their cultures, I've found that online communities are much more engaging and interesting when there are limitations on what can and can't be said, as well as how things are said. Obviously the internet and real life are very different, but it got me thinking nonetheless.

So I ask: To what degree, if any, should speech be limited in society? For example, on one hand you wouldn't want bad actors in your society spewing complete lies in order to corrupt your citizens, but on the other hand if you allow bad actors to be suppressed, who determines who the bad actors are? It's a very complex question, I think I still lean towards more free speech but I'm curious if y'all have thought about this at all.

Total and absolute free speech as a global human right forever.

Anything bad coming from it like the surge of offensive but zero value shit that will happen when that ruling is launched, will subside with time, because those people will either realize they're not funny anymore or get ignored altogether.

Everyone will be able to say whatever they want and each individual will decide how they personally react to what they hear. Simple as.

 

[Regal]

if you're the following naming scheme:
* = one = 1
** = two = 2
*** = three = 3
**** = four = 4
***** = five = 5
and so on

and you move those two pebbles ** next to another two ** and get ****, we can look at the little table we made above and see its four. sure we could've used the symbol for 5 to represent **** in which case 2+2=5, but assuming we're sticking to our little rules we set in place, no matter how many people yell 2+2=5, that won't make it true
sure you could say we can just all go against our table of rules we set in place nicely for a common baseline of communication and just make up a new one, to which i'll say derme sce lesreg quoipour enmej cieous, onsfai stsuo resnot te nconsommerec a roze!


i'd say it's safe to say there is an objective truth to things, which imply an objective right and wrong

I hear you, but I think you're missing what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that humans define what is true. If there are 8 billion people in the world and 7 billion people deny the existence of dinosaurs then dinosaurs don't exist (as a human truth). All we have is our collective perception.

Maybe I'm getting more meta than this conversation needs to be.

 

[Pangolin]

Comedy is our biggest weapon against the psyops of today. If its something you are not allowed to make fun of, then it is your sacred duty to laugh. Never let anyone tell you that you cannot laugh!


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knIroVvPZU4


I think that reasonable limits on freedom of speech should apply. For example yelling bomb, throwing out threats on any platform. But political speech, comedy, social commentary, and even things that are held sacred should be up for discussion and rational thought and discussion by thinking reasoning adults. Unfortunately the latter is in dire lack of supply. Sure the world contains things that can hurt if you read them. Maybe they will even make you feel alienated. So what. Read them anyway, and use your brain to challenge your own preconceptions. How can you expect to ever grow as a person if you never challenge yourself and only accept what you are told? How can people grow if they are only ever exposed to the Official Narrative™?

I get that people want to avoid misinformation, since in our information age the truth can be rapidly overshadowed by lies from third parties, but legislating the truth, paying for human fact checkers (biased depending on who signs the checks), or random websites that claim to have the truth is not the solution. The solution is called use your brain.

The meat bots online who spew pre-cooked talking points: These people will never grow and will never change, they have been enslaved through their minds and love their chains. They talk a color of beige, safe, never offensive, flavorless and soulless. Are they even really people?

 

[Some_porcupine]

here, we go, again

 

[myrriad]

I hear you, but I think you're missing what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that humans define what is true. If there are 8 billion people in the world and 7 billion people deny the existence of dinosaurs then dinosaurs don't exist (as a human truth). All we have is our collective perception.

Maybe I'm getting more meta than this conversation needs to be.

look i also lean way more towards idealism than materialism, but i seriously don't think idealism alone will wipe dinosaurs from history. i agree though that i don't think we're getting anywhere with this back and forth

 

[WALFTEAM]

Freedom of speech is as impractical a concept as bodily autonomy is. It's kind of an unattainable ideal; you want as much of it as you can get but there are many things standing in the way of perfect freedom that aren't going to be solved.

 

[stonehead]

I'm all for free speech, but I think there is a difference between "You can legally express any idea without punishment from the government" and "You can express any idea anywhere you want without repercussions from anyone". It's like, you can say whatever vile garbage I don't even want to reproduce in the privacy of your own home. But you can't say it at my 6 year old nephew's birthday party. You have a right to express your ideas, but I have a right to not hear your hatefull rants on my own private property.

The real discussion right now is about whether massive social media conglomerates count as "private property", or if they're so ubiquitous that they're some different, entirely new category.

 

[Pangolin]

Legally they are private property but given that they are so large and all idiots have an account it becomes public property.

 

[microbyte]

The real discussion right now is about whether massive social media conglomerates count as "private property", or if they're so ubiquitous that they're some different, entirely new category.

Well, someone is paying the bill on it would be viewed as that persons (or organizations) property. I think that social media is 100% private property, as organizations expend their resources on it, and as such, deserve control over it.

 

[Yabba]

I don't think true freedom of speech is possible, nor desirable. Taking the Lord's name in vain is so common these days, I imagine that at least a third of everyone that will go to Hell will be from their utterance of blasphemies. Life under Catholic blasphemy law sounds like a dream.

As a fellow Christian, I understand where your coming from; as we are surrounded by blasphemy in the modern day. However God gave humans the ability to think and express our thoughts for a reason. Therefore attempting to suppress peoples rights when they are largely hurting themselves is heresy. Only when people suppress our God given rights, should we suppress there's. That's my opinion on freedom of speech, and freedom in general.

 

[Some_porcupine]

As a fellow Christian, I understand where your coming from; as we are surrounded by blasphemy in the modern day. However God gave humans the ability to think and express our thoughts for a reason. Therefore attempting to suppress peoples rights when they are largely hurting themselves is heresy. Only when people suppress our God given rights, should we suppress there's. That's my opinion on freedom of speech, and freedom in general.

because, lets say,
banning someone without reason is bad; lets discuss why and what went wrong;
because there can happen this thing: if you exclude group, or so, they will go elsewhere. they can group, attack. they can go "away from eyes".
this is how anti-gov groups happen... there shouldnt be any divide, unless that group (< lets say) dont want to do that so, by themselves on their own accords/conditions!

 

[nintendopenis]

When it comes to the Internet I think centralization is the root of all evil. I explain it partly in this thread:

I figure internet centralization was the cause for all the cultural problems we see today.

I think it's well acknowledged by now that Tumblr and 4chan were the breeding grounds for the respective wings of terminally online unreasonable left and right-wingers through the 2010s. But think about it, would a bunch of teenage girls just be naturally inclined to talking about manspreading...

forum.agoraroad.com

Basically, since the most sizeable audience is on centralized social media, this leads people to self-censor if they want their message to reach anybody at all. People who are too radical get kicked off or leave and seek other platforms, like imageboards as you said. These alternative platforms eventually acquire a negative reputation for harboring only rejects and radicals, so no one bothers looking at them except for other rejects and radicals, even if some true and insightful stuff is said on these alternative venues.

This leads to an awful dichotomy where we have major platforms totally in league with mainstream narratives where you can hardly express iconoclastic opinions and unsavoury dens of insanity where totally schizoid opnions flourish, with no rational in-between. If the Internet was more spread out, into loads of smaller websites instead of 'major platforms' and their 'free-speech alternatives', then things would naturally sort themselves into a spectrum between 'totally in line with mainstream narratives' and 'totally unfounded conspiracy theories', with plenty of 'helpfully subversive' sites to be found in the middle.

i like this a lot. centralization is the suburbanization of the internet

 

[InsufferableCynic]

Hey Agora,
Recently I have been tossing around the idea of how speech and the sharing of information should be treated in a society. My whole life I have been a pretty firm believer of complete freedom of speech, as censorship of ideas is how a society gets controlled. But after exploring forums and imageboards and their cultures, I've found that online communities are much more engaging and interesting when there are limitations on what can and can't be said, as well as how things are said. Obviously the internet and real life are very different, but it got me thinking nonetheless.

So I ask: To what degree, if any, should speech be limited in society? For example, on one hand you wouldn't want bad actors in your society spewing complete lies in order to corrupt your citizens, but on the other hand if you allow bad actors to be suppressed, who determines who the bad actors are? It's a very complex question, I think I still lean towards more free speech but I'm curious if y'all have thought about this at all.

"Hardcore free-speech" is essentially a meme. Literally nobody, not even the most diehard free-speech advocate actually believe in completely unrestricted speech. If I was to set up a speaker system outside of their house and blast loud music at all hours of the day, I'm sure they would call the police to shut me up - and they would be justified in doing it. Society simply cannot function if people can say whatever they want whenever they want with no legal consequences.

The idea of "total unrestricted in any way" free speech is largely a modern idea, and is reactionary based on censorship. I get it, I really do, people get suppressed from saying something, so they build this idea in their head that nobody should ever be able to do that for any reason. But it's just not viable in a real society. People who think so really haven't sat down and actually thought about the consequences of completely unrestricted speech.

Should I be able to take out advertisements in the paper saying that drinking arsenic is good for your health? The commonly cited example in the United States is crying "fire" in a crowded theater, and it's a good one. If I was to cry fire, and as a result a stampede occurred killing 15 people, would I be responsible for their deaths? Should I be prosecuted for what I said? If you say no and think "well they were too stupid and should have noticed there was no fire", then you've missed the point entirely - this allows anyone to practically coerce or trick someone into killing themselves or someone else, with no consequences.

While I largely agree that censorship has gone way too far recently, and I feel that having the majority of online discussion being heavy-handedly moderated by corporate overlords is not good for the internet overall, throwing literally everything out is equally as dumb and is likely to be equally as disastrous.

Free Speech exists on a spectrum and is a delicate balance. Some people want to tip it so far one way that they want everyone to only say sanitized, corporate-friendly speech, and other people want to be able to send tangible death threats to people without consequences. Both of these are insane positions.

Imagine if I could criticise a company and in response they took out a full page ad in every paper calling me a pedophile. Should they be prosecuted for that? Of course they should.

You're literally stupid if you believe in total unrestricted free speech. Unfortunately the argument has largely been redefined as a binary position - either you want total, unrestricted speech at all times, or you want hate speech to be illegal and people to go to jail for saying "praise jesus" to a Muslim. But that's just how modern politics works. People don't think about issues, they just pick a side, and all the nuance disappears as a result.

 

[andreixyz]

Hardcore free-speech" is essentially a meme.

That's because this idea is almost always being pushed by 40-year-old-kids that just want to spew dumb shit on the internet without getting affected by consequences, and not by actual people hit by censorship on any real reason. And by "dumb shit", I don't mean about allowing some anon to say "sand******" on 69chan, but allowing people to send death threats and other highly stupid content on social media.

Keep in mind, kids, "free speech" is not a free permit to be an asshole to others.