Free speech is a discussion that brings out a lot of different people with a lot of different takes on it.
You have people that believe in unmitigated free speech. (this is free speech)
You have people that believe in free speech except for illegal speech, but who decides what's illegal and what's illegal constantly changes.
You have people that believe in free speech, but not violence or bigotry.
You have people that believe in free speech, but then ban anyone who they decide is a shill that posts MSM shill business.
You also have people that believe other people should only believe or write what they themselves believe, no questions asked. You see this in many countries ran by full on authoritarian governments.
Then there's the matter of private property. Should you be allowed to yell whatever you want on someone else's property, whether it be a home, a car, a business or a website. No matter what people try to convince you of, a website is private property, it is owned by someone or a corporation, they pay the bills.
Do we force private companies to pay the bills to host content that they do not want?
Also take note on this fact: Any site that has allowed very very little moderation always turns into a shit show or stormfront. There are many many many examples of this. This alone shouldn't be a problem, however, constant bigotry and aggressive insults to anyone who doesn't share those views is a very good way to chase everyone away.
Some people will say great! We don't want those faggots here! Then all you're doing is jerking each other off to the exact same ideas, which results in zero growth and mostly just a big pile of jizz on your own face.
So what is an acceptable level of free speech to everyone here?
EDIT: Woke up today banned form the Donald. Never even posted there. LOL
Self and social feedback are legitimate - you have right to express yourself and so do they. Systemic oppression of ideas even if they are wrong think I’d the beginning of the end
Free speech is free speech, no ifs ands or buts. Reddit has the right to implement their policies and we have the right to leave and join communities (such as this) that allow free speech. Stop worrying about how you’ll be perceived by the masses - that is why we are in this current mess. Embracing free speech is the best way to convert people into the light of freedom, not trying to trick them by allowing more “free speech” than the other guys.
But does it though? At what point do they become a common carrier?
Here's the thing, it's one thing for all the news sites to join together and follow the BBC's lead and decide what to censor when the white house tells them to.
It's another thing when the white house tells the telcos to censor SMS messages. Those mofos are indeed common carriers. Are they really allowed to censor these messages?
I don't agree with censoring text messages either, that's why we need end to end encryption as a standard, but that also provides cover for illegal services.
So kind of in a screwed if you do or don't position.
I'm totally for end-to-end encryption, but the spectre of government laws interferes with this. We're one false-flag away from government mandated censorship and the supreme court is so fucked they'll allow it.
They're currently breaking the law by being both common carriers and also censoring. They can't legally do both. But who will prosecute them? Certainly not any part of the government which is pushing them to do this.
The first amendment should be sufficient to block this, but it is no longer being followed. They got around it because of a stupid loophole "Congress shall make no law" does not include executive orders, and it should. Just as the second stupidly mentions "militia" but does not include "No standing armies"
But this community doesn't allow free speech, that's the point. Virtually no communities do. They all employ their own "free speech" which in reality is quite limited.
I was banned from r/conspiracy for simply stating that linking to a thread is not brigading in itself. I was banned from here 8 times today in fact for talking about censorship here and censorship done by the head mod, and I was previously banned from greatawakening.win, funny.win, technology.win, gaming.win all for going against the narrative there.
So I'm still hunting for this so called free speech that everyone claims exists, yet I can't find it.
Start your own site. Host it on dmca ignore servers in east eu or rosh.
Free speech in your head will be a thing of the past. Your thoughts will be evaluated by the government and your social credit score will be based on your thoughts.
Only if we let them win.
I think we're a bit far from Minority Report, but I can see it happening.
Fear is a powerful motivator.
Either be a "platform" and allow all speech or a "publisher" and police the speech of everyone and be held liable for any repercussions of that speech.
It's pretty simple. You can have one but not both.
Liable for repercussions? How so? What kind of repercussions for what kind of speech? And who decides?
Legal repercussions. For instance, if someone got hurt/violated directly from the speech of a user on a website and nothing was done on the part of the administration of the website.
If that website were seen as a publisher of that content (ie. They have final judicial oversight of the words they choose to put into the public eye) then they could be held liable in a court of law for consequences of that content.
I'm not a lawfag, but that's my understanding.
How could speech directly hurt a person? Like hurt feelings? Or physical harm? Same question for being violated. How could I violate you with my speech?
Who are you saying is liable if my speech on this site has hurt or violated you? Me or the site? Or both? Are websites that allow for content from users now tasked with making sure to limit liabilities from potential speech that could potentially violate another person? Who in their right mind would have a website at that point? Do sites like Amazon need to monitor the reviews of products and Q and A portion of their sites because someone's opinion was hurtful or damaged their reputation because the product sucked? Peoples reviews could hurt the feelings of the makers of the product and even make them lose money and potentially feel violated by honest reviewer making him and Amazon both liable for it.
A call to action for instance. If I were to communicate with a bunch of other people to raid someone's house on a specific day and time, that could be seen as a call to action.
But I'm not saying your speech hurt or violated me. I firmly believe that anyone should be allowed to say whatever they want at any opportunity.
I'm taking this opportunity to tell you to chill the fuck out and stop acting like I'm attacking you.
Yeah so not sure what just happened there. I am just asking questions to illustrate my point. I am not sure what you perceived as an attack. I do not mean "you" personally when I include "you" in the question if that is what it was. Gonna attempt to move on here and this is not an attack either, just debating your point.
Orchestrating a raid on someone's house is a conspiracy to commit a crime and there are already rules on the books to handle this. The means by which he communicated those plans (ie a website) shouldn't be held liable just as the telephone company shouldn't if he communicated using their platform.
Yeah just put those that followed the call to action in prison ... And give the caller a PRIZE for entrapment of imbeciles.
Why can't you have both?
Why can't I make a site that's open to discussions I agree with?
If I make an open website for discussing cats and you come on it and start writing rape fantasies and I get rid of them, am I a platform and a publisher? Do I have no right to get rid of bullshit I don't agree with and don't want since I'm paying the bills?
My point is that you cannot have free speech while also censoring speech. It's in the definition.
If you set up a site for cat posting and you censor rape posts then you're acting as a publisher. And that's fine.
But if you set up a website dedicated to free speech then, by definition, you cannot censor viewpoints you disagree with. Otherwise you're still acting as a publisher and not a platform.
A publisher takes an active role. A platform is passive.
But there are no unmoderated platforms anywhere, so by your definition platforms do not exist, except maybe the dark web. Nothing "known" by the general population.
Because it's a remarkably tricky subject to handle fairly.
Everyone walks around pretending you can either be completely for or against it, but what we'll have to settle for is something in the infinite shades of gray.
I personally want something as close to truly free speech as possible. I know there are stupid cunts out there who will ruin that idea immediately, but I'll always prefer more speech than less.
I completely agree with that. This all or nothing mentality does not work for almost anything in existence since life is all shades of grey.
There are things like IPFS and tor sites, and mastodon and the such, and federated sites, I wish I had paid more attention a few years ago when they started up. It may come to pass that some day they'll take down communities.win as well and we'd need to prepare for that day - it will come.
As long as the purpose of the moderators are to keep things on topic with wide margins it's fine. If the moderators start censoring based on political beliefs - then it's a shitshow like reddit and that needs to die.
For example if someone comes on this forum and posts an ad for whatever, then that has no place here.
If some deep state troll comes here and says you guys are all nutjobs and 9/11 was actually because of Saddam was getting blow jobs from Bin Laden, then yeah, that guy needs to go.
So more like a bouncer at the door that if a drunk gets too riled up and starts a bar fight gets escorted out on his ass double quick.
I just got banned from The Donald for this post I believe. I've never even posted there. I did when it was on reddit once and got banned. They were crying about twitter banning people and my one post of "Ironic considering all the bans here" got me banned.
It was peak meta irony.
So free speech only exists when you can choose your moderators?
But what if the wrong side chooses?
They fall under section 230 which states no provider of an interactive computer service (twitter) shall be treated as the publisher or liable for other people's content.
So this whole platform/publisher debate is not relevant for online.
The concept of publisher/platform does not exist online. That is the law as it currently exists. Your point is irrelevant.
On the Internet you mean? I mean I have free speech amongst my friends f2f w/o gadgets and computers. Nobody can take that away.
Yes, on servers outside the five-eyes (esp. USA and the reach of USA/UK)
Yes on distributed servers, not relying on ICANN domains, AWS/other stupid central hosting OR plain-old IPv4.
Yes, when fully encrypted, data obfuscated and mixed in between normal traffic
But sure, it takes some doing. And no service that I know of has gone there yet.
Keep taking those vaccines, and it will no longer be free in your own head.
I'm not vaccinated for covid, next time build a bigger strawman when you contribute, it will be worth more that way.
They can predict your brain patterns with algorithms.
You conveniently leave out the fact that those sites (the chins, voat, pol, whatever) have massive (consummate with the size of their userbase) shill brigades of jidf, feds, globohomos, and your run of the mill corporate shills.
The parasite is the issue, not the symptoms of the parasite’s infection spreading.
I don't "conveniently" leave that out, I believe there are honest to badness shitty people out in the world, and shitty people congregate in shitty places and push non-shitty people out.
Sorry, I don't buy the "everyone is an agent and there's no racist, loser pieces of shit out there" narrative. There are some, I won't deny that. But when there's plenty of people agreeing, well, they can't all be shills now can they?
It's way too easy to no true scotsman that shit away.
If it's 100% anonymous, then yes. Then you can speak "what if?" scenarios all day long and others can comment on whether they're total bullshit or have some value
Is there something here we can't say? Nigger? Jew ?
I would really avoid racism. It's not useful in any way and it's the same kind of xenophobia as plague rat, and "the unvaccinated" bullshit.
Yes there are evil people of color just as there are good, and yes there are evil people of a certain religion/lineage, as well as good.
Let's try to even avoid democrat/republican. It's not useful in any way either.
All these distinctions are not useful in uniting us against the actual common enemy which has done a bang up job of dividing us.
I don't give a shit if you're for abortions or against, red or blue, or rainbow flavored, or even worship satan... as long as you're not for the global WEF reset commies/fascist/CCP totalitarians. That's the only line I draw.
The antidote to divide and conquer is multiply, unite, and resist.
There's too many divisions in society as is.
Race, sex, sexual preference, language, color, city, state, country, continent, religion, politics, coke or pepsi....
There's so many divisions and so many people fanning them that we'll never become a Starfleet Utopia in my mind.
I don't care about a Starfleet Utopia - that idea is also congruent with a great reset - remember in Starfleet people didn't need jobs anymore the government provided them with everything they needed. They were "free" to do what they wanted. It was only missing the piece about "You will own nothing" - there was still money and property in that scifi universe.
What I care about is uniting enough of everyone to avoid the great reset and the loss of bodily sovereignty.
Being able to do whatever you wanted and not ever having to worry about a single bill or missed meal would be fucking divine.
Click the mod logs link on the right to see what you cant discuss here.
Yes.
No speech should be illegal.
Violent speech should be free and legal repercussions only come when a threat is made. The threat is the crime (the actual admission of being a potential threat to cause harm) the speech is not. Threats are the only speech that could be considered violent and is only potentially violent. Telling another person to go commit violence should no be illegal as it relies on the actions of another person and is their decision and we should respect that each person does what they decide and are responsible for it.
A private website is not obliged to allow for free speech.
You are free to yell whatever you want on a person's property until that person tells you to leave the property. If they do not, they are guilty of trespassing. Not any speech while trespassing unless it was a threat of physical harm.
No private company should be forced to host anything they do not want or do business with anyone they do not wish to based on any reason, including racism and bigotry.
totally agree.
Remember the line, "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it, to the death." - it's from Voltaire, Patrick Henry, or Evelyn Beatrice Hall and the ACLU has forgotten this. I think they infiltrated it.
It used to be the ACLU would defend even neo nazis. I'm more of punch a nazi in the face kinda person, but if you replace nazi with commie, I'm totally up for punching those fuckers too.
Despite that, I feel they should be allowed to speak their ideas.
popular speech does not need protection.
And totally, your right to free speech does not override my right to not listen.
I do remember that line! It used to be widely accepted. Now it gets censored for hate speech/violence if you say it.
I also remember another gem:
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but WORDS will never hurt me" -Pretty sure this was from Jesus but it may have been Sinbad. Maybe Bee Arthur not sure really someone wise AF.
Speaking of...
"I am rubber you are glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you!" I am quite sure that was Pee Wee Herman also known for "I know you are but what am I?" as a way of countering hurtful speech that still today there is no known comeback from.
We need more great minds like Herman. So what if he masterbates at a porn theater from time to time? He's got a right to live his truth right? Where is his hashtag?
Ha
Yet even threats have to be CREDIBLE. Meaning there needs to be PROOF of you taking action to accomplish that threat.
I am not sure what your argument is here.
What exactly you don't understand?
Are you saying that threatening violence is not a crime unless it is a credible threat where action has been taken?
Are you arguing for or against threatening speech being illegal?
Are you disagreeing with me? Is so, about what?
I'm arguing that IT SHOULD BE LEGAL TO SCARE THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF IDIOTS THAT BELIEVE . As long as you don't take action .
FUCK THE BELIEVERS.
Making a threat is action. It presents you to them as a threat they are allowed legally defend themselves from with deadly force.
Well then FUCK YOU and WHOEVER GAVE BIRTH TO YOU. AN i hope you get fucking cancer and die in the most painful way possible . No threats aren't action. THEY ARE SPEECH.
I agree for the most part. It gets a little iffy when people are encouraging others to do violence though. The mob slips through the cracks like this.
Definitely iffy stuff, potentially dangerous even. Freedom can be like that sometimes. I am certainly not saying advocating violence is good or should be encouraged by any means. It is shitty behavior for sure and hopefully people aren't stupid enough to commit violence because someone told them to, however if they are I do not think that laws against this speech would do much to help the situation. If we do we are then saying that the person committing the violence is less accountable for their own actions do o the fact that another person suggested he commit the violence. Should he get a lesser sentence? What punishment for the person who told him what to do, without any authority over him and without any threats if he didn't do them get?
Also, how often are these sort of situations presenting themselves? Aren't we creating the rule for the exception at that point?
This is why they got Capone for tax bullshit.
I don't have all the answers, I do know modern society is better with some rules than none, and that people should stop being assholes to each other.
Aside from that, who knows what the answer is. Too many people too full of hate, and too many people fanning those flames.
I certainly do not have all the answers but I do have most of the questions usually. lol
I wish people would stop being assholes as well and agree there is too much hate however, from what I have learned it is impossible to legislate morality even if there was an objective agreed upon moral code we all agreed on. But of course there isn't and morality is subjective for the most part and generally people believe whatever fucked up shit they do is moral anyhow so it wouldn't help. BLM, antifa, proud boys or the KKK there is not one of them who doesn't believe in their cause and knows they are playing the role of the villain or that their actions aren't justified given the evils of the opposing side to their cause.
I am not sure if society is better with some rules regarding speech to be honest. And we have more laws on the books than we could possibly know in this modern society and look at the shape we are in. Maybe these laws aren't helping the situation and more freedom would stop many of the conflicts out there.
Indeed. But some causes are better than others, causes that help people > causes that hang people.
And yes, there is a middle ground somewhere with laws, too many is as bad as too few (people are fucking animals and sorry, but they need some rules or it's just a zoo), the problem is that no 2 people will ever agree on all the same laws.