It's really hard to tell the difference between what is genuinely offensive and what is not.
No easy answers. In this case, maybe there is a relatively simple rule: Supporting democracy must not in itself be regarded as offensive...
replies(8):
No easy answers. In this case, maybe there is a relatively simple rule: Supporting democracy must not in itself be regarded as offensive...
That’s why language policing, hate speech laws, Twitter mobs, and bully-the-bully efforts are abominations. So really, the answer is easy: everyone has the right to offend, and has no right not to be offended. Your simple rule doesn’t go far enough.
It's not hard to tell the difference actually. You know when you are offended quite obviously.
The hard part is knowing when other people are offended. This is why we can't have rules based on subjective experience.
I remember reading an article about how someone breaking your heart is a much more egregious crime than shoplifting. Yet, there is no law against breaking hearts.
You can't have both "Free Speech" and "You Can't Say Anything Offensive" at the same time, because there is too much overlap. So you have to choose. The US constitution is pretty clear that "Free Speech" is the higher principle.
I don't agree with this stance, but it is an oft-heard one defending companies who stifle speech (as long as the stifled speech was a far right Nazi website or anti-LGBT comments).
As we see, that stance is dangerous and extends to companies stifling politically inconvenient speech like "I support Hong Kong protesters".
No, the US Constitution doesn't even purport to set out social priorities outside of the relations between the government of the US and it's people.
You might believe that free speech is an important principle outside of that context, but (even if dead guys once wrote it in a document was a valid argument for a set of social priorities) the Constitution of the United States doesn't make that claim, and if you want to make it, you’ll have to make the argument yourself, not just rely on “the Constitution say so”.
E.g. I don't agree with Trump's policies, I generally disagree on most topics with his voters, but I wholeheartedly support their right to voice their opinions. I want them to voice their opinions, even if sometimes they will result in rules that I dislike. I'm too terrified of the alternative where a certain group is not allowed to participate.
In an open society, there can and should be heated debates, sides that stand firm behind their beliefs and everyone should be prepared to fight (in debate) for what they deem important. Crucially however, no debate should be won by silencing the other side through decree.
It is easy to handwave this case away as fringe, but it is only fringe inasmuch as you only see the tip of an iceberg. As other posts have pointed out, this seemingly low impact act by Blizzard is actually a sign of a cultural collision.
Where the culture of open dispute and free expression of ideas is met with a closed and conformist culture of be silent or be silenced by force.
We must fight back against this problem every time it surfaces, because the moment we stop, we lose. Whenever it becomes normalized and accepted that corporations that arose from the support and foundations of a free society can turn on those principles whenever they deem profitable, we lose a bit of those freedoms.
If history is of any indication, freedoms once lost this way can only ever bought back by bloodshed.
Calling for liberation of any territory is genuinely offensive to the government from which one is calling for it to be liberated, and to people who support that government (and often to those who support the territorial integrity of the relevant state event if they don't strongly support the government in question.)
Try and tell me your opinions are your own and the books and media you consume do not own some portion of them.
Hate-speech laws exist to prevent the programming of people to systematically hate and exterminate other people, a lesson that has been learned many times over in history.
I disagree. The fact that the US Constitution deals with a specific relationship between government and individual is incidental to the implicit claim. The US society therein is governed (for whatever it's worth) by the "priorities" and principles within that constitution. This is what marks the confusion. I agree there is a legal distinction between the principles and law. The principles remain.
It would go like this: hate speech is first yelling fire in a theater, then it's espousing bigotry, then it's holding the wrong opinions, until it's finally speaking ill of the Party. That's also a lesson that has been learned many times over in history.
But some level of social cohesion is desirable, and I think starting at the level of 'not allowed to advocate for the rape and murder of peoples' is a reasonable step towards ensuring less people think that is viable.
It's a key distinction, and yes, the media still has the liberty to not broadcast is views (because the same liberty that lets them refrain from repeating "I support Hong Kong protesters" lets them refrain from repeating all manner of "Death to all X").
Is that gameable in a multinational world where some media companies are cross-oceanic superpowers? Sure. There are other media outlets that aren't that.
It's possible the solution to these speech issues is to aggressively enforce antitrust.
That's an awful place to live as well.
...unless Cloudflare or Amazon or whomever is hosting his blog arrives at the same conclusion as Blizzard. I would argue free speech as a philosophy doesn't work unless corporations are on board.
And some people would like to have us programmed with their opinion unchallenged, rather than have their view face opposing arguments in a fair and open debate.
Once you compromise on free speech for some views, it’s all a slippery down-hill slope from there.
This particular cynicism justifies far too much. A liberal (as in liberty) society must trust the super-majority of its population to agree on and uphold its ethical foundations. Policing hate speech weakens one of those foundations no matter how you justify it, but if you justify it by saying "people are programmable and so can't be trusted to hear what hateful people have to say," it weakens it enormously.
A huge percentage of our speech is attempted "programming." Political debate, religious preaching, even mathematical models of the universe are attempts to get others to think about something a certain way. But it would be unethical to ban any of those things, because people aren't "programmable," they're suggestible.
I absolutely agree. I'm not saying ban hate speech because its programming -- I'm saying ban it because it's evil and effective.
It's morally reprehensible to defend the existence of advocating for racial superiority when we have witnessed hundreds of times where that leads to genocide.
The idea is that in America such topics are prohibits because there is the idea of historical injustice and bringing everyone to a fair level for a "better society" (very well-intended). It is no different in China when political topics bring an uprising flux of emotion from within the Chinese people (also very well-intended in the context of Chinese legacy). There is no fundamental difference, only a difference in how the freedom of expression is backed by historical context and reigning ideology.
> It's morally reprehensible to defend the existence of advocating for racial superiority...
This really is a slippery slope. Let's agree that it's morally reprehensible to advocate for racial superiority. Let's not argue that it's morally reprehensible to defend the right of somebody else to advocate for racial superiority. When we are faced with assailing what is supposed to be as close as possible to an unassailable right for pragmatic reasons, neither side of the argument is clearly moral or immoral. Or, rather, both sides are somewhat immoral. If we as a society come to the conclusion that hate speech is so dangerous that it is worth reducing the right to free speech to prevent it, then let's at least do so with a heavy heart. Political decisions that pit a great good against another great good are terrible. Don't make them more terrible by accusing those on either side of being morally reprehensible.
That's because it's not up to the prankster or the offender or a third party to decide if one is suffering. It's up to the offended, mocked or bullied one who are the only ones knowing what they feel.
Of course, in the public political space, everybody tries to play the victim/innocent game to their advantage.
You can google that sentence, you can read defenses of it and make up your mind. I'm not that passionate about changing a single opinion that I'm going to waste time chasing after your ever expanding requirements.
A small limitation on an 'unassailable' right (where is that status derived from?) is actually the solution that maximizes liberalism by limiting genocide.
I had never heard of the term but I would certainly agree that it's hate speech. It seems to me that it was a twitter hashtag that some people thought was funny.
I don't agree with it but I also think that an equivalent hashtag #killallwomen would have an equally hard time being brought before a judge.
I find it rude to simply turn around and walk away without saying why I chose to. I remembered previous conversations I had that went the same way and ended in me being dragged along and my time being wasted. Fool me once, shame on me etc etc. I apologize if that was not your intention.
True, if we collectively foster it. Let's definitely not do that.
> where is that status derived from?
It's just agreed upon, or not. The extent to which free speech is unassailable is the extent to which free speech is unassailable. Every society has restricted it in some way or other; many (even western) societies have restricted it much too far, in my opinion. We can go as far as we choose.
Personally, I wish we wouldn't choose speech policing in the US at this point in time. The implications are far reaching. Policing something doesn't just affect the people who break the law, it affects anybody who could theoretically break it. Mechanisms to monitor and silence speech get another great justification. And the people doing the policing will of course err on the side of caution at times. Look at the recent stack overflow kerfuffle. Since intent is so difficult to judge, there is no way that the only thing hate speech laws are applied to will be speech with hateful intent. Some arguments in support of Israel are considered by some to be hate speech, as supporting the Hong Kong protests is by others. Both of those platforms are deeply offensive to a particular demographic. And the argument that these are just "bad applications" of the law is insufficient, because laws at their very best are applied badly sometimes, and at their worst applied badly _most_ of the time.
Saying that a limitation on this particular right for this particular reason "is actually the solution that maximizes liberalism by limiting genocide," is not a good argument. Genocide has some probability of occurring in a country with the policies in place today, and some other probability of occurring with different policies in place. If we just applied any policy that reduced the probability, there would be no freedoms at all. And even hundreds of examples in history don't work very well as evidence unless you can demonstrate an inverse correlation in history between the degree to which countries restricted hate speech and the extend to which they engaged in genocide, and I wouldn't be surprised if you found exactly the opposite.
You can look at it that way: If a private entity is prohibited from deleting user content, isn't that also an infringement of free speech? And at what level are they prohibited to filter such content? Are they allowed to require an account? Are they allowed to delete spam?
No "Right to Free Speech" can be enforced between private persons or entities. Nobody can be forced to listen to you, nobody can be prohibited from taking measures to not read or hear you, just because you claim a right to free speech.
Thus the only correct level to fight against this particular instance of private censorship is indeed the private domain, and that's mainly counter-speech.
A right to Free Speech can only protect you from government sanctions. How other private parties react to your "taboo" opinions cannot be legislated.
And I'd like to break a lance for "political correctness" here. Hate speech and offensive language in general do make a public or private space uncomfortable for certain people. Not all of this can be avoided, but in the case of race and gender, those who feel offended can't really change their offendedness. And because those people are usually a minority, it is usually someone else who steps up to the task of defending such a space.
Unfortunately, an aggressive climate fueled by hate speech leads to worse consequences than offended feelings. So, in many cases, why not avoid offending people? And in many cases at issue, the main motivation of the offenders is the offending, not what they believe is the "truth".
Feeling offended because somebody criticized a state is harder to make stick.
The decision to abandon democracy can never be democratic or democratically legitimated.
In the example of Venezuela, both parties agree to the same constitution, though they interpret it differently.
Coincidentally I stumbled upon a comment on imgur today that went like this:
- canadian guy is in saskatoon, in a bar
- chinese guy at the counter
- chinese guy backs away from the counter with beverage
- bumps into canadian guy he didn't see
- canadian guy blurps 'woops, sorry'
- chinese guy 'YOU APOLOGIZE TO ALL OF CHINA'
- canadian guy thinks it's funny, laught it off
- mates from chinese guy laugh and pull him away
Then imgur commenters: "Yeah, some Chinese tourists/expats/students can be very sensitive about China".
Feeling offended because somebody criticized a state is harder to make stick.
All that to say that in some parts of the world personal identity can be tied real tight to national/territorial origin. And we all meet on the intertubes.