It seems to me a repeating pattern that once freedom of thought, speech and expression is limited for essentially any reason, it will have unintended consequences.
Once the tools are in place, they will be used, abused and inevitably end up in the hands of someone you disagree with, regardless of whether the original implementer had good intentions.
As such I’m personally very averse to restrictions. I’ve thought about the question a fair bit – there isn’t a clear cut or obvious line to draw.
Please elaborate and motivate your answer. I’m genuinely curious about getting some fresh perspectives.
In terms of public speech, specifically:
- Anything that can be or has been demonstrably proven cannot be subject to denialism. For example: the holocaust.
- News orgs cannot knowingly air falsehoods, and need to correct any falsehoods during subsequent broadcasts. Knowingly airing falsehoods should come with draconian financial punishments with no ability to appeal.
News sources should be required to publish their truthfulness rating, a graded system agreed upon by the public which measures the source’s adherence to standards of journalism.
I’ve been giving this some thought and the only line I can see is banning the calls for violence against a individual or protected group.
I think anything more or less restrictive causes trouble.
Example points:
- Cannot discuss declaring war (voilence) on another country.
- Can never lie or can not cause harm = can not tell a joke.
- Cannot ban misinformation = who decides? In the 1960 being gay was illegal, should the gay right movement have been banned as misinformation?
Societies grow by challenging norms.
I think our weird society can be fixed by teaching critical thinking in schools and introspection. However, philosophers have been saying similar things for at least 2000 years and it hasn’t caught on yet.
Happy to discuss the above as I’d like to work the angles for a better line, if we think there is one.
“Your right to swing your fist ends where the nose of someone else begins”
You can say what ever the fuck you want, as long as you dont hurt someone else doing so.
Calling somebody a racist or sexist hurts their feelings, should that be allowed?
Calling somebody out publicly can hurt their livelihood and thus ability to get things like medical care, should that be allowed?
Ah, we finally have the tolerance paradox again. Tolerating intolerance does not increase the total amount of tolerance. If someone breaks the social contract to tolerate everyone he can not plead himself on the contract, because he broke the contract first.
What is, in your opinion, a necessary set of minimal restrictions on freedom of thought, speech and expression?
- Liberty of thought?
What the fuck?! Anyone should be free to think what they want, no matter how ugly, dirty or stupid, or even criminal, that could be. That’s thoughts, ffs. - Liberty of expression. My stance is that we should not tolerate call to murder or to direct violence against anyone or any group of persons (be it physical, or otherwise). That also means, we should not tolerate any call to the ‘I feel offended’ argument to try to shut anyone we disagree with (we’re all free to not listen to anything we don’t like, that doesn’t mean we have any right to censor it), and no tolerance towards any call to ‘vengeance’ or to ‘cancel’ anyone no matter how much they ‘deserved’ it (judging and then, maybe, punishing someone should be the exclusive job of justice not of an angry (and stupid) mob of people).
For the rest, the liberty of expression and the liberty of discussion are fundamentals to any working democracy—and to any working educative system too, looking at you (way too many) colleges and universities. Their absence being key to the creation of any kind of… dictatorship you can think of.
I’ll let anyone pick the kind of political regime they want to live in, I’ve made my choice and it’s not a dictatorship even one controlled by the ‘good guys’. Fuck that.
Edit: if you feel like downvoting this, by all mean do it but keep in mind that this won’t teach me (or anyone else for that matter) much of your reasoning in doing so. So, if you want to help me (and anyone else reading this) realize how wrong I am, maybe explain why/how in a comment? Otherwise, your downvote won’t mean much if anything, to me at least.
Yes on all accounts - I think freedom of thought and expression are linked to a great extent. We form and develop thoughts and ideas by expressing and discussing them, especially when it comes to more advanced concepts that benefit from group insights.
- Liberty of thought?
Minimal restrictions? I think it needs to be contextualized. And it depends on what your goals are.
Implicit restrictions may work very well, as social contracts and dynamics, until they don’t. Like shame making us normalize and assimilate into a social group. This may not work of different kinds of personalities or personality disorders, and/or in bigger and more anonymized societies.
For a good, stable, society you need a strong justice system separate from individuals, and people to have confidence in it and its justice. It can serve as a mediator and interpreter of restrictions, and weigh the different interests, for example of individuals vs public interest.
A right to privacy is very important to not give attack vectors to malicious intents, but it must end when it becomes a danger to others.
Any form of hatespeech, disinformation, manipulation, lying to ruin or damage others, physically or mentally, stalking must be restricted.
At the same time, the restrictions must not apply unquestioned to things in the interest of the public, of society, and of justice.
Personally, I like the German system of unreasonable insulting not being allowed more than a US free speech including unreasonable insults. But that’s something that may not be “minimal” even if it means causing some damage to some people, and excluding some from participating in some or all of society due to immediate or indirect effects.
I don’t think you can draw a hard, specific line that can stand statically and unquestioned.
Something I find funny is that the British conservative government granted themselves a lot of powers to stop protest and arrest people over internet posts. Then a labour government takes power, starts using it their way, and the conservatives are whining
I think it’s disingenuous to group freedom of thought with speech and expression. Limiting the first is impossible, while every country on earth limits the other two to some degree.
My personal opinion is that you shouldn’t be able to hurt people in stupid, hateful, predictable ways.
Can you define “hurt”. Do you mean physically or emotionally? If the latter then I think it is too restrictive.
In this context I pretty much mean advocating for genocide or fascism. That and I don’t think you should be able to lie out your ass and call it news.
They are tied, because the other two freedoms are intrinsically linked to the first. If a thought is not permitted to be expressed, then it is, for all intents and purposes, prohibited.
Consider how often you forget something. I write things down to remember them. If that thought, expressed, were considered criminal, then it becomes a limitation also on thought itself.
Personally, I like Simone Weil’s idea that total freedom of thought and expression are only truly possible in the absence of propaganda, political parties, and deception.
That is to say, it’s not really free thought if we’re just parroting what the party, news, etc. say.
Everyone who claims this is a hypocrite, you absolutely have limits on the freedom of speech and expression, and no one can limit your thoughts with the current technology so that’s irrelevant to the discussion. You don’t believe me? Ok, in that case I think you should be okay with my freedom to express myself by dismembering you slowly while streaming it online, oh, I shouldn’t be allowed to legally do that? How DARE you limit my freedom of expression.
So, now that we’ve established freedom of expression is already limited by other laws we should focus on which laws should be allowed to surpass the freedom of expression, and the answer is essentially all of them, otherwise “I was expressing myself” would be a valid legal defense. The whole point of a law is to prevent people from expressing something, be it murder intent or unwillingness to pay taxes. We must watch our government so that laws are not oppressive and that they’re used to protect the people and not to abuse power. But laws against racism and homofobia are not abuse of power and serve to protect people from other people.
depends on scope
I think that a gov’t has an interest in suppressing calls to violence, hate speech, and medical misinformation in the name of protecting its citizenry. I don’t think it can ethically suppress other kinds of expression, especially political express, most especially criticism of the government.
I think a voluntary community, however, can ethically set much narrower limits on expression within community space. If a group of friends has a movie night and Jamie keeps spoiling the endings, it’s okay to stop inviting her to movie night. An online forum dedicated to urbanism can remove posts containing pro-car propaganda, and ban repeat offenders. A school can have a dress code.
But no person; no organization; no entity below the level of, say, Ma’at; none can set limits on what someone thinks. Thoughts are not consistently voluntary, and are not consistently the result of an ethical process, anymore than laughing when ticked or blinking in a bright light.
calls to violence, hate speech, and medical misinformation in the name of protecting its citizenry. I don’t think it can ethically suppress other kinds of expression, especially political express, most especially criticism of the government.
…and yet political expression and both “calls to violence” and “hate speech” are overlapping. Is a call to revolution not the ultimate criticism of the government? (but also inherently violent?)
Who gets to decide what is hateful, violent or misinformation? How do we prevent the tools used to regulate dissemination of these types of expression from being applied against other things, or the definitions of the terms from being changed/drifting over time? (Consider for instance statements regarding transgender individuals somehow getting covered by medical disinformation laws…)
I think a voluntary community, however, can ethically set much narrower limits on expression within community space.
I agree, I think this could be applied even regarding non-voluntary spaces.
However, if a forum has a sufficiently large number of members amongst the population, I believe it should be considered a public space (and have these freedoms apply), hence taking away the power of controllers of large platforms to dictate/limit/direct the public discourse.
A government that’s democratically elected by the people should have the ability to restrict hate speech and threats of violence, but there shouldn’t be criminal penalties, because then that could get abused. Such laws should require 2/3 supermajority in legislature to pass, (or 60% if its via referrendum).
Example: The government should be able to take down a website saying “[Race] is superior than [Another Race]”.
The reason why no criminal penalties is because many countries in the EU are now abusing hate speech laws to jail anti-genocide protests. If something is a good cause, naturally the message will still spread despite censorship. Conversely, white supremacist groups would have a harder time spreading their hatred from their basements if their websites keep getting taken down and they have to go outside to do it. (Yes they could use VPNs, but its harm reduction. Less people will go on those sites, less people radicalized.)
TLDR: Hate speech websites, newpapers, tv channels, should be taken down. But no criminal punishment should be imposed. That’s would be my compromise to avoid anti-hate-speech laws from being abused to jail dissent.
should have the ability to restrict hate speech and threats of violence
Who decides what is considered hate speech and threats of violence?
The rest of your comment indicates you’re aware of the vagueness of these terms (and existing instances of regulatory abuse).
Ideally it should be the legislature that propose these laws, and the people should vote on it via refereendum (60% supermajority is a good idea to prevent tyranny of the majority).
As for actual enforcement, an attorney of the state (“state” as in polity) would present a list of websites, news articles, video, video games, news channels, etc… to the judge of an independent judiciary, and demonstrare why they qualify as “hate spech” to be taken down, and the judge reviews it and either grants the “takedown warant” or refuses it. Then it can get appealed to higher courts if the losing side disagrees.
I’m not a lawyer, so the specfic wording of the law would need more legalase, but that’s the general concept of it.
There should be no restrictions on freedom of thought. Simple reason: One cannot control their thoughts.
I think speech and expression should be limited in ways that prevent negative outcomes for individuals or populations of people based on immutable characteristics like sexuality, skin colour, ethnic background, etc.
I can see no reason why anyone should ever be allowed to use free speech to incite violence, or expressing oneself in a way that is destructive to others. There should be no reason why we allow people to target others with slurs.
There are already laws restricting speech and expression in numerous ways. For example: one cannot utter threats to another person, even though they are not physically doing anything and operating with “free speech”.
If one cannot speak or express themselves without hurting others I see no reason why that should be tolerated in modern civilizations.
One cannot control their thoughts.
I want to know what you mean by this.
I don’t know that i fully disagree with you, I don’t get to will myself to instantly think any thought, but i have a plethora of tools at my disposal to manage my thought processes. when i find myself thinking thoughts that violate my values i introduce counter thoughts to balance it all out, or sometimes i just cut it off with a “we’re done here for now” kinda vibe. I can control what kind of thoughts pop into my head in response to external stimuli by altering my values. Meditation and prayer also provide a means to alter or dissipate the flow of thoughts. Many of my values are at odds with each other, so i must partake in a seemingly constant exercise of identifying and resolving the dissonances in my values either internally (changing my values) or externally (attempting to alter the world around me to match my values).
One is merely an observer of their thoughts. The reason for this is there is a delay from Stimulus and Brain activity before the Conscious awareness of the stimulus and brain activity. This natural delay causes us to assume that we are consciously making choices, and thinking on our own.
The core idea that I believe in here is that Humans do not have free will. We cannot control our actions or thoughts, and we merely observe them with our conscious mind.
Im the same as you. Yeah there is all sorts of nasty stuff but it always seems like there is more to loose than what it gains. Besides loss of rights there is the whole things going underground which just makes them harder to track or know how much of a problem it is. I want laws to be more about actions than art, writing, speech, and thought. I mean do all sorts of crazy searches regularly for weapons or poison or some other nerd thing that goes through my mind at some point. Does not mean im going to go kill someone. Now if I get picked up as a suspect I totally get it being something to point out in court if it showed I searched for something specific to the crime Im accused of recently or such. Not that I think peoples info should be available willy nilly but the subpoena system is understandable.
I will repost something I wrote a few months ago here on Lemmy.
My ethos boils down to…
- The Golden Rule: Your rights end where other’s rights begin, and vice versa.
- Natural Rights: Any action or inaction, thought, or word, spoken or written, that does not cross the line of the Golden Rule is a natural right.
- Ethics: All ethics are founded upon, and entirely dependent upon, points 1 & 2.
- Morality Is Unethical: Morality, allowing for arbitrary precepts, is inherently unethical.
- Effort: Strive to live ethically.
- Inaction is Action: Inaction is, itself, an action. If your inaction results (even indirectly) in someone’s natural rights being infringed, your inaction is unethical.
- Consideration: Actions often have cascading, indirect consequences, and you bear full responsibility for them. Therefore, failure to consider the indirect consequences of your (in)actions is also unethical.
- Graciousness: Treat others the way they wish to be treated. Recognize the dividends that gracious behavior has on preserving the natural rights of both yourself and others.
- Defend the Social Contract: Ethical behavior is a contract between individuals. Aggressors and instigators who violate that contract are not subject to its protections. As such, adherents are obliged to defend both themselves and others from such infringements to preserve the greater social stability.
- Imperfection: Acknowledge that no body, no thing, and no system is perfect. Not you, not others, not nature, not these precepts. Mistakes are inevitable, it is the effort and intention that matters. Accept and treasure imperfection, and be faithful to the spirit rather than the letter.
Can you give us an example of point 1 with regards to hate speech? Or a call for violence against another?
If it wasn’t for a certain south African man child, I would have called myself a free speech absolutist.
I believe that free speech is a vital component of a healthy democracy. And as it is the most fragile one that is easy to take away, it’s also among the most important ones.
But like any other tool, it can be abused. Of course freedom of expression is not the same as freedom from consequence, and certain things should therefore be illegal. Exactly what should be, and the definition of such, needs to be determined by some of ne smarter than I.
For example, stochastic terrorism should not be legal, but that’s a very Grey area that can be very prone to abuse - Who determines what is and isn’t stochastic terrorism?
