Depends on what you mean by “free speech”. If you mean absolute free speech in the sense that all voices are present and heard, then no, because it blocks out the hateful voices. But you can’t have that while allowing for hate speech either because hate speech silences the voices of its target. So no such thing can exist. If you want a platform with “free speech”, you need to decide who gets the freedom and how much of it. There has to be a limit somewhere, whether it’s explicitly set or not.
No
It will probably never be free speech happening. It’s always been free speech with exceptions.
I think one measure of society is how strictly it imposes some kind of penalty for people that use speech that crosses those boundaries. No one should get away with racist comments and not be penalized in some way. Not necessarily legal penalties, I mean including smaller stuff, like limiting the pool of potential friends. There’s a lot of range with these.
Another measure would have to do with what the penalties even are.
I think to achieve that you’ll have to redefine the upvote/downvote system. Currently upvoting and downvoting is synonymous with “I agree” or “I disagree”, but what it should represent, is whether a contribution adds or subtracts value from the conversation.
This way if somebody wants to troll their contribution will be vanquished.
Further more, hate speech is usually backed by topics that are indeed worthy of discussion, but are often ill-expressed and prevent any for of civil discussion.Short answer: no. But one should define terms, especially with legal implications.
“Hate Speech” always sounded a bit Orwellian to me. Just like “Homeland Security”. People should be allowed to speak about what they hate, even if it’s bigoted, racist, sexist, etc. if free thought and inquiry are valuable human rights.
In general, I believe the jurisprudence of free speech in our country (USA) essentially says beyond, libel, slander, inciting violence, or sedition, the government can’t imprison you for expression or forcibly silence you in a public forum.
Private organizations and companies can regulate speech within their domains and property to the extent that they don’t violate other laws or rights of other parties within and without their said domains and property.
I think that’s pretty fair.
Hate speech needs to be said in person.
Said a different way, “I says pardon?”
It depends on how much of an absolutist you want to be. No government allows absolute freedom of speech. Libel, slander, and incitement of violence are all forms of speech that are illegal in basically every country. If your platform refuses to remove these forms of speech, you would be protecting what is generally not considered to be free speech, and it’s possible you could even be held legally liable for allowing that kind of speech to spread on your platform.
If you decide not to be a free speech absolutist, and instead define free speech as legal speech, then things get complicated. In the U.S., the Supreme Court has held multiple times that hate speech is protected under the First Amendment, so censoring hate speech would mean your platform wasn’t allowing all forms of, “free speech.” However, the U.S. has much broader protections on speech than most Western countries, and hate speech is illegal in much of Europe.
So, TL:DR; free speech is a sliding scale, and many countries wouldn’t consider hate speech to be protected form of speech. By those standards, you could have a platform that censors hate speech but still maintains what is considered free speech. However, by other countries’ standards, you would be censoring legal speech.
Free speech as in, the freedom to express valid political speech and criticize the current government? Sure. Easy.
Free speech as in, the ability to say whatever the hell you want, including threatening, harassing, or inciting hatred and genocide against people? No. No you cannot.
Says who? Who decided that free speech got an asterisk? Who makes and enforces the rules and limitations?
I think it may be possible if you understand a difference between the right to speak and the right to be heard.
Ie the right to say something doesn’t create an obligation in others to hear it, nor to hear you in the future.
If I stand up on a milk crate in the middle of a city park to preach the glory of closed source operating systems, it doesn’t infringe my right to free speech if someone posts a sign that says “Microsoft shill ahead” and offers earplugs at the park entrance. People can choose to believe the sign or not.
A social media platform could automate the signs and earplugs. By allowing users to set thresholds of the discourse acceptable to them on different topics, and the platform could evaluate (through data analysis or crowd sourced feedback) whether comments and/or commenters met that threshold.
I think this would largely stop people from experiencing hatespeech, (one they had their thresholds appropriately dialed in) and disincentivize hatespeech without actually infringing anybody’s right to say whatever they want.
There would definitely be challenges though.
If a person wants to be protected from experiencing hatespeech they need to empower some-one/thing to censor media for them which is a risk.
Properly evaluating content for hatespeech/ otherwise objectionable speech is difficult. Upvotes and downvotes are an attempt to do this in a very coarse way. That/this system assumes that all users have a shared view of what content is worth seeing on a given topic and that all votes are equally credible. In a small community of people, with similar values, that aren’t trying to manipulate the system, it’s a reasonable approach. It doesn’t scale that well.
I think you misunderstand the point of hate speech laws, it’s not to not hear it, its because people rightly recognize that spreading ideas in itself can be dangerous given how flawed human beings are and how some ideas can incite people towards violence.
The idea that all ideas are harmless and spreading them to others has no effect is flat out divorced from reality.
Spreading the idea that others are less than human and deserve to die is an act of violence in itself, just a cowardly one, one step divorced from action. But one that should still be illegal in itself. It’s the difference between ignoring Nazis and hoping they go away and going out and punching them in the teeth.
I support robust enforcement of anti hate speech laws. In fact I’ve reported hate speech/ hatecrime to the police before.
We’re not talking about laws, we’re talking about social media platform policies.
Social media platforms connect people from regions with different hatespeech laws so " enforcing hatespeech laws" is impossible to do consistently.
If users engage in crimes using the platform they are subject to the laws that they are subject to.
I don’t care that it’s legal to advocate for genocide where a preacher is located, or at the corporation’s preferred jurisdiction, I don’t want my son reading it.
The question was: is there a way a platform can be totally free speech and stop hate speech. I think the answer is “kinda”
Yes you effing can. It’s called block button.
It’s pretty exhausting having to block everyone all the time though. That’s one small benefit with Lemmy. You can block instances.
I mean, yeah. But also not everyone.
It worked well for so long because it is a good solution. Allow users to block and let everything fly as long as it’s not a personal attack. The community will relatively quickly sort itself out.
Sadly, today there are exception to block button working >:(
Edit: Hell. isn’t BlueSky pretty much riding this today? People made blocklists and give fuck all about the less nice side of the site. And people who are intersted can keep seeing stuff.
Look into the of Paradox of Tolerance.
Definitely read the article, but TL;DR It’s acceptable (and necessary) to shut down Nazis.
Yes. There is no contradiction. Freedom or speech is the freedom to discuss or criticise as part of a discussion, in particular the freedom to criticize those in power without the fear of repercussion. Discuss sensitive topics to all your hearts desire. Hate speech does not intend to discuss anything. Hate speech is there to target, to threaten, to belittle, to dehumanise, to attack. Hate speech is violence.
Edit; As usual with this topic “free speech absolutists” emerge, often accompanied by elaborate use of language and a thesaurus. And as usual they are not really into the entire “free speech” as in “freedom of discussion”, but rather “freedom of consequences” for themselves. Well boo hoo, ain’t that a pearl clutching shame of a slippery slope to the strawman of “who are the real Nazis” when not supporting your freedom of unadulterated hatred to run free into the world.
That’s free speech with an asterisk. It also means you have this big gray area and someone policing and deciding what is and isn’t hate speech, so you won’t ever see completely free speech thoughts from everyone.
You can’t have your cake, and eat it too. Having rules against what can be said or talked about means you’re in a bubble, for better or worse.
Oh no, policing. Like in everything else in a functioning society because people do things they are not supposed to. You’re free to drive wherever but you’re but free to ram your car into pedestrians. Oh my god the oppression.
I would be careful with phrases like, “there is no contradiction.” There is a comprehensible tension between free speech as the ability for anyone to say what they wish, and a prohibition on hate speech as a prohibition on saying specific things. Denying that risks damaging one’s credibility because it can appear that we are merely refusing to acknowledge that tension.
I argue it’s better to admit these tensions. And that’s not an admission that the arguments for prohibition of hate speech are weak, but it is an admission that as real people in the real world, we can never have the comfort of a tension-free, contradiction-free theory for anything of significance.
It’s essentially a practical application of the paradox of tolerance. And like with that one, the paradox goes away when the offending party breaks the social contract.
"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise." - Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
Everyone seems to forget the second paragraph of the quote.
Also a contract by definition cannot be valid and signed under duress thus the social contract is an invalid assertion. At the end of the day only thing that actually matters is Darwinian evaluation.
Well how do u define hate speach? Is misgendering someone hate speach or free speach? Is burning a flag hate speach or free speach? Is calling for the death of elon musk hate speach or free speach?
Its impossible to define hate and free speach in a way everyone agrees with ans thus impossible to have both symultaniously for everyone.
The fediverse is beautiful cos u can choose an instance that defines both in a manner u choose fit or even spin up ur own server and do it however u want.
Misgendering on purpose, hate speech. “On purpose” might be a fuzzy term, but patterns of behaviour will usually make it obvious. Burning a flag, free speech. Calling for death of Elon Musk, hate speech. Calling him out on his bullshit, free speech.
Not actually that hard.
Misgendering on purpose, hate speech.
So ur definition of hate speach can include something that is purly a subjective experience of being offended? The subjective is by definition whatever one claims it to be. Thus i could claim that subjectively u speaking at all is hate speach? Ohh and dont try claiming its not subjective cos i dont give a fuck if u misgender me (my existance is a counter example of any possible proof).
And here we are disagreeing about what is free/hate speach thus both symultaniously is impossible.
Not imposible if you’re wrong. Which you are.
What about demeaning others is subjective? Do you fear that victimhood will be wielded as a weapon? I believe a good percentage of cases of hate speech are very obvious, and the rest should be handled by good old societal norms and shaming.
Do you feel bad when others correct you?
Didnt u rwad what i wrote?
U don’t have a right not to be offended that is simply the cost of free expression. Its only demeaning if u let it be demeaning i dont give a fuck if u misgender me therefore i have a different subjective experience of the same act therfore it is subjective (i am a counter example to any possible proof, as i said).
The subjective is what u decide it is therefore i can subjectively claim u opening ur mouth is demeaning and thus u should be silenced.
What is wrong with this logic other than u dont like it? U havnt corrected me cos u havnt addressed my argument or points all uve done is make the assertion that missgendering is demeaning for ur subjective opinion.
I’ll grant that there’s no acceptable way to programmatically evaluate some text and infer from the text alone if it’s hate speech.
That’s why I stick to a manual process to evaluate. For example, if enough people report you for misgendering others, and you do not adjust your behaviour it eventuallt becomes hate speech. But a human has to go and analyze this, it is difficult, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.
But your argument is that it’s impossible, and I just illustrated that it isn’t impossible. I do agree that it’s hard. But that’s just life for you. Nuance takes time and effort, as most worthwhile things do.
Freedom is always relative. No one has absolute freedom. No matter how much I want to go without sleep, I can’t do that. No matter how much I don’t like gravity, it limits me (or liberates me, depending on my view). I have the freedom to jump off a highrise, but will that freedom actually do me good? Absolute freedom is not necessarily a good thing as it can harm myself and others.
Therefore free speech doesn’t mean I can say whatever I want. It means that I have the right to express my opinions publicly. But there must be restrictions to balance the right to free speech with the need to protect individuals and society from harm (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech).
Edit: formatting
The best way to think about this is https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moderation-is-different-from-censorship
Yes, free speech doesn’t mean necessarily free speech absolutism
I like to remind *free speech absolutists" that child porn is technically a type of speech.
It’s inherently exploitative due to the age difference. Free speech doesn’t cover violating someone else’s rights like that.
Absolutely right, but there is still a limit on speech. Every right must be balanced against other rights
No. Absolute free speech means allowing people say whatever they like and that means anything. You can spam somebody with messages telling them to kill themselves. You can put a loudspeaker in front of somebody’s house and play a message on loop telling them to kill themselves. You can openly call for somebody to kill another person and not get in trouble for enticing a murder. You can shout down anybody you like and tell them to shut up or threaten them, all you have to do is be louder and look like you have the means to kill them in order to intimidate. And that will all be fine because if someone tries to stop you from expressing your opinion, they will be infringing on your right to absolute free speech.
It does however create a paradox: if someone uses their free speech to infringe on somebody else’s free speech, what can be done? You can’t tell the person infringing to stop because that would infringe on their free speech. After all, they have a right to absolute free speech, don’t they? So, if you say “your right to free speech ends where the right of somebody else’s begins” then it’s not absolute anymore.
It also opens a can of worms as to what counts as expressing free speech and what counts as suppressing it. Does blocking somebody on a platform infringe on their right? Does muting? If the rule is “right to speak, but no right to be heard”, what counts as speech? Does typing and hitting send count as free speech? Well, I could give you an app with a textbox and a send button, disconnect you from the internet, and you could write everything you want, hit send and it never leaves your computer but you did express yourself, didn’t you? Or maybe the sounds coming out of your mouth count as speech / expression ? Well, I could gag you, you can make sounds and that’s speech, right?
So no. I don’t believe absolute free speech can exist.
Lots of places already exclude hate speech from free speech, for an example I am familiar with (because I live there), Australia has a right to freedom of expression and opinion but does not protect speech that incites discrimination, among other things. As far as I’m concerned that is still a right to free speech, not the least because hate speech inherently limits the voice of its victims.
