a belief held by most reasonable people and only opposed by Nazis
So the ACLU are Nazis now?
i mean they’ve historically defended nazis yes
That doesn’t make them Nazis. It makes them defenders of free speech.
Free speech protects unpopular speech. Popular speech doesn’t need to be protected.
no it makes them defenders of nazis. if youre at a table with ten nazis, youre at a table of eleven nazis
So you’re an authoritarian bootlicker who can’t tell the difference between defending free speech vs spouting hateful speech.
I’ll defend a Nazi’s right to say their hateful shit. I’ll also gladly plead guilty to an assault charge over beating their ass for it.
They shouldn’t fear the government for their speech. They should fear physical retaliation from their community.
Like so many others, you’ve mixed up general society with law enforcement. We defend the right for the Nazis to say their piece without being imprisoned. Running a business profiting from letting Nazis publish their speech is a choice, and not a necessary one. Using and supporting the social relevance of a social network that voluntarily publishes hate speech for profit is a choice, and not a necessary one.
Sounds like you’re the one mixing it up.
And that’s exactly what the user you’re replying to has been saying all along.
This post is about the UN, as in, a governmental authority. The whole discussion here is that moderation isn’t something for the government to do (outside of prosecutable crimes), it’s for private entities to do. Meta can moderate its platforms however it chooses, and users can similarly choose to stop using the platform. Governments shouldn’t force Meta to moderate or not moderate, that’s completely outside its bailiwick.
A social site doesn’t publish anything, it’s just a medium for users to communicate.
That’s the problem with the internet, really. You can’t punch these assholes through your monitor or keyboard. The consequence here is moderation. Removing these asshats from their platform is the punch in the nuts that they deserve. It’s still free speech because these are non-government websites.
Considering this moderation is often done in cooperation with government censors, and the executives working at these platforms are often former government, the lines are blurred enough that I don’t support it.
We need more legal blocks to prevent the government from getting around the constitutional protections by coordinating with corporate third parties.
Exactly, which is why this should be handled by the platforms as they choose instead of by government requirement. If you don’t like how a platform moderates content, don’t use that platform.
This isn’t about free speech. This is about amplification and publication of speech.
You can say whatever you want, but we shouldn’t guarantee you a megaphone to say it.
A social media site is not a publisher.
Why not?
They do not curate the content that’s posted there. Just because someone wrote something on Facebook does not mean Facebook endorses their opinion, just like sending someone an e-mail does not mean that your e-mail host endorses whatever you sent.
The platform isn’t the megaphone. That’s the algorithm.
If you’re wanting their access to platforms limited, I’d like the know where you draw the line. Are they allowed to text hate speech to each other? Publish their own email or print newsletters? Should we ban them from access to printers (or printing press while we’re at it)? Should they be allowed to have hateful conversations with large groups of each other?
That’s up to the owner of the megaphone.
If the megaphone owner doesn’t want you to use it, create your own.
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And there’s the expected bootlicking. You went from complaining about who gets access to the megaphone, to openly praising government censorship coordination.
Maybe if you want more censorship so bad, you should take your own advice and start your own platform.
And those that still think fReE sPEECh is an acceptable concept in the modern world?
Free speech is absolutely an acceptable concept, but it’s merely a restriction on government.
Private platforms are free to drop you from their platform if they don’t like your speech, and you can be prosecuted if your speech violates a law (e.g. hate speech). Platforms can also restrict the types of speech allowed on their platforms. None of that is a violation of free speech.
Free speech is only violated if governments place a restriction on the speech itself, or force private entities to enforce restrictions.
but it’s merely a restriction on government.
It isn’t. Free speech is a right the gov can give you, but it’s also just a concept.
Governments don’t grant rights, they can only restrict them.
They can recognize them. But nice strawman.
It’s not a strawman, it’s literally what you wrote.
The Bill of Rights in the US only exists to prevent encroachment on individual rights, they’re not necessary in order for people to have them. Arguably, governments only have rights explicitly granted to them, because they only exist due to the people submitting themselves to them.
It’s an important distinction, and one so many seem to misunderstand. I’m not saying you do, I’m merely clarifying in case someone else does.
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It’s not a strawman, it’s literally what you wrote.
You ignored the point I was making to argue about semantics. Still are. That’s a strawman.
The freedom to speak has nothing to do with being heard.
Free speech without consequences is what fascists are after. Free speech is an action to which they want no reaction or even worse when there is a negative reaction (also a desired goal) they will use that to attack the structures attempting to uphold peace.
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Yes that’s why the Chinese are such big proponents of free speech!
Post free speech. They have already finished their objective.
Ya know I never thought I’d see the day that a marginalized people would protest free speech fundamentally. This is just next level stupid.
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Suddenly they care. One dead CEao and a bunch of whiny scared Billionaires is enough to stop 10 years of hateful content. Interesting lesson right there. Censorship is only good if it protects the rich.
If in a work of fiction I have a villain call my hero the n-word to demonstrate that the villain is an unapologetic racist, and I am told that I can’t have that because the word is bad in and of itself and that racist behavior cannot be tolerated even in fiction…
That is censorship.
If you call a black person the n-word in real life, and he stomps your ass.
This isn’t censorship, this is comedy.
I mean it is, but it’s also not a bad thing in moderation (heh)
Are we redefining words now?
We’re always redefining words, that’s how language works. This isn’t even close to the most egregious within the last couple decades.
Language works when words have a common meaning between the speaker and the listener. When 2 parties have 2 different interpretations of the same word because 1 decided they were going to manipulate into meaning something different from the commonly understood one, language breaks down, and we get senseless arguments among people who otherwise agree outside of semantics.
So no, that’s not how language works.
Literally means figuratively now.
Yes, language changes, that is why you don’t rely solely on individual words to define your argument.
The reason people might argue despite agreeing outside semantics is that they never bothered to go beyond a very basic explanation of their argument. If your sole disagreement comes from a differing interpretation of a word… then do your best to define your argument better. Otherwise you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing.
Literally means figuratively now.
Which is an excellent example of how stupid this is because this word has literally lost all meaning, thank you.
then do your best to define your argument better.
My argument is that manipulating definitions to suit an agenda is stupid nonsense.
Yeah, “purchasing” movies or shows comes to mind. When streaming services revoke access and never grant a way to download them, did you ever really purchase the movie or did you just rent it?
An excellent example of the negative impact of the manipulation of definitions.
Censorship means that some higher authority wants some information not to be seen by certain people. The target of censorship is therefore the readers/listeners and not primarily the person writing/speaking. Hence if the readers/listeners don’t actually want to read/hear the hateful drivel that some person shouts into the void, removing it isn’t censorship but content curation.
And what if 50% of people want to read what you consider hateful drivel?
They can go somewhere else and talk to each other there.
Also block the source of speech.
But they don’t care to block, the goal is to suppress the speech.
The problem with blocking is this. It’s not a communally accepted part of any website. Here’s what I mean by that. Lots of websites say they allow you to block people. What they mean is they allow you to mute people. This can mean something as simple as you can still see their posts but you can’t interact (but they can see and interact with your posts (upvote/downvote etc), but can’t talk to you. That’s problematic. I feel like a block should mean block. I. E. The web host or platform completely isolated you from one another so that it appears on the user side of things as if you never existed. But that’s problematic too. On Lemmy, if I block someone I lose all post history related to that section of the post where the interaction took place. I can’t go back to my own comments. I cannot see my own comments.
Then there’s the problem of block or mute lists having a finite number. If you have a ten year old account somewhere and you have been muting or blocking people for all ten of those years, eventually you will run out of available space on the block list and there’s no good way to purge the list. You very often can’t back it up, can’t auto purge accounts that are dead or no longer in use, can’t even generally see if the people you blocked are still active in a way that insulates and protects you.
If the goal is to suppress speech that implies that the person/entity doing the suppression is in a position of authority and not following the will of their constituency. So if a mod gets hundreds of reports about a post or comment, some action is warranted because the community is speaking out against it.
That’s important to what we’re talking about here.
It’s not a right to harass people, and you’re not entitled to others’ megaphones
I don’t disagree with you. But calling it anything other than what it is is disingenuous and misleading. Like when you buy a movie and it isn’t available to download and the streaming service takes away access, did you really purchase that movie or did you just rent it? Words have meaning is all I’m saying.
Is it not censorship to allow violent assholes to scare minorities into silence?
No, that’s not what “censorship” means.
You have probably not heard of the heckler’s veto
I’d say that censorship when enacted by governments is violence and there’s no smaller minority than the individual. That said, if the UN Rights Chief wants to censor certain things, he should just say it. Besides, I don’t put much faith in an org who puts Iran as the chair of the human rights council. Stances like this and the OP’s link are reasons why there’s a ground swelling in the US for withdrawing from the UN.
No they just gave oppositional defiance disorder. Not recognizing that protecting every individual also means working against prejudiced hate means you’re going to fail every time.
Words also have connotations.
Human rights violations aside The EFF and Techdirt have already said that it is hate speech and effectively suppresses the free speech of gay and trans. Do you know better than these sources? The latter is like the very person who states that anti-hate speech laws are First Amendment violations. He said it loud and clear: this is actual censorship of LGBT voices.
“BAAAHHH!!! YOU’RE CENSORING MY HATE SPEECH, RACIST SLURS AND DEATH THREATS!!! WAAAAAAHHHHH!!!”
That CANNOT be the arguement you stand behind.
I mean, we do that. Just say it’s good to censor bad things. There’s nothing wrong with that, so don’t lie about what you’re doing.
Censorship will attract scrutiny, they prefer term “modding” and they do it as charity, boy, take off your pants…
The argument is the dictionary.
Which one?
No one said it had to be platformed, but call a spade a spade
like how the right redefines free speech to mean hate speech
I mean there has always been illegal speech, we just don’t usually call it censorship.
It’s only censorship if it’s something I personally agree with.
These are platforms. It isn’t censorship because they are private for-profit entities. They can host or deny any speech they want. And we can post on them or not and take our content elsewhere.
I think the difference is between protecting wealth and power vs protecting basic human rights.
It’s censorship one way or the other. The paradox of tolerance comes into play. We can’t ignore hate, it needs to be visible so people can be on guard, but we also can’t let it take over by letting it run roughshod and unchecked. Those in charge of media and social media are in the first camp - protecting wealth and power, letting hate run rampant. It drives profits and engagement, the extremes of politics they support give them control.
It actually is. It’s making the online space feel sterile and unnatural IMO. It’s purposefully hiding the complexities of human experience/perception and expression. You don’t have to agree with something or think it’s good - but you should be allowed to be aware of it. You should be able to “feel how people breathe” online and if there is censorship and sterilization - you can’t. You don’t get the full picture.
Ok Elon
Whole censoring content should get flipped otherway round. Meaning instead doing it from up to down like it is done now, it should be done down to up. Instead coverments, companies, platforms doing censoring, there should be tools to do it by end user.
If I say “X is shit”, then that is my opinion. But if some other user do not like that i said “X is shit”. Then that person should have way to filter out “X is shit” content.
So end user is person who decides what is shown, not some higer entity.
individuals create echo chambers: if someone spouts intolerant garbage, and the people who fight that garbage block the speech, there’s nobody to oppose it and without voices speaking out against it, it becomes mainstream
if society doesn’t enforce rules around hate speech, it places a burden on minorities to defend themselves from hate, otherwise hate becomes the mainstream viewpoint
You have it backward. Censorship is what creates echo chambers.
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Why do you have to wait for your admins to do so when you could just block us today yourself?
Why is this not as simple as adding a setting button for moderation of hateful content? The user can decide to filter it out.
And who decides whether content is hateful?
Moderator groups that users can choose between.
That’s my ideal as well.
As long as what’s allowed is not in the hands of the government, I’m happy. If it is, once the leadership changes, those laws don’t look so good.
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O’Brien, he’s trustworthy
Conan? Days Gone? Waterskis?
Content moderators per community guidelines. Why is this so hard?
And who do you select as moderators? Who ensures their moderation is consistent with community guidelines? What are the consequences if they moderate unfairly?
If we are talking platforms, then the employees of that platform. If we are talking federation, then the community and groups leading the communities. The consequences are the same as always. Bans for rule violations, and the freedom we all share to use or not use these platforms.
As long as we’re keeping the government out of it, I’m happy. People need the ability to vote with their feet and use other platforms, and that’s not feasible if the moderation comes from government rules.
Platforms can and will use the law as an excuse to push their agenda. “Oops, that looks like hate speech, it’s out of my hands” to any content they don’t like. A law like that justifies bad behavior and silence of dissent.
Solid points. I’m with you. I admit I am skeptical of all platforms. I operate from the assumption that we only hear about moderation when these platforms want to control content for other reasons. Moderation for hate speech could be as simple as moderation for porn, but it is not because it isn’t about hate speech, it is about what the platforms can and can’t control. Which was the point I was trying to make. Sorry if that got lost.
Here on Lemmy, people who claim to advocate for freedom of speech and information, demanding for social networks to be shutdown and people to be censored based on unknown and ambiguous criteria, without even understanding the implications of it.
Details at six
in a year Lemmy will be a cesspool of extremist thoughts and opinions. left, right, doesn’t matter.
the average Lemmy user is become far more caustic towards any differing opinions and that directly increases the toxicity of the platform.
this is why mods are trying to be pedantic about the rules in communities, but unfortunately they’re only accelerating it.
for a truly free and moderated platform a mechanism must be put in place that allows the community itself to self-moderate. unfortunately every new platform wants to start out as Twitter or Meta or Reddit. All three of these platforms failed in their goals of becoming a better socialmedia platform while exceeding expectations for financial viability.
IMO communities should have a cap limit of members that can grow over time of positive growth. if there’s negative growth the community must resolve the issues together or be forced to shrink and lose members.
this doesn’t mean the community blocks access, it just means you can’t post content or comments.
Yes, but just deleting without comment, as if it never existed, isn’t the solution either.
Are you saying it should be required by law to have a comment regarding removal of content?
Well it depends on the definition of censor.
If you define censor as, “to suppress or delete as objectionable” (Webster) then it fits just fine.
I mean it is censorship. But not all censorship is bad.
There will be no protection under the social contract for those who wish to violate it.
