That does seem to be the underlying issue; too many people conflate having a right to their own opinions, no matter how unpopular, with having access to a platform.
My stance of free speech has always been that people should go ahead and say whatever they want, as long as they are willing to accept and deal with the consequences of what they say without bitching and whining about it.
No one is âowedâ an audience or a platform.
Cracked is one of the few mainstream left media sources that is still unblemished. Vox and Slate were vigorously pushing counterproductive bullshit yesterday.
and
âI have the right to formulate, state and defend my opinion and I should not be censored as long as I am doing it in a non-destructive mannerâ.
The two donât really go together.
Denial of a platform to âformulate, state and defendâ an opinion is about the most effective form of censorship there is.
I can understand groups like the EFFâs concern about hosting services not hosting Stormfront, et al.
I donât know that Iâm exactly crying about the poor liddle wannabe Nazis having it a little more difficult to spew their filth but I can see the argument that itâs perhaps not a good idea to allow commercial organisations to decide who gets to be on the internet based only on their own view of their commercial self interest.
I find it particularly ironic given that hosting services, etc. all argue that they are not like newspaper publishers, etc. and therefore shouldnât be held liable for libel or in fact anything else published via their service. The basis for their argument being that they do not decide what is published, the site owner does.
Well, if they are going to decide to host/not host depending on what they think of the views of the site owners, then they are in fact making the same sort of editorial decision a newspaper publisher would and should be just as liable.
Socialists and communists found they had much weaker protections during the '50âs and '60âs, even for non-violent speech. I donât think thatâs changed much.
Well thereâs a problem here at least for free speech absolutists in general. They believe that free speech must be protected but equally many of them believe that property rights are equal to all other rights in a liberal (classical) society. So itâs a circling the square kind of situation for some of them when the fact that property rights are treated this way. Unless theyâre for a Fairness Doctrine 2.0 or some redefinition of cartel then theyâre really stuck with the propertarian outcome theyâre experiencing. Personally, I have no problems with hosting companies telling anyone to fly a kite but at the same time I also believe that ISPs should allow consumers (especially residential ones) to host their own sites which would resolve this problem relatively easily. Because really, the only reason why anyone needs a hosting service other than they might not have a good connection is the fact that ISPs and their terms of service forbid any/all hosting of server software (Iâve seen some ISPs get in a tizzy with people who run intranets that donât even poll outside connections). So if free speech absolutists want to take aim at anything they should start at residential ISPs. Then we can talk about Google or Level 3 blocking packets from Storm Front or goatse.
Wrong.
The internet and access to it is not âa right.â
As others have already stated, thereâs no one stopping Nazi broflakes from creating their own operating systems, platforms etc. If they donât have the inclination, time and resources to do so, then thatâs their problem.
Everyone gets to think and say whatever they want without being penalized by the federal government for it; thatâs all the first amendment means.
North Korea has its own OS, devices, and Internet. Whatâs stopping the Nazi broflakes?
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/903283877267083264
Johnathon Chait is getting amusingly spanked in the comments.
Not to defend them, but the line between âsomeone should kill themâ/âyou should kill themâ and âI am going to kill themâ/âI am going to kill youâ is pretty relevant.
We have sanctions against behaviors, not speech. Some behaviors affected via speech are punishable - threats, the passing of state secrets, contact against restraining orders etc.
Blurring the line between speech and behavior isnât going to fly in the US. Itâs one of our fundamentals.
Feel free to start a pro-Daesh newsletter and see how long it takes the FBI to show up.
Youâve presented your position, certainly. I remain entirely unconvinced.
You have some interesting fundamentals, I must say.
/s, mostly
ď˘
L0ki:
Denial of a platform to âformulate, state and defendâ an opinion is about the most effective form of censorship there is.
Unsurprisingly, I donât agree that what I said is wrong.
If you have something to say and no one will let you say it, you have been censored. That censorship may be entirely valid and accepted by the community as AOK, but it has happened.
The fact that it is not the government doing it may be what makes it ok in law, but it doesnât change the fact that you have been denied a platform to express your opinion. The existence of other platforms doesnât change that. The fact that you could create your own platform doesnât change that.
Well, thatâs where Iâll disagree with you - and so does the UN, oh and officially so does the US government since it is a signatory to the relevant convention.
and the actual report:
Now granted, thatâs a convention that the US signed in 1977, only ratified in 1992 and has expressly stated that it wonât follow in several respects:
which does rather beg the question, why the US bothered to sign it in the first place, but hey - the US and human rights have a tricky relationship.
The US does keep signing these things though, like this one:
and not actually doing anything about themâŚ
Not that the US is in any way alone in that (the site has links to various reports on how the US and other countries are doing - itâs a bit shitty to navigate though).
Nevertheless, it is (still, just about) official US policy that businesses have a duty to respect human rights and that the government has to have an effective means for people to obtain redress if companies donât respect their human rights.
Thereâs plenty of room to argue about whether what specifically happened to the people running The Stormer or whatever shitty euphemism/crap translation they used (Iâm not going to google it) was an infraction of their human rights or whether there is an effective remedy but the fundamental principle that denial of access to the internet can be an infringement of human rights is settled.
OTOH:
You are conflating ISPs and hosting services.
Okay. Itâs good to agree, especially since normally we donât.
Iâm sure I am - doesnât really matter to the general point though.
Of course. The black list was also carried out primarily through the work of private corporations, but with some serious state and popular pressure. But such violations werenât just aimed at communists and socialists and even in that specific case, it certainly didnât begin with the Cold War. Donât forget Eugene Debs and Emma Goldman, who were jailed and kicked out of the country respectively. The war on the left began long before it became understood as an existential struggle between the commies and capitalists as represented by the USSR and the US. Iâd also argue that in some cases, being white and male gave a measure of protection for such speech at times.
But overall, what we considered protected speech has changed, culturally and legally, over the course of US history. I think thatâs important to bear in mind, especially when it relates to speech in support of white supremacy, which has long, long been allowed to flourish as protected speech.
