Is it hypocritical for free speech advocates to moderate comments on their own site?

general topics
198

Precisely, and also something that is not true of Facebook. Because, y’know, good luck setting up your own Facebook. Even Google couldn’t manage to do that.

The good news is, human beings are more directly connected to each other than at any other point in human history. Spoiler alert: this is also the bad news.

Perhaps, but also the source of “disemvoweling” which I feel is not just a bad idea but actively harmful. I think it’s more clearly stated as a breakdown in the cost of emotional labor:

First we’ll reframe the problem: the real issue is not Problem Child’s opinions – he can have whatever opinions he wants. The issue is that he’s doing zero emotional labor – he’s not thinking about his audience or his effect on people at all. (Possibly, he’s just really bad at modeling other people’s responses – the outcome is the same whether he lacks the will or lacks the skill.) But to be a good community member, he needs to consider his audience.

8 Likes
199

You see? A liberal arts education does have its uses!

7 Likes
200

You don’t have to set up a whole Facebook. You just have to set up a site for the niche Facebook doesn’t allow.

So if you want to post boobies and people fucking - there are sites for that.

You want violent, real world war imagery that may include children, there are many sites for that.

Real world example: When Facebook stopped allowing gun buy/sell/trade groups, people went and built their own site trying to emulate the concept of people having the ability to form their own trade groups. I am not sure how well they are doing, but they made it, and they didn’t have to create a whole new face book, just the one part they can’t do on facebook any more. And besides that there are a half dozen large B/S/T and auction sites that, IMHO, is even better than FB ever was due to the ability to search and have nation wide coverage.

3 Likes
201

I am curious what you mean by that? I mean other than the rampant inane internet debates.

202

A few examples of negative consequences, defended on free speech grounds in the US, which would be regulated, prohibited or prosecuted in many other countries:

Citizen’s United / US campaign finance and advertising in general: among the reasons why Australian elections are so much cheaper and faster than in the US is that we regulate time and manner of political advertising, limit political donations and prosecute conflict-of-interest corruption.

Revenge porn: this sort of violation of privacy and harassment is slam-dunk illegal in most places.

Crush videos: infamously defended by a USSC decision.

Fred Phelps: he can believe whatever shit he wants, but his graveyard antics would’ve sent him to prison almost anywhere except the USA.

Stormfront: most places have no problem with restricting speech that calls for the murder of fellow citizens. See Rwanda for the eventual consequences of not doing so.

The KKK: ditto.

Father Coughlin: I’m sensing a theme here…

Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising: American medical commercialism is weird. Most places recognise that television marketing is not an appropriate forum for medical decision making.

Quackery in general: Not a victimless crime. Ditto “psychic” fraud.

Unregulated marketing fraud: Regulation against misleading and harmful advertising (e.g. Oz-style tobacco packaging regulation) is much weaker in the USA.

.

That’s off the top of my head. When applied with context-blind literalism, the US first amendment appears to be an example of “for every complicated problem, there is an answer that is simple, elegant and wrong”.

11 Likes
203

I’m sure here to say … this is still going on?? Good golly Miss Molly.

4 Likes
205

For most of your complaints, those things aren’t fully protected by the 1st Amendment, but clearly the laws are different.

Quackery and marketing fraud are regulated and illegal. Some of the stuff is allowed, but you can’t make certain claims (ie homeopathy, which is a think in Europe as well). Revenge porn is illegal in most states and I imagine the others will catch up. There are also anti-harassment laws etc.

Campaign reform is an issue, but Freedom of Speech is only part of the issue. This can be regulated differently in the future.

Direct to consumer pharmaceuticals ads again isn’t a right, it is just currently legal. There are limits as to how booze, tobacco, and gambling are advertised, for example. This too can change.

The rest, the hate groups, really aren’t prevalent in every day things (and I say this living an hour from the Phelps). It is a problem, yes, but is it big enough to do away with the 1st Amendment? I don’t think so.

Sure the system isn’t prefect, but the reason for the Amendment was two fold - one because so many early colonists were religious pariah and victims of persecution, and 2) past oppression of news, information, and dissenting opinions.

You are correct there are currently people abusing their rights. But one can’t also ignore the powerful protection it has given Americans under law. I mean, many people see us as Pseudo-fascists anyway, would you want us to lack the ability to question say Macarthyism? We could get real dark - what if prayer was mandatory in school, or the Pledge of Alliance? What if not standing during the anthem or burning the flag was a jailable offense? What if the gov. places limits on how you criticize it? Etc. These aren’t just what ifs, you can see consequences of it in recent history.

I concur it isn’t perfect, but please keep in mind, 1) there are some limits to free speech and 2) some of the things you have issues with could be changed, it is just now how the law is written now.

206

While I’m at it…

  1. “Person X is bad, and I’ll pay you to kill them”

  2. “Person X is bad, and you should kill them”

  3. “Person X is bad, and it would be a good thing if someone killed them”

  4. “People of group X are bad, and I’ll pay you to kill them”

  5. “People of group X are bad, and you should kill them”

  6. “People of group X are bad, and it would be a good thing if someone killed them”

How many of those should be legal to say? I’ve seen US right-libertarians argue for all of them.

6 Likes
208

What context? Do you allow satire? What about 16 year olds talking shit?

Legitimate threats like this are illegal. Like if you are caught trying to hire a hit man. Joking about bombs at airports or killing the president will also get you in trouble.

So if someone had a pro-Palestine march in your country, is a “Death to Israel” sign illegal? Or is that sort of thing not even allowed?

209

You should be able to say all those things, although obviously you’re guilty of murder if you pay someone to commit murder, so why wouldn’t you be equally guilty if someone did your bidding for free?

Freedom of speech isn’t freedom from consequences. The point is that you are responsible for what harm you actually cause, not restricted from speaking because of what you might cause. (Sort of the opposite of laws against drug use, where they punish you for what might possibly happen even if nobody is harmed.)

1 Like
210

Kinda my point: context matters, in a way that black-and-white absolutist rules do not allow for.

Happens all the time.

That sign would be legal; “death to Jews” might not be. There’s room for judicial and police discretion in the laws, and context would be considered in any prosecution.

You can have a system that controls genuine dangers without forcing you to prosecute every idiot undergrad. But it requires the judgement of people for it to function; you can’t do it with just a piece of literature.

3 Likes
211

Have you read about our judicial and police discretion lately? It doesn’t have the best track record.

ETA - this illustrates the point of the Bill or Rights. It isn’t to protect us from each other - it is to protect us from the government.

1 Like
212

Disemvoweling was the only thing I really liked about TNH’s moderation style. I miss it, and I wish the mods here still did it.

Good night, all!

1 Like
213

I’d argue that removing human judgement from a corrupt, biased and abusive judicial/police system is attacking the wrong problem. You’ll just trade one disaster for another.

As your earlier McCarthy example shows, rights on paper are useless when the bodies enforcing those rights are biased or corrupted. See also the experience of abolitionist publishers in the antebellum South.

6 Likes
214

I think it would be almost impossible to create another Boingboing, especially with similarly minded community members and the same level of talent in it’s authors.

If I wanted to be able to have tangential discussion about articles on this site, a second, fake, boingboing forum wouldn’t have any users.

Since the community guidelines welcome constructive criticism, discussing it here, with Robs blessing seems like a way more practical option than trying to start my own version of Boingboing.

215

You could absolutely create a community of this size, or close enough to it. Totally possible. Lots of people do it, we host many of them at discourse.org. Or just download the free open source software and host yourself.

Creating a site of Facebook’s scope and power, though? Zero chance in hell of any of us achieving that.

9 Likes
216

Modern usage of trolley does not take into account intentions, only the effect. I’m not too keen on that usage but I understand how someone who doesn’t mean to derail a thread can still derail a thread.
Having said that, just calling out someone as a concern trolley doesn’t do any good either, pointing out behavior and how it affects the conversation is much more useful.

3 Likes
217

4 Likes
218

This definition makes it so we can call anyone a trolley for anything. It’s too vague, and this is another reason that the rules focused on not harming each other are better than some of the others.

Most users are civil, but some use moderation opportunistically.

If you don’t like what someones saying, find a way to make it look bad under the site rules, and have them moderated.

There was one point where Rob and I were off topic, and I alone was lectured by another user for being off topic. They acted like I’d ruined their entire day, and didn’t even acknowledge that Rob (who runs the site) was also involved and that I was responding to him. It was horribly dramatic, and slowly realizing how this weird power dynamic works, I almost called them out for “handwringing”, but since we were arguably off topic I apologized.

As long as you keep trying to bait him into hitting you, why should he leave?

This was said earlier in this thread, made especially for discussing moderation. These people have overtly suggested I’m not welcome, and I completely agree that others have tried to bait me into some kind of lashing out for an opportunistic moderation. At least this trap is easy to avoid. You just treat other users with respect, even when they’re unkind.

If you don’t like what someones saying and they repeat a small portion for context, accuse them of repeating themselves, quote the four words they repeated out of the entire post, and voila! they’ve broken a rule.

And let’s be honest, we break out the “beating a dead horse” rant more often when we disagree with the person. Everyone does that, on and off the internet.

When you enforce a set of rules like that, some users will take advantage. That’s why I think in some ways it’s better to focus on not harming/harassing each other, and less on grey areas like “hand wringing” or what counts as off topic when discussing complex issues like censorship.

219

Or for any misunderstandings or unfortunate coincidences that may come about, due to your words.

I agree that all of the statements above should be legally ‘allowed’, but at the same time, we must realize that what we say matters; it can and will be held against us.

For instance;

If someone threatens to “kill” their annoying neighbors for playing loud music at 4am, and then not too long after that those neighbors fall victim to foul-play, guess who’s automatically a prime suspect?

Bottom line: just because you’re allowed to say whatever you want, doesn’t mean it’s always prudent or in one’s best interest to say it.

7 Likes