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Squabbles, another recent reddit alternative, seems to be taking the doomed "free speech" path
(i.imgur.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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When you have a "free speech" policy, you attract principled free-speech advocates who want to discuss issues rather than shouting down unpopular opinions, a few people who are well-behaved and intelligent but write about ideas that the majority may find offensive or horrifying, and a whole bunch of people who got banned everywhere else for being rude and disruptive.
The best-moderated such place that I've seen had a policy requiring politeness and high-effort posts, which kept out the third group.
The second group can be tough to tolerate. Sometimes they're interesting, sometimes they're a Holocaust denier who cites references, and you look up those references and they appear to be real papers written by real academics, and you know this is all wrong but you're not a historian and even if you were you don't have time to address every issue in this guy's entire life's work and you just wish the topic never came up. But you can't keep out the second group unless you compromise your principles as a member of the first group.
Yes, that's exactly what it means. Often, participating is very unpleasant. (I had to leave the Holocaust denial discussion - that one was too personal for me.) And I still think we ought to respect places where people do get to talk like that.
There is good and bad, and good people can't assume they'll always be able to fight harder or yell louder. On the contrary, bad people tend to be better at fighting and at yelling. So if good people fight and yell, they give up the long-term advantages that they may have. Those advantages are that appeals to our common humanity sometimes work, and that peaceful coexistence makes everyone safer and wealthier. But to have these advantages, you need to be willing to tolerate people you hate and hear them out. After all, that's what you want the other side to do.
(Sometimes that doesn't work and you do have to fight, but if you're in that position then you're already competing on the enemy's terms. The Allies didn't win World War II because they were the good guys. They won because they had more guns, and next time the bad guys may have more guns.)
Who gets to decide what thoughts, beliefs, and groups are allowed to be tolerated?
Is there a quantifiable threshold for what is and what is not tolerable?
Does that threshold change over time?
I don't understand how one can advocate for censorship, yet be incapable of defining what speech should be restricted.
I suppose it makes sense for somebody unable to express their belief system to also be unable to consider more than one viewpoint.
I feel like Sarah defined pretty thoroughly the type of speech that should be restricted when she said "If you are advocating for the literal eradication of people because they are part of your “out group”, then into the bin with you.".
That feels like a line that we should all be able to agree upon, and yet there are still many who bafflingly say that we should respect Nazi's ability to spout Nazi propaganda and recruit online.
You're 100% right that the exact threshold at which speech verges from the "unpleasant but tolerable" to the "dangerous and requiring censorship" is fuzzy and subjective. But I think it's entirely safe to say that when what you're discussing is the eradication of groups or even "just" individuals, you're on the wrong side of that threshold, plain and simple.
We can talk about where exactly that line falls relative to other issues, but that's always going to vary from person to person in the fine details, but anyone who thinks that literal Nazis should have a safe space to discuss actual Nazi propaganda frankly isn't someone whose opinion I'm going to take seriously, in the same way I wouldn't take seriously someone who argues the Earth is flat (though - being harmless - I'd certainly support their ability to talk about Flat Earth online without censorship).
Thank you for your thought out and well written response. You bring up important points to consider.
To be honest, I don't have any answers to where the limit of tolerable speech should be that aren't arbitrary or contradictory. There's a lot of nuance in this topic that I feel gets lost in most discussions.
For example, in a vacuum I agree that Nazi propaganda should not be tolerated or protected speech. Especially clear and immediate advocation for the physical harm of people. But on the other hand, there have been times in history where advocating for violence has resulted in overall positive social change (such as the American and Haitian revolutions). Does the distinction of tolerability get drawn at advocating for the violent extermination of a political regime vs a group of people? How do you make a distinction between the two that is satisfactory for any situation, past, present, and future?
If you take Nazi propaganda in insolation I think every reasonable person would support banning it (including myself). With the advantage of hindsight I think there are lots of topics/beliefs where that would be reasonable and appropriate. Where it gets concerning is making rules that stop intolerable speech now, yet won't squash positive (but subversive) new ideas that aren't part of the social conciousness yet. If history is any indicator we all have beliefs that will be considered intolerable in the future. Do you have to draw that line on a case by case basis? And if so, who should have the authority to do that?
Maybe I'm being unintentionally obtuse, but if there can't be rules made that are equally valid in hindsight and future unknown situations, it's better to err on the side of unrestricted speech. I don't want to unintentionally prevent future posivitve changes out of fear of Nazis and other hate-groups.
Yes there is. When your freedom directly invades the freedom of other people you are passing the threshold of what is tolerable.
When you form a group of people and declare it's free speech to discuss how women shouldn't be allowed to vote, for example, you aren't just voicing any random opinion. Words have consequences and words can hurt people. You are past the line of tolerance because you actively invade other people's freedom.
I can only imagine that thinking it's freedom to allow these talking points to freely flourish online stems from the naive believe that nothing will come of these types of echo chambers, but it does. We have already experience with this from the incel and racist mass shooters and the online communities that helped birthing them.
I don't say it's easy to decide in every case when you should put a stop to a discussion. But simply allowing everything is not the way. And ironically this squabble community realises this by also not allowing everything.
Thanks for your response. Free speech is a nuanced topic and I appreciate well though out discussions about it.
I agree, It's very hard to decide on a case by case basis what is and isn't tolerable. That's the main reason why I questions arguments for limiting speech--how can you make non-arbitrary distinctions between the two and who should have the authority to decide?
I think your example of speech advocating for women to not have the right to vote is a good subject to consider.
I agree, arguing that women shouldn't have the right to vote is beyond rediciulous and in a vacuum, it would be reasonable to consider that speech intolerable. But on the other hand, wasn't it freedom of speech that gave women the power to gain suffrage in the first place?
You mention drawing the distinction for intolerable speech at speech that limits the freedom of others. In an abstract sense I think that's reasonable, but in practice I'm not so sure. Anti-suffragists often argued that granting women the right to vote infringed on their freedom. That's obviously a morally wrong argument, but who should be allowed to decide that?
The core of the problem, I think, is that there is no non-arbitrary distinction for every case and no one should have absolute authority about these decisions. Cue decentralised communities. The discussions around these topics are messy and exhausting, but I think that’s as good as it gets. Communicating and changing again and again where this arbitrary lines get drawn is what people have to do, even when that doesn’t feel exactly satisfying.
For the suffrage example, if you look up what the counter-arguments where, it’s actually that they believed women weren’t capable of voting because they supposedly didn’t have the time or mental capacity to think about politics. Or that women “don’t want the vote”. I wouldn’t call that feeling threatened in their freedom, they felt threatened in their worldview.
I do think a lot of people do not see this distinction (is my freedom threatened or my worldview?) because they happen to not really fear that their rights might actually be stripped away someday. For someone who struggles to empathise with this fear it might seem overly dramatic how other people react to them just asking questions.
lmao you are the perfect example of what is wrong with this kind of thinking. You are free to ahead and block someone who was simply arguing in favor of free speech, but no one thinks big of you for it and the fact you decided to declare it to the world is hilarious.
Try visiting Belsen or Dachau, you fucking child.
OK? That doesn't absolve the real childish behavior I was responding to, you idiot.
This is a great overview of the benefits and problems of free speech platforms without the immediate nosedive into the dogwhistle argument that seems to just be used as a thought/discussion stopper more than anything else lately.
I feel that it's vitally important that free speech spaces exist. Places to discuss "ideas that the majority may find offensive or horrifying" are important, but they aren't for everyone and they do by their nature offer spaces for "undesirable" people like holocaust deniers.