For the nth fucking time. Free speech doesn't mean you can say whatever shit you want and I have to listen to it and give you an avenue to do so. It just means that the state can't take legal action against you. If I run a coffee shop and you come there and say "murder all the xyz", I can very well ask you to leave because that's not suppressing your free speech. I'm just saying you can't say that on my property.
Those who don't get it can keep screaming into the void.
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@viv Well I kinda agree here but not entierly.
Disclaimer
Do not take the below as me claiming that free speech is necessary or evil not to uphold. I think there is a great deal of value in tolerance and inclusivity and ejecting abusive elements from a personal space is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. My following statements are of a technical nature on the meaning of free speech as a term and how I interpret your usage in this post.
Meaning of Free Speech
For the nth fucking time. Free speech doesn’t mean you can say whatever shit you want … It just means that the state can’t take legal action against you.
Free speech is a principle (which can be encoded into law or a personal policy or even the rule of an organization) whereby people are protected to hold any opinion they wish without punitive repercussions. It does not carry over to calls to action, harassment, or similar destructive behavior.
Free speech doesn’t mean you can say whatever shit you want and I have to … give you an avenue to do so.
Presuming the things being spoken here are a reference to opinions, and not a call to action then as such this would mean, presuming you run an instance, that your server or instance does not employ free-speech principles. That would be true even if you operate out of a country that has free speech laws.
Free speech laws protect you from punitive actions from your government with regard to your opinions. Likewise a free speech instance would protect you from punitive action from your instance for your opinions.
If I run a coffee shop and you come there and say “murder all the xyz”, I can very well ask you to leave
This would not be considered an opinion but rather a call to action. Presuming there is some potential for people to follow this call to action it would not be covered by either legal free speech or a personal policy of free speech.
However if someone said “We would be better off if xyz were all dead” then that would not be a call to action. It would be legally protected in a free speech legal system but likewise if your coffee shop employed free-speech policy it too would be permitted in your coffee shop. If you kicked someone out on those grounds it would be well within your legal rights in a free speech state, but it would mean that you personally are not supporting free speech as a principle.
because that’s not suppressing your free speech.
You would be suppressing free speech, but you are legally permitted to suppress free speech in private spaces. Therefore you would not be violating free speech laws despite the fact that you would be suppressing free speech
Those who don’t get it can keep screaming into the void.
I do agree with the fact that a lot of people don’t get or understand the nuance here. Many people think that you must enforce free speech in your cafe as a legal right, and you are correct that you are free to suppress free speech. However I think many people who object dont do so because they feel you would be in legal violation but rather because free speech as a principle is the morally right thing to do and by not upholding free speech principles in your cafe you would be in moral, not legal, violation of ones perceived sense of right and wrong.
Yes, I do that at times. Reason being replies dont show in ones own main timeline to their own followers typically (those this can be turned on). So if I make a post where I feel it would reflect something I would also like to say as a top-level post then rather than copying and pasting it to a new post I will usually retweet. This also allows users to see the context and contribute to the conversation in its original context if they wish.
@freemo @viv free speech as a principle covers the right of someone to say something without fear of government censorship, but should not force people to listen to you.
The natural consequence of someone saying bigoted and prejudiced things, or being mean, should be that people stop listening to them.
If you are a horrible person, I have no problem asking you to leave my coffee shop.
It has not infringed your right of free speech; you can go outside and continue speaking all you like.
It also does not mean I am against the principle of free speech - I am not advocating to ban you from saying such things, and would oppose any laws against such.
Free speech means rather than have the government step in, you should legally be able to say things, but then, importantly, SUFFER THE NATURAL CONSEQUENCES OF BEING SHUNNED.
What is the point of having free speech, allowing people to say dumb, horrid things, if I can't then throw them out of my coffee shop for being a dickhead?
free speech as a principle covers the right of someone to say something without fear of government censorship, but should not force people to listen to you.
Not entirely a few things off about this.
1) Free speech does not give you the right to say anything you want without government censorship. A government which upholds free speech can, and will, censor certain types of speech as I covered, for example calls to action. It only protects your opinions and your right to express them. There are a litany of forms of speech which do not fall under that umbrella such as calls to action, slander/libel, etc.
2) what you describe is only the principle of free speech when being applied in a legal context. It can and often is applied in other context. It is also often denied as a principle in many contexts. Ultimately that choice is up to whoever is making the rules for the medium of exchange.
The natural consequence of someone saying bigoted and prejudiced things, or being mean, should be that people stop listening to them.
Generally yes, and no where in my original reply did I imply this wasnt the case.
If the government you live in employes free speech as a principle codified into law then a person is free to say whatever unpleasant things they want, assuming they are expressions of opinion, when standing on the sidewalk. You also have the right not to listen by plugging your ears or walking away
Similarly if a cafe employs the principle of free speech to its rules of conduct expected of its customers then the rules of such a cafe would likewise allow anyone within the cafe to say unpleasant things without consequence from the cafe owner or the threat of being kicked out. Just as before, however, you are not forced to listen. You as another customer who does not like that speech can plug your ears, or leave the cafe, you are not forced to listen.
If you are a horrible person, I have no problem asking you to leave my coffee shop.
Of course, and you are welcome legally to do so, and morally completely justified in doing so as well. However in doing so you would not be employing free speech as a principle, though you would be in compliance with free speech as a legal right, at least as defined in the USA. All of this assumes the reason for the person being “horrible” is an opinion you find unpleasant and not something that falls outside of free speech such as harassment.
No one said it is wrong to not uphold free speech, in fact it is quite reasonable to a certain extent (too far in either direction becomes harmful). But you absolutely would not be employing a policy of free speech as cafe owner who kicks out people who express opinions you find unpleasant, though you would be upholding the legal principle of free speech, which does not have scope outside of public places.
It has not infringed your right of free speech; you can go outside and continue speaking all you like.
This part seems to be where you get confused and mix up the meaning of free speech as a general principle, and its specific manifestation as a law. Rights are the domain of law, and you are correct that in kicking someone out you have not infringed on their legal right to free speech. But you have however refused to grant the individual free speech as rule of conduct within your cafe.
It also does not mean I am against the principle of free speech - I am not advocating to ban you from saying such things, and would oppose any laws against such.
That depends, it means that you are against the principle of free speech within your cafe, but uphold the principle of free speech as a legal right as currently codified by law. There is no reason you cant do both, and in this case you would be.
Free speech means rather than have the government step in, you should legally be able to say things, but then, importantly, SUFFER THE NATURAL CONSEQUENCES OF BEING SHUNNED.
Being shunned isnt really the point here. If as a cafe owner you had a rule of conduct that allowed free speech then to uphold that rule you’d be unable to kick that person out. However shunning them, calling them a horrible person, not liking them, refusing to respect them or their opinion, not engaging them in conversation, would all be perfectly valid in this context and still be able to say the cafe has rules of conduct that are free speech in nature.
What is the point of having free speech, allowing people to say dumb, horrid things, if I can’t then throw them out of my coffee shop for being a dickhead?
You can, I never claimed in my original post or this one that you cant. The legal codification of free speech absolutely ensures you this right. It just means your cafe isnt a free speech space, and thats ok. It doesnt need to be, you have every right not to have it be if you want. Its your cafe, and you can make whatever rules you think creates the space youw ant.
@sgryphon @freemo @viv The problem is you have a coffee shop. You’re not just preventing me from speaking to you. You’re preventing me from speaking to everyone in the (metaphorical) shop. And they can’t find another shop, because you sent a threat letter to those other shops that you’ll trick your customers into not shopping there by defederating, if they don’t ostracise the same people who you do. Your customers don’t get any say over this of course.
Even if they could all find another shop, maybe they didn’t know I wanted to say something to them at all. Maybe they don’t know how, or they don’t know that other shops exist. Maybe they don’t know you’re censoring anyone. In all these cases, you’re using their ignorance to manipulate their behavior to benefit yourself at my expense. Even if you think you’re just kicking out some dickhead.
And if the dickheads do find another shop, you won’t know what they’re saying, since you very effectively blocked yourself from hearing it. If the owner of that shop kicks out sensible people and only allows dickheads, then the dickheads will start talking about trashing your shop so that you won’t have any power to block them anymore, and there won’t be anyone with any sense warning them that it’s a bad idea.
You should still kick out dickheads I mean, but you should make damn sure your patrons also want them gone and it’s not just your personal agenda. And you should make damn sure that you have no other option than kicking them out, because once you do you’ve made an enemy, and driven them into the arms of your other enemies. And if you bully other instances with defederation, that’s kind of a dick move first off, secondly it hurts the network overall, thirdly it feeds the persecution complex of dickheads, and fourthly it magnifies your censorship to a massive scale, so if there’s any chance at all that you might not be 100% right in concluding that all in this minority group are a bunch of dickheads with nothing to say that anyone should be allowed to hear… the results can be disastrous.
@freemo I feel no reason to believe as if free speech infringements only comes from the state, especially in this context where most censorships are done by corporations, media and other non-government institutions. It should be kept in mind that the social settings in which the first amendment was made is very different from the one we are now living in. The biggest threat of free speech is always from the powerful Orthodoxies trying to ban unpopular and heretic opinions, be it the state, the press, the news outlets, the big tech, the mob, or the social circles where only a very narrow range of opinions are allowed.
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I dont exactly buy the whole “the first ammendment wasnt written for the modern era”, so I disagree with your reasoning, BUT I do agree with your conclusions to some extent, that being that corporations that deal in social media, or rather, ones which have a near-monopoly on social media, should be legally obligated to uphold free speech policies. But my reasoning is quite a bit different than yours.
First off before UI explain why let me be clear, I only feel monopoly level social media companies that have a significant portion of the market should be required to uphold free speech principles, as such smaller companies like parlor or mastodon should remain free to censor as they see fit.
My reasoning is that when a private entity owns a large portion of a communication medium, and can control the speech unilaterally it becomes a kin to what we tend to define as a “public utility”. This is the case with other communication means that in many cases have an infrastructure built by private companies, but where a common shared use is needed. for example the physical telephone wires, even when built by private companies, as part of a national network is considered a public utility. The same can be said of the internet infrastructure itself. For these reasons a telephone company can not restrict your free speech, it is treated as if in a public space, same thing for an ISP.
I would argue that because things like Facebook and Twitter are so pervasive, and in fact, the only medium most people can use to contact the majority of their friends and family, it too should be treated as a public utility. As such I would argue they should loose their rights to censorship in the way that other private forums or communities have a right to do.
