It depends on how much of an absolutist you want to be. No government allows absolute freedom of speech. Libel, slander, and incitement of violence are all forms of speech that are illegal in basically every country. If your platform refuses to remove these forms of speech, you would be protecting what is generally not considered to be free speech, and it’s possible you could even be held legally liable for allowing that kind of speech to spread on your platform.
If you decide not to be a free speech absolutist, and instead define free speech as legal speech, then things get complicated. In the U.S., the Supreme Court has held multiple times that hate speech is protected under the First Amendment, so censoring hate speech would mean your platform wasn’t allowing all forms of, “free speech.” However, the U.S. has much broader protections on speech than most Western countries, and hate speech is illegal in much of Europe.
So, TL:DR; free speech is a sliding scale, and many countries wouldn’t consider hate speech to be protected form of speech. By those standards, you could have a platform that censors hate speech but still maintains what is considered free speech. However, by other countries’ standards, you would be censoring legal speech.
Free speech as in, the freedom to express valid political speech and criticize the current government? Sure. Easy.
Free speech as in, the ability to say whatever the hell you want, including threatening, harassing, or inciting hatred and genocide against people? No. No you cannot.
I think it may be possible if you understand a difference between the right to speak and the right to be heard.
Ie the right to say something doesn’t create an obligation in others to hear it, nor to hear you in the future.
If I stand up on a milk crate in the middle of a city park to preach the glory of closed source operating systems, it doesn’t infringe my right to free speech if someone posts a sign that says “Microsoft shill ahead” and offers earplugs at the park entrance. People can choose to believe the sign or not.
A social media platform could automate the signs and earplugs. By allowing users to set thresholds of the discourse acceptable to them on different topics, and the platform could evaluate (through data analysis or crowd sourced feedback) whether comments and/or commenters met that threshold.
I think this would largely stop people from experiencing hatespeech, (one they had their thresholds appropriately dialed in) and disincentivize hatespeech without actually infringing anybody’s right to say whatever they want.
There would definitely be challenges though.
If a person wants to be protected from experiencing hatespeech they need to empower some-one/thing to censor media for them which is a risk.
Properly evaluating content for hatespeech/ otherwise objectionable speech is difficult. Upvotes and downvotes are an attempt to do this in a very coarse way. That/this system assumes that all users have a shared view of what content is worth seeing on a given topic and that all votes are equally credible. In a small community of people, with similar values, that aren’t trying to manipulate the system, it’s a reasonable approach. It doesn’t scale that well.
No. Absolute free speech means allowing people say whatever they like and that means anything. You can spam somebody with messages telling them to kill themselves. You can put a loudspeaker in front of somebody’s house and play a message on loop telling them to kill themselves. You can openly call for somebody to kill another person and not get in trouble for enticing a murder. You can shout down anybody you like and tell them to shut up or threaten them, all you have to do is be louder and look like you have the means to kill them in order to intimidate. And that will all be fine because if someone tries to stop you from expressing your opinion, they will be infringing on your right to absolute free speech.
It does however create a paradox: if someone uses their free speech to infringe on somebody else’s free speech, what can be done? You can’t tell the person infringing to stop because that would infringe on their free speech. After all, they have a right to absolute free speech, don’t they? So, if you say “your right to free speech ends where the right of somebody else’s begins” then it’s not absolute anymore.
It also opens a can of worms as to what counts as expressing free speech and what counts as suppressing it. Does blocking somebody on a platform infringe on their right? Does muting? If the rule is “right to speak, but no right to be heard”, what counts as speech? Does typing and hitting send count as free speech? Well, I could give you an app with a textbox and a send button, disconnect you from the internet, and you could write everything you want, hit send and it never leaves your computer but you did express yourself, didn’t you? Or maybe the sounds coming out of your mouth count as speech / expression ? Well, I could gag you, you can make sounds and that’s speech, right?
So no. I don’t believe absolute free speech can exist.
Look into the of Paradox of Tolerance.
Definitely read the article, but TL;DR It’s acceptable (and necessary) to shut down Nazis.
Yes. There is no contradiction. Freedom or speech is the freedom to discuss or criticise as part of a discussion, in particular the freedom to criticize those in power without the fear of repercussion. Discuss sensitive topics to all your hearts desire. Hate speech does not intend to discuss anything. Hate speech is there to target, to threaten, to belittle, to dehumanise, to attack. Hate speech is violence.
Edit; As usual with this topic “free speech absolutists” emerge, often accompanied by elaborate use of language and a thesaurus. And as usual they are not really into the entire “free speech” as in “freedom of discussion”, but rather “freedom of consequences” for themselves. Well boo hoo, ain’t that a pearl clutching shame of a slippery slope to the strawman of “who are the real Nazis” when not supporting your freedom of unadulterated hatred to run free into the world.
I would be careful with phrases like, “there is no contradiction.” There is a comprehensible tension between free speech as the ability for anyone to say what they wish, and a prohibition on hate speech as a prohibition on saying specific things. Denying that risks damaging one’s credibility because it can appear that we are merely refusing to acknowledge that tension.
I argue it’s better to admit these tensions. And that’s not an admission that the arguments for prohibition of hate speech are weak, but it is an admission that as real people in the real world, we can never have the comfort of a tension-free, contradiction-free theory for anything of significance.
It’s essentially a practical application of the paradox of tolerance. And like with that one, the paradox goes away when the offending party breaks the social contract.
Freedom is always relative. No one has absolute freedom. No matter how much I want to go without sleep, I can’t do that. No matter how much I don’t like gravity, it limits me (or liberates me, depending on my view). I have the freedom to jump off a highrise, but will that freedom actually do me good? Absolute freedom is not necessarily a good thing as it can harm myself and others.
Therefore free speech doesn’t mean I can say whatever I want. It means that I have the right to express my opinions publicly. But there must be restrictions to balance the right to free speech with the need to protect individuals and society from harm (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech).
Edit: formatting
Yes, free speech doesn’t mean necessarily free speech absolutism
I like to remind *free speech absolutists" that child porn is technically a type of speech.
It’s inherently exploitative due to the age difference. Free speech doesn’t cover violating someone else’s rights like that.
Absolutely right, but there is still a limit on speech. Every right must be balanced against other rights
No, because free speech includes all speech. Even the speech we disagree with.
We don’t technically have free speech in the US either. You can’t make death threats or shout “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater.
Thats because once discussion on something concludes, you generally make it law.
“Murder is bad” is very much agreed on to be a good thing. To me it is only logical for the next step to be “verbally encouraging or excusing murder is bad”, which might not need to be law, but it should at least not be state backed.
There is a difference between being allowed to say whatever you think, and having the state guarantee that whatever you have to say is actually heard.
Not being heard or listened to, is not a violation of free speech. Being removed or “silenced” online or even physically in public, is not a violation of your free speech.
Free speech is to be free to say whatever you like, but it does not protect you from what other citizens do in response.
If you insult someone, and they punch you in the face in response, your free speech was not violated.
“Hate speech” is a category of “opinion” that is obviously harmful that anyone thinking straight should immediately dismiss it. The problems have started because thanks to the internet, those “opinions” can now reach all the people who aren’t thinking straight.
For those who do identify hate speech easily, to protect those who don’t, by at least not propagating it (social media, government) is the bare minimum of what they can do.
Taking away the megaphone if someone is using it to encourage murder is not a violation of free speech. And it’s necessary.
With a megaphone, you don’t need to be right. You just need to be heard by enough people that the tiny percentage that will believe whatever you say, is a large enough group to be dangerous.
The free speech absolutism is useless in practice.
Lots of places already exclude hate speech from free speech, for an example I am familiar with (because I live there), Australia has a right to freedom of expression and opinion but does not protect speech that incites discrimination, among other things. As far as I’m concerned that is still a right to free speech, not the least because hate speech inherently limits the voice of its victims.
In theory.
In practice it would be very hard and you would require very rigorous definitions of what constitutes hate speech that would have to carefully examined on a case to case basis. So basically you’re building a small legal system.
That’s impossible to do with volunteer moderators working for free.
No. “Hate speech” is an intentionally broad term designed to be abused and weaponized against unpopular speech.
A better approach would be more specific. No racist speech. No homophobic speech. No misogynistic speech. Etc. Leaving it open ended and subjective is setting up for failure.
Completely and utterly false.
Every single western country outside of America has hate speech laws without issue.
A) they are not that open ended and subjective
B) the idea that laws can’t be open ended, subjective, or governed through intent and spirit of the law, is only the case in the dumbass American legal system that has been intentionally ruined by simple minded Republicans, which insist on every edge case being explicitly covered by a law or legislation because they know that makes it impossible to effectively write laws or govern.
You get crazy things in other countries though, like truth not being a defense for libel\slander.
In which countries is that the case?
UK is the notable one.
The UK is the weird outlier but there is still a defense of truth in the UK. The difference is that the person accusing you of defamation doesn’t have to prove that you’re wrong and you do have to prove that you’re right.
Every single western country outside of America has hate speech laws without issue.
So does the US. Just not for ordinary people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threatening_government_officials_of_the_United_States
Those would not be considered hate speech laws in other countries, just normal no-uttering-threats laws. Hate Speech laws typically protect against inciting hatred or violence against an identifiable group, actually uttering threats is typically a different broader law.
Love the timing making it so easy to disprove your argument. Just look at the flood of European countries abusing broad and ambiguous hate speech laws to crush dissent and crack down on criticism of Israel.
You’re talking about the one instance of Germany ruling that a single controversial slogan was hate speech?
These are mostly incidents of people publicly expressing support for Hamas, and being arrested for expressing support for a designated terrorist organization, and pretty much all confined to the UK, which has some of the weakest individual protections in the EU / western world.
They also don’t have Nazi parades down their streets in 2024.
Ahh. You’re a hasbara bot.
Ah, you’re so terminally online that you brand anyone who mildly disagrees with you a ‘bot’.
Tho fair point about the EDL.
Leaving it open ended and subjective is setting up for failure.
Having a specific list always misses something, and bad actors will find ways to abuse the gaps in that list.
Bad actors also abuse the rules when they’re too broad.
No they don’t. The argument is that good actors get overly punished for doing things that shouldn’t be illegal yet are. You’re not even being logically consistent in your arguments.
They absolutely do. One of the best ways to get a community banned on these platforms is to get the rules as ambiguous as you can, and then flood the community with bots breaking the rules.
It’s Twitter, there are no communities, what are you talking about?
Speaking broadly about social media.
At the societal level with hate speech laws you can’t use bots though. You’re going to have to waste the courts time by wasting real people’s time dragging them in front of judges for protest actions. Eventually the courts will just make it a fine that police can quickly issue.
No. Free speech tends to mean the most powerful group determines and enforces norms through aggression, harassment, etc. Speech has consequences, and some of those consequences include harms (threats, doxing, stalking, etc.)
Mastodon is one of the freest online speech platforms I’ve been a part of, and yet also has the most rigorously enforced code of conduct. More people are free to say more things, and feel confident that doing so does not put them in danger.
Before online platforms emerged, the ability to spread a message was dependent on your ability to support it financially and logistically. Anyone can publish a newspaper on any topic, but unless you have a racist millionaire backing you up, your message won’t get very far (ahem, Deerborn Independent). Online publishing has been a haven for hate groups.
First you need to define free speech.
Let’s use Call of duty as an example. People love to think of MW2 lobbies as free speech. Male Gamers used their “free speech” to make any women feel unwelcome the minute they spoke. White Gamers listening for any signs of non-whiteness to ridicule. Was this free speech? Or just a group imposing its views on everyone who stood out on the platform? Activision just wants to sell as many copies as possible. So those Gamers get the boot, now those women and minorities feel the freedom to play and speak again.
If the speech is used as a battering ram to relentlessly berate, shame, silence, and enforce groupthink, then there is a chilling effect on the more truly free speech of others.
Using this logic the only way to have a truly free speech platform is to keep these mobs in check, and remove or limit their hate speech.
Well, if you allow everyone to say everything, the one yelling the loudest wins, and the more silent people don’t get to speak freely. Also it’s going to send hate, violence, doxxing, state secrets etc into the world. Harming other people and limiting their freedom. Or you limit free spech. So either way, there is no such thing as free speech. It contradicts itself.
Depends on whether you define a “free speech platform” as a platform that doesn’t impose its own constraints on speech, or a platform that enables speech without constraints. Because there are social pressures that also constrain speech, and hate speech can be a tool of those pressures.
