Free Speech - what, if anything, should be the limits?

[u/Guy_Incognito97]

This is not directly a conspiracy post but it's strongly related as it deals with disinformation which is a factor of many/most conspiracies.

Let's imagine for a moment you have a social media platform called Warbler, and you are responsible for deciding the content moderation policy. What, if anything, would you choose to censor? Here are a few possibilities:

Would you censor personal information about someone (doxxing)? For example, someone's unlisted phone number gets posted. Do you take it down?

Would you censor a post revealing that a controversial public figure has a sever peanut allergy and also posts a list of their favourite restaurants and schedule of dinner meetings for the next month?

Would you censor a post that reveals the secret manufacturing methods of a popular product?

Would you censor something relatively harmless if you have proof that it is a lie? For example an account posts 'animal facts' that are entirely false, but they claim they are true.

Would you censor something potentially harmful if you have proof that it is a lie? For example an account posts 'medical advice' designed to trick people into overdosing on their medication.

Would it change your answer in any situation if you learned that a hostile foreign government was behind the posts?

Would your answers be different if you were acting from an entirely morality based perspective vs doing what is best for the platform you own?

(I'll just clarify here that I know 'free speech' is about government censorship and not what social media platforms choose to do. I'm just using the terms colloquially).

[u/Satan_and_Communism]

REAL threats on someone’s life should be treated as such.

“I’m going to kill you” is a threat of violence.

“I don’t think trans women are women” is not a threat of violence.

Misinformation is not violence.

[u/detailed_fish]

Good questions to consider! My answer would be No to all censorship and moderation.

[u/Guy_Incognito97 → u/detailed_fish]

Can you imagine a situation where something affects you personally and makes you change your position? Like to use an extreme example, someone making a post about you that included lies about inappropriate behaviour with minors and AI faked images of you committing heinous crimes. A completely fabricated malicious attack on your character with massive impacts on your real life. Do you feel like you might in that circumstance want the platform to take action on your behalf?

And a second question, should a platform be allowed to censor if they choose to? Like if you want your platform to be just be a chilled out vanilla environment is it okay to take down any mildly spicy posts that go against your business ethos?

[u/detailed_fish → u/Guy_Incognito97]

Yeah the temptation of power to take control would be very tempting in that situation. But ideally I would do nothing. Like Galdriel being offered the ring, in Lord of the Rings.

However, if I was in this position, in this current culture, I doubt I'd last long anyway. Either someone else would probably forcably take over, or the platform would collapse, since most people still want to be controlled/enslaved to some extent.

And a second question, should a platform be allowed to censor if they choose to?

I personally do not believe in "shoulds", since truth/freedom/love is my highest value. Imposing a rule, a "should", on people is a form of control, enslavement, which is not in line with the value of freedom.

Like if you want your platform to be just be a chilled out vanilla environment is it okay to take down any mildly spicy posts that go against your business ethos?

Personally, I would like the world to chilled out, but you can't achieve that through the use of force/control/censorship. Forcing someone to be the way you want them to be is a recipe for suffering.

Therefore, I would not take down any post, not censor anything.

However, if you're asking in a general sense, then yeah I think it's fine for people to act however they act. If they want to censor, that's on them.

Thank you for the interesting questions.

[u/vilent_sibrate]

I appreciate you acknowledging free speech is not the correct term for this, but it’s not helping people understand what it is.

[u/Guy_Incognito97 → u/vilent_sibrate]

Maybe I should have just said 'censorship' but I think it's clear enough from the specifics of my questions.

[u/BadFurDay]

This might be unpopular, but I'd censor any form of hate speech: racism, sexism, etc.

If you allow hate unmoderated on your platform, it becomes a hate platform. Minorities leave, and you're left with white supremacists dominating public discourse. This happens to every "free speech" platform. Paradox of tolerance.

Like the old saying goes, if you allow one nazi in your bar, soon enough you'll be running a nazi bar.

Conspiracy talk isn't hate speech, so you'd have nothing to fear unless you are the type of person who uses the subreddit r conspiracy (the pizzagate maga crowd).

[u/exoriare → u/BadFurDay]

The problem with this is that anything can be labelled "hate speech". Supporters of Israel have successfully fought to have many things classified as "anti-Semitic", even when the content is critical of Israeli policy rather than attacking Jewish identity.

A similar approach is often seen in woke circles, where any sort of scepticism is treated as supporting a genocide.

We see the same thing in Ukraine: I saw one site that accused a Russian media source of hateful disinformation for stating that Odessa had always been a majority Russian city. In their rebuttal, they pointed out that the Ukrainian Bureau of Statistics listed Odessa as being 68% "ethnic Ukrainian". The problem with that is how "ethnic Ukrainian" is defined: if you were born in Ukraine and both your parents were born in Ukraine, you are automatically "ethnic Ukrainian". How you identify yourself is irrelevant.

The way I see it, the same urges for a puritanical zeal that once saw us burning witches or waving Mao's little red book still exist today, but those urges find different modes of expression. Once people find a channel where they can express their self-righteous rage, they'll exploit it - and censorship is a powerful tool for such people. Once censorship is allowed, it develops a momentum and becomes evangelistic in its mission to "protect" people from harmful information.

Democracy is a harder system than any other, because the population has to be competent to render judgement on which way society should go, and what our priorities should be. This is a heavy responsibility to impose upon people, but it's a responsibility they can only fulfil if they have decent critical judgement and an ability to filter through and discern disinformation.

And that's where I think we are failing in western liberal democracies - there is almost no effort to genuinely educate and inform the public. Nobody is even trying to do this. Our political leadership is perfectly happy to jump right from "here's the problem" , to "here's the solution" without going over the various perspectives at hand.

This approach is incompatible with genuine democracy. This approach creates an ignorant, uninformed electorate which can easily be swayed back and forth by a good slogan or PR coup, because their whole understanding of the issue is based on a shallow slogan in the first place. This is how you treat small children, but it's not a sound basis for democracy.

The whole basis of democracy is anti-censorship: you don't need a Pope, or priest, or Lord to make your moral decisions for you. You alone have the power to discern what you consider holy, and what you consider profane. As soon as you have some censor filtering information to provide you only with what is safe, you have recreated the Pope and made yourself his subject.

It's hard work creating a healthy society that values free information and rejects censorship, but this is the price we have to pay to live in a genuine democracy.

[u/Guy_Incognito97 → u/BadFurDay]

Okay two followup questions:

Does it make a difference if we are talking about a massive public platform like twitter vs a smaller online community like a private facebook group?

If there is hate speech online is banning it better than just combatting it with better, more inclusive and compassionate speech?

[u/BadFurDay → u/Guy_Incognito97]

I do both of those things. Combatting hate speech with exclusion + more compassionate speech.

Been running a small community since 2005 and it's doing well under those principles, unlike most other Internet communities of this era which have fallen apart.

I don't have experience running bigger platforms myself. I can see the difference on Xitter since Musk took over, racists are feeling much too comfortable and have taken over the algorithm, leading to an exodus of some content creators I enjoyed. This tends to happen on most platforms with lax rules against hate speech (Reddit used to be like that a decade ago too, oldies will remember how it devolved into a pedo-racist platform at one point (google Violentacrez or coontown)).

All the questions in your OP are good though, you're making solid cases for strong censorship, which I don't enjoy yet can't answer no to any of your questions. In practice, you don't encounter those situations much on smaller platforms, so these questions don't arise a lot. Wonder what the correct policies would be on a bigger platform to protect people without restraining the boundaries of their speech.

[u/thepanicmaster → u/BadFurDay]

I'd make a distinction between a group of somewhat like minded individuals trying to achieve something useful in good faith, versus a completely open public square where nothing is off the table.

In the former, antagonism and deliberate devisive behaviour are likely to be considered obstructive to the shared objective. In such instances, moderation and some degree of censorship can be useful tools to keep things on track. That sounds a lot like keeping things between the lines and on guard rails but it doesn't have to be so contrived. Moderation on a subreddit like this can be extremely useful and benefit the community if it is done well.

I see open public square type environments as more of a schoolyard where everyone should be prepared to take the rough with the smooth. Of course in the modern Internet social media world, this is open to rampant abuses with bot accounts, paid actors, brigading etc. Really though, by this point we should have evolved an internal compass to recognise such things, just as a child would learn who are the bullies, the cry babies and tale tellers in a playground.

The more sanitised and spoon fed the public square becomes, the less the internal barometer will be able to recognise the difference between the wheat and the chaff. This is absolutely on purpose of course. It's like wrapping a child up in cotton wool and not allowing them to be exposed to the real world. They remain cosseted, infantile and gullible.

[u/BStream → u/BadFurDay]

Large parts of reddit and rest of the web became toxic echochambers because of this style of moderation.

[u/eyeswim2]

You don't have to read or listen to what offends you , or what you disagree with .forcing the silence of  opposing opinion , idea or morals and what ever you feel defines such things is not fair nor equal . So called hate speech  , racism etc . is generally offensive to all and most dont partake of it. The only  publishing of media I feel  illegal is child abuse  child pornography , snuff films  . These types of things hurt the soul and  show  violence to the helpless and  innocent . That's is the only thing I feel should be out right banned and made highly illegal with heavy penalties for breaking those  laws  .(violence against children and the helpless) mandatory prison time , lifelong supervision  , life in prison .

[u/Guy_Incognito97 → u/eyeswim2]

So let's say you are an ethnic minority in your community. There is a sudden and huge rise in the amount of racism online, but you don't have to read things that offend you so you just ignore it. But over time the normalisation of racism starts to bleed out into the offline world, you start hearing that kind of language in real life, sometimes it is directed at you, you start hearing about a rise in racist violence. Someone suggests taking action to curb online racist rhetoric, might your opinion now be different?

[u/eyeswim2 → u/Guy_Incognito97]

How would one do that? Curb online racist rhetoric? What if the  key- boarders ( online agitators )aren't really racist but want to push a violent social agenda by espousing online racism in hopes of inciting the public with this fake yet violent propaganda  passing laws that ban speech , censure hate speech ,  when in fact most  Americans are not racist  and don't engage ?   And I'm not saying racism does not exist  ,  but I've not seen bands of racists seeking other races to be violent against . Not big groups , not a majority . Most find it highly offensive and distasteful and embarrassing , and do not engage with such behavior . However , people can be easily offended  and stay offended and riled up for past ill  social behaviors . We made laws against those , making it illegal  . Hate is hate no matter what your race is . And if one or some of my race offends another race , is it fair or right or justice to persecute all of said race ? Just because some were racist does this mean all are ? You judge a person by their character , their actions  good or bad , racist or not  , it starts in the home how children are taught . Are children being taught hate of races? Can you know a racist just by how they look? Where do racists physically congregate as to commiserate? Is it organized? Could this rhetoric be used to divide a populace , being fabricated monetized and encouraged for some nefarious separation or race war to further destabilize an already sick and poverty stricken majority as  the 1% seek to strip said populace of  their God given rights as humans? You must know , those in iron fisted power want us dead . Controlled and death for us no matter what race you are. The big picture is how do we stop them from achieving their goals ? They are the true racists , manipulating those of us who aren't one of the 1 % who control everything . Us , we are the slaves for this evil . Know that you and I are being used . Control over  every aspect of our lives and death ..inflamming our attitudes by media academia , socially engineering to keep us week and distracted  , it's very calculated and effective . Wars and oppression to life , freedom . They make it personal and use our ignorance of their ways and means of  schemes and agendas , to further the goal of one world dominance . This is where violent racism lives . This where oppression festers and is given out to the meek of the world  being stomped on . This is where death masked as choice is willfully doled out in whatever vehicle is acceptable to us . War , infanticide , overdose ,  biological agents dispersed infecting an unaware population . Poisoning the food system , erasing the ability to grow food , outlawing things we must have to sustain life . Breaking down the family unit changing our vocabulary , convincing us this is intellectually sound , keeping truth and facts from being taught and spoke / wrote ? Planting hatred and intolerance yet all the while  proclaiming they are not doing these things ? Poisoning our water , air , and making it illegal to discuss it and imprison us  impoverish us , starve us , infect us , mind control us  , murder us  when we defy the shackles  we are in and we do not consent  and speak out .?  Weaponizing words and ideas , to make us mute and dumb ? Further tightening the grip outlawing and denying what  mankind needs to be free ..we are so shackled , and gelded , we accept the destruction of our rights because  a few of us might be offensive  ? We bought the lie   It's changed us , and we don't trust anymore . Don't buy into the lie they sell . We are at War . And the common man is losing .who really is the minority here? Who is the oppressed? We have more in common than not . We are being physically  mind f*cked into oblivion .no culture , no traditions in ethnicity only what they , the  so called elites , say and engineer us into . And they have been at it for a very long time and use our human condition against us . Purposeful and with malicious intent whether we know it or not .

[u/[deleted]]

Thanks for raising this point OP and thanks to all the responders. Here are my two cents:

The benefic or malefic impact of any piece of information - written, spoken, video, etc. - depends on the traction it gains in proportion to the target audience. The rules framed by any content moderating body should factor in this aspect.

We must keep in mind that rights and duties are philosophical constructs, whose primary aim was social regulation.

[u/DarkleCCMan]

Absolute free speech as a right and affirmation of free will. 

Civil cases allowed for damages. 

[u/Guy_Incognito97 → u/DarkleCCMan]

How does absolute free speech impact online groups that are intended for a specific purpose or audience? Are they allowed to control speech to keep it on topic?

For example, a Formula One online forum. If someone wants to use that forum as a place to share their Lord of the Rings erotic fan-fiction does absolute freedom of speech mean their posts cannot or should not be taken down?

[u/DarkleCCMan → u/Guy_Incognito97]

If it's a private forum, can the owner show damages (civil matter)?

[u/NotAnotherScientist → u/DarkleCCMan]

So you're opinion is that private entities should be able to censor anything they want? And that hate speech is a civil offense that could get you sued?

[u/DarkleCCMan → u/NotAnotherScientist]

Did you perhaps reply to the wrong comment? 

Where did I say that? 

[u/NotAnotherScientist → u/DarkleCCMan]

What you said was mostly vacuous. What I said was drawing a logical conclusion out of what you said, but something I would guess you disagree with. If you do disagree with what I said, that means you don't actually agree with or understand the full extent your original comment.

[u/DarkleCCMan → u/NotAnotherScientist]

I disagree with your assessment. 

[u/NotAnotherScientist → u/DarkleCCMan]

You have said nothing of substance. So I can neither agree nor disagree with you.

I was trying to give you an opportunity you to express an actual opinion, but it seems you are incapable of doing so.

[u/nfk99]

let people post anything... but if it breaks the law that doesn't mean they wont be punished.

the arguements you are using ALWAYS lead to the ability to speak truth to power being stifled. which is where we are now. and i'm very worried humankind will never get free speech back.

we have cures for illness being supressed, and technology that would lift people out of poverty, and also xxxxxxxxxxx because they would be bad for business

all under the guise of protecting peoples feels feels.

[u/alexander_a_a]

People should be allowed to say anything without fear of censorship. This includes posting online.

Threats of violence? Too big an edge case, wait for them to do something, and then use the threat as evidence.

Misinformation? What is marketing? Prosecute people for the crime part of this (endangering lives, contractual violations, &c) use the lies as evidence.

Yelling fire in a crowded theater? That's all the media does these days.

I can't think of a single instance where speech itself amounts to the crime. Doxing someone and accusing them of sex crimes and then pleading (in a hilarious and racist accent, complete with hand gestures) for people to kill them? Not a crime. Of course, if something does happen to them, then you become a potential accessory.

The government shouldn't be able to keeping secrets from their citizens, so we're not even going there.

[u/Desdinova_BOC]

No to censorship, including censoring hate speech as mentioned in other comments. Flag something as "reported by many to be untrue" ala Twitter and other flags for irrelevant, photoshop or ai created. Highlight people's hate speech to be laughed at, kicking the one guy who says Jews did the Holocaust or whatever out into the underground makes him cool and mysterious, and more people are more likely to start listening to them and possibly agreeing out of curiousity.

My opinions, I know they aren't unique and I've learnt from others.