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USA's Control of Internet Speech
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2024
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Not every "conspiracy theory" is something stupid and made up. Have you not heard of MK Ultra?
There's a good chance some governments are still doing stuff like that, and I'm sure if you found some evidence of something like that and started talking about it, you would be silenced on any major platform because of these laws.
Also, if someone posts something online you think is dumb, do you really think it should just be deleted? Do you think that helps anyone?
But hate speech is never good, is it?
Hard disagree. Hate speech shouldn't be censored. I believe in freedom of speech. Prosecuting people for "hate speech" misunderstands what freedom of speech is.
As long as you don't threaten direct harm to a particular individual, you should not be censored or punished for it. If you do threaten harm to a particular person, you should not be censored but instead restrained, and what you said should be noted down and preserved for the date of a fair trial.
One person being upset shouldn't mean the other (who didn't know any better) has to spend the rest of their formative years in prison.
I think it’s easier to have to position that absolute free speech is the best solution if you are not part of a minority group who is the target of hate speech. (Not saying you aren’t)
The definition is tricky and if such law should exist it should have a good margin from being used for arbitrary “I was offended” type of offenses.
I don’t think prison, as you suggested, is a reasonable consequence either.
The repercussion to bad speech and ideas is inherent to the current paradigm of the internet: downvotes and ostracization.
Maybe they will wind up on their own forum saying despicable shit, but they were probably going to do that anyway. Bad ideas love a vacuum away from prying eyes and outsiders.
It can lead to prison in some countries (more than I imagine you'd think), which I think is very bad.
Also, the opposite of what you're describing can happen. Governments and big media/tech companies can use censorship to prevent ideas they don't like from spreading online.
Yes, absolutely. We should all be concerned with the source of our ideas and even our memes, as dumb of a concept as that is.
What is hate speech?
Yeah, fair, definition can be hard. But to give an example that I think is pretty clear cut: people standing outside of a mosque/synagogue/church arguing that those [certain people] deserve to be dead or put in labor camp.
You could argue that those are just words, and be correct, but for the individuals that are targeted it’s not just words. They know for a fact that those words and ideologies do turn in to actions.
I think it’s easier to have to position that absolute free speech is the best solution if you are not part of a minority group who is the target of hate speech.
That only really applies to specific threats like that though, rather than just saying you personally think certain ideologies are morally wrong.
Stuff like "gay people are unnatural and should be corrected" and "drag queens/trans people/[insert bogeyman here] are pedophiles coming for our children" and "n***ers oughta be whipped"
My point is that it's a moving target that will be abused. The government should not and thankfully cannot regulate speech based on the grounds of "hate". Hate is also not illegal. (At least in the US)
For example, Christians are taught to love the sinner but hate the sin. Homosexuality, drag queens, transgenderism are sins in Christianity. With your new law Christians are now censored because their worldview disagrees with yours.
Whoever has the right to define that term has immense power and that power will be abused just like the other labels in the meme.
They aren't censored for believing those things are sinful. They're being punished for trying to enforce their views on what a person should be on people who aren't them. The minute I start having to care about what the Christian sitting next to me thinks is sinful because he might hurt me if I don't, he loses the right to free speech, you get me?
Not if he's just arguing with you in a way that outwardly appears calm, even if a little shocked or disgusted.
As long as I get to tell him just as calmly to fuck off and leave me alone, and he does, we're good.
I believe in trying to enact compassion and peace. Most people are actually very similar and don't want to be bothered by angry people.
I beg to differ. Some people want to be trans. Some people think being trans is unnatural and should therefore be illegal. There can be no halfway compromise on these issues. There can be no reminding people "hey, we're all human, why can't we just get along" when one group wants another to stop existing.
I have just demonstrated why we cannot. Did you listen to a single word I said?
Are you sure you're not an LLM?
That's only because you're high as a kite right now, dude. LLMs and humans are very easy to tell apart, because LLMs are orders of magnitude less intelligent. Ask an LLM to visualize something or solve a simple puzzle it hasn't read about before, it can't. Ask an LLM (heck, ask most Lemmings) to have an intellectual conversation like you and I had yesterday, they can't. The reason everyone is calling you an LLM now isn't because LLMs have gotten smarter, it's because drugs brought your intelligence down to their level.
Seriously, the stream of incoherent posts you've made in the last hour is the best argument I've yet heard against doing drugs. What kills me is you'll probably think you sounded smart when you come down, too.
Did you get any dental surgery recently?
Looking at his comment history, it looks likely he is currently experiencing a schizophrenic episode. Like, not even joking or trying to be mean, just appears to be the case :(
While not pacifistic Christianity is non-violent. If someone claims to be a Christian and beats up a homosexual for "no reason" then they are sinning. This, also, is completely irrelevant to the argument I was making.
Everyone tries to enforce their views. You, I assume, want to enforce your world view of radical tolerance for [issue here] at the expense of someone elses ability to criticize it. Your neighbor might want to define hate speech as anything that violates Sharia law.
What we have now (which is no restriction on hate speech) is actually the best policy.
If that's how you want to define the opinion that people shouldn't be thrown in jail for providing abortions or gender affirming care, or that Tucker Carlson shouldn't be allowed to go on TV and tell his followers that all drag queens are pedophiles, then so be it.
Sin is whatever. You can believe that all gays are going to go to turbo-hell, you can tell all your facebook friends, you can say you feel pity for us, I don't care. As long as I'm allowed to live my life however I want, and you don't come into my face and tell me not to, we're good. But your right to swing your arms stops at my face. As soon as you start codifying your opinions into law, or advocating for violence against people who ~~hold different beliefs than you~~ live their lives in a way contrary to your religion (which strangely only seems to come from people who self-identify as being on the right), we're gonna have a problem.
This is (mostly) a different point and I'm not going to engage with it. Suffice it to say that hate speech isn't a slippery slope it's the bottom of the mountain. If such a policy is ever enacted it will be abused and used to persecute people.
I agree that censorship is evil. I disagree that people being banned from internet forums because of opinions they hold is censorship.
You're just redefining terms. It's the same thing. If Twitter or Lemmy wants to block those things that's fine. I would agree that social networks should try to maintain some sense of decency on their platforms. The government shouldn't be involved though.
Sounds like we agree then.
🙂
Of course I have. Because it was declassified. And that means it's no longer a conspiracy theory.
Tell me with a straight face that you have never even thought about blocking a single other social media user. Tell me you think troll comments like "What's a major turn off when dating?" "If she's black" should not be removed by moderators.
It was a conspiracy theory. So were Edward Snowden's documents. Hating conspiracy theories in general is an incredibly stupid take.
Yes to all your questions.
I've never blocked anyone. Maybe I would if they were spamming me on a chat for a very long time or getting super personal, and I would probably stop engaging if I didn't have the time or energy for them anyway, but that's pretty much irrelevant to what I think your point is.
I wouldn't care if I encountered your hypothetical forum post. Granted, I'm not black, but that doesn't affect what I'm saying much, especially when so many black people have already encountered a lot of racism in their lives.
Anyway, people can have whatever dating preferences they want. Just because you don't want to date someone doesn't mean you think of them as less of a person than anyone else. Do you hate your parents because you don't want to fuck them? The comment was admittedly written almost certainly by a racist, but I actually still don't think racist comments should be removed. Most mods do a little bit too much in my eyes, because it's kind of in their nature.
Usually it's highly uneducated people who go online trying to upset people or spread hate all the time, so why don't more educated community members try to teach them? They might not want to listen, but they'll probably go away if they don't.
Generally I think people need to stay level-headed on forums. Your mental health is always more important than what some idiot says online, so remember to take a break whenever you need to. Welcome to forums.
Every ounce of energy a person spends watching their back, making sure their fellow man isn't out to get them, hardening their armor against the thousands of people trying to find a chink, find the one thing they can say that gets them to have a mental breakdown just because they think it's funny watching them have a mental breakdown, is an ounce of energy they don't spend creating, caring for each other, making the life of their fellow man just that little bit better, and unapologetically being themselves.
But if you're so insistent that words on a screen can't affect you unless you let them, Mr. Forumite, I guess you won't mind if I end this conversation by telling you to go to the hardware store and buy a rope and a bucket, providing exhaustive instructions for how to tie a noose, and telling you to end your worthless life before you ruin anyone else's, because your parents clearly never loved you and there's no way anyone else who's sane ever will.
Yeah. I don't mind. I don't care whether or not you say anything else to me, whether or not it's intended to be hurtful.
What you don't seem to me like you understand is that some people are far more prone to mental breakdowns than others, but it could happen to anyone. It could happen to you or I at some point in the future. If I were incredibly sensitive and easy to manipulate, then I could be going off to follow your instructions right now and end my life.
Some people can be manipulated with silver tongues. Look at what politicians do, and the media that mock different sides when they say certain things.
Nobody wants to be manipulated, and "hardening" yourself emotionally is what I think to be a very important and natural part of maturing.
I don't think people should be erasing any information they even slightly disagree with though. The media only show you certain things to make you believe certain things, which is the point OP seems to have been making. Mods could also make a pretty good argument to delete your comment because you just told me to kill myself, but I still don't personally think they should.
Genuinely, though, calm down, mate. This is just a space to have discussions in your spare time. We should all be friends here. My advice would be to take a break, especially if you don't want the mods to come in and ban your account.
Deep breaths. Most things people say don't matter very much. It should usually be that simple.
So you believe that, since there are a large number of people who can be easily manipulated by words into believing or doing certain things, and there likely always will be, words may as well inherently have power and we should be careful with how we use them, but you simultaneously believe that the solution to this is just to make everyone grow thicker skin?
For the record, though, I don't believe anyone should kill themselves, or anything that I said about you personally in the second paragraph. Quite the opposite, in fact. I only said that to make the point that "just words on a screen" can do horrible things to the right people, which I'm glad you seem to understand.
Yes. Exactly. :)
Feel free to disagree, but you'd probably need a much longer argument to convince me otherwise.
Also, that's the reason it is a bit difficult to decide how justified someone is in deleting/hiding information or saying something that might be a bit wrong.
If everyone were trying to spread knowledge and understand each other all the time, the world would be a much safer and much better place by most standards.
The fact that this is not the case is why forums need moderation. Very rarely, I find, do people engage in good faith when a more emotionally satisfying alternative is available. People troll. People argue in bad faith. People deliberately try to get each other riled up and post misinformation (by which I mean statements that can be disproved by a single Google search) in the hopes that those who see it will be too lazy to check. People take one of those misinformation posts saying something they already agree with as irrefutable proof that it is true and refuse to listen to reason.
I agree that whether any given post constitutes some of the above is much more often than not a matter of personal opinion, and that therefore people who can be trusted to decide accurately every single time are rare indeed if they truly exist at all. That said, anyone who's ever browsed 4chan for a while can plainly see that removing nothing does much more harm than good, especially in forums that discuss topics commonly frequented by people who are vulnerable and therefore easy to manipulate (forums discussing trans issues immediately come to mind).
I personally would MUCH rather use a forum moderated by an imperfect human whose heart is in the right place than a forum with no moderators whatsoever. The beautiful thing about the Internet, though, is that we do not all have to agree on which is best. Some forums are moderated, some are not, and we can use one or the other or both as we choose.
Exactly. I don't hate mods at all and never said I did. I even think that the mods here did a good job if they agree with a lot of my reasoning. Thanks mods. Lol
Hate is a very negative thing that can lead to what most people will agree is some form of evil. Everyone should try not to fill their minds with hate.
Related: you should try and explain to yourself how and why you think you could become the best person you could possibly be.
People who had thought enough about certain things were seen throughout history as being strongly in touch with the divine and mysticism.
I'm just going to throw in a bit at the end of this thread here, as I find the conversation fascinating.
This is how fascism starts. "We have to control speech for your own good" becomes "hateful speech comes from [insert group]" becomes "we have to stop them."
We are all being weaponized by the internet. Free speech is important. You don't fight fascism with more fascism, you fight it with better ideas.