Do you believe in unconditional free speech
 

I was thinking about this last night after i saw a really disgusting tweet that lucas showed me and there was people in the replies posting screenshots of the crime report they’d submitted online even though no crime had been committed (it was absolutely vile though)

Like idk i just think that there are some things you just shouldn’t joke about and i found it absolutely repulsive but then also people seeing it as an actual CRIME just feels a bit weird

Not without accountability/consequence, no

Free speech shouldn’t mean free from consequence, I don’t think people should be reported to the police for making jokes, but people shouldn’t be surprised if their behaviour or language has personal consequences for them

Depends really. Free from legal consequences, yes, UNLESS it's slander/defamation. I think it's unavoidable that there will be social consequences for (in short) being an arsehole. However I also think respectful academic discussion of controversial topics should be protected.

everyone should have right of free speech

otherwise you live in north korea or russia like countries :joker: also what my dad tells me nearly 20 times now

If free speech was completely unconditional you wouldn't be able to do anything about things like bullying and defamation. Also laws against inciting violence is another limitation on free speech that most people would agree with.

I'd much rather someone be able to walk up to me and call me a "fucking fag" than for that to be illegal. I wouldn't go crying to the police or their employer because I'm over the age of seven.

But I agree that there should be consequences - no employer should be forced to keep employing someone who uses words like that.

I don't really agree with universities or other venues cancelling speaking gigs, as they're usually arranged by groups within the university rather than the university itself. If a student doesn't want to hear the likes of Amber Rudd or Katie Hopkins speak, they can choose to not go the hall at that time. At this point I'd certainly have no interest in what they have to say, but until they call for violence let them speak.

neither of these can be talked right with free speech

bullying, defamation are very wrong, violence is wrong

No, not free speech for all. Especially not peados. :mad:

Free speech can never be unconditional, there always has to be accountability. You can't threaten people, defame or slander them, tell lies that could ruin or cost lives etc and call it free speech.

People are allowed their opinions but unconditional freedom of speech is simply more than that.

...if we want ‘society/law and order and justice systems’ etc ...?...then there can’t ever be ‘unconditional’ because unconditional would remove all of those things and bring an entirely different world that I doubt that any of us would want as an existence...the laws and rules of protection from the ‘freedom of others’ must also apply .../...as others have said, basically...and as James has said, from childhood, in a school for instance...how could any society ever be structured with...’...of course, you can say whatever you like, target as much as you want to etc..and that person will just have to ‘cry it out’ or whatever, just deal with it..’...’maybe they’ll take their own lives even if it all gets too much, that’s always a ‘freedom’ for them to do...but you carry on...’....etc...

Free speech doesnt meant freedom from consequences, some people dont seem to understand that.

Sometimes the consequences are pretty stupid and needless though; see JK Rowling.

This is part of the problem these days; throughout 99.9% of human history, the social consequences for saying something people didn't like were self-limiting and relatively minor. In the digital age though, the entire world has a feedback platform to tell someone what they think, so there can be a thousand-person pile on that seems drastic even when it's only a small percentage of people overall. We're not really equipped to operate at that sort of scale.

Tru dat. There was nothing even particularly wrong with what JK said, but the amount of histrionics overshadowed what she actually said, so suddenly she was a "transphobe" with no-one being able to say why they think that.

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..it’s a strange thing because social media and it’s influence and likes and dislikes and cancelling etc...is what we’ve made it...(...not we as in anyone of us personally...)...but it wouldn’t be what it is if it wasn’t made to ‘fit’ over time...but then it’s become everything we don’t want and never wanted and are completely opposed to...how odd really...it just goes to show that ‘unconditional’ can’t exist ...because ‘control’ can’t exist with these type things...

Disagreeing with kings and religion has historically proved far graver than being cancelled on twitter.

Isn't that the quandary of the modern human though, Ammi? Our hard-baked instincts, honed over millions of years, don't always match up with the modern world we've created very recently, and in quite self-destructive ways. We evolved to seek out high-energy foods to keep us going because such food was scarce; sweet things, fatty things... But now those foods are abundant... But we're still driven to eat them. We still instinctually find them delicious. And they're right there on the shelf! For most people, it takes significant self control and understanding the consequences of overeating high-energy-content food to say "no I'll have a salad".

The same applies socially. We're highly social animals, us humans, so we're driven to embrace social situations but we evolved sociological in tribes and villages of a few hundred, maybe at most clans of a few thousand. We were certainly never equipped to be operating on platforms of millions of people like social media.

I think TiBB serves as a good example really. We're a small community, people often disagree, people often come out with things that are ill thought through or even quite awful, but for the most part we get on with things... We still chat away in other threads... We are aware of people "by (user)name" and know what to expect of them and roughly where they're coming from... We peacefully co-exist with major flare ups being pretty rare.

You don't really get that on a huge platform like Twitter. A fleeting back-and-forth with usually a complete stranger who is more of "a viewpoint" than "a person". I mean... Not only is it a completely bizarre (in historical context) form of communication;we're actually instinctually DRIVEN to be wary of strangers, for obvious reasons.

One might say that not toeing the line on certain issues is the modern equivalent of disagreeing with religion.

Power hierarchies are a different thing to community homogeny, though. Organised religion is another cluster**** just like social media - I don't think we're evolved to be equipped for that either. It's just that it's been around for longer. Still not long at all in terms of full human history - certainly not the form of religion that had leaders.

...we’ve created social media because of the obvious need for it ...the world has become so vast and families, friends etc don’t live so much in close, immediate contact, communication is everything, really...so to keep close contact, it’s an amazing thing...how would any of us have survived through lockdown etc and schools with online classes...and businesses without virtual meetings etc...without the magnificence of social media...a world with no social media is a world of true isolation...and something so huge, I mean anything so huge is always going to be open to the not so magnificent as well...I’m not sure that consequences are any more, they’re just entirely different and ‘living and adapting within the space and time that we’re also living and adapting in’...etc...I know that I can often say that social media can be a nightmare because it can, so many things can in their negative forms...and in TiBB we tend to discuss negative forms a lot in the nature of news stories etc...but on the whole, social is media is a great and wonderful thing, I feel...

Don't think I agree with this either, as human societies without power hierarchies don't exist. Even communities within tribes have always been bound by adherence to that tribe, it's rules and it's power structure. There are too many examples of independent human societies set up this way for us to believe that it's not innate in us; we even set up our gods in hierarchies. East germany and nazi germany show how quickly people turn against their neighbours if they believe that informing on their rebellion is either in the selfish interests of the individual, or for the greater good.

Before religious leaders there were shamen, who also had supposed knowledge that the rest of the tribe didn't, and created that groups superstitions. We know that some of the practices that these people used to indulge in would have required either group conformity or beliefs, so speaking out against these folks would have been a quick way to shorten a lifespan.

Modern humans have been around for about 250k years, and we can trace modern(ish) societies back for around half of that time. I think it's inconceivable that our earlier tribal ancestors had a more tolerant attitude to their authority and rules being questioned.

Free speech has always been an ideal not a reality, and many of the free speech warriors of today are only harkening back to a time 40/50 years ago where it was acceptable to say *** on TV.

I'm a free speech idealist; I'd like people to be able to say whatever they want, because it reveals more about them and that persons true feelings, but then again, no one ever chased me down the street calling me a shoe bomber or a fag, so some limitations and consequences for speech is for the benefit of society as a whole. Even the founders in the US, after enshrining free speech to their constitution put limitations on it (shouting fire in a packed theatre).

I think people like JK Rowling have had the backlash taken to extremes that I disagree with, but I don't think that we had free speech throughout human history until twitter came along.

I think some people believe free speech is a licence to make hateful, derogatory and vile remarks when its not

As long as people don't mind the consequences, why shouldn't they be able to say hateful or vile things? It's only words.

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That's the whole point. They want the speech without the consequences.