[ineptech]

> waving swastikas

The only reason people wear swastikas in America is because of the strong free-speech protection that this thread is discussing the erosion of. If we banned swastikas (like Germany) then people would stop wearing them (like Germany), but we'd still have the same hate speech you're discussing censoring.

> advocating for violence against Jews

That's a pretty broad standard. If a politician supports evicting Israelis from disputed settlements in the West Bank, is that "advocating violence against Jews?" The answer "Yes according to some people, No according to others." So again, I ask: who are you trusting to decide? President Trump? Congress? You personally? To be clear, the offer currently on the table is "some middle-managers at Cloudfare, as directed by the fickle hand of social media."

[JumpCrisscross]

> If a politician supports evicting Israelis from disputed settlements in the West Bank, is that "advocating violence against Jews?"

Someone chanting "death to Jews" and waving Nazi flags leaves little unambiguous. I'm usually a slippery slope fanatic when it comes to free speech, and I still am as it relates to First Amendment concerns, but private companies choosing not to do business with people who self identify as Nazis, wave Nazi flags and chant "death to Jews" while saying that employees of said companies are also Nazis is pretty clearly their right. Courts aren't computers and the law isn't code; judges can understand "they are Nazis."

[ineptech]

You're answering the question "Is it okay to censor stuff that's super-duper bad", which no one is asking. The question at hand is who gets to distinguish bad-enough-to-ban from the not-bad-enough-to-ban. That you've replied twice without answering suggests, I think, that there's not an easy answer. Not that there's any shame in that! The founders couldn't come up with a good answer either. The first amendment essentially says, "Restricting speech is so difficult to get right that we don't trust Congress to do it."

Meanwhile, the point this article is making is that (in practice, if not in law) the current answer to the question of who decides what to censor is "middle managers at network infrastructure companies, based on what their social media departments suspect might hurt their brand." If you think that's an acceptable answer, great, but I don't think you can go on thinking of yourself as a "slippery slope fanatic when it comes to free speech" in that case.

[JumpCrisscross]

> That you've replied twice without answering suggests, I think, that there's not an easy answer

There isn't. But we don't need an answer, not yet. The justice system is a lazy evaluator. This case has an easy answer--they are Nazis. If someone sued, the ruling would be quick. If the next case is more complex, reality will illuminate the nuances.

Common law systems are complex. They're also de-centralised and empirical. You don't always need a standard ex ante. We have a cultural standard regarding genocide, its advocacy, and Nazis. Existing norms and laws suffice.

(Philosophically, your question is interesting. It's practically irrelevant, though, until a matching case threatens to arise.)

[anigbrowl]

But you're saying that we should just ignore the examples of super-duper-bad speech because of the difficulty of deciding where the line is. And that is a really hard problem, but it doesn't take away from the fact that people are engaging in super-duper bad stuff like calling for genocide and plotting and committing political murders.

[teddyh]

Yes, and maybe allowing that would be less bad than allowing censorship to creep its way into acceptability.

[anigbrowl]

I'd like you to expand on this. I'm sure you're familiar with the idea of a chilling effect, and can understand how accepting the open advocacy of genocide, ethnic cleansing, or terrorism would negatively impact the freedom of those who are intended to be on the receiving end of such policies.

How many or how detailed must threats against others' wellbeing become before you consider them unacceptable?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect

[weberc2]

Threats of violence are already illegal. If speech crosses into threat/violence, we should punish that vigorously so as to deter further violence and to assure would-be victims. In fact, this is already policy and it's working out pretty well; Nazism lags even Islamic terrorism (at least in the US) in deaths. Surely if we tell people not to worry about Islamic terrorism, no one should be chilled by Nazism. The fear isn't rational; it's only propped up by leftist FUD (as fear of terrorists was largely propped up by the right in the aughts).

[weberc2]

Plotting and committing political murders are already crimes, let's not conflate these with abhorrent speech.

[anigbrowl]

No, let's. Organizing for the murder of a large number of people is as bad as or even even worse than calling for the deaths of individuals.

[weberc2]

I don't know how you do that moral calculus, but it doesn't matter because it's still not a reason to constrain speech. At best, it's a reason to apply a hate crime magnifier to the murder/conspiracy charge.