[superkuh]

>If the closed web is a place where hate speech, harassment and bullying thrives, the open web can be, needs to be an experience where it does not.

I am strongly against this appeal to censorship. Luckily in the real open web, where you host your own content the incentives and mechanisms for censorship are few and difficult to achieve. No, my dream of the open web is diverse. Full of things people hate and full of things people love. Not just some gentrified, marketable, set of opinions from a narrow slice of the possible. The overton window has shrunk enough.

That's how the web was and how it can be again. Without extremes there's nothing exceptional.

[groby_b]

The reason we're in the mess that we are is the shit show the open web was. People were delighted to have a walled garden where they only communicated with friends, instead of random drive-by trolls in the open.

And frankly, it's understandable. A place that justifies bullying and hate speech as a good thing, with mumblings of "b.. b.. but free speech", is not a place where anybody wants to spend their time. (Except people who either like or don't mind bullying)

And given that we're currently debating if the Overton window should include actual real-life Nazis - "because free speech" - I'm OK with it shrinking some more.

Extremes in thought are indeed necessary. But they need to be followed by a realization of how far is too far, and an ability to moderate how much of that extreme thought is publicly shared, respecting other people. Maturity is a necessary tool of useful debate.

"How the web was" was (and is) mostly kids screaming in the backyard, with sensible adults carving out spaces that exclude immaturity.

[JoshMnem]

> People were delighted to have a walled garden where they only communicated with friends, instead of random drive-by trolls in the open.

I spend most of my time on the open web, and don't see many drive-by trolls. I don't think that is the reason the web became closed.

[malvosenior]

Sensible adults have long been a proponent of free speech. It’s the call to censorship for comfort that is new and seemingly coming from younger generations who don’t have experience with why that may be a bad idea.

The ACLU has long defended all speech: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/why-we-must-defend-fre...

[groby_b]

Sensible adults have long been aware that censorship is something the government does, and that private individuals (and by extension, corporations) are perfectly fine restricting what speech they're willing to accept in their environment. The rule commonly known as "my house, my rules". The problem many people have with the open web is that many people don't step up and spell out house rules, which others interpret as "sure, we can pee on the carpet"

And you'll note that even the ACLU is perfectly fine with the government restricting speech in some well-defined circumstances[1].

[1] Visible if you see the full text of the blog post you linked: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/09/28/why-we-must-still...

[Rylinks]

This is wrong, even in the United States. There are rare circumstances where a company's property is open to the public to such an extent that they become subject to first amendment restrictions (e.g. Marsh v. Alabama). Some states, such as California, have even greater restrictions on private parties in their state constitution. CA's constitutional speech protections prevent shopping malls from expelling petitioners from their premises, even if the mall disagrees with the speech.

Extending this body of law to, say, Facebook would have problems, of course. But I don't think it's so clear that all sensible adults know that censorship is only something the government does, and are happy letting any corporate behavior, no matter how extreme, pass without scrutiny.

[groby_b]

I stand corrected. And am happy to learn about Marsh v. Alabama, thank you!

The larger point I was trying to make still stands. I think.

Specifically, that speech in a private context is not subject to the same amount of regulations as speech in a public context (with the incorrect interference that only the govt can restrict speech in a public context). Marsh v. Alabama specifically argues that the sidewalk in a company town is equivalent to a public space. (And I think that does hold interesting questions for large web sites).

But free speech rules still apply to a lesser extent on both commercial and private properties. The idea that "censorship for comfort" in general is bad is misguided.

(In the context of above lawsuit, I'd love to hear a lawyer expand on if content restrictions qualify as restricting speech in a semi-public content, or if they qualify as making the space less public - i.e. are they barriers to access, or to speech?)

[Rylinks]

I agree, and if I were forced to answer I would say that even the CA constitution probably doesn't apply to Facebook et. al.

I think the point I have in mind is that there are less restrictions on speech as the venue becomes more private, and this is for good reasons, large websites as a platform for mass conversation are relatively new, and come with their own benefits and drawbacks when they choose to restrict speech. And because these trade-offs are new, the debate should be about these pros and cons, rather than flat statements that censorship is bad, or that private companies can do whatever they want, no matter how severe.

It should be a policy debate. The CA constitution probably doesn't apply, but the legislature can intervene anyway, and I don't think an argument that says "these platforms are important enough to modern-day communication that they should do so in some manner" is completely insane.

[TuringTest]

Uh, that's not quite exact. That may be something americans think, but at least here in Europe we have rules that control the speech that happens at private venues that enable public speech (like, newspapers).

For example if a newspaper publishes inaccurate information about a person, that person has the right to publish a correction[1] explaining their point of view on the subject; and the newspaper is forced by law to publish the correction in the same venue and same prominence. This is considered quite sensible to us.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_reply

[prophesi]

The saddest part is how the younger generation turned college campuses, the place where radical & worldview-challenging ideas could thrive, into places wherein you're protected from any such challenging ideas.

[untog]

That's a very common and entirely overblown hypothesis. Sure, there are student protests about a tiny number of speakers each year. But there have been student protests about anything ever since there have been students.

> More importantly, though, we can see here why reaching broad conclusions from sets of anecdotes is inadvisable. There are around 2,600 four-year universities in the United States. Friedersdorf tried to compile all of the most outrageous instances from a single year, and found about 10 of them. Those 10 were probably roughly evenly distributed according to the political affiliation of the students; i.e. there are more shutdown attempts by liberal students than conservative students, but students are also more liberal. And among those high-profile incidents, a bunch of the speakers ended up coming and speaking and the petitions went nowhere.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/02/why-do-those-college-...

"college campuses" are quite safe from the "younger generation".

[prophesi]

If you want a book that uses national polls conducted over the past 40+ years, plus a little bit of anecdotal evidence to make the data tangible, I recommend iGen by Jean M. Twenge[0].

There's a noticeable trend that the kids of this upcoming generation are ill-prepared for college and expect the authorities to protect them. In highschool, they're less likely to go out without their parents or work a part-time job (And on a positive note, less likely to drink or have premarital sex).

[0] https://www.amazon.com/iGen-Super-Connected-Rebellious-Happy...

[untog]

Yeah, about that:

> For instance, Twenge argues that young people have become increasingly self-absorbed since the advent of the Internet. One piece of evidence she uses is a search she ran through Google's Ngram (which searches through printed books) for the phrase "I love me." She found a sharp spike in the phrase in the last few decades. But "I love me" sounds slightly off — surely most people say "I love myself." And lo, if you search "I love myself" (as I would guess Twenge did first), you find that the phrase fluctuated with much less satisfying results, and in fact occurred at a higher frequency in, for instance, the 1770s, than in the early 2000s. So, Twenge discovered a grammatical shift and disguised it as a cultural one.

> It's a small example, but the book is dizzying with this brand of deceptive spin.

https://www.npr.org/2017/09/17/548664627/move-over-millennia...

I'm not arguing that the book is without merit, but I really don't think it comprehensively and inarguably states that the "younger generation" are as damaged as the "older generation" might suspect (and "the coming generation are wrong about all the things!" is a trope as old as time)

[sincerely]

Why is less premarital sex a "positive note"?

[s73v3r_]

No, they didn't. The sad part is people apparently believing that minorities being subjected to a bunch of hate speech directed toward them are "challenging ideas."

[Spivak]

I think it's funny you were immediately downvoted for this. It betrays this crowd as a population that largely hasn't experienced the kind of the politely-expressed but openly hateful things that are passed off as challenging. Or how quickly people berate groups as delicate because they meet for the purposes of not feeling like shit for a few hours.

[s73v3r_]

I don't find it funny. I find it rather sad, but unfortunately rather predictable for this crowd.

Fortunately, at this point, the comment has been upvoted into the positive.

[temp-dude-87844]

It's a manifestation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs among a certain cohort that's allied with targets of discrimination and feeling politically cornered by the opposition's shift to the right. They see that the Overton window about certain types of discourse being mainstream has shifted because the opposition has moved further right -- both in terms of leadership and the views of the membership. They see radical positions working for their opponents, and escalate in turn.

There's a lack of nuance about whether they wish to push certain viewpoints underground and out of the mainstream, or if they wish to silence them altogether. Some probably don't care, which is troubling, but not altogether hard to understand. The effort is internally justified by invoking the 'paradox of tolerance', where they propose that the discourse of their opponents is fundamentally intolerant and presents a clear and present existential threat to society at large, and must be reactively suppressed for the health of diverse and open discourse to continue.

[Spooky23]

I never had much exposure to nazis and other scum on the open web. It’s behavior not tolerated on a place like HN, and I don’t frequent places that welcome that conduct.

Facebook is a machine designed to generate reaction. I deactivated a long time ago, one of my catalysts for moving was when the platform kept trying to keep me away from things I cared about and towards things that would trigger the most base/id reaction.

Thanksgiving Dinner isn’t about trolling your drunk uncle.

[crdoconnor]

Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.

Besides, censoring Nazis and other undesirable types (e.g. ISIS propaganda) is ineffective at shutting them up and endears potential recruits to them. It would likely be more effective to subtly mix their propaganda with counter-propaganda instead of playing whack-a-mole with their accounts.

[groby_b]

You got me. In my personal environment, my house? Speech that I don't accept doesn't happen. And it turns out that that's actually perfectly fine, because free speech should only not be restricted by the government.

[crdoconnor]

>In my personal environment, my house?

Weren't we talking about freedom of speech on the open web though?

When you mentioned walled gardens I assumed you meant Twitter not your living room.

[fauigerzigerk]

Absolute free speech is not a sustainable position, because it conflicts with other basic rights, freedoms and laws.

Would you not accept that directly inciting violence against specific groups or individuals must be banned?

[peoplewindow]

It's better to ban nothing when it comes to speech. Any restrictions at all rapidly escalate into enormous restrictions, hypocrisy and logical contradictions.

Actually by now, I automatically assume anyone who uses the phrase "hate speech" doesn't actually care about violent speech at all, just shutting down people they don't agree with.

Consider that students in America keep arguing that any opinion they don't like is "violence" that makes them feel "unsafe", and of course anyone to the right of Marx is "promoting intolerance and hatred". That's a pretty bad abuse of the word violent, but if you say the only kind of speech that is banned is speech that incites violence then pretty quickly everyone is claiming any ideological enemy is "inciting violence" with whatever justification they can find.

So there had better be really good reasons for such bans. But are there? I am struggling to think of cases where someone stood up and announced "kill those people" and it actually happened, outside of extremist Islamic preachers e.g. the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. That's rare, but also, the moment you say that sort of preaching isn't allowed anymore you run into the question of people's right to practice religion, as there is quite a lot of incitement to violence in basically every ancient holy book.

And then there's the hate speech that doesn't get prosecuted because it's by politically important groups: https://www.salon.com/2013/05/07/twitters_latest_unfunny_tre...

In the end, when I see the apparently small amount of physical world violence definitively and directly caused by speech, vs the huge numbers of people trying to classify things they disagree with as hate speech, I am forced to conclude that the cost/benefit ratio is not worth it and the first amendment has got it right.

[fauigerzigerk]

I agree that there is a danger of overreach and political instrumentalisation and that we are seeing it in full force in many public debates right now.

But I think that the sort of wording that nokcha posted in the sibling comment does a pretty good job at putting the breaks on any tendencies to extend the meaning of inciting violence endlessly.

I think the real problem of overreach arises because governments are trying to outsource censorship to huge corporations that are running our centralised internet.

These corporations are not going to be as wise as the judge ruling on Brandenburg v. Ohio. They are going err on the side of caution and ban everything remotely suspicious to avoid controversy. And then everyone will say it's not censorship because it's not the government doing it.

You are right that bans on speech are only very rarely needed. But that's how it should be. It should be a tool of last resort just like the use of lethal force by police should be a very rare exception. But I think we do need tools of last resort.

I want this particular tool of last resort in the hands of the courts though, and not applied automatically on a massive scale by corporations trying to stay in the good graces of governments.

[Retra]

>Any restrictions at all rapidly escalate into enormous restrictions [...]

This is a slippery slope argument and it is as weak as any.

Hate speech is that speech which has historically been used to 'justify' vast amounts of violence against mostly innocent people. More accurately, it is speech that is used to promote emotions which cause people to conveniently accept justifications of violence that overlook the individuality of a person. The speech that does this is designed to do it. And the consequences of engaging in such thinking can be almost arbitrarily bad.

The first amendment was written before WW2. It was written before Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, radio, television, internet, and modern journalism. It was also written by people with a questionable understanding of modern liberalism and to appease people with a far worse understanding of liberalism.

The first amendment is not sacred. Even if you can find fault in every alternative, this does nothing to absolve the faults already within it.

> the moment you say that sort of preaching isn't allowed anymore you run into the question of people's right to practice religion

Clearly christianity is outlawed in the US because stoning people (and by extension, homosexuals) is illegal. All that's happened here is that you're not allowed to grant yourself arbitrary rights by claiming they are 'religious.' All societies restrict the authority of religion. Either through secular principles such as this, or through religious persecution committed by another religion.

>I am struggling to think of cases where someone stood up and announced "kill those people" and it actually happened

This is laughable. Your ignorance isn't a argument. "I can't find any examples of something I didn't bother to look for examples of."

[nokcha]

Just to clarify: under Brandenburg v. Ohio (395 U.S. 444 (1969)), such speech can be punished (by the government) only if it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action"; abstract advocacy of illegal violence is protected speech.

[naiveai]

Didn't really work either though. Trolls gonna troll no matter what.

[attalus]

I am sorry, but who is actually giving voice to these groups. Sure there are trolls that co-opt this stupidity, but it is a fact that the number of people involved in hate-groups are going down.

[untog]

"thrives" != "exists"

I don't see a contradiction between allowing hateful content to exist but not actively promoting it to users. Time and time again we've seen algorithmic feeds that are entirely dedicated to making users click on more things serve up more and more hateful content (think: YouTube's recommended videos).

As I interpret it, the OP is calling for a return to neutrality on the open web, not censorship. No-one uses YouTube because they're enthusiastic about the recommended content that appears after their video. They use it because the potential audience is huge, and in many ways it's the only choice if you want to start a successful video career. The linked post is asking what if people had a choice?

Take Twitter for example. There was a mild uproar a while back because they started banning alt-right accounts. Those banned users then set up Gab (I think?), a Twitter alternative for the alt-right. In an open world where dozens of different social networks exist this wouldn't be an issue at all, in fact it would be how things should work. Anyone can make their own playground, and anyone can decide their own rules. But the closed, centralised world we have today gives companies like Twitter far too much power, and far too broad an audience to effectively use that power.

[TuringTest]

> I am strongly against this appeal to censorship.

Why do you interpret "experiencing a web without harassment and bullying" as implying "censoring speech"? People may publish all the hatred and bullshit they want on the open web, but I don't need to be forced to watch it. Both things are not exclusive.

IM applications with limited groups (Telegram, Whatsapp) show us a way this can be done. If these tools were open, you could create groups to communicate anything you want; but only people subscribed to those groups will see them, and you won't reach people that isn't interested in that content, or which have blocked you after an awkward interaction.

[superkuh]

Because what a small, loud minority of people call "bullying" simply isn't. Because sometimes mocking ideas is the right thing to do. The idea that "bullying" or "harassment" should be eliminated comes from a place where people believe they can define an absolute right or wrong. And even more unbelievable, they think that there is a person (or worse, a group of people) that know these absolutes.

If they want to block that communications on their forum it's fine. But I'll post to my personal, self-hosted website whatever opinions I want.

The way to cut the gordian knot of what to allow is simple: everyone should self host, federate, and set up web rings. Everyone should be a full participant on the 'net instead of going through centralized proxies that create perverse commercial incentives for censorship.

[Spivak]

I don't think your proposed solution will really change anything and would probably backfire if it became reality. Congrats, you now have a public website espousing opinions that would have gotten you banned from the former central platforms. But it doesn't really matter since the practical reach of your message is basically nonexistant. You're blacklisted from all the popular webrings who are empowered to moderate even stronger since they're not platforms for general speech anymore and their users love it because it's not fun to be bullied and harassed.

Everyone gets what they want I guess?

[superkuh]

Except none of that happens because the people pushing for stupid things like anti-bullying were in the minority all along.

Also, my self hosted website has been doing fine for ~20 years now. And because I don't care about reach or other marketing and business terms even in your scarecrow scenario I'm just fine too.

[GW150914]

It seems that you use HN a lot, and this is a heavily (well) moderated forum. That seems like an implicit endorsement of just the kind of “censorship” you and others are railing against. If HN became oppressively censored, another option would tske its place.

[ChrisHardie]

I believe there is a middle ground between hate speech being "allowed-but-not-thriving" and censorship, and I think we can do a better job of finding it than we do now.

[pmlnr]

On the open web, registrars regularly suspend domains, isps block ips, in the name of 'we are protecting you'. But at least you own your data and you can move it to somewhere else.

[Spivak]

These two things aren't in necessarily in conflict. Using moderation to prevent threats, harassment, bullying, and hate does not prevent diversity of thought.

[InclinedPlane]

You're confusing censorship with no platforming, they are not the same thing.

[superkuh]

True enough. But when the government creates the economic and legal incentives to force private companies to de-platform people (ie, FOSTA-SESTA) the difference is marginal.