> Speech isn't "dangerous". You know what you do about people that say stupid things: you call them out on it. The answer to hate speech is more speech.
This worked to marvelous effect when legitimate, unique net neutrality concerns were buried under an avalanche of duplicate anti-net-neutrality letters sent on behalf of people who were very much deceased.
The solution to this challenge likely needs a much more nuanced approach to it than just burying hate speech in more speech, because look how well that turned out.
Time bears us many more examples where your proposal was successfully inverted to hideous ends. The loudest have a very pervasive tendency to win.
In the end, what does hate speech do other than to defraud an audience into an unjustified view of a subject?
It's a relevant analogy. You're free to dispute it, but we might all benefit if you invest some effort explaining why this and other examples aren't relevant.
This is a good example of why free speech is necessary. I've always considered myself a strong supporter of "net neutrality". Yet there were instances in the last 5 Years where the policies or positions labeled by many, particularly in the media, as net neutrality were not those that I would support. It was only as a result of robust debate and the free expression of contrarian views that I was exposed to critical facts exposing the misleading use of the phrase "net neutrality."
To the extent that speech is dangerous, it's pretty easy to pivot to defending it on 2nd Amendment grounds, in addition to the 1st. (Relevant: https://xkcd.com/504/)
Speech can absolutely be dangerous. Much of the run-up to the Holocaust was in dehumanizing and characterizing the Jews as money-sucking leeches bleeding Germany dry.
Much of the run up to the Holocaust was in establishing and propagandizing an authoritarian worldview while silencing the opposition with whatever tools were available.
If recent history is any example it's an ever expanding and often arbitrary list depending on an individuals sensitivity level (particularly when it comes down to the individual level like mod's on subreddits or employees at Twitter).
It seems many very vocal people on the internet are essentially pushing an idea that the most sensitive people should be defining what those boundaries are for everyone and the list of things people can be outraged could change at any time, and ignorance of these boundaries is not sufficient excuse.
A Google presentation titled "The Good Censor" was recently leaked where they talk about how themselves, Twitter, and Facebook, should censor free speach. They say that they want to move to a "European model" where civility is valued over freedom.
I cannot speak for the whole of Europe, but the German model certainly isn't "civility over freedom", but practical concordance: you have several basic rights which unfortunately almost always collide in some form with each other, and you find a way to give maximum effect to all of them.
The difference between America and Germany — very broadly speaking — is that America goes for the local maximum (free speech trumps everything) and Germany goes for a global maximum.
Social networks don't control the police and jails. They have always had the right - though they neglected it because they are lazy and delusional - to moderate content on their own servers.
It's so clear to me that "one size fits all" social networks will go away. They are inherently dysfunctional. Putting everyone from terrorists to toddlers on the same forums was never a good idea.
Hate speech is made in full faith by a group that has dominance and power to influence others to harm groups who live under that dominance and power. How many gradations do you think there are between the two?
For one thing, this definition eschews a common standard. Rather, violations are based on arbitrary criteria of "dominance" - which is popular with certain ideologues but has very little support in showing that this is actually a good metaphor for understanding our society. Anyway, in practice (and probably in your mind), this definition would entail grouping people by their skin color and labeling one group as extra susceptible for violating YOUR hate speech code and another group being completely exempt.
>Rather, violations are based on arbitrary criteria of "dominance" - which is popular with certain ideologues but has very little support in showing that this is actually a good metaphor for understanding our society.
I'm fascinated with why people don't acknowledge power structures as having any influence in how one part of society views another; that there is currently no hierarchy in society.
You just haven't ever needed to interface with this idea and therefore believe it's not a defined concept.