[cies]

Nonsense. Do you think movies of child abuse are "free speech", or recruitment/instruction videos tot terrorist organizations, or inciting violence and hate? What about Assange, he published some stuff, could that be free speech? Or violations of copyright?

To me free speech is like free markets. The word does not adequately cover the implementation as boundaries do apply. There are little to non truly free markets (no tax, no imp/ex restrictions, etc). And there is not truly free speech.

And to limit freedom to speech to prevent hate/violence inciting crowds to get a platform may --according to me-- be necessary in some cases and is allowed by many of the worlds constitutions.

On top of that Reddit is a private platform, so they are free to set their standard, just like you may prohibit some speech in your own household (under the thread of being expelled or "no longer welcome).

[sebmellen]

The line where free speech ends is pretty clearly delineated, and that's when it crosses over into criminal or violent action in the "world of atoms".

Almost all of your examples can be prosecuted based on their direct effect on the real world (or representation of a crime, such as with child abuse videos), not the content of their speech. The difference is crucial.

To take things to an extreme, if I say "all XXXX should be killed", that's very different from actually killing all members of the XXXX group, or even plotting to do so.

[cies]

So you want law to protect people that say "all X should be killed", then X is not demonstrably super violent/intolerant in the first place?

Let's say someone campaigns that all people that have gay sex should be killed: do you want this "speech" protected?

Well: I dont. That's why I think "intolerance of the intolerant" is good. Most law books in developed democracies agree with me. White supremacists, racists, fascists, extreme wahabists/salafits dont. They want to incite hatred/violence (to non-violent/tolerant people). I'd say shut 'm down and/or dont give platform.

[sebmellen]

Yes, I do, actually.

We have a number of tiny fringe groups like this in the US, such as the Westboro Baptist Church, which would surely be illegal in most of Europe. I will defend their full right to speech so I can have my full right to speech.

In Europe, free speech laws shut down leftist activists, not just "white supremacists, racists, fascists, extreme wahabists/salafits". I think this is a strawman and an idealistic vision of being able to control speech fairly. One of the biggest active groups is the IHRA, a Zionist organization. The IHRA consists of 31 member nations including the United States, Canada, Australia, France, England, Germany, and twenty-six other European countries.

They are essentially criminalizing Palestinian activism. See https://socialism.com/statement/defend-free-speech-stop-the-....

This has become a big problem in Germany for Palestinian/Muslim activists who are critical of Israel. Curtailing free speech is a slippery slope.

Now, perhaps the AfD will be banned in Germany, as it has been placed under so-called "Verfassungsschütz beobachtung", an agency that protects the German constitution. Should it be criminal to identify as a communist or nationalist in Germany? What comes after that — perhaps it should be criminal to be a Jew or Muslim or Christian, given the hateful teachings of the Torah, Quran, and Bible?

This is a bad line of argument.

[blackbrokkoli]

You are going full circle without realising it.

A political party may be banned in Germany, as in: You cannot vote for them any more. For that to happen, they have to be hostile against fundamental parts of the constitution. That is division of powers, free development of the individual, independence of courts and stuff like that. Only then a ban might be even considered.

And it is still fully legal to be against these things, tweet about them or whatever.

This is to -protect- Jews, Muslims and Christians, because as was so colourfully demonstrated in Germany 33-45 it is very easy to run a platform striving to destroy these values within a democratic framework. (Similar to what the Free Speech Paradox is about)

There is no slippery slope here, and your argument that there is either bad faith or extremely uniformed.

[sebmellen]

You're right the point about the AfD is a weak one, so I won't argue it further (though I don't cede my ground, either).

But you did not respond to the rest of my comment. Free speech in Germany (and, for that matter, most of Europe), does not exist.

There is a great article in The Atlantic about this, titled "In Europe, Speech Is an Alienable Right": https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-fr....

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that:

> > By accusing Muhammad of paedophilia, [E.S.] had merely sought to defame him, without providing evidence that his primary sexual interest in Aisha had been her not yet having reached puberty or that his other wives or concubines had been similarly young. In particular, [E.S.] had disregarded the fact that the marriage with Aisha had continued until the Prophet’s death, when she had already turned eighteen and had therefore passed the age of puberty.

To which the author rightly responds:

> Having sex with a child isn’t pedophilia, in other words, if the child’s prepubescence is not your biggest turn-on, or if you also have sex with adults, or if you continue having sex after the child reaches maturity. (Am I alone in finding the Austrian court’s reasoning offensive?

Just look at a map of blasphemy laws in Europe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law). Germany is on par with Yemen, Oman, Turkey, Indonesia, Myanmar... This is not a good thing to have in common with those countries.

I maintain that the government should never hold the right of censure. It is a slippery slope. Given the ECHR rules, it's quite possible criticism of Islam will be fully illegal in the next 10 years. This is dangerous.

[blackbrokkoli]

But those examples do not hold either?

The Muhammad story is about Austria (which I did not discuss and do not know a lot about). I don't know much about the religious issue at hand either, but the possibility of getting fined 500€ for accusing people of paedophilia if your claim does not hold does not strike me as such horrendous. Isn't this slander in the US and illegal as well?

How is Germany on par with the countries you listed? You may not disturb public peace with speech and not insult people. Example is a dude who printed "The Holy Quran" on toilet paper. Nothing wrong with enforcing human decency via the law. Such insults is also literally what Nazis did in the first stage of the holocaust. Looking at the countries this is supposed to be on par with: Yemen uses blasphemy laws to imprison establishment enemies. Oman is not even on the list. Turkey is extra ironic because there was a comedian who made a parody of the Turkish government and Germany had a diplomatic crisis because Germany refused to do something against it (obv. totally on par). Myanmar put a guy in jail for wearing Buddha headphones. Indonesia's mention is so brief I guess you could say the law sounds similar.

Still not seeing the slope, sorry...

[DavidVoid]

> Should it be criminal to identify as a communist or nationalist in Germany?

It seems somewhat likely that it'll become illegal to identify as a communist in the US, since, as of two days ago [1], Communist Party members are no longer allowed to enter the country.

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/news/alerts/uscis-issues-policy-guidan...

[umvi]

How about religious people who believe gay marriage/abortion should be illegal? Should they be shut down as well?

[DavidVoid]

Depends on what they're doing. They definitely shouldn't be allowed to harass gay weddings and health centers that perform abortions.

[umvi]

What if they spread their ideas via proselyting and convert more people to their way of thinking, causing abortion centers to close and gay marriage to become illegal? Should that be allowed?

[andrepd]

It's not just a saying, the pen is truly mightier than the sword.

Hitler never physically dragged a jew into a gas chamber. After 1933 he never shot someone or so much as brawled with anyone. Yet it was only words, his words, his speech, or ink on a paper, that compelled millions of people to commit some of the greatest atrocities in modern history.

Words can obviously be a more powerful thing than actions. In another example, if someone is depressed or suicidal, and they are close to you, you can probably make them kill themselves with words alone, if you choose them correctly.

[cies]

Exactly. Hence inciting violence/hate is prohibited by law in most developed democracies.

[sebmellen]

Hitler's orders had an extremely clear and well-traced direct effect on the physical world, borne out in the tragedies you mention. He could therefore be tried for war crimes. His actions were not free speech, they were military orders. This is not an argument against freedom of speech.

The first thing any dictator does is begin to curtail the rights of their citizenry. The first right to go is the right to free speech.

[bfieidhbrjr]

You're mixing up a lot of things.

Child abuse is a physical act and isn't speech. Recruitment and instructional videos are speech. Assange is speech, but, he wasn't a journalist with protections for handling secret information. Copyright used to have a limited term before it dropped in to the public domain where it would become speech.

These are all different things with their own problems.

[claudiawerner]

>Child abuse is a physical act and isn't speech.

A video is a form of expression that falls under speech for all intents and purposes. There is no general caveat to freedom of speech which states that one cannot create a video of some illegal act. Child pornography seems to be the only exception in the US.

Further, metaphysically, 'physical acts' such as burning flags fall under freedom of expression, and all physical actions are themselves expressive. We prohibit child abuse because it is abuse, not because it is a physical act and therefore not speech.

The expression of copyrighted material, likewise, is speech. Disney is exercising its right to free speech by releasing a movie, even if that movie falls under copyright. Just as in the case of child porn, copying and/or distributing such media is a restriction on speech, albeit a widely accepted one.

To me, there is no way to argue that child porn and unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material isn't a kind of speech, or at least a kind of expression. It is absolutely speech, just as sharing a video of a murder or theft is speech, and just as sharing some public domain music is speech, and it is also speech that most people agree should be restricted.

[sebmellen]

Your point about child abuse is ridiculous. We prohibit child abuse precisely because it is a physical act. If I said "I will whip my child 50 times", and didn't do it, that would not be child abuse. It becomes child abuse once it is a physical act.

You make the faulty presumption that speech itself can be a form of abuse. This is where free speech absolutists such as myself would disagree. Speech is a protected class of expression precisely for this reason: it cannot be abusive.

To argue that child pornography is a form of speech is rather ridiculous, if we define speech as "the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words". A form of expression, sure, but there are limits on forms of expression. I cannot choose to stab people as a form of free expression, nor torch a building.

[cies]

As said, and said agian, I mention videos of abuse (not abuse itself). I will not tell you this again if you still dot get that.

> To argue that child pornography is a form of speech is rather ridiculous

To lawyers it is not. Again this is about the video, not the act itself. You repeatedly dont get that difference.

> but there are limits on forms of expression. I cannot choose to stab people as a form of free expression, nor torch a building.

Great! you get it! We cannot allow all expression. Now on stabbing we agree. On abuse videos as well. But on inciting hate/violence we dont.

May I ask why you want to defend inciting hate/violence -speech?

[sebmellen]

Please see my other comment in response to you where I defend the most egregious forms of speech. Just "Ctrl-F" for "Westboro Baptist Church".

[claudiawerner]

>It becomes child abuse once it is a physical act.

Agreed, so being a physical act seems to be necessary for its prohibition. But we're not talking about child abuse, we're talking about the creation and distribution of child abuse videos, i.e. child pornography. These are two separate crimes.

>Speech is a protected class of expression precisely for this reason: it cannot be abusive.

People can absolutely be abused by speech, even in the common meaning of the word. Spousal and child abuse often happens through speech. Teachers may abuse their students through speech. Cyberbullying is widely regarded as a form of abuse through speech. Threats are themselves speech. If speech is so important as to have no real-world consequences, what makes freedom of speech such an important principle?

> if we define speech as "the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words"

Freedom of speech (or more accurately, expression) law is much wider than this, and applies to, say, artistic works in which not a single word is spoken, and it also applies to burning flags or silently protesting. There is no need for a word to be spoken, or even a concrete thought - speech can be purely emotive, or a command, or a shopping list, too. Child pornography can easily be considered artistic. The fact that it is art, and therefore expression, is irrelevant to illegalizing it.

>I cannot choose to stab people as a form of free expression, nor torch a building.

The same law that protects freedom of expression also protects freedom of speech. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are two sides of the same coin. You're noticing that not all physical acts count as speech, and this is certainly true for child abuse, stabbing people, or torching buildings. However, in general, it is not true for videos depicting those things, with the exception of child porn.

[sebmellen]

Yes, child pornography seems to be the one big outlier. However, even the Supreme Court ruled to expand free speech in the case of a borderline child porn case. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalit....

Most of the child pornography laws that are used in prosecution are actually obscenity laws, which are an entirely different class of strange laws. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_the_....

Obviously this is probably the most egregious and disgusting form of criminality out there, so it's an important issue to deal with. I'm not sure what the proper solution is, but what we have now seems to work, given its extremely limited and well-defined scope.

[claudiawerner]

I very much agree with you on virtual/drawn "child pornography", in which there is no victim and no abuse. Fiction should always be unrestricted.

[cies]

> Child abuse is a physical act and isn't speech.

I say movies of such acts. That's not the act itself. See Japan where comics that show sexual abuse of "young looking individuals" are freely distributed.

> These are all different things with their own problems.

> You're mixing up a lot of things.

No, they are all current limitations to free speech encoded in law. I mean to say (please re-read my comment) that "true free speech" already does not exist (just like "truly free markets" dont).

> Recruitment and instructional videos are speech.

Try massively sharing those to the wider public: I'm curious how long you stay free or your endeavors remain uninterrupted. Lol.

[pleasebegood]

> See Japan where comics that show sexual abuse of "young looking individuals" are freely distributed.

https://myanimelist.net/manga/127513/Dansei_Kyoufushou_Datta...

A manga that depicts serious child abuse that turned the author into a porn star. It's written by herself. Maybe she shouldn't be allowed to express herself and hide it. We can all then live a happy fantasy where everyone is a good person in any depiction.

My first thought when reading the manga, how can we stop this?

Suffice to say, I didn't enjoy it one bit but I never thought this should be censored.

There are many similar manga that depicts all sorts of stuff. Some of them written by the people which were unfortunate.

It's also evident you don't care about the medium because you used the word comic.

Censorship of evil acts was rampant in the history. People didn't want to admit what others were doing. There are broader issues if people are pushed to the extreme by media. Why would someone join a terrorist group after watching one of their videos? There must be something else causing the problem. The videos are a symptom, not a cause.

Last, I have consumed media of both your examples. It didn't turn me into a child abuser or a terrorist. I want to help make world a safer place for children and terrorism free more than before. I want to stop it so it stops get depicted on its own.

[cies]

Interesting. So having a official terrorist recruitment offices in your town should be legal? (basically this is what the KKK is to me)

I dont think so.

> A manga that depicts serious child abuse that turned the author into a porn star. It's written by herself.

I dont know if the piece was inciting violence against children. I think it does not, and if it would it'd be censored. Rightfully, imho.

[pleasebegood]

Incitement of violence and abuse is already illegal. I am not sure what your point is then. Your first comment paints a broad stroke. Please be more concise when talking about censoring heavy handed topics because otherwise you may be causing a chilling effect.

And your example is not speech.

[djsumdog]

There are limits in every country for free speech. It's usually images of child abuse, threats of direct and imminent harm to specific people, etc. I just did a post about this:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/why-i-no-longer-hate-amer...

Remember, at one time, saying homosexuality was okay was considered dangerous, hateful, flawed and needed to be banned. Saying god didn't exist could get you expelled from a university, excommunicated from your community or killed.

You only view some speech as okay today because you don't understand what some people went through to fight for that idea.

Assange is clearly free speech. However leaking that information is a crime if you're a member of the US military (hence Manning; maliciously prosecuted by Obama, and then also symbolically freed by Obama).

The NYT published information about Trump's taxes. That's free speech. The Person who leaked it committed a Federal crime. (technically NYT may be guilty of a crime here too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrvYNfsAgJY)

[nickthemagicman]

I would argue that your argument is nice in theory, nonsense in practicality.

Who decides what speech is hateful or violent and should be limited? You, me, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un ?

How easy is it to label something as hateful and ban it? Very easy.

That's the flaw in your argument, the human element.

The revolution to create America had violent and hateful speech towards the British crown.

Private companies can do what they want, but in public sphere the parent poster was right free speech exists to enable dissent, not support the status quo.

[cies]

> I would argue that your argument is nice in theory, nonsense in practicality.

Well, it already is encoded in law. Most countries prohibit hate speech and/or inciting violence, while most people consider that free speech is protected in those places. So it's already practical.

> Who decides what speech is hateful or violent and should be limited? You, me, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un ?

This gets coded in law and jurisprudence and gets enforced by police. Just like any other unlawful acts. Again: this is already how it works in most developed democracies.

> How easy is it to label something as hateful and ban it? Very easy.

See my other comment about pesticide. Please answer that question. Inciting hate/violence is quite easy to detect in practice.

> That's the flaw in your argument, the human element.

Please explain. I dont get it. It's all down to culture, true. But that does not prevent it from being pretty much universal.

> The revolution to create America had violent and hateful speech towards the British crown.

Yes. Which was behaving intolerant and violent in the first place!! Just like now with police brutality in the US: so much violence from them that expressing/inciting hate toward them becomes acceptable in my book.

> Private companies can do what they want, but in public sphere the parent poster was right free speech exists to enable dissent, not support the status quo.

Dissent have no need to exist when there is no oppression/violence/exploitation/marginalization. Hence dissent is the best example of "intolerance of the intolerant". Thanks.

[LiNeXT]

> Just like now with police brutality in the US: so much violence from them that expressing/inciting hate toward them becomes acceptable in my book.

So it is you, personally, that is the arbiter of what is and isn't OK? Does your own repeated expression of intolerance for the fundamentals of free speech in this thread similarly allow me to mark "expressing/inciting hate" toward you as "acceptable" as well? Where does this kind of reasoning end?

[luckylion]

> Well, it already is encoded in law. Most countries prohibit hate speech and/or inciting violence, while most people consider that free speech is protected in those places.

Depends. Germany for example takes a similar route as Reddit does. If you're Turkish, you're allowed to say "Germans are a dog race" when the German parliament recognize the fact that Turkey committed genocide against the Armenians (hey, fun fact, they're re-activating their ISIS-buddies to try again right now).

If a German said "Turks are a dog race", they'd be prosecuted.

Hate speech isn't outlawed, it's majority hate speech that's outlawed.

[_v7gu]

Isn't flamebait not allowed here?

[DrJones1098]

This is the exact problem I'm talking about. Millions of people all are arbitraily classified as Germans or Turks just because they were born in a geographical region... most of them did not participate and had zero connection to any genocides.

But their free speech can be infringed upon simply because they've been labeled a certain way by other human beings, no matter how accurate or inaccurate.

As much as we would like to censor speech that sounds horrible to us you can't because it's such a slippery slope.