[baobabKoodaa]

It sounds like you have a very, very specific idea of what should be considered free speech, and you seem to have very little tolerance for people who hold a different opinion on that topic. Rather than saying "we disagree on what should be considered free speech", you describe the people who disagree with you as confused and ignorant, who need to be educated with more debate.

I have news for you: people can have different ideas about what should be within the limits of free speech and what should not. In fact, different countries have entirely different laws regarding what is protected as free speech and what is not.

Let's consider the harassment example that you brought up: in principle I agree with you that people should not be allowed to harass each other. However, when you can quell unwanted speech by labeling it "harassment", you create an incentive for people to label more and more speech as harassment. We see this issue in practice all the time. In many places, stating facts such as "men and women have biological differences" is now considered harassment and can lead to losing your job.

[throwaway894345]

You've missed the point. Free-speech is widely understood to exclude threats and harassment, but even if it were only a niche definition used by free-speech proponents the pro-cancel-culture argument would still be nonsense because it claims that the pro-free-speech argument is inconsistent and self-refuting based on a definition of 'free-speech' that includes threats and harassment. Anyone who makes this argument plainly doesn't understand the free-speech argument.

[baobabKoodaa]

No, the "free-speech proponents" do not adhere to your specific definition of what should be considered free speech. The kind of speech which is often labelled "harassment" by its opponents is often labelled as "free speech" by its proponents.

[throwaway894345]

> The kind of speech which is often labelled "harassment" by its opponents is often labelled as "free speech" by its proponents.

If they are doing this, then they are contradicting themselves, but in all of the debates to which I've been a party, the free speech position has always held that coercive behavior (threats and harassment including quid pro quo harassment) are out of bounds of free speech. Once in a while you'll have a few people indulging in a little schadenfreude when a cancel-culture proponent is themselves canceled, and sometimes this stretches so far as to legitimize their canceling--rationalizing the canceling certainly goes too far and conflicts with free-speech ideals and schadenfreude while understandable is probably still not helpful.

[baobabKoodaa]

> If they are doing this, then they are contradicting themselves

Not sure I follow anymore. Who is contradicting themselves, and how?

[throwaway894345]

If as you claim, free-speech proponents are arguing that coercive behavior (harassment, threats, etc) are "free speech", then they are contradicting themselves. However, I dispute that this is a general phenomenon, even if there are a few individual free-speech proponents here or there who do contradict themselves in this way. For the most part, free speech proponents are consistent in arguing that threats and harassment are not free speech and should not be treated as such.

[baobabKoodaa]

> If as you claim, free-speech proponents are arguing that coercive behavior (harassment, threats, etc) are "free speech", then they are contradicting themselves.

Once again: where is the contradiction? For example, I might say "Christianity is causing a lot of suffering and death". I think that statements like that are "free speech" and not "harassment", but a fundamental Christian person who hears this statement may think that expressing this opinion constitutes harassment. So you have a statement, and two people disagree whether it is free speech. You think there's a contradiction somewhere in there. Well, where is it?