[Spivak]

I’m always confused by this opinion because this applies to literally every single instance where collective decision making is required or desired.

Who gets to decide how much we pay in taxes? You? Me? The Government? Bloomberg?

Like if you think deciding what constitutes hate speech is too much power then the people who decide the conditions someone is locked up must be gods.

[theanzelm]

Thank you, this is the cleanest deconstruction of this argument I've ever seen.

I think the fundamental misconception is that speech "cannot infringe other's freedoms" like physical actions can, so no tradeoffs of individual's freedoms have to be collectively decided for speech.

The idea of words propagating beliefs, drowning out others and inciting actions is just subtle enough to weasel out of whenever convenient in this world view.

[wussboy]

I think part of the problem as well is that "free speech" has been elevated from "desirable" to "the greatest good". It is good. It is not the greatest good. It does not surprise me to see people involved in Internet communications/social networking trumpeting free speech as the greatest good since these communication channels depend on us not restricting free speech to a more reasonable place in our society.