[malthuswaswrong]

>Within reason of course, nobody wants Nazis or Pedophiles to spread their opinions because they are obscene.

Who decides what's reasonable? Who decides what constitutes a "Nazi" or a "Pedophile"? If someone tries to suggest that convicting a 14 year old girl as a sex offender for having nude photos of herself on her phone is preposterous that person can be effectively silenced by labeling them as a pedophile.

"But that's ridiculous. Nobody would do that." -Somebody who has never been on the internet.

Every idiotic position you can think of exists on the internet, and can be amplified to make it seem like it's a more popular opinion than it really is.

The only logical course of action is to allow all speech and let the reader discern for themselves.

[phs318u]

> The only logical course of action is to allow all speech and let the reader discern for themselves.

The assumption being that most readers are discerning. Kind of reminds of the adage about markets working based on rational actors. In both situations, reality would like a word.

[krick]

No, there's no such assumption. In fact, by virtue of ignoring the main point of his, your post is an example "of the adage about markets working based on rational actors", which doesn't go well with reality.

And the point is: "Who decides what's reasonable?" You? Well, yeah, I hope you do for yourself. But I don't want you to dare to even try to decide that for me. Nothing personal, of course: there's no single person on the planet I would trust to do that for me.

In other words, it's not about assuming anything about the most readers (it is rather about NOT assuming anything about them). And, in fact, I don't even expect any good outcome "for the most of readers". I am pretty positive most people will find a way to fuck themselves no matter what you do. The only assertion here is that it will be worse for everyone if you TRY to do something about it. I mean, it should be pretty obvious thing to say, as much as people like to tell stories about "how terrible it was when Stalin was in charge" — it is best for everyone if there's no individual or group of people who can enforce their ideas of what is right on the others.

(BTW, I don't believe that this is really avoidable too. It happes one way or the other. The only thing that makes me say anything about this, is that this is just scary that half of the society today doesn't even understand that they SHOULD TRY to prevent anyone from being able to control what they say or think. They WANT to be controlled. They WANT to fuck themselves and everyone around them.)

[phs318u]

Perhaps I wasn’t being clear. Following the principle that your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins, the thing about free speech and an undiscerning audience is that there are often consequences that cross that line even when the speech itself doesn’t. Anyway, I’m pretty confident that I’m not going to cut the Gordian knot here.

For myself I’m happy for you to have all the freedom of speech you like. What I’d like enshrined is the right to freedom from speech. In my country we are in the midst of an election campaign and it is impossible for me (both legally and technically) to stop political parties from spamming my phone. I would rather they didn’t spam my phone. I don’t have an opinion about your phone.