Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by systemvoltage 1469 days ago
> Bullying is different though. If narrow/specific enough, causing mental and emotional distress online, must have the same level of punishment as it does when it's done in the real world.

Bar needs to be far, far higher. Someone here just said that seeing naked people on a zoom call is akin to a sexual-assault. All you have to do is close the browser window. No really, that's all you need to do. If someone is threatening you with death threats, that's already illegal.

So speech limitations are well grounded in US. It must be some kind of an imminent harm to an individual or a group.

Absolute free-speech isn't a thing and shouldn't be IMO. Giving up that 0.01% of free speech (Yelling "Bomb" in an airplane) keeps the rest 99.9% clause healthy. The bar needs to be quite high and shouldn't be about someone's emotions or mental health. There is no end to subjectivity there and it'd be open for misuse and exploitation. Generally, free speech already includes aforementioned provisions and is accepted by most people living in US or otherwise. I'd even argue to push that boundary to 0.001% but that's debatable.

I commented about one of the most beautiful interpretations of 1st Amendment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31691145