[lbruno]

i'm enjoying the right-leaning comments here -- it's not censorship, it's being censured

which highlights a point i like to make: if you wish to defend KF, first you have to justify the concrete speech being carried out on it

with examples

which you can't post here because it goes against the rules of this place -- which should be a pretty big hint as to why the fruit site got censured

[soundnote]

> which highlights a point i like to make: if you wish to defend KF, first you have to justify the concrete speech being carried out on it

> with examples

> which you can't post here because it goes against the rules of this place -- which should be a pretty big hint as to why the fruit site got censured

Shouldn't the logic here be the reverse? If we want to censor Kiwifarms, we should justify it as heinously evil and an active threat to people's lives or something. Many articles claim they are, but at least according to other posters here end up being a case of circular citations with little in the way of actual examples of Kiwifarms content that'd convince people that maybe it's enough of a pile of garbage to toss out of society.

I know it's definitely not a pleasant place - a friend recently dug out some posts from there on what archives he managed to find, and said it was basically a sneer club site. But a sneer club in a small godforsaken corner of the net is pretty far from actively harassing people to suicide.

Made more complicated by keffals, as far as I know, basically being a similar grade of asshole.

[dragonwriter]

> Shouldn't the logic here be the reverse?

No.

> If we want to censor Kiwifarms

That’s not the debate, we aren’t doing that. We are debating the propriety of another party exercising their free speech rights to not relay Kiwifarms speech.

[lbruno]

even with me saying “being censured”, folks pretend there's some censorship concern here

there's isn't

“censorship” is when an advocate of human-rights gets silenced by a powerful entity that wishes to revoke said human rights

“being censured” is me getting moderated for insulting the intelligence of right-wingers here, if that goes against the rules

[FeepingCreature]

> which highlights a point i like to make: if you wish to defend KF, first you have to justify the concrete speech being carried out on it

Speech does not require justification any more than any other right does. As a principle, speech is not for something. So I in fact have to neither justify nor endorse KF to consider this wrong.

[geofft]

Then how do you decide what is (or should be) a right and what is not? Suppose someone claims a right to gay marriage, or a right to employ only people of their race, or a right to bear arms - how does society (the citizenry, the legislature, and/or the courts) decide whether that is indeed a right?

Absent a holy constitution given to us by the divine, the way we decide what is and isn't a right is we look at its effect. Places that recognize a right to bear arms, for instance, do so because they believe that arming the citizenry protects them against abuses of the government. Places that don't do so because they believe that disarming the citizenry protects them against crimes from other citizens. To the extent that one of these views is correct and the other is not, it is not because they guessed wrong about the nature of the universe - it is because one argument is correct and another is not.

Free speech is not axiomatic. Free speech is a right (and I agree it is a right!) because it has particular positive effects on society, through the benefits of open and unfiltered public discourse.

And the same reasoning helps us define exactly what "free speech" is. We make significant restrictions on free speech - classified information, copyright and trademark law, slander and tortious interference, electioneering laws, unauthorized practice of medicine or law, fraud, etc. - in the expectation that those restrictions serve to benefit society, and in the understanding that if we were to allow these forms of speech, they wouldn't really serve the goals which we see free speech, overall, as helping. If I were to say "I am a licensed doctor and I think you should take two pounds of Vitamin D a day," we understand that the benefit of me adding that statement to the public discourse is nil, and the harm is great, and so we don't recognize that as protected by free speech.

[FeepingCreature]

I mean, we could try using the democratic process, that seems to have worked reasonably well so far.

But you're right that I hold free speech to be a right for its own sake. So it's that I first believe that to be a right, on grounds of personal preference, and then I advocate for it because of that. But obviously I cannot convince someone on that basis - though that goes for pretty much every preference.

That said, I think the particular issue here is that the abrogation of the right of free speech created by this action did not come about through any particular instance of the democratic process, and is not actually based on any process of formally weighing rights against one another, but rather who can threaten to cost companies the most revenue.

[lbruno]

lol, speech isn't an absolute right where i grew up, thankfully

i'm European, you're arguing as if i had to meekly accept your framing that impeding someone from speaking is a bad thing

who is speaking and what they're saying is crucial to that assessment, hence you get to justify e.g. the threats KF orchestrated in Belfast if you want to justify keeping KF on the air

[bembi]

lol im from europe too, have fun being muzzled like a dog when its ur turn

[josephcsible]

> which highlights a point i like to make: if you wish to defend KF, first you have to justify the concrete speech being carried out on it

That's not true, though. Remember this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am... David Goldberger, a Jewish lawyer, defended actual Nazis' rights to free speech. Do you think that he thought Nazism was justified?

[lbruno]

i'm European, but i am familiar with the work of the ACLU at Skokie, including that detail

keywords: i'm European

meaning your appeal to an absolute right to freely speech washes right off

it's on you to defend the harassment incited and guided by KF

that includes, i'll remind you, a juvenile attempt at calling in a threat in Belfast; didn't work, they didn't know the old code-words

one example of what you'll need to defend; or you can stop digging

[icycombative]

Thankfully, American websites are not, and never will be, subject to the jurisdiction of the E.U. or the U.K.

A lot of blood was spilled for that right.

[lbruno]

there's a reason i explicitly chose the example of that threat phoned in re: Belfast

if you think USA-style free-speech ideas will somehow shield you if you engage in that sort of behaviour, or if you frequent the online spaces where that sort of behaviour is coordinated

you should go and have another think

besides, the eejit briefly hosted from a Netherlands DC so good luck with that whole approach ;)

[geofft]

No, but he happened to be wrong for it.

The NSPA's goal was never to actually hold a march. They never did hold a march in Skokie, after that defense. Their goal was to harass Jewish communities through the process of applying for the march, which Goldberger, for all his good intention, assisted them with.

As the article notes, they sent letters to a whole bunch of suburbs asking for a permit to hold a march. They never followed up with the suburbs that ignored them, nor did they march in those suburbs either.

The whole thing was a bad-faith tactic which today we'd call trolling. They weren't fighting for their right to speak freely in Skokie, they were fighting for their right to use the legal process to harass the city of Skokie.

[areyousure]

In case anyone is curious, the article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am... linked above suggests that the NSPA's goal was in fact to hold a march in Chicago and following the Skokie decision, they apparently did in fact hold a rally in Chicago.

[api]

The right supports the right of private businesses to decide who to serve unless they are kicking out right wingers in which case we need government intervention to guarantee a platform.

It’s sort of like how they support federalism except when states do things they don’t like, or small government except for when it comes to their pet issues.

[zo1]

As much as I agree with the free-market/private company angle. I also have to say that we are all in a "culture" war, or a war for mindshare in the general public. You have to understand that the right is losing. Sanity and nuance and reasonable thought are losing too, let's be frank about that. Just look at the crazy discussions about any heated topic like race, gender, and now the war in Ukraine to see that.

That is why they hold these two seemingly-opposing viewpoints.

[api]

We certainly are in an era of hyper polarization. I blame the social media algorithms. It maximizes engagement.

That being said I don’t think this line of thinking applies to Kiwi Farms. There are loads of conservative mags and podcasts and blogs online that argue against e.g. aspects of the trans movement. They do not get kicked off their ISPs because they do not doxx and cyberbully people to the point of suicide.

[netrunnernobody]

Well, it's easy to make your opponents sound bad when you strawman their entire ideology for them.

Unless you have some videos of right-wing politicians calling for the executives at Cloudflare to go to prison, I think that the right-wing position has always been the fairly consistent "you can choose to not provide services to whomever you want, but it's a pretty dick move to do so."

[luckylion]

The "support private businesses' rights unless I don't like their decision" is kind of universal, isn't it (okay, minus some libertarians)? Custom cakes for gay weddings was a case where probably everyone who now says "private businesses have no duty to serve you" said the opposite.

[lbruno]

i never said/implied anything generic re: private ISPs serving KF

what i implied was specific and concrete: KF should not be served by anyone

you're the one marketing a generic and abstract “no duty to serve”, because you can't defend the specific and concrete actions taken by KF

edit: i'll also happily make the concrete argument that cake shops shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against gays/lesbians/etc, while at the same time saying no-one should be allowed to serve KF

these two points of view are perfectly consistent with one another -- confusion only arises if you try to think of abstract nonsense that must apply to both situations

that is a strawman of your own creation

[luckylion]

I hadn't replied to anything you said, but to api's statement:

> The right supports the right of private businesses to decide who to serve unless they are kicking out right wingers in which case we need government intervention to guarantee a platform.

[lbruno]

i know you didn't, but you were speaking generically and about abstract principles/guidelines/etc

i usually caution folks to speak of concrete things, so that you're not led astray and forget what you're defending

[luckylion]

I've grown up on Kant, and while I don't follow him to the absolutist ends, I do agree that principles are unconditional, or they're worthless intellectual fake jewelry we pretend to have because it looks good.

But in this specific case: I mentioned that "it's a crime if done to me, but totally fine if done to thee" is pretty much universal, and you'll find it in most large ideological groups. Going "the other side does that (but not mine, we're better than that)" is cheap tribalism that is based only in wishful thinking.