[immibis]

I think it would be interesting to hear your take on this hypothetical situation: I have been cursed by the Devil himself, so that whenever I say "xyzzy" and then the name of a person and then "plugh", that person drops dead.

Should the government restrict my speech?

[strictnein]

The devil doesn't exist, nor does magic.

The law does speak on this though, already. If you run a gang, and you say out loud "Charlie is such a pain" and every time you say that phrase, the person you named is killed, you are also held liable for those killings.

[immibis]

So a restriction of speech.

[strictnein]

Yep, lots of ways that we restrict speech. Criminal speech is not protected. Business speech is also not protected. Telling Eastasia about our new spy plane is also not protected.

Saying stupid, abhorrent, wrong, etc things online is, thankfully, protected. If you don't think that it should be, just imagine the person you dislike politically the most being the one who decides what should be allowed and what shouldn't.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

[immibis]

Earlier you stated - and I quote - "the government partnering with businesses to restrict speech is actually a really bad thing" but now you state it's okay to restrict certain classes of speech. Is it bad or isn't it? Suppose every time I tweet "xyzzy", someone's name, then "plugh", they die. Would the government be justified ordering Twitter to ban me?

I don't actually need to use magical examples any more since you provided three of your own:

> Criminal speech is not protected.

So if I keep tweeting "kill this guy" and people are killing all the guys I name, should the government partner with Twitter to restrict my speech?

> Business speech is also not protected.

So if I tweet "I'm buying Twitter for $420 per share" and then don't do it, should the government partner with Twitter to restrict my speech?

> Telling Eastasia about our new spy plane is also not protected.

So if I tweet to Eastasia about our new spy plane, should the government partner with Twitter to restrict my speech?

This actually happened, on Discord. Was it really bad when the government partnered with Discord to restrict the speech of that War Thunder player?

[dns_snek]

So you're murdering people and asking whether the government should stop you? Obviously? Not just by restricting your speech but by using lethal force if necessary.

[immibis]

So you agree that speech which causes deaths should be restricted?

[strictnein]

It's not speech. You have a gun that fires when you say a word. You having a setup that fires the gun when you say a word instead of pulling a trigger doesn't mean you are utilizing "speech" in any meaningful sense of the word, other than that the gun responds to a sound.

[immibis]

There is no gun involved. I say the words, and the person dies. Should the government restrict my speech?

[strictnein]

Again, we don't live in a fairyland, we live in reality. A gun is real, your magic is not. If you had a gun that fired based on a sound, the fact that a sound is used does not matter. It is not "speech". Noise is not protected speech.

Likewise, if you had the magical ability to kill a random person with your magical sounds, you are not practicing "speech", you are using a magical technique in your make believe land to kill random people.

[dns_snek]

Yes, for some definition of "speech which causes deaths". This definition should include calls to violence but exclude, for example, vaccine skepticism.

[wredcoll]

There's a big ol' messy line between a powerful entity saying "I would like you not to do that" and "I'm going to stop you from doing that".

We don't want to be in some world where the gov can't ask people to stop being/hosting vaccine deniers.