[rustynails77]

This thread is very interesting and I deeply appreciate the comments people are making, including FoS, fear to comment on FoS, etc.

I personally respect freedom of speech, except hate. For example, HN strongly discourages attacking another member personally (eg. calling someone else idiot). I consider this a reasonable limit on freedom of speech, but concepts and opinions should be fully open for discussion (eg. pro/anti evolution etc). If the discussions are respectful, then anything should be allowed.

I believe Political Correctness has done more harm than it does good. It has created an unhealthy focus on skin colour, reproductive organs, etc to the point of lunacy. Many people struggle to look past superficial features and seem to lost the ability to make reasoned judgements. Any criticism of a woman gets you labelled a misogynist, regardless of how incapable she is. This continues to undermine the credibility of women that are truly capable in their own right. I'm currently managing a team of women. They all got there on their own merit. I would not hire a woman for the sake of political correctness or because I was bullied by a feminist journalist (as is quite common these days). The women in my team were not selected based on their gender - they were selected based on their talents and attitudes. They were available and capable.

This whole Ellen Pao incident made me think about the validity of comments on sexism and racism that are floating around the net. Compare the attitudes towards the criticisms of Steve Ballmer vs Ellen Pao. One of these individuals contributed to the significant growth of Microsoft, the other didn't manage to achieve much that stands out. Both developed a bad reputation as leaders. Yet, one of these people is being defended and the other is not. The major difference (other than Ballmer's financial track record for Microsoft) is their genders. Political Correctness has driven the need to blindly defend women, no matter how incompetent they may be. The hope is that this behaviour will help "women's rights". I view it as doing the exact opposite ... "jobs for the girls".

It saddens me that we seem to be more sexist, less tolerant and more willing to defend incompetence an an attempt to promote rights for selected members of society.

On a side note, I dislike the term "women's rights". Is it so hard to represent "people's rights"? I believe one of these reflects a destructive, prejudiced mindset and creates a bad attitude of entitlement and encourages sexism. If society said we'd defend the rights of everyone equally based on merit, the world would be a much better place.

[zmb_]

> I personally respect freedom of speech, except hate.

The problem is that as soon as you draw such a line, you need to appoint a censor to determine what qualifies as "hate". As Christopher Hitchens asked: "To whom would you want to delegate the task to decide for you what you could read? To relieve you of the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear?"

Typically this job falls to the public prosecutors. Who will make mistakes, misapply and pervert the laws. Sometimes with good intentions, sometimes with malice.

It is not just an abstract argument, it has very real consequences. Here in Finland we had a case [1] where an MP (now MEP) was convicted of hate speech for making a point about freedom of speech by asking a question along the lines of: 'Why is it ok to write that Finns might be culturally and genetically predisposed to get drunk and kill people, but not ok to write that Somalis might be culturally and genetically predisposed to rob people and live on welfare?'

These types of laws have very real chilling effects on public discourse. People are unwilling to engage in certain topics, which should be discussed, due to the fear of being prosecuted. In democracies trying to suppress or censor an idea or argument will just end up elevating them. In this case, the party to which the convicted MP belongs ended up becoming the second largest party and are now in the government. They no longer have to argue their case, they can simply implement it (and their immigration program was written by the MP in question).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jussi_Halla-aho#Criminal_charg...

[arrrg]

Counterpoint: Censorship is awesome. It creates and shapes places that are just great and pleasant all around. Being an excellent censor is a great ability and there are sadly way too few out there who can give a clear voice (not in the sense of being one voice, necessarily, though that can also be great!) to something and be really excellently opinionated about their censorship.

I want more great censorship, not less. If it’s done by people and organisations, at least. Because that’s what we are talking about here, right? Reddit, not governments?

Censors are just editors and that job is not some inscrutable thing. It can be done and it can be done excellently.

I mean, to me this only gets tricky when we are talking about basic infrastructure, i.e. should a paper mill be allowed to refuse to sell their paper to Neo Nazis because of ideological reasons? Should a web hoster be allowed to refuse to sell to Neo Nazis?

But Reddit? That’s easy and I don’t really get what the fuss is about. Nothing would be lost at all if the admins were much, much, much more ban happy and much more pro-censorship. They should be, 100%.

[growupkids]

Perhaps I'm missing something. How would you know if someone is an excellent censor (I.e. They only censor "bad" speech, and not "good" speech) if then intent is to shield you from the "bad" speech. Wouldn't you then not know what they censored?

Specifically, it seems to me that if you're shielded from seeing that they censored, then they could also be censoring "good" speech too. So the only way it seems you could ensure they weren't do this poorly or deliberately would be to allow everyone access to what they've censored. Which inversely seems to defeat the purpose of having a good censor. Now essentially nothing in censored.

Again, perhaps I'm missing something but if I'm not then I don't understand how you resolve this conundrum.

Edit: Unless you're referring to ex post facto censorship, where everyone sees the "bad" speech, and the speaker is banned for violating "community standards" To pre-emptively ban future speech. But this too still allows "bad" speech, and I suppose you also have the problem of deleting the bad speech. If it's gone, then what substantiates the ban/censorship? Because again, what if the action was either done in error, or maliciously to ban "good" but unpopular speech/speakers how would you know?

[arrrg]

I don’t. I just accept that sometimes I just cannot know the absolute truth and that’s that.

But I do have the ability to trust people and I know when I enjoy something.

So, this all might sound very abstract, but I do know that I like the censors (they call themselves editors) working for certain newspapers I like. I trust them to make good decisions, partly just because I don’t have time to make those decisions myself.

And that’s obviously not perfect – but this whole nerd dream of provable correctness and absolute, guaranteed access to the truth all the time … it’s all unachievable bullshit anyway. Sometime you just don’t know. Sometimes you just have to live with that. I live with it and I like it.

[camelite]

> Sometime you just don’t know. Sometimes you just have to live with that. I live with it and I like it.

Honestly, this comes across as "He loved Big Brother"-level creepy.

[arrrg]

Big brother?

Do you have some sort of trust issues? I mean, sometimes I’m willing to trust other people, that’s all. I don’t have to believe that everyone is evil and out to get me. So when I read a newspaper I like I have a general trust that the editors (censors) have done their job … because what else can I do? What else can you do?

I don’t have the time to sit around 24 hours by the newswire … and even then, the people writing that and reporting that … how do I know I can trust those absolutely? I can’t. That’s all.

We humans are forever doomed to not know the truth always all the time. And no one is an island and sometimes you just have to trust other people. And that’s healthy and that’s ok.

[camelite]

> Counterpoint: Censorship is awesome.

Well it's crucial that the censors are people who like you. If they didn't like you, you probably wouldn't be such a fan of censorship. That is to say, the only reason you're in favour of censorship on reddit is that you're reasonably that the censors will be people like you, which really is no more than sophisticated tribalism.

[arrrg]

Hm … well I don’t like the censors at (insert certain newspaper I dislike here). But I don’t argue that they shouldn’t censor (edit their newspaper), I argue that they shouldn’t lie and write so much bullshit.

If I didn’t like the censors at Reddit I would do the same thing. I think that’s normal and healthy.

[agumonkey]

It's interesting. Instead of censorships I'm fond of the idea (though experiment so far) of shaping the place with costs and plateaus. Make sensitive things possible but with a bit of effort, so only people needing and meaning it will go the distance. The other will `naturally` fall back to their comfort zone.

reddit does that actually, until you're a well known user, you cannot submit more than a few per minute, after that delays kick in, if it really was something you wanted to share, you'll come back. No censor involved.

That's just an idea, but you get the point.

[JohnBooty]

   > The problem is that as soon as you draw such a line

The line needs to be drawn, though. As the saying goes, "Your freedoms end where my freedoms begin."

At some point, hate speech most definitely infringes upon the reader's rights. The canonical example is yelling "FIRE! FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater and causing a stampede; your right to free speech doesn't trump everybody else's right to be safe.

[dredmorbius]

I'd very strongly suggest you read the circumstances of * Schenck v. United States. While I also find the issue of fraudulently harmful speech a reasonable bar, the case itself concerned something rather different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

[A] United States Supreme Court decision concerning enforcement of the Espionage Act of 1917 during World War I. A unanimous Supreme Court, in a famous opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., concluded that defendants who distributed leaflets to draft-age men, urging resistance to induction, could be convicted of an attempt to obstruct the draft, a criminal offense.

[intopieces]

>On a side note, I dislike the term "women's rights". Is it so hard to represent "people's rights"?

I want to pull this quote out and address it directly, because it's a valid concern with a real answer. The reason we don't represent "people's rights" is because all people do not need their rights defended. To use an analogy, think of our system for measuring the level of endangered for animals, from "Critically Endangered" to "Least Concern." Is it sensible to say, 'Well, aren't all species important to the ecosystem? Why do we seek to protect Garrulax courtoisi but not Megascops watsonii?' This is because the former is nearly extinct, while the latter is ubiquitous. The cause of "social justice" -- the oft-derided 'warriors' of anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, etc -- is to correct years of disadvantage. It's not accurate to call, say, attempts to further women in technology as 'sexist'. In fact, that's co-opting the term to obfuscate the original issue.

Overall, your heart is in the right place -- it does seem like our attempts to further minorities comes off as patronizing (like affirmative action). But, in the end, the good that is done outweighs the bad so long as we adequately train the individuals we put forward through these initiatives such that no one believes they only 'got it because of their gender' (which to me is no different than 'got here through someone she knows' -- this is how most business seems to be done in the world!)

[__Joker]

Thoughtful comments.

I have thought much on these as common person, neither in an academic setting nor who has to deal with these issue frequently.

Lot of time I would argue with myself why can't we have everybody have equal rights ? Why we need to specially fight for rights of women and be feminists or to project the issue to broader sense, where we talk or act about any group. Personally I believe that while the ideal case as it should be is equal rights for everybody, the problem is the inequality created by negative discrimination over the ages. It is more like we are trying to correct the wrong doing over the ages by believing that a positive discrimination for the groups would offset the historical prejudice.

These are personal thoughts. Please feel free to correct.

[thelamest]

For some reason there is still lots of inequality in education, work and culture so some sort of change is still needed. And I really don't think you get seriously labeled a bigot just for any criticism of a minority member.

> Both developed a bad reputation as leaders. Yet, one of these people is being defended and the other is not.

You mean Ballmer?

We know nothing specific and substantial about internal Reddit politics, so the cause for seeing all this hateful scapegoating can only be some kind of mass stupidity.

[fnordfnordfnord]

>I personally respect freedom of speech, except hate.

How far are you willing to take that? You could potentially prohibit satire.

[benihana]

>> I personally respect freedom of speech, except hate.

I'm sorry. You don't respect freedom of speech then. Drawing an arbitrary line on what you (or anyone else) considers acceptable isn't free speech.

Put it this way: Things that were unacceptable in the 1950s are completely banal and uninteresting now. Things that were considered in poor taste in the past are horribly offensive now (look at Andy Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's). Are you going to be some society guardian, constantly updating what is and isn't acceptable to say as our values shift with the times

[JohnBooty]

This argument is pretty easy to deflate: a defender of "absolute free speech" most certainly would not be okay with people walking up to them in the street, following them home and verbally threatening them. So, everybody has an arbitrary line.... somewhere.