Free speech is good and must be protected, that’s clear. But it should not be virtually limitless. The US played a major role sorting out the negative consequences of the Weimar republic, which did not contain fascist ideology, which then (edit: among other things ofc) lead to WW2.
It still baffles my mind how the US cannot see that tolerating the intolerant must inevitably lead to an intolerant and possibly facist society.
I have thought about it for a while but the US is basically in a cold civil war, with a significant chance of it becoming hot. And it looks very similar to their previous one. Neither side seem to have a charismatic enough leader.
It’s easy to look over the pond and think it’s none of our problem. But if the US falls to chaos a lot of other countries will follow suit. We can already see this influence in the UK and I’d argue many other EU countries. Russia probably saw this weakness, bet on it worsening much quicker than it did, but lost that bet (so far).
With that said, addressing the US as a whole no longer makes sense. I’m sure plenty, plenty of Americans see what is happening.
It’s unfortunate that one of the wealthiest people on this planet has taken the anti-democratic side, but it’s not the first or the last time in history a powerful man, rich beyond measure has done so.
Very much so, the Bavarian Conservative Party literally has gone to have talks with republicans to use their election strategies, the German-wide AgD has ramped up their Anti-LGBT campaigning and started to use similar messaging to far-right propaganda networks, e.g. “protect our children”, “pedophiles”, photoshopped images of CSAM at pride events, etc.
All the conservative parties in the west seem to be pushing the same thing. It seems pretty co-ordinated which is even scarier. Every country is hearing the same talking points.
My country (Australia) has tied itself to you guys so if you go down we definitely go down with you. I’m 100% hoping the US doesn’t fall into chaos. We also birthed Rupert Murdoch and he’s played a huge part in heating up this civil war.
y’all can just flip to china and they’ll treat you really nice to try and placate future potential allies
at least… for like a decade or two
Russia probably saw this weakness
Good ol’ “Foundations of Geopolitics” by Aleksandr Dugin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
Free speech is good and must be protected
I agree, but Twitter has nothing to do with free speech. Period. It’s not like the government is going around throwing people in prison for being racist fucks on Twitter. Twitter can moderate content if they want to. If they don’t want to moderate content they don’t have to as long as the material isn’t illegal.
I don’t know why people keep thinking this has anything to do with the first amendment at all. Twitter is not public, not even close.
I agree, but Twitter has nothing to do with free speech.
Twitter positions itself as the Internet’s public square, and free speech certainly does apply in an old-fashioned offline public square, so yeah, Twitter kinda does have something to do with free speech. Don’t seek power if you don’t want the responsibility it comes with.
There’s no such thing as “the internet’s public square”. It is the “X-owned public square”. In an offline public square, the government owns the square, so free speech protections apply. But this “square” is privately owned. There’s an incredibly fundamental difference here.
That’s not how it works, what you are talking about is often called freeze peach.
Until Twitter can fine you or lock you up for saying the wrong thing or exercise prior restraint over all your expression, it’s not a free speech issue.
I think you’re mostly right but there’s a host of nuance and legalese that muddies this up. Social media is always in a conflicted relationship with speech, wanting to have no culpability over what’s posted while also making decisions over what to feature/restrict/etc. They’re actually really cautious to not position themselves as the “town square” for that reason since it does channel a sort of legal definition of such.
You’re partly right. But it’s the job of the citizenry to stand up to this stuff, not the state. We can’t keep our heads down and hope it goes away on its own. We shouldn’t allow the state, with its monopoly on violence, to fight our social battles for us.
I dislike the idea of the state getting to start making decisions on what is “hateful”. And I’m disgusted we don’t have more people standing up and loudly declaring how wrong the hateful viewpoints are. It is our responsibility and we are failing.
It is a tempting proposition to let the state handle hateful speech, but we don’t have to look much further than Florida to see what happens when the shit side is in power and starts redefining what is “hateful”.
But it’s the job of the citizenry to stand up to this stuff, not the state.
So what’s the state for?
The function of a properly constituted government is to prevent other worse governments from forming.
It is a tempting proposition to let the state handle hateful speech, but we don’t have to look much further than Florida to see what happens when the shit side is in power
You seem to be suggesting that separating hate speech prevention from legislation will protect you from a “tyranny of the majority” situation.
But if the populace has a bigoted plurality, won’t that also create a tyranny of the majority?
If the populace has a bigoted plurality, then they get to declare what is officially hateful. So yes, you’re right.
I put the onus on the collective citizenry, but there is no perfect solution in reality. There is a role for the state to play in protecting people, I just don’t think they should dip much into what speech is or isn’t allowed. The majority should rule in my opinion, but we have the job of maintaining a majority that isn’t regressive bigoted shitheads. It’s an eternal struggle, unfortunately.
AFAIU this is a result of the wording in the US constitution. The freedom of speech in the US has a stronger legal implication than in other countries, even stronger than western democracies like the UK.
And, then in the civilian level, as you say, US netizens tend to write “you are entitled to your opinion” to basically anybody with any horrible belief as if they were government officials.
The US has limits on free speech in the name of public health and safety. There’s no assumption of limitless free speech in the US. People who cry “free speech” typically have no understanding of its actual legal definition in the country and just want an excuse to be a bigoted asshole without consequences.
Twitter, not being part of the government, gets to decide what content they allow and doesn’t need to worry too much about the legal definition of free speech. But, despite Musk’s claims, Twitter is not actually a space of limitless free speech. They’ve taken plenty of actions since he took over that limit the speech of individuals he disagrees with. Twitter is just interesting in giving a platform to hate. There’s certainly money to be made in monetizing hate (see Trump), but hopefully it doesn’t work out well in the end for Twitter or Musk.
People who argue against free speech always do so on legal grounds. Nobody seems to want to attack free speech as an ethical concept.
Things are going great, Linda
Also can news outlets please stop referring to Twitter as X? X is the stupidest name I’ve ever heard.
It’s the official name so the news is obliged. Your brain can handle this detail I’m sure.
Yeah, it’s just like when Prince changed his name. The media will just keep going “X, formerly known as Twitter” forever.
in that case Prince changed his name to the artist formally known as Prince because of some sort of trademark or copyright dispute. So again the media is just reporting the facts.
X is really dumb, and I’m not a fan of Twitter personally… But twitters reputation shouldn’t be completely obliterated because of who now owns it. Not that it matters, I guess, because there’s no way people don’t know X was once Twitter.
So I don’t know, guess I don’t care either way. But X is dumb.
For those who don’t want to read TFA: the brands are Gilead and NYU Lagone Hospital
Spokespeople for NCTA and pharmaceutical company Gilead said that they immediately paused their ad spending on X after CNN flagged their ads on the pro-Nazi account.
Alt-speak: we only care if the media report that our ad placements were next to questionable contents.
