The global gag on free speech is tightening

https://www.economist.com/international/2019/08/17/the-global-gag-on-free-speech-is-tightening

by doener • 7 years ago

88 116 7 years ago

This article focuses on government gags on free speech, which is a real problem globally, but here in the United States I see free speech coming under attack from the progressive left constituency, rather than the government. To me it appears that the far left has abandoned the classical definitions of the word 'liberal' for populism and extremism. This seems to have been amplified in the last few years, since Trump's election, and you see it in things like the social justice warrior meme mocking 'free speech' with the purposely misspelling 'freeze peach'.

Leaving aside culture wars waged by individuals, I see institutional tightening on free speech all over America. I see it in big tech companies, where only a progressive monoculture exists with no psychological safety for other viewpoints. I see it in censorship applied by defacto digital public squares like YouTube. I see it in the left's rampant use of deplatforming to silence opposing views. Increasingly, I also see it in universities (see this incident at the University of Washington today https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-university-of-was...).

I don't think it matters greatly whether it is the government or others. Free speech is a fundamental good that must be protected. I hope a greater focus is brought on these other means via which it has come under attack.

ebg134• 7 years ago

deplatforming to silence opposing views

I can't name any deplatformed views that aren't hate speech. If you can, I'd like to hear about them to broaden my views.

Free speech is a fundamental good that must be protected

The freedom of speech and association comes with a corollary: the freedom to dissociate and shun. So welcome to the consequences of being on the other side of progress, I suppose? This is what happens.

progressive left

Do you mean social democratic left?

busymom0• 7 years ago

Many people who have criticized Greta Thunberg have been banned.

meruru13• 7 years ago

Did you miss all the Stallman threads we just had?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21120806

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21103133

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21088690

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990583

brighton36• 7 years ago

Who decides what's hate speech? Aren't white nationalists necessarily guilty of too much white people love?

orangecat• 7 years ago

I can't name any deplatformed views that aren't hate speech. If you can, I'd like to hear about them to broaden my views.

James Damore. And if you believe what he said really was hate speech, that just illustrates the problem.

bilbo0s2• 7 years ago

You're both right.

Freedom of speech is important.

And Freedom of Association is important.

Everyone has a right to say what they please. And everyone has a right to associate with whoever they please.

If you don't like what someone says, well, sorry. I don't know what to tell you? Go listen to someone else, I guess? But you can't make the guy you don't like stop talking. That's attacking his freedom.

If people don't want to associate with you, well, sorry. I don't know what to tell you? Go find different friends, or don't be a douchebag, I guess? But you can't force people who don't like you to associate with you. That's attacking their freedom.

Hate speech may be a thing, but it's entirely legitimate free expression.

Other people don't lose their rights simply because you feel they should to accommodate your belief system.

"Deplatforming", whatever that is, may be a thing, but it's entirely legitimate free expression.

Other people don't lose their rights simply because you feel they should to accommodate your belief system.

throwawaysea8• 7 years ago

If you follow my link to Professor Cliff Mass's blog post about censorship at the University of Washington, you would see a bit about when he used the phrase "pigs at a trough". This phrasing was - as ridiculous as it may sound - cast as a racist comment by activists, and used as a means of attack against him. Here's the relevant bits:

In that blog, I discussed the issue of politically well-connected groups securing funds at the public trough and used the century-old political metaphor of “pigs at a trough”, not in the text, but in a single picture (see below).
This metaphor is frequently used in the media and books, such as Arianna Huffington’s hard hitting book on political corruption in America, which described the greed of the politically connected (see below).
The activist students claimed that such a metaphor was racist because some members of the 1631 consortium were from minority groups. They ignored the fact that the 1631 coalition was overwhelmingly white and well-to-do. The fact I was expressing political opinions outside the UW did not seem important to them, nor did they care about the concept of freedom of speech. They wanted the department and college administration to do something about me and my blog.
Will the College of Environment Deans Accuse Arianna Huffington of Racism? Or Australian Adam Schwab? And shamefully and potentially illegally, the Atmospheric Sciences chair and COENV Deans, ignoring First Amendment protections and the essential principles of an academic institution, did exactly what the students wanted
Between the end of October and early November 2018, Department Chairman Dale Durran, COENV Associate Dean of Research Robert Wood, COENV Associate Dean of Administration Stephanie Harrington, and COENV Assistant Dean of Diversity Terryl Ross wrote a letter attacking my blog that was formally approved by Dean Lisa Graumlich. (all of this is documented in their internal emails).
Their letter, “Message on Departmental Civility”, was sent to MY ENTIRE DEPARTMENT (including staff, faculty, and students—over 120 people) on November 22, stating that my blog “included imagery and text that was racially insensitive and caused offense.” The letter accused me of racism through the statement “Racism is in direct contradiction to our shared values and has no place in our college” as well as suggesting that I harmed the community through my blog.
This letter was not only inappropriate and arguably unethical but a violation of University of Washington faculty code, including the protection of academic freedom.
UW administrators were sanctioning and shaming a faculty member inside the university for expressing political free speech outside of the UW: also an apparent violation of constitutionally protected freedom of speech at a public university. Importantly, freedom of speech is protected BOTH inside and outside a public university by the U.S. and Washington State constitutions.

There are numerous examples to point at, but this is a very recent one showing how far the definition of 'hate speech' has been stretched. By making every issue political, and every issue one of oppression, the notion of intersectionality has been twisted to weaponize rhetoric and curtail free speech. I think that is very bad for healing divisiveness and operating a rational society.

Consultant32452• 7 years ago

It doesn't help the conversation to suggest that the speech that's being deplatformed is unpalatable. That's practically a tautology. You don't have to protect approved speech. I recommend this speech by Frederick Douglass against deplatforming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w2i5CnZ9Xo

snagglegaggle3• 7 years ago

Hate speech is protected speech. The "fire in a theater" argument was forced as the justice was grabbing at straws in an attempt to protect the war effort. He later admitted it was a poor ruling.

To understand why all speech is protected realize that the first amendment is partly to prevent arguments about which speech is permissible from occurring by allowing all of it. So... by saying "hate speech is not allowed" you are having the argument that was supposed to not be had.

arcticbull7• 7 years ago

Free speech is completely unrelated to deplatforming, regardless whether you believe that’s happening or not. Only the government is required to permit free speech, Twitter isn’t, YouTube isn’t, and neither is Fox or Breitbart. Private companies do not have any responsibility to permit speech they disagree with.

No “left winger” (America doesn’t have a left, it has a center right and a far right) has proposed amending the constitution to eliminate free speech. At best they're hoping to move the Overton window.

toomuchtodo• 7 years ago

Indeed, which is why Youtube is totally within their right to demonetize LGBTQ+ content (any content really, regardless of subject) if it's not acceptable to their advertisers. If you're comfortable with platforms deplatforming what you don't agree with, be prepared to become comfortable with them deplatforming whatever they want, whenever they want.

throwawaysea8• 7 years ago

No, free speech is fundamental principle that is not tied to the government. You are conflating free speech and the first amendment as it exists in the US. Private companies that control as much of information exchange as modern tech companies do are serving as a digital public square. They should not have the authority to censor legal speech.

Also, America definitely has a far left. Claiming that the most-left cohort of America is center-right is completely disconnected from reality.

throwaway65436• 7 years ago

Free speech is completely unrelated to deplatforming only if you ascribe to the purely legal definition of it. Many others consider free speech to be much more than a legal concept; it's an ideal that is worthwhile as much in private contexts as it is in public.

vinay427• 7 years ago

No “left winger” (America doesn’t have a left, it has a center right and a far right)

If we separate this into social and fiscal dimensions or authoritarian and economic dimensions (e.g. the Political Compass), the US certainly does have a major party that's left in some key ways. Assuming at least a few other western countries also have a left by this standard.

thereare5lights• 7 years ago

I see free speech coming under attack from the progressive left constituency, rather than the government.

Oh please. The right is just as guilty. The Dixie Chicks got canceled for the better part of the 2000s for daring to speak against the Iraq War and Bush.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/04/university-of-...

That got Dean Jamie Riley fired.

Colin Kaepernick got canceled by the right.

I'm sure there's numerous more examples to be found if we dug into it, but let's not pretend that these attacks on free speech are a purely left wing thing.

throwawaysea8• 7 years ago

Yes, you're right this phenomenon isn't purely a left-wing one, and I think it is wrong when either side does it. I pointed at the left just because these days I see it most often done by the left, and in recent times, it is accomplished by going to service providers (like payment processors) and pressuring them to fire a client. For the record, I thought it was wrong for networks to drop the Dixie Chicks as they did.

antipropaganda• 7 years ago

The larger problem here is that many technology companies have become virtual monopolies. If you can be deplatformed from Youtube + Facebook + Twitter then you will not be heard at all. Afterward, your political opponents can go online on these platforms and call you a 'Nazi' a million times. At this point, what Joseph Goebbels said applies: 'If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it'[1]. This causes even more platforms to deplatform you and eventually, it becomes a cycle.

The core of the problem is that these companies are too big, too influential. They must be broken up

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie

throwawaysea8• 7 years ago

Yes, totally agree. These big companies must be broken up, or treated with a much greater degree of regulation (effectively holding them to the standards that the government is held to, as sole provider of some functions).

patientplatypus3• 7 years ago

The larger larger problem is that those giants are owned lock stock and two smoking barrels by advertisers. You can say anything you want on the internet so long as it doesn't lose Proctor & Gamble or Mars or Pepsi Co any money.

Oh the land of the freeeeee.....

jakelazaroff7• 7 years ago

You say you're worried about freedom of speech in big tech companies and de facto digital public squares, but what you seem to be getting at would actually curtail their freedom of speech. The government forcing private entities to disseminate speech they don't want to — that's where this leads, right?

In reality, no one is a free speech absolutist. We just argue over where the lines should be drawn. Bans on child pornography and threats of violence are pretty uncontroversial abridgements of free speech. Banning harassment and hate speech seems to be a bit less popular. Which is fine, everyone has their own ideas about what's acceptable. But don't draw your line in the sand and then tell me that's what determines "free speech".

meruru13• 7 years ago

The government forcing private entities to disseminate speech they don't want to — that's where this leads, right?

I don't think so. Is anyone proposing this as a solution? The parent certainly doesn't seem to be.

AmericanChopper5• 7 years ago

This post contains the two forms of gaslighting most often used to derail any serious discussion on the merits of free speech.

1. Free speech absolutism is actually perfectly reasonable. An absolute stance of free speech doesn’t mean you can’t use speech to commit a crime. If you hire a hit man to kill somebody, you’ve committed a crime, even though the only thing you have done is speak. Nothing about that contradicts an absolute stance on free speech. I have a drivers licence which entitles me to drive a car on public roads. It doesn’t entitle me to run over pedestrians who may be walking on them. Your child pornography example is the same thing. Child pornography is illegal because it involves the crime of sexually abusing children. That’s why it’s illegal, and why drawn or computer generated images or movies depicting sexual acts with children are protected by 1A.

2. Calling for free speech in large online platforms is not curtailing their own right to free speech. The one and only reason large online platforms are allowed to moderate their platforms in anyway they choose is because of a law introduced in the 90s granting them protection from prosecution for the content they publish. If you have an online platform that you don’t moderate, you used to be protected by common carrier laws. If you do choose to moderate it, you are no longer a common carrier, and should be held liable for the content you are now acting as a editor and publisher for. This law was created at a time before large tech companies had monopolised online speech, and really should be revised. Changing it certainly wouldn’t require curtailing anybody’s rights, and every time this comes up I’m honestly surprised by the kind of people who object to it, because the argument you have put forward applies equally as an argument against net neutrality.

patientplatypus3• 7 years ago

What about climate change? Should we continue to give a platform to climate change deniers?

erik_seaberg2• 7 years ago

Keep countering with better arguments. They'll gain support if they can point at an actual conspiracy silencing them.

arduanika5• 7 years ago

If it can't be questioned, it's not science. All the labcoats and vials in the world can't make you a scientist if you don't believe in inquiry.

atoav3• 7 years ago

This is a consequence of the postmodernist post-truth fragmentation of the political discourse in which words and speech are exceedingly used like weapons.

So I’d argue that there is a dialectic relationship between the speech sensitivity on the left and the post-truth-I-know-it-is-false-but-I-will-say-it-anyways-tactics of the right.

And that isn’t the case because speech is a thing the left wants to take away from the rest of us ― no, speech itself has become the battlefield on which the decisions about the future are carried out. Both the left and the right have understood this. So I said the left and the right are in a dialectic relationship when it comes to speech. Here is what this means: As the discourse is getting more and more unhinged and boundaries we traditionally had are completely gone: things that were unspeakable a decade ago are now said in the news.

So the left is in their own weird way trying to keep control about what should and shouldn’t be said. The right on the other hand tries to expand what can be said, because it gives them an advantage. They literally don’t care about the fallout their language has on society as long as it brings them political power. The raw discourse certainly helps to divide the public into binary camps and the hope on the right is that the speech-aware left can be beaten by a right that is not bound to any ethical consideration when it comes to their choice of words. In fact the reason why the language on the right is so unhinged is because they belive it gives them a tactical advantage and not because any of them believes in free speech per se.

So the left tries to change speech in such a way, that the speaker should become aware of the many realities (race, class, gender, culture, ...) encoded in speech and avoid saying things that negatively impact others. The right literally tries to speak things into existence in a way that acts as a tribal identity in times where tribes cannot exist without friction. So where the left has accepted this post-tribal state of affairs and wants to respect as many realities as possible (and sometimes more) the right does the polar opposite and needs to keep as many realities as possible (and sometimes more) out of their speech in order to maintain the group.

That beeing said they are both phenomena that are rooted in the structural changes our societies are going through as a consequence of the internet and the fall of the soviet union (which meant for the first time capitalism didn’t had a socialist counterpart and there was no need to look social anymore).

arduanika5• 7 years ago

In fact the reason why the language on the right is so unhinged is because they belive it gives them a tactical advantage and not because any of them believes in free speech per se.

Mindreading.

They literally don’t care about the fallout their language has on society as long as it brings them political power.

Mindreading. Possible projection too, but I don't want to engage in mindreading.

become aware of the many realities encoded in speech and avoid saying things that negatively impact others

Get a time machine, tell that truck to James Madison. Tell it to John Stuart Mill.

There is one proven way of raising consciousness and of expanding the possibilities of consciousness, and that's free speech. Every other mode of conceptualizing the kaleidoscope of realities leads to bad places. Every other mode other than free speech is a blasphemy against the Enlightenment. I will defend your right to blaspheme of course, but reserve my right to sneer at your "dialectic" and at your deeply broken toxic simile about how "words and speech are exceedingly used like weapons".

s/like/in lieu/, and we should be damn grateful for it.

bontaq• 7 years ago

It's kind of interesting that this is the exact comment I expected to see.

Obviously, the mockery of "free speech" as "freeze peach" is because the meaning behind that, for a lot of people complaining about it, is that they would like to say something hateful. It's so frequent that it's become a meme.

It's unfortunate, and places that put an emphasis on free speech are shitholes like gab and voat. They would like whatever hate they're selling to have a bigger audience, and it's not really on corporations to provide that.

I would say the term has been co-opted by the right in online spaces, which makes it hard to talk about. It's no longer classical "free speech," almost always you have ask, "what were you trying to say with that free speech?"

Are they being banned for being anti-government? Anti-bank? Anti-military? Anti-religion? The pro- versions of those? Or is it maybe something else. Your vision of a "leftist" crack down, could be interpreted as the "right" getting more extreme and being banned.

tarsinge• 7 years ago

Isn’t there a confusion between free speech and social consequences of opinions? Protection from the second is not a right. Saying something hugely unpopular to a group, no matter the validity of the claim, will generate a strong response from that group. That one group is overly represented for example in Universities is a political problem, not a free speech problem.

If you say something racist in the US, you just get a social (media) outcry. But in France for example, it’s also illegal, so you also literally get a fine.

neonate• 7 years ago

http://archive.is/ZKYOf

throwaway010718• 7 years ago

One of most surprising headlines I saw this week is that in NYC you can be fined $250,000 for calling someone an "illegal immigrant".

I can understand that such an accusation may be slanderous under civil law. But the criminal law seems to only apply to that specific phrase, not the accusation.

Does anyone understand how such a seemingly unconstitutional law could get passed ?

devnulloverflow• 7 years ago

Does anyone understand how such a seemingly unconstitutional law could get passed ?

Things get passed because politicians vote for them. They might or might not listen to legal advice about their constitutionality before voting.

It's possible there is something we don't know that makes the rule constitutional. Other possibilities are:

1. The councilors who voted for it don't care, their strategy is to try to get away with anything and let the courts uphold the constitution.

2. The councilors actively want the courts to strike it down to generate a talking point at the next election.

There are plenty of voters who will reward both strategies, and they are over-represented among the politically active people.

nickloewen• 7 years ago

To clarify, because I wanted to know the details:

This is coming from the "NYC Commission on Human Rights Legal Enforcement Guidance on Discrimination on the Basis of Immigration Status and National Origin."

The relevant text is: "the use of certain language, including “illegal alien” and “illegals,” with the intent to demean, humiliate, or offend a person or persons constitutes discrimination." The law does not (in this context) explicitly include the phrase "illegal immigrant."

A news article about this: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-illegal-alien-city-law...

The original document: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/publications/...

ETA: "The New York City Human Rights Law (“NYCHRL”) prohibits discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived “alienage and citizenship status,” and “national origin,” among other categories, by most employers, housing providers, and providers of public accommodations in New York City. The NYCHRL also prohibits discriminatory harassment and bias-based profiling by law enforcement."

arduanika5• 7 years ago

John C. Calhoun is alive and well in his beloved party. Nullification forever.

darkwizard42• 7 years ago

I would recommend reading the article which classifies that if this speech is used to threaten, demean, or discriminate then the fine is imposed.

This is how most free speech laws work, they don't impede your free speech unless you are endangering others with it. Threatening someone or yelling "fire" in a crowded theater are not protected.

hnzix• 7 years ago

We are entering a time of prim moral panic that echoes the temperance movement and the prohibition era. I don't even bother discussing controversial ideas anymore because apparently there is now a list of approved viewpoints and one isn't allowed to play devil's advocate.

Palahniuk's recent novel Adjustment Day lampooned this state of affairs beautifully but it's ultimately depressing, there seems no alternative but to wait for the free speech pendulum to swing back to open discourse in another 15 years or so.

throwawaysea8• 7 years ago

Does it swing purely due to the cyclic nature of what is fashionable? Or does it take catastrophic results to shock society into a pendulum swing the other way?

Pfhreak2• 7 years ago

This has always been the case. There have always been pressures to conform to social norms and stiff penalties for those who did not.

What has changed is not that people are stricter, it's that what's accepted as normal has changed. The world has turned, and some folks suddenly find themselves in the out group for the first time.

rm_-rf_slash2• 7 years ago

I would argue that nothing has significantly changed about cultural norms, except for a widespread acceptance that sexual harassment is unacceptable in the wake of #MeToo.

No, what’s different is that social media allows for decentralized outrage targeting. It can come organically or it can be manufactured by the advertisement-dependent media, autocratic states, PR firms, “social justice warriors”, or other bad actors. That creates the perception of widespread outrage even when its limited to a handful of twitter accounts. But when a few dozen people are so loud you can’t hear the near-silence of everybody else, the rational response is to stop the noise and acquiesce to the outraged, which only gives them more power for the next Internet hate bandwagon.

a_imho• 7 years ago

Could silencing make controversial opinions more enticing via the Streisand effect?

meruru13• 7 years ago

It's hard to measure, but it does often bring attention to them when we have these discussions. I do feel the left's online attitude is firing back more than it's helping them. More than anything it makes people who had no position to take a side, which benefits those that are banking on the controversies the most.

The global gag on free speech is tightening

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