It's popular these days to declare that freedom of speech is in grave trouble. But is that so? Do you feel any restrictions on what you can say in public?
I confess that I'm not very bent out of shape about college kids deplatforming speakers they don't like. Or about schoolteachers who are required to teach a particular curriculum. Or a social media service that needs to remove white supremacists or child porn if they want to keep their advertisers happy. Or some local library that decides to remove Heather Has Two Mommies.
All of these are things that ought to be watched, as well as other particular violations of free speech that crop up here and there. Overall, though, I'd like to make the case for judging the state of free speech two ways. The first is the simple think tank approach:
Both of these rely on surveys that ask people in different countries for their views on various free speech issues. Other think tanks commission experts to take a look at countries around the world and compare both their de facto and de jure approaches to free speech. Either way, pretty much every ranking that comes out of a think tank places the US at the top of the world or very close to it.
The second way to judge free speech is even simpler: just ask people about it.
Generally speaking, these results are appalling. Between 10-50% of Americans think that people with particular beliefs ought to be prohibited from speaking in public. Back in 1972, all of these were bunched together, as if Americans were simply opposed to First Amendment rights for anyone who was vaguely controversial. Today, the lines have all split apart, and disapproval rates are quite different for different groups. Almost no one wants to ban gay people from speaking, while more than half the country would ban a racist from speaking.
If I squint, I think I see a vague downward trend in these lines. But only barely. A lot of people think it's perfectly OK to stop people from speaking if they hold objectionable views.
The good news, such as it is, is that there's nothing new here. Lots of Americans are fickle toward the First Amendment, but they always have been. Compared to this, Twitter's problems with content moderation strike me as fairly trivial.
In consensual countries like Sweden, Denmark (I originally hail from the Netherlands which is similar) it's easy to be in favor of absolute free speech, since no-one will use it. Or at least not in a way outside the consensus around what is acceptable. When social control does the job of "moderating content", you don't need a law. In short, I find it at once curious and logical that countries which I find suffocating are the ones where one is allowed to breathe - by the state, that is.
Exactly. We don't have a free speech problem in the US, we have a problem with crackpots, xenophobes, and scam artists who think they should have a turn at every privately owned megaphone.
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I've seen your cousin. She's not exactly the kind of person most folks would want to date. Why did she get a divorce? I know your family's known for gallivanting while married, but I can't imagine she'll ever find someone better.
Maybe the cousin will find someone at a family reunion.
The unwritten laws are the ones which are hardest to break.
Apparently the Orban government has taken increasing control of the media in Hungary. Yet Justitia has Hungary in fifth place on the free-speech index, although its questions include publishing. How do Hungarians express themselves freely - just by word-of-mouth?
Didn't notice that, but holy crap, if Hungary is 5 I think that list isn't very helpful.
It also has Venezuela at No 7, so yeah, I think their list is complete BS.
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The real problem is with facts, not opinion. Should people be able to spread all kinds of misinformation and lies on social media (or any media)? The Section 230 exemption of social media from libel is a major aspect of this.
Is it a fact or a lie that "women have the exact same brains as men"?
Is it a fact or a lie "trans women are women"?
Is is a fact or a lie that "Jews punch above their weight in Hollywood and the media"?
The issue is not REALLY facts vs lies.
Many people want vague claims to be treated as ABSOLUTE facts.
Other people do not want attention drawn to certain facts (or assume that any attention drawn to those facts implies some sort of motivation).
etc etc
Quite obviously the biggest blow billionaires like Elon M. could strike for free speech would be to set up a legal defense fund for people who have signed NDAs and promise to spend up to $1 billion in legal fees on any person who gets on Twitter and blabs about stuff they're not supposed to say. Stormy Daniels press conference anyone? Gretchen Carlson? Air Elon flight attendants? I mean, if the philosophical reason for "free speech" is to make sure we have the information we need in public policy debates, then it sure seems like we need to hear from those folks.
"Or about schoolteachers who are required to teach a particular curriculum."
In private schools that don't receive tax dollars, I agree. In public schools, I would strongly object to a requirement to teach creationism as valid science.
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If Kevin had school-age children in Virginia, he might have second thoughts about the current education policies- some not (yet) approved, but still under consideration - that are likely to be much more reflective of the old textbooks than honest history. That congresswoman who spoke approvingly of Hitler's indoctrination of children at an early age had the "right" idea.
If you can no longer close public schools in one county alone for five years, sell at least some school buildings for $1 to be used as private schools while Black children lack any schools, the next best thing is to really grab control of al aspects of the curriculum.
It can be as difficult for good teachers and parents as for the kids, too.
Count me as dubious of that line chart in terms of the government banning free speech. I certainly don't want to hear a racist rant anywhere, but also certainly don't want to have the government do anything to prevent it.
Private institutions, however, certainly don't have to let a racist jerk give speeches on their property or in their halls.
UC Berkeley (to give one example) is in fact a Government, not a Private institution...
Berkeley is government FUINDED institution that behaves in all ways that matter like a private university. It is not like Berkeley is a branch of the thought police.
Actually, UC Berkeley is a PARTIALLY government FUNDED institution.
The point is more that state schools like Berkeley generally/often (but not always!) fall into the category of a state actor for First Amendment purposes.
UC Berkeley isn't required to invite anyone who wants to come, though. If a student or faculty group wants to invite someone in space they've booked, it has to allow them, with some exceptions for health and safety.
But if that student or faculty group bows to pressure and rescinds the invite, nobody's speech rights have been violated.
Yeah agreed
Wonder how much of a free hand government has to take with private forums to require free speech protection for them
I’ll admit that the Biden and Trump campaign Twitter removal requests in this case are a nothingburger but taken to extremes, the government acting as a de facto moderator on a private forum is a bit different
I just don’t like it. Need special handling when the censor is affiliated with the government. If Twitter decides all on their own to remove something then whatever, but the Feds making them take it down for anything other than a violation of law doesn’t sit right
Good thing then that the US government can’t and didn’t ‘make’ anyone take any legal content down.
That's not free speech.
Per Justittia: "In the US, young people, women, the less educated, and Biden voters are generally less supportive of free speech."
This is about the general public's tolerance of hate speech, in the US. The longer we tolerate the intolerable, the sooner our society collapses under the weight of absolutist stupidity. See: Musk's Twitter.
Who decides what is intolerable? You?
Hate speech.
Who determines what is hate speech? And are you saying hate speech should not be allowed in the United States?
Allowed by the government, not tolerated by the people.
I would prefer you read what I write before you make requests. If you read carefully, I explained this.
Come back to me and ask the question after you've read Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance.
It’s a silly argument
The way to beat unserious extremists in a free society is let them dig themselves in a hole saying dumb things and step on their neck if they actually do anything illegal
Good rule of thumb for stuff like this is to put the power you want in the hands of your enemies and see how it sits with you. Rewind the clock 100 years back to the apartheid South and arbitrary speech restrictions don’t feel so good to me
You make an assumption that hate speech will not lead to division that will tear apart a nation.
Let's see what happens to the Russian Federation, first.
Yeah, that's working really well. After some kid fired up by hate speech gets done killing 50 people, we put him in jail. Real good plan.
Don't talk to me until you've read William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, done 50 pushups, and learned to ride a unicycle.
Silly requirements aside, if you have no response to Karl Popper's paradox, we're done here.
The greatest argument in favor of free speech is that censorship just doesn’t work
Hence why MLK, Mandela, and Hitler all wrote from prison, and they ended up with federal holidays, presidencies, and dictatorships respectively
Anyone who hates racists or Nazis should be handing them megaphones so they can sit back and laugh at them. Best example I can think of is Illinois Nazis in the Blues Brothers. Those guys were a fucking joke. Can we go back to that treatment? It works better
"The greatest argument in favor of free speech is that censorship just doesn’t work"
This will come as a great relief to the people of North Korea.
Look at the commies in the USSR. Everyone else thought they were brainwashed ants but 6 months later the Soviets realized everyone else hated bread lines just as much as they did
When i said “doesn’t work” I guess I meant “doesn’t help influencing what people believe”. Running over Proud Boys with tanks may or may not keep them down but I assume you’re also hoping it doesn’t come to that lol
Soviet-style censorship didn't really work for the purpose of inculcating in the population a sense of euphoric joy in the shared experience of (non-existant) Soviet social and economic triumph. It sure did immiserate a hundreds of millions of people for the better part of a century, though. And, I'd argue, part of the reason post-Soviet Russia has continued to be such an awful place is because a civil society that valued free speech was never allowed to develop.
So, yeah, censorship absolutely "works," if your goal is to have a miserable society with a small elite maintaining a stranglehold on power. The CCP doesn't firewall the internet because it's stupid, and Putin/Edrogan/etc. didn't subvert their respective media markets because they needed a hobby.
About that poll: Were people aware of the definition of free speech? Or did they just say "racists should keep their mouths shut"?
Polls are fickle and can easily be manipulated. They are not data.
Unfortunately think tank-derived graphs are--if anything--even worse.
The last chart seems to show a hopeful trend. The more irrational the argument of the speech (racist, militarist) more people believe the speech should be contained. The more rational the argument of the speech (sexuality, religion) fewer people object to its expression. And especially good to see that "communist" speech is gradually becoming less of a bugaboo. (Hard to tell for sure what the various labels in this chart mean, of course. I guess we all understand what racist, militarist, communist, and "anti-religionist" speech is. But what is "homosexual speech," exactly? Pro- or anti-? Or does it just rate lowest on the list since it's got sex in it and everyone likes to hear expressions about that topic?)
OT: Transfer portal is officially open today for college football.
The word "Banned" is doing a lot of work in that last chart. Clicking though to the original data reveals that the question was "allowed" vs. "not allowed", which is better, but leaves the ambiguity: "allowed" by whom?
If the implicit question is, Should there be a law forbidding public speech by individuals from these groups (or any other), many people's answer -- including mine -- is an emphatic "No". But if the question is, Should a particular private entity (corporation, university, church, whatever) permit their facilities, resources, or platform to be used by individuals who espouse some particular point of view, that's a much more nuanced question, on which people of good will might disagree. We'll never know how individual respondents to the survey interpreted the question.
With that last set of results I would say that the term "should be banned from giving a speech" might be vague in a way that renders the results not particularly helpful. Essentially the wording might simply be giving people to feeling that they should be expressing either approval or disapproval for certain points of view.
"Should the government ban so and so from speaking?" is a very different question from "should an organization I am involved with invite so and so to give a speech?" So depending on how these survey questions are worded and on how carefully respondents read or listen, well, you could end up with results that don't really tell you a whole lot.
Free speech is weird. People can wear Grab 'em By the Pussy Hats into restaurants, but I can't tell that snowflake to get the fuck out of the restaurant.
Racists should absolutely be banned. Who knows what a militarist is. Banning communists, atheists and homosexuals is an attack on political, religious, and lifestyle choice views.
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