People would be able to hold anti-government views. They woul dbe able to talk about them. But no publisher would carry them, their comments would be purged from social media and shadowbans applied, and their job would be threatened.
The government might not need to lift a finger. It’s just - there’s a lot of party members in a lot of senior positions and they have views on what it’s appropriate to publish.
Now, have someone’s inalienable rights been violated in this scenario?
I would actually quite like to have a discussion about freedom of speech and socially enforced groupthink in the public space that takes it as read that Republicans are insincere racists and doesnt feel the need to raise it every single post.
I don’t disagree, but Americans get this weird urge to start talking about first amendment law whenever someone mentions the phrase - they appear to be unable to help themselves, so let’s help them by using their crappy 50s Americanism. It’s still less annoying than what they all mean by “liberal” anyway.
So you support what Blizzard did with Blitzchung then? Because that was motivated by a fear of losing market share.
No Tom, you don’t own the language, you gave up that right in 1776 :)
Well we agree about all of that :)
Well this is interesting. Because obviously there shouldn’t be freedom from the consequences of speech, but it’s easy to construct a reductio ad absudium where a lack of freedom from the consequences of speech results in zero dissent in the public sphere.
EDIT: And I don’t know how to construct an alternate idea of an “idealised right” which both guarantees the preservation of viewpoint diversity while discouraging prejudice, incitement to harm and speech which causes undue distress. The problem is anyone trying to defend viewpoint diversity here is inevitably accused of actively desiring the expression of sentiments which are truly undesireable.
Not in my opinion, unless you embellish the inalienable right of freedom of speech to also include freedom to force one or more private companies to publish your speech.
This guy could create his own publishing company. Or he could go stand in a public square and start yelling.
I’m also curious how people who disagree would suggest we implement a system where this person’s writings would end up being printed. Does the government force one of the publishers? Is there some sort of court where everyone goes that assigns their writings to a certain publisher?
Thank you. I stand educated :-). My knowledge of the American constitution leaves a lot to be desired, I’m afraid.
I do enjoy some friendly US/Euro banter though. And that was why I hinted that, even though the constitution of my country (1849) had freedom of speech included, the right of women to vote was only included as an amendment in 1908
Yeah, it’s not simple! And I think what I’m thinking about might be straying more into the territory of the cancel culture thread anyway. I wrote a long post but actually I’m gonna leave that stone unturned this time :)
The fact of the matter is that if the Chinese government did not suppress speech then free speech would get published, regardless of of cultural/social pressure to not do so. We know this because everywhere else where the government does not suppress free speech, unpalatable things get published all the time, and that’s in spite of social and even financial consequences (job loss, lawsuits, whatever).
So yeah. Hawley can go self-publish, or find a publisher with lower moral standards. he’ll be fine. And the government is not in any way involved except insofar as Hawley is the government.
It’s true that the Constitution and First Amendment protect freedom of speech, but that doesn’t mean that they fully encompass what it means. At best they provide a floor. One can certainly view freedom of speech as something even greater than what is covered by the First Amendment, and enact those additional protections into law. Just as “voting rights” are more than what is found in the 15th amendment.
And in fact I don’t think you need to go outside the US to find examples. For instance, anti-SLAPP laws are designed to protect freedom of speech, but they regulate conduct between private parties rather than prevent government interference. The protections they provide are completely outside the scope of the First Amendment (in fact, some states don’t provide those protections).
Likewise, net neutrality laws are also meant to protect freedom of speech. And they explicitly force companies to consider all speakers (ie websites) equally. There are even some parallels between S&S refusing to publish a book and Comcast deprioritizing certain sources of traffic. I happen to think that the former is ok and the latter is not, but neither violate the Constitution. So the issue cannot simply be reduced to asking whether the government is making the decision.
I would argue that net neutrality laws are actually designed as consumer protection laws, in situations where companies hold somewhat monopolistic control over fundamental infrastructure.
Eh. The primary beneficiaries of net neutrality laws are the likes of Netflix, or rather smaller companies who do that sort of thing but don’t have the market power to negotiate zero-rating or similar fast-lane arrangements.
I think zero rating demonstrates that net neutrality isn’t really about consumer protection. If Verizon decides to lift data caps for ESPN, there is no harm to consumers (for the same reason that if S&S starts giving away certain books, there is no harm to consumers). But the websites that don’t benefit from zero rating may unfairly lose their audience.
I wasn’t really thinking of that, the “woke mob”, inasmuch as it is a thing, doesn’t look very much like a more subtle version of the chinese dictatorship. As has been pointed out repeatedly and accurately, the woke mob is singularly ineffective if you view its goal to make sure heterodox views do not get disseminated. My comments about a “slightly less evil Chinese government” were intended as a thought experiment to suggest we need a slightly broader version of free speech.
My thoughts did subsequently turn in the direction of cancel culture, and I tried to put some thoughts together, but in the end I couldm’t find anything that I thought would be helpful and I said I didn’t wont to go there. We had a thread on it not too long ago and I dont think anyone would benefit from rehashing that ground. I don’t have an answer I’m happy with and I was trying to come at the problem from a new angle. Do you think anything useful is going to come out of a discussion of “woke mobs” or “cancel culture”?
But the ultimate rationale for this, is that it protects consumers by preventing isp’s from controlling the content that we have access to.
Preventing an isp from having monopolistic control over internet content, serves the same ultimate goal that all antitrust laws do… While they benefit the competition in the market, the fundamental reason for this is because the CONSUMERS, i.e. society at large, benefit from robust competition.
The core reason why net neutrality is good, is not simply because it protects the Netflix of the world. The real reason is that without net neutrality, all of us will suffer from a less rich internet experience, with less available content for us to choose from.
Additionally, the fundamental reason why this is necessary, is because we, as consumers, generally only have access to one real ISP in many regions, due to different providers intentionally choosing to avoid competition.
If there were a larger number of choices for consumers, net neutrality wouldn’t really be necessary, because then consumers could choose a different isp if one decided to limit access to content.
