The Issue with "Free Speech"

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For a long time, popular conservative figures have claimed free speech is under attack by the “Left”. Defending this claim, they cite online platforms such as Twitter censoring hate speech or conservative speakers not being allowed to speak on college campuses.

The issue with this is that private institutions are not obligated to respect your right to free speech on their platforms. Not all forms of speech, including hate speech, deserve an audience or platform. Protesting a speaker who spreads hate speech is not attacking one’s right to free speech. Rather, it is exercising one’s own free speech in order to deny a platform to those who might spread dangerous ideas. Conservative speakers will also cite hate speech laws in European countries as evidence of an attack on freedom of speech. However, there is definitely a difference between freedom of expression and hate speech.

What are your thoughts?
 
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Freedom of speech was not outlined in our constitution to protect socially acceptable speech. There is no need to.

The thing is, much of the public forum for the discussion occurs online. Despite being managed by private companies, they have become an essential service in the modern world. Should a gas company be able to cut off your gas because they do not like your ideas? No. Neither should a platform. If they do, than they are not acting as a platform, they are acting as a publisher because they are picking and choosing whose views get to be expressed on there.

Also, by saying someone has the right to speak, you are not saying they have the right to an audience. If you don’t like what someone is saying, walk or click away. By censoring someone, you are not proving that the person’s ideas do not have any merit. The only way you can do that is by engaging with them in debate. What you are actually proving is that you are afraid of what they have to say and that gives those ideas more power.
 
I don’t know what you’re trying to say. For one, at least in the United States free speech is not an absolute, this is why we have libel laws. And if you’re talking about online, well guess what? Those websites are privately hosted, they can control what you say. Is there a reason that when you talk about conservatives, you’re making them into a straw man instead of what they actually are?
 
You are right! The constitutional right to free speech not only protects socially acceptable speech but socially unacceptable speech as well. However, media outlets have always denied a platform to those whom they chose, for better or worse. A newspaper would have not reported on a story that they deemed harmful. Picking and choosing what views are expressed is necessary in order to maintain order within a society. There’s a reason online platforms do not allow anti-Semitic or racist ideas.
redbetta said:
Also, by saying someone has the right to speak, you are not saying they have the right to an audience.
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This is totally correct! The Right to Free Speech doesn’t equal the right to a platform to express your opinions on. The point in censoring isn’t to prove that one’s idea doesn’t have any merit. It’s to contain it or prevent it from spreading. Engaging in a debate isn’t always the right thing to do. You don’t debate Nazism because there is nothing to debate. Allowing dangerous ideas to spread through your platform can have disastrous effects on society.
 
I am not making them a strawman at all. Figures like Richard Spencer or Candace Owens will complain all the time that they are being censored when colleges won’t allow them to speak on campus. At the same time, they’ll trash college students who protest them when they attempt to spread their ideas on their campus.
 
Censored ideas still spread. They just spread underground. And the people who hold them are emboldened because they feel like they are being persecuted and are, therefore, righteous.

While you usually do not convince someone when you engage them in debate, you still can succeed in picking apart their argument and making them look like fools to the rest of the world, which is what ultimately counts. Also, I would have to disagree with you that there is nothing to debate in Nazism. Eugenics was pretty in vogue with many intellectuals at that time and plenty of people in high places still think eugenics have merit. You can really debate anything.

Also, there is a world of a difference between a newspaper and an online platform like Twitter. One is meant to inform about current events. The other is a place of public discussion.
 
redbetta said:
Also, there is a world of a difference between a newspaper and an online platform like Twitter. One is meant to inform about current events. The other is a place of public discussion.
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Well, Twitter is multi-purposed. You can get your news from it. It’s for public discussion. You can talk to some friends or catch up with the folks. Its sole purpose is not discussion and discourse. Therefore, Twitter doesn’t have the obligation to allow one point of view or another.

When I say there is nothing to debate in Nazism, I am saying that it doesn’t deserve the recognition as a valid idea or ideology. While debates can help in some cases, this is the exception. In addition, when a person speaks at a campus or public event, they’re not usually looking to debate. They’re looking to convince members of the audience, or make their opinions seem acceptable or valid in the very least.

Regarding your first point, censored ideas do become underground. An underground ideology will be in the minority, and therefore no longer a threat to society. However, when these ideas become mainstream, then things can get dangerous. A perfect example is Richard Spencer, who is a Neo-nazi and white nationalist. He’d been permitted to speak at numerous institutions, which has caused the white nationalist and neo-nazi movement to grow even further. The culmination of all of this was Charlottesville in my opinion, when these ideologies were no longer “underground”.
 
This is a non-issue. Plenty of websites exist for uncensored discussion of ideas. (4chan, 8kun, etc etc.)
 
Those platforms are largely unknown or underground, which is a problem for someone trying to inject an ideology into the mainstream.
 
4chan is just outside of the top 1000 websites visited every day. Hardly underground, in my opinion.
 
How does it follow that, just because Twitter has many other uses including discussion, it is not obligated to include all sorts of discourse? It is not like Twitter ever advertised itself as a new source: it just happened that over the years that that is were people have come to find news stories as traditional outlets became less popular. I repeat: it is a platform, not a publisher. If it wants to pick and choose what it has on its site, then it cannot call itself a platform.

Also, an ideology driven underground is never truly eradicated. It can always resurface anytime the time is right. You cannot say an ideology does not deserve recognition or has any validity unless you pick it apart and find it lacking. To ignore the issue by saying that ideology is not valid solves nothing.

Also, lots of debates happen on college campuses and speakers usually give the audience an opportunity to engage with them where debate can happen.
 
Yeah, a lot of people go to 4chan to get their memes. Also, it has come into the mainstream consciousness quite a few times due to the shenanigans that go on there.
 
I was commenting on your saying that Twitter was a place of public discussion. Sorry if I wasn’t clear.
redbetta said:
You cannot say an ideology does not deserve recognition or has any validity unless you pick it apart and find it lacking.
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This is true. However, what do you do to an ideology that you do find lacking? The Earth has been proven to be a sphere numerous times, and yet Flat Earthers still exist. Nazi Germany fell after WWII, and yet neo-nazis exist. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, and yet there are still racists and white nationalists/supremacists.

While an audience member can engage a speaker for a few minutes at a time, this is not sufficient time to debunk an entire ideology. Speeches are meant to convince the audience. Their primary purpose is not discourse or discussion. Even so, a speaker will sometimes create a strawman out of someone’s argument and poof, their time is wasted.
 
Censorship can be a form of closed-mindedness. Even if someone’s ideas aren’t necessarily harmful, they can be censored simply because the host disagrees with them. And, that does squelch free speech. If one doesn’t agree with those ideas, one needn’t adopt them, but the person who has them still has the right to express them.

There’s an important difference between rooting our truly harmful speech and shutting someone up just because their views don’t conform to one’s own. And whether they’ll admit it or not, some of today’s censors do it for that reason.
 
  1. College campuses aren’t all “private institutions”; many at the center of controversies are state-run and state-funded.
  2. Regarding private businesses, if you’re talking about social media platforms, they run the risk of increased government oversight and regulation if they are perceived to be manipulating their content in favor of one side or another.
  3. I’m not sure what the point of your thread is. Are you actually interested in free speech law? If so, there’s plenty of books on it for you to read. If you’re just wanting to toss around philosophical opinions, that’s fine for chatting but isn’t how the world works.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
College campuses aren’t all “private institutions”; many at the center of controversies are state-run and state-funded.
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While this is true, most you’re not permitted on most public college campuses unless you attend. Obviously there are exceptions such as campus tours, college days, etc. The point is, an institution can deny and permit someone to speak on campus property.
Tis_Bearself said:
Regarding private businesses, if you’re talking about social media platforms, they run the risk of increased government oversight and regulation if they are perceived to be manipulating their content in favor of one side or another.
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However, banning hate speech is not censoring one side or the other. No one should use a media platform to spread hateful ideas and opinions.

By the way, I made this thread because I had a thought and wanted to share it and get some feedback. It’s purely for discussion.
 
Making fun of an idea does help in a lot, if not, in most circumstances. However, in extreme cases, a lot more needs to be done.
 
If you have thoroughly made a fool of the extremist, then nobody is going to follow them. That should be sufficient. If you try to censor him, people will get curious and look into this person or ideology to see what the fuss is about. This is not an example of an extremist, but I was first introduced to Ben Shapiro because have read stories about students from different colleges throwing fits and attempting to get him censored. So I watched his speech when he came to my college just because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
 
TheBomb.Com said:
While this is true, most you’re not permitted on most public college campuses unless you attend.
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Huh? This has not been my experience at all; most US college campuses in my experience are open. There are certain areas such as buildings and dorms that are accessible only to students, and during certain times such as when there’s a security threat (for example, when a large protest or event is happening in the city) the campus may be closed, but as a practical reality a closed campus makes little sense, especially for large institutions, as non-students frequently need to visit the campus for a wide variety of reasons. Now if you’re talking about hosting an assembly on campus, often there’s an approval/ scheduling process for that, but that has nothing to do with people who don’t attend the university being allowed to walk on and off the campus.
However, banning hate speech is not censoring one side or the other. No one should use a media platform to spread hateful ideas and opinions.
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Under US law, hate speech is legally defined by laws and courts and there’s usually legal prohibitions against it. It’s a very narrow category. Schools often want to censor far beyond the legal definition.
 
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