Free speech is something I've done a full 180 on over the last five years or so. Your basic point is THE basic point- who gets to decide? That's a problem that can't be solved easily, if at all. Underlying the suppressive impulse is the (in my view) extremely fallacious premise that people need to be 'educated'- and if they are sufficiently educated, they will of course think exactly like you think, on every issue... Well, that's just insulting. Who made you God? Sure, argue your corner. Let's have it out. That's philosophy, or the marketplace of ideas. That's how thinking gets sharpened up.
That’s it exactly. I get that it’s easy for us to believe that the things we hold to be true are basically self-evident, and anyone thinking differently must be either a jackass or a fool. But of course all those other people feel exactly the same way about you.
The waters get muddy, of course, when people start hate-commenting on people’s posts or stalking their DMs sending rude and inappropriate stuff. But at least we have the block function I guess.
One big growth moment for me here was realizing that not everything was for me. There are types of texts that irk or frustrate me, but instead of getting into weird bickerfests I have realized it’s really much better to just glide on unruffled. As much as possible hahah.
I also think that psychologically there's a defensiveness that occurs when people on some level know they're wrong or on shaky logical ground. People who have really hashed out their own ideas are often less reactive because they know what they know and why. Which is not to say ideas don't change: fixity of ideas is another sign of intellectual insecurity. Another guess I have is that it's an age thing. As I've gotten older I've changed my mind enough times to understand that my working theories at any given time are not the be-all and end-all.
I have also learnt that certain conversations are a literal waste of breath. I can't be bothered pouring my energy into black holes any more, and I've become better at spotting the black holes before getting sucked in. I'm only interested in productive and surprising conversation, I don't want to do battle any more. That's just me, other people can do what they want.
Yessss on both of those! When I was younger I had everything figured out - the death penalty, adultery, any moral quandary seemed to have a straightforward answer. Getting older has only muddied the waters in every direction 😅
And yes on the defensiveness. Like the force with which the people who want to support Harris try to insist ‘there’s no other way’… Like, friend, it sounds to me like you’re convincing yourself and not me…. 😔 And definitely sometimes the superior conversation is the conversation not had.
I agree, to a degree, with your premise. However, I'm uncomfortable treating this subject as a binary. The universe in which we consider "freedom of speech" vs. "censorship" is almost never clearly defined in these discussions, and there are myriad ways that people assume, interpret, or define the scope and intent of the argument. In the US we have the 1st ammendment; I can't speak to similar or comparative rules in other countries because I don't know enough about them. Then, we have social media, with each platform both creating its own rules and complying with (or challenging) the laws of countries where they operate. Then we have both legacy media and newer media formats that don't fall neatly into "media" or "social media" categories, such as podcasts, where the rules vary widely, depending on who/what finances creation, distribution, and publication. Then we have all the other ways humans communicate their ideas, ranging from 1-on-1 conversations to huge publicly staged events.
And then, we can't forget about the effed up ways that "free speech" can be warped out of context, such as SCOTUS ruling that corporations are people, and spending money on political campaigns is "speech."
This last example points to how even defining what censorship is can be tricky. Is it really censorship to not allow the largest, most powerful financial entities in the world to contribute as much money as they want to their favorite politicians?
From this point, we get to another tricky question: at what point does allowing a powerful entity to say whatever it wants drown out (effectively censoring) less powerful people or entities?
Then, there is the question of caveats. You have included a few here, eg, actual threats of harm. So who gets to decide how those caveats are defined? Who decides what is stochastic terrorism, as opposed to mean trash talk? And how does who the target of a threat is impact the assessment of the realistic determination of whether a threat is just mean, or actually dangerous?
None of these questions can be answered by deciding yes/no. Free speech had always, always had at least some level of caveat applied, and it is our job to figure out not if, but in what way, and how much, are we going to insist on and define those caveats.
First and foremost the 'corporations are people' hogwash. I think that's actually a great point to the thing I tried to illustrate about how whenever we start introducing these rules, there's immediately malicious intent to warp them to something they were never meant to be. Like all the people getting harassed during the last year for 'anti-Semitism'. But how do you untangle these knots? You would need objective arbiters, and we never get objective arbiters.
The question of 'how far is too far' is also a great one, and I also don't entirely see how it gets resolved, beyond on a personal level. Because obviously as soon as you start protecting people from other people being mean to them, everyone and their grandmother starts using that to defend themselves from rightful criticism.
The first amendment feels like it is so poorly understood, considering how often it's invoked...
It's also fascinating, I wanted to mention that in the text but ran out of space I guess, how 'freedom of speech' used to be a squarely leftist/Dem issue and has been totally taken over by the Right (and yes, they mostly want to use it as Freedom To Insult, but it's still weird) and the Dems have in reaction taken up lots of more censory-type stances.
Regarding the anti-semitism crap, that is a tough one. As an anti-zionist Jew, I have felt very caught in the middle on that one. I would agree with you that the accusation has been weaponized - and very often, by people who are actually very bigoted against Jews themselves, and want to leverage the accusation in support of their aims for western control of the region. On the other hand, I have had a phenomenal amount of anti-Jewish (I prefer this term to "anti-semitism" because that term's current definition is misleading, since Jews aren't the only Semitic people; i think it is disrespectful of us to use that term with the intention of applying it only to Jews) hateful crap thrown at me this last year, and it has definitely escalated from the typical low background hum it was at before. It is definitely hate speech, and some of it has been really scary. And I don't believe that refusing to censor actual hate speech is going to solve that problem. The tricky part, and what we need to do, is parse what is actually "antisemitism" and what is being called that as a way to shut down criticism of Israel. The waters are incredibly muddy, and I don't believe that tolerating actual hate speech is going to thwart the people using claims of antisemitism disingenuously. They aren't doing so because they're actually concerned with the impact of hate speech; they're doing it because it serves their political agenda, and if they're not allowed to do it this way, they'll find another excuse.
BTW, I think this issue goes even deeper than censorship because calling the resistance antisemitic for the purpose of censoring is only part of what's going on here. The other part of it the deliberate sowing of confusion (that is just a side-note; not a refutation of your point, which i agree with).
Yes absolutely all of that!!! There has been an immediate rise in ACTUAL hate speech against Jewish people, for sure, because those scummy people who want to push those hateful agendas will use any excuse and have immediately tried to infiltrate the pro-Palestinian movement. I’m happy to say I have seen them immediately shut down by everyone else in most cases but I can imagine the sorts of horrible run-ins you must have had. So yes, big big big agree that nothing ever justifies hate speech, ever. Nobody needs THAT freedom.
But yes there has been a lot of malicious use as well, like what has been done to Jeremy Corbyn, for instance. It’s difficult to know how to untangle those. Or rather it wouldn’t be, because I think we all know real hate speech when we see it, but if people decide to pretend they don’t understand it it becomes much trickier….
Yes! But, to be honest, there actually are a good number of Jewish people who do believe that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic, so here is where your original point comes into play: how do we avoid censorship if we can't agree on what is hate speech and what is not? In this particular case I am 100% comfortable saying that criticism of Israel in and of itself, is not hate speech, and - in spite of what pro-Israel ideas claim - it is objectively obvious that speaking out against what Israel is doing has nothing to do with Judaism per se; it is aimed at aggressive, violent actions, not beliefs or ethnic/religious identity. That being said, there are plenty of ways to blur the lines, ie, masquerade anti-Jewish sentiment in the guise of anti-Israeli criticism, and also plenty of ways to intentionally spin/misinterpret anti-Israel criticism to claim it is actually anti-Jewish criticism. And there are probably myriad other situations, concerning other groups of marginalized people, where the distinction is not so clear. I think that is one reason why it is so easy for people on both sides of the censorship argument, in any given context, to disingenuously argue their point without there being any universally agreed upon right/wrong. I think having this kind of conversation is the best (only?) way to get any clarity on it. Thank you for raising the question!
Yep yep, absolutely true!! Like you say, ‘speaking against Israel’ can be such a huge range of things. There’s also the scale of ‘how offensive is offensive’, which you also pointed out. But generally I feel public conversation is ill served by these endless volleys of ‘you are being offensive’, ‘no, YOU are being offensive’ when usually both sides are being disingenuous and annoying.
I also have to step back here and say that as a white cis woman I am only potential target for one small sliver of all the ‘offensive’ out there and I generally tend to side with the minority in such discussions because all minorities in general just take so much verbal battering it must be deeply detrimental to their general wellbeing.
I am not sure how one fosters a less duplicitous exchange on this front and keeps people from being harmed while not indulging them when they’re just wanting to shut down debate. One element is definitely general culture, but how that gets created is obviously alchemy.
I have a lot of issues with banning things like The Diary of Anne Frank in order not to trigger sensitivities (‘won’t someone please think of the children!!!’) because at one point are you protecting children from…. having feelings? And in general minorities don’t really benefit from the historical injustices their people lived through getting swept under the carpet…..
It’s a can of worms for sure, I’m really grateful to you and everyone else here helping me try to detangle the worms :)
I don't know the answer, but I think it might partly be that we need to develop a culture of taking responsibility for the freedoms we claim. At least in the US, there seems to be this assumption that the right to free speech means that you should be able to say whatever you want, with an expectation that there will be no criticism or consequences - as if having the right to say a thing means you have no responsibility for what happens after you say it. I think a hefty portion of the debate about free speech would be moot if we all just understood that we have to own and take responsibility for what we say.
Regarding corporate speech, unless i misunderstood what you are saying, I don't think your argument really does apply to that, because it is a function of 1st ammendment protection, not a way in which anyone has tried to limit free speech.
Yep, responsibility and holding ourselves and each other accountable would go a long way.
For the corporations I just meant it’s ridiculous we try to establish rights for people and someone goes ‘massive legal entities owned by the megarich are people too, right?!??’ And everyone goes ‘yeah ok…’ and then you set up precedent for all sorts of legal tomfoolery.
It’s also so blatantly malevolent. I hate those things where we have to pretend we are discussing one thing where everyone knows we are not really discussing it. Like ‘are corporations actually people actually?’ ‘No.’ Conversation over, you know? But it doesn’t go that way.
Same like now we’re supposed to be debating whether or not Lebanese grandmas actually have 1500 pound missiles sitting in their living rooms ready to launch. No. They don’t. You ever set off a firecracker in your living room? Damn. But we’re supposed to debate it. ‘You see it wouldn’t be feasible blah blah’. They know. You know they know. Nobody gives a shit. Let’s talk about the real things. Why are all the decision makers evil? Why are we using Machiavellian philosophy as a guidebook???
I think that censorship is a slippery slope. If people are being threatened, that's not censorship, as there is no legal precedent that says incitement of violence and blatant threats are protected speech.
I feel like you do. I rarely, if ever resort to insults. I am a data nerd. So, I will present data, and if someone has conflicting data, I ask them to submit it as well. I rarely block people either. I think that honestly, let people show them who they are.
I don't think that censorship aside from that of safety concerns has any place in civilized society.
And yes, threats and sexual comments and that stuff is just a different category.
I think that there is a type of person who conflates the idea of 'illegal' and 'distasteful'. So, like, someone calling me a 'piece of shit' on one of my notes, or saying I've got 'my head stuck up my ass' is definitely not a joyful experience, especially if it's, like, the first comment they ever write to me. But these are NOT crimes.
Being shitty is not a crime. I do block people who insult me or other people on my posts because honestly, I just don't have the patience to put up with that crap. But I would not call to have them banned. Because of the slippery slope thing exactly.
You can't make beliefs go away by sweeping them under the carpet. Look at the explosion of Nazi support and Alt-Right movements in Germany today. It's pretty wild, because they were supposed to be a shining example of a country that has accepted and dealt with its own shit. But apparently not.
Unpleasant as it is, we have to have these things in the open, and then everyone has to align the way they feel is right. Like right now seeing Israelis post is the biggest factor in getting more people to consider supporting Palestine, because they just sound so insanely hateful and gleeful about the carnage and innocent victims. If we weren't able to see that we wouldn't understand what was happening.
The problem, though, is then: who decides what constitutes an actual threat? As much as I agree that this should be the dividing line, determining where that line is isn't as clear cut as we would like to think it is. I think one of the biggest issues is that depending on your identity, something that might be merely "offensive" to one person can be truly threatening and/or harmful to someone else. On one hand we have people like the "don't say gay" crowd claiming that even discussing gender or sexuality other than cis-het is a threat. On the other end of the spectrum, we've got people who believe hate speech, including vicious slurs and stereotypes, are fine because they aren't actual violence; they are merely "offensive," though there are studies that refute that, and show the actual harm this language causes. Where to draw the line is a much more subjective endeavor than it seems on the surface.
Absolutely. And I think there is no way around having to accept a sort of range instead of one narrow stiff definition.
But for instance in the case that inspired this text, a woman wrote an article about her experience with men that included a few…. questionable phrases? Like ‘I have realized men come in breeds, like dogs’ and ‘my boyfriend understands I hate all other men and he is ok with it.’ So, alright, a little abrasive but fine, we’re expressing our experience.
Then someone read this and felt motivated to point out it sounds abrasive, and they did this by basically copying the text but swapping the genders. So now you had it reading ‘I’ve realized women come in breeds, like dogs’ and ‘my girlfriend knows I hate all other women and she is fine with it.’
I can’t vouch for other people but I admit this new version sounds far worse to me, partially for the reasons you mentioned (women face so much violence, speaking of them in that way links in my mind to that violence in a way it doesn’t do for men). But it still made me consider that the language can rightfully be seen as demeaning when used towards men too.
But THEN the female author and friends jumped to report the gender swap text insisting it was misogynistic, it was plagiarism, it was theft, it was demeaning and disparaging towards women. Substack refused to take it down and now they and their friends are super mad about that and posting about the massive injustice.
Here is where I falter. Ignoring the fact that copying for purposes of critique is totally legal, how can a text be so horrible and demeaning in one version and become apparently totally cool and ‘yass girl’ just by swapping grammatical gender? (Considering of course that this is not an issue relating to trans people but a beef between, as far as I can tell, cis women vs cis men.
In this sense I feel if we lean on getting companies to just take down whatever articles vaguely offend us, we are actually weakening the set of tools we have to actually protect the people who need protection?
There’s a power imbalance in Democratic speech when the presidential candidate can say “working around the clock.. to get a hostage deal and cease-fire done.. Including unspeakable sexual violence.. working to end this war, the hostages are released - the suffering in Gaza ends..fundamental principles, from the rule of law to free and fair elections” while openly saying she will ship weapons in contravention of the International Court to a certified illegal occupier committing plausible genocide who has been asked to leave. Everything from the literature to the published story is a lie in bedding the doctrine of discovery in the Abraham criminal consciousness of the mythology. I think it needs to be constantly challenged especially the abelism of its patriarchy.
They have essentially broken the fourth wall. They used to be able to somewhat pretend that 'law and order, western values, the other side are terrorists so we must be firm blah blah blah' but by now it has all come too far into the open so they are right at the verge of switching to 'you know what? Yes, we are a thinly veiled tyranny and we don't give a shit who knows it'. The question is what happens then.
'I invite you to look into what England, Germany and France are doing right now with journalists...'
Yeah, I know right...it's dystopian and scary to think of the precedent that's been set. The citizens need to strongly oppose such oppressive measures.
Strongly. And to their credit, a lot of people are freaking out, which is why we are seeing some of the idiotic repressive measures on journalists being reluctantly walked back. But a lot more people should be freaking out a lot louder.
I really appreciate your writing and thoughts on this topic. As well as some of the points others have pointed out above.
Of course, where we draw the line is always going to be arbitrary. But for me personally it goes where speech turns into threats.
For most of us who are too young to remember what went on in the East blocks / USSR as well as in the McCarthy era in the US, it is difficult to imagine how censorship can be that sinister. But it was, and it hasn’t gone away.
As you say, banning people from expressing their thoughts and opinions IS a slippery slope… Because the question will always be then; Who decides what is “good” and what is “bad”?
Yes, the arbitrary line will forever be an issue, especially since most people who want tobdo harm know very well how to pretend they DON’T want to do any harm. I absolutely agree threats should be sanctioned.
There is also this question of do you want an enemy who stabs you in the back or in the front, you know? Let’s say any sexist or racist speech is 100% forbidden and we drive them all underground - what then? Now we don’t know what they’re doing. Targeted minorities know well how to take cover. I’d rather hear their stupid rhetoric and face it head on.
It is a scary thing, when governments sanction expression. I mean it’s happening right now around Palestine and is far worse than I expected of the west, and frankly my expectations weren’t high… also all we need to do is see how all of the US still reacts to the word ‘communist’… it’s worse than any slur apparently, which is also an interesting showcase of the power of government propaganda.
Oh yeah, the ones out in the open are just a hint, they know they shouldn’t advertise.
It really hit me when I realized how many fake accounts there were. Like I get not wanting visibility but when it’s a clearly fake account and you’re running around insulting people and posting toxic shit….
There could be controls against that but the apps don’t care.
Yes 🙌 I have been thinking about how the discourse on SM has changed since 2016 and how it’s become ever increasingly hostile since and how many of these accounts stirring stuff up are just toxic bots. Not actual real people.
I think a lot of trolls are bots or ai too.
Of course that said, there are a probably enough people who have those kinds of beliefs but I think many of these counter comments and toxic comments are not from real people, but programmed by real people…
That’s the thing, ‘bots’ have no agency, they are set up by someone. But whether AI or human content farms in Malaysia or wherever, with tons of people sitting in massive warehouses and just cranking out comments. I talk a lot with ChatGPT and I do think a lot of the troll comments are still human, though not genuine of course. Though I could be wrong.
What’s fascinating to me is how the bad people are always a step ahead. I really think most of us regular reasonable people genuinely don’t know that there even exists such a phenomenon as a ‘comment farm’, where you pay some money to a bunch of unfortunate people in a poorer country to just crank out ‘engagement’ to suit your agenda - whether to fakely compliment your product (every stupid ‘make 6 figures in 30 days by selling your dryer lint!!’ course with seven thousand comments on each post going ‘wow, amazing, life changing!!!’) but also a lot of the ‘censoring’, piling up to insult or intimidate random people who they see as ‘too woke’ or whatever, queer people, minorities, and since more recently anyone saying a word against Israel… (even if it’s Jewish people themselves…) so there’s definitely an agenda there, where these people have figured out they can a) hook 500 cheap mobiles together themselves and make 500 fake accounts or b) pay relatively little money to someone who does this professionally.
This is also how ‘Russian interference’ in the last election supposedly happened…. I mean it happened, the ‘supposedly’ part relates how we’re apparently supposed to REALLY care when it’s Russians doing it but not when it’s Israel, or us. In fact they probably don’t want to crack down on these mechanisms of manipulation because they find them useful. The same reason why for 20 years now we all know most of our clothes and tech are put together by basically child slaves, but…. we like clothes and tech? So nothing ever changes.
I've experienced the same with Instagram. Another tactic of Insta is to hide comments at the bottom of the comment section, with a disclaimer which must be clicked 'these comments may be offensive' or something like that. Most people would never click and so these comments are hidden. The comments I've seen there are never offensive.
If you go on twitter and find Israelis or their supporters, they often brag about removing critical voices from social media and even worse, such as getting them fired from their job. Some of the comments I've seen are absolutely vile and (ironically?) I'm sure their toxic behaviour and equating criticism of Israeli genocide to anti-Semitism is actually causing real anti-Semitism. I think that any group of people behaving that way would attract hate.
Sorry I forgot to mention that I think when people report comments enough, that person is kind of marked by the algorithm as a spammer. Either that or using keywords which are marked as controversial and I think comment length also plays a part as my longer comments are more often marked as spam. It can be ridiculous, eg when a person made a video about the word c*not, lots of people had used it outright in the comments but when I used it in a comment my comment was flagged and removed and I was threatened with a ban, which happened immediately after I'd made the comment, which must mean that my comments there are going through a harsher automated moderation process than those of others.
'They' (And 'they' here is not just the Israel supporters, it's all the trolls in general - MAGA types, Andrew Tate types, antiabortionists, the lot) have a whole series of very smooth running tactics on how to mass-report people who they feel are doing damage to their cause, by being, like, too genuine and good and objective and shit. And yes they absolutely collude to take people down. We have seen so many witch hunts and ridiculous firings in the first few months. And it's really not just the people who get the knife - it's also literally everyone else, seeing it happen and suddenly running their hand protectively over their own neck thinking 'man I sure don't want THAT to be me.....'
You arrest a few journalists and other journalists go more quiet. You fire a few protesters and people think twice about being seen at protests. You destroy the accounts of a few content creators, or doxx them, make them feel unsafe, whatever, and suddenly fewer people are speaking up. It's as sinister as it is familiar.
I think the same thing happened to me because the number of my posts that got flagged and taken down is just ridiculous. I only posted a tiny part here, I didn't even save most of them, and out of the ones I saved there are lots more that are just not that fun to read but basically in the same vein, or on totally unrelated subjects. I personally can't find a single word in these that goes against any sort of community guideline imaginable. But that's what you get when there is a censorship mechanism and it decides you're the bad guy.
Yes, and the process is not transparent, and there's no way to appeal... A lot of the time the comments I have removed have nothing to do with anything controversial. There are no keywords which could be offensive. Maybe my comments are just longer than average. It's wrong to censor people in an unfair way like this and give them no chance to fight the 'dark' policy. It makes me not want to bother interacting and I think that's their endgame. They're creating echo chambers.
Oh yeah it’s exactly what they want, for us to go away. I’ve had a lot of totally random comments blocked too. About exercising, or just giving someone encouragement, totally random stuff.
Free speech is something I've done a full 180 on over the last five years or so. Your basic point is THE basic point- who gets to decide? That's a problem that can't be solved easily, if at all. Underlying the suppressive impulse is the (in my view) extremely fallacious premise that people need to be 'educated'- and if they are sufficiently educated, they will of course think exactly like you think, on every issue... Well, that's just insulting. Who made you God? Sure, argue your corner. Let's have it out. That's philosophy, or the marketplace of ideas. That's how thinking gets sharpened up.
Thank God for Substack- they get this.
That’s it exactly. I get that it’s easy for us to believe that the things we hold to be true are basically self-evident, and anyone thinking differently must be either a jackass or a fool. But of course all those other people feel exactly the same way about you.
The waters get muddy, of course, when people start hate-commenting on people’s posts or stalking their DMs sending rude and inappropriate stuff. But at least we have the block function I guess.
One big growth moment for me here was realizing that not everything was for me. There are types of texts that irk or frustrate me, but instead of getting into weird bickerfests I have realized it’s really much better to just glide on unruffled. As much as possible hahah.
I also think that psychologically there's a defensiveness that occurs when people on some level know they're wrong or on shaky logical ground. People who have really hashed out their own ideas are often less reactive because they know what they know and why. Which is not to say ideas don't change: fixity of ideas is another sign of intellectual insecurity. Another guess I have is that it's an age thing. As I've gotten older I've changed my mind enough times to understand that my working theories at any given time are not the be-all and end-all.
I have also learnt that certain conversations are a literal waste of breath. I can't be bothered pouring my energy into black holes any more, and I've become better at spotting the black holes before getting sucked in. I'm only interested in productive and surprising conversation, I don't want to do battle any more. That's just me, other people can do what they want.
Yessss on both of those! When I was younger I had everything figured out - the death penalty, adultery, any moral quandary seemed to have a straightforward answer. Getting older has only muddied the waters in every direction 😅
And yes on the defensiveness. Like the force with which the people who want to support Harris try to insist ‘there’s no other way’… Like, friend, it sounds to me like you’re convincing yourself and not me…. 😔 And definitely sometimes the superior conversation is the conversation not had.
I agree, to a degree, with your premise. However, I'm uncomfortable treating this subject as a binary. The universe in which we consider "freedom of speech" vs. "censorship" is almost never clearly defined in these discussions, and there are myriad ways that people assume, interpret, or define the scope and intent of the argument. In the US we have the 1st ammendment; I can't speak to similar or comparative rules in other countries because I don't know enough about them. Then, we have social media, with each platform both creating its own rules and complying with (or challenging) the laws of countries where they operate. Then we have both legacy media and newer media formats that don't fall neatly into "media" or "social media" categories, such as podcasts, where the rules vary widely, depending on who/what finances creation, distribution, and publication. Then we have all the other ways humans communicate their ideas, ranging from 1-on-1 conversations to huge publicly staged events.
And then, we can't forget about the effed up ways that "free speech" can be warped out of context, such as SCOTUS ruling that corporations are people, and spending money on political campaigns is "speech."
This last example points to how even defining what censorship is can be tricky. Is it really censorship to not allow the largest, most powerful financial entities in the world to contribute as much money as they want to their favorite politicians?
From this point, we get to another tricky question: at what point does allowing a powerful entity to say whatever it wants drown out (effectively censoring) less powerful people or entities?
Then, there is the question of caveats. You have included a few here, eg, actual threats of harm. So who gets to decide how those caveats are defined? Who decides what is stochastic terrorism, as opposed to mean trash talk? And how does who the target of a threat is impact the assessment of the realistic determination of whether a threat is just mean, or actually dangerous?
None of these questions can be answered by deciding yes/no. Free speech had always, always had at least some level of caveat applied, and it is our job to figure out not if, but in what way, and how much, are we going to insist on and define those caveats.
Totally agreed, so many amazing points here!
First and foremost the 'corporations are people' hogwash. I think that's actually a great point to the thing I tried to illustrate about how whenever we start introducing these rules, there's immediately malicious intent to warp them to something they were never meant to be. Like all the people getting harassed during the last year for 'anti-Semitism'. But how do you untangle these knots? You would need objective arbiters, and we never get objective arbiters.
The question of 'how far is too far' is also a great one, and I also don't entirely see how it gets resolved, beyond on a personal level. Because obviously as soon as you start protecting people from other people being mean to them, everyone and their grandmother starts using that to defend themselves from rightful criticism.
The first amendment feels like it is so poorly understood, considering how often it's invoked...
It's also fascinating, I wanted to mention that in the text but ran out of space I guess, how 'freedom of speech' used to be a squarely leftist/Dem issue and has been totally taken over by the Right (and yes, they mostly want to use it as Freedom To Insult, but it's still weird) and the Dems have in reaction taken up lots of more censory-type stances.
Regarding the anti-semitism crap, that is a tough one. As an anti-zionist Jew, I have felt very caught in the middle on that one. I would agree with you that the accusation has been weaponized - and very often, by people who are actually very bigoted against Jews themselves, and want to leverage the accusation in support of their aims for western control of the region. On the other hand, I have had a phenomenal amount of anti-Jewish (I prefer this term to "anti-semitism" because that term's current definition is misleading, since Jews aren't the only Semitic people; i think it is disrespectful of us to use that term with the intention of applying it only to Jews) hateful crap thrown at me this last year, and it has definitely escalated from the typical low background hum it was at before. It is definitely hate speech, and some of it has been really scary. And I don't believe that refusing to censor actual hate speech is going to solve that problem. The tricky part, and what we need to do, is parse what is actually "antisemitism" and what is being called that as a way to shut down criticism of Israel. The waters are incredibly muddy, and I don't believe that tolerating actual hate speech is going to thwart the people using claims of antisemitism disingenuously. They aren't doing so because they're actually concerned with the impact of hate speech; they're doing it because it serves their political agenda, and if they're not allowed to do it this way, they'll find another excuse.
BTW, I think this issue goes even deeper than censorship because calling the resistance antisemitic for the purpose of censoring is only part of what's going on here. The other part of it the deliberate sowing of confusion (that is just a side-note; not a refutation of your point, which i agree with).
Yes absolutely all of that!!! There has been an immediate rise in ACTUAL hate speech against Jewish people, for sure, because those scummy people who want to push those hateful agendas will use any excuse and have immediately tried to infiltrate the pro-Palestinian movement. I’m happy to say I have seen them immediately shut down by everyone else in most cases but I can imagine the sorts of horrible run-ins you must have had. So yes, big big big agree that nothing ever justifies hate speech, ever. Nobody needs THAT freedom.
But yes there has been a lot of malicious use as well, like what has been done to Jeremy Corbyn, for instance. It’s difficult to know how to untangle those. Or rather it wouldn’t be, because I think we all know real hate speech when we see it, but if people decide to pretend they don’t understand it it becomes much trickier….
Yes! But, to be honest, there actually are a good number of Jewish people who do believe that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic, so here is where your original point comes into play: how do we avoid censorship if we can't agree on what is hate speech and what is not? In this particular case I am 100% comfortable saying that criticism of Israel in and of itself, is not hate speech, and - in spite of what pro-Israel ideas claim - it is objectively obvious that speaking out against what Israel is doing has nothing to do with Judaism per se; it is aimed at aggressive, violent actions, not beliefs or ethnic/religious identity. That being said, there are plenty of ways to blur the lines, ie, masquerade anti-Jewish sentiment in the guise of anti-Israeli criticism, and also plenty of ways to intentionally spin/misinterpret anti-Israel criticism to claim it is actually anti-Jewish criticism. And there are probably myriad other situations, concerning other groups of marginalized people, where the distinction is not so clear. I think that is one reason why it is so easy for people on both sides of the censorship argument, in any given context, to disingenuously argue their point without there being any universally agreed upon right/wrong. I think having this kind of conversation is the best (only?) way to get any clarity on it. Thank you for raising the question!
Yep yep, absolutely true!! Like you say, ‘speaking against Israel’ can be such a huge range of things. There’s also the scale of ‘how offensive is offensive’, which you also pointed out. But generally I feel public conversation is ill served by these endless volleys of ‘you are being offensive’, ‘no, YOU are being offensive’ when usually both sides are being disingenuous and annoying.
I also have to step back here and say that as a white cis woman I am only potential target for one small sliver of all the ‘offensive’ out there and I generally tend to side with the minority in such discussions because all minorities in general just take so much verbal battering it must be deeply detrimental to their general wellbeing.
I am not sure how one fosters a less duplicitous exchange on this front and keeps people from being harmed while not indulging them when they’re just wanting to shut down debate. One element is definitely general culture, but how that gets created is obviously alchemy.
I have a lot of issues with banning things like The Diary of Anne Frank in order not to trigger sensitivities (‘won’t someone please think of the children!!!’) because at one point are you protecting children from…. having feelings? And in general minorities don’t really benefit from the historical injustices their people lived through getting swept under the carpet…..
It’s a can of worms for sure, I’m really grateful to you and everyone else here helping me try to detangle the worms :)
I don't know the answer, but I think it might partly be that we need to develop a culture of taking responsibility for the freedoms we claim. At least in the US, there seems to be this assumption that the right to free speech means that you should be able to say whatever you want, with an expectation that there will be no criticism or consequences - as if having the right to say a thing means you have no responsibility for what happens after you say it. I think a hefty portion of the debate about free speech would be moot if we all just understood that we have to own and take responsibility for what we say.
Regarding corporate speech, unless i misunderstood what you are saying, I don't think your argument really does apply to that, because it is a function of 1st ammendment protection, not a way in which anyone has tried to limit free speech.
Yep, responsibility and holding ourselves and each other accountable would go a long way.
For the corporations I just meant it’s ridiculous we try to establish rights for people and someone goes ‘massive legal entities owned by the megarich are people too, right?!??’ And everyone goes ‘yeah ok…’ and then you set up precedent for all sorts of legal tomfoolery.
Oh, yeah, the corporation thing is maddening.
It’s also so blatantly malevolent. I hate those things where we have to pretend we are discussing one thing where everyone knows we are not really discussing it. Like ‘are corporations actually people actually?’ ‘No.’ Conversation over, you know? But it doesn’t go that way.
Same like now we’re supposed to be debating whether or not Lebanese grandmas actually have 1500 pound missiles sitting in their living rooms ready to launch. No. They don’t. You ever set off a firecracker in your living room? Damn. But we’re supposed to debate it. ‘You see it wouldn’t be feasible blah blah’. They know. You know they know. Nobody gives a shit. Let’s talk about the real things. Why are all the decision makers evil? Why are we using Machiavellian philosophy as a guidebook???
I think that censorship is a slippery slope. If people are being threatened, that's not censorship, as there is no legal precedent that says incitement of violence and blatant threats are protected speech.
I feel like you do. I rarely, if ever resort to insults. I am a data nerd. So, I will present data, and if someone has conflicting data, I ask them to submit it as well. I rarely block people either. I think that honestly, let people show them who they are.
I don't think that censorship aside from that of safety concerns has any place in civilized society.
Absolutely agreed.
And yes, threats and sexual comments and that stuff is just a different category.
I think that there is a type of person who conflates the idea of 'illegal' and 'distasteful'. So, like, someone calling me a 'piece of shit' on one of my notes, or saying I've got 'my head stuck up my ass' is definitely not a joyful experience, especially if it's, like, the first comment they ever write to me. But these are NOT crimes.
Being shitty is not a crime. I do block people who insult me or other people on my posts because honestly, I just don't have the patience to put up with that crap. But I would not call to have them banned. Because of the slippery slope thing exactly.
You can't make beliefs go away by sweeping them under the carpet. Look at the explosion of Nazi support and Alt-Right movements in Germany today. It's pretty wild, because they were supposed to be a shining example of a country that has accepted and dealt with its own shit. But apparently not.
Unpleasant as it is, we have to have these things in the open, and then everyone has to align the way they feel is right. Like right now seeing Israelis post is the biggest factor in getting more people to consider supporting Palestine, because they just sound so insanely hateful and gleeful about the carnage and innocent victims. If we weren't able to see that we wouldn't understand what was happening.
The problem, though, is then: who decides what constitutes an actual threat? As much as I agree that this should be the dividing line, determining where that line is isn't as clear cut as we would like to think it is. I think one of the biggest issues is that depending on your identity, something that might be merely "offensive" to one person can be truly threatening and/or harmful to someone else. On one hand we have people like the "don't say gay" crowd claiming that even discussing gender or sexuality other than cis-het is a threat. On the other end of the spectrum, we've got people who believe hate speech, including vicious slurs and stereotypes, are fine because they aren't actual violence; they are merely "offensive," though there are studies that refute that, and show the actual harm this language causes. Where to draw the line is a much more subjective endeavor than it seems on the surface.
Absolutely. And I think there is no way around having to accept a sort of range instead of one narrow stiff definition.
But for instance in the case that inspired this text, a woman wrote an article about her experience with men that included a few…. questionable phrases? Like ‘I have realized men come in breeds, like dogs’ and ‘my boyfriend understands I hate all other men and he is ok with it.’ So, alright, a little abrasive but fine, we’re expressing our experience.
Then someone read this and felt motivated to point out it sounds abrasive, and they did this by basically copying the text but swapping the genders. So now you had it reading ‘I’ve realized women come in breeds, like dogs’ and ‘my girlfriend knows I hate all other women and she is fine with it.’
I can’t vouch for other people but I admit this new version sounds far worse to me, partially for the reasons you mentioned (women face so much violence, speaking of them in that way links in my mind to that violence in a way it doesn’t do for men). But it still made me consider that the language can rightfully be seen as demeaning when used towards men too.
But THEN the female author and friends jumped to report the gender swap text insisting it was misogynistic, it was plagiarism, it was theft, it was demeaning and disparaging towards women. Substack refused to take it down and now they and their friends are super mad about that and posting about the massive injustice.
Here is where I falter. Ignoring the fact that copying for purposes of critique is totally legal, how can a text be so horrible and demeaning in one version and become apparently totally cool and ‘yass girl’ just by swapping grammatical gender? (Considering of course that this is not an issue relating to trans people but a beef between, as far as I can tell, cis women vs cis men.
In this sense I feel if we lean on getting companies to just take down whatever articles vaguely offend us, we are actually weakening the set of tools we have to actually protect the people who need protection?
There’s a power imbalance in Democratic speech when the presidential candidate can say “working around the clock.. to get a hostage deal and cease-fire done.. Including unspeakable sexual violence.. working to end this war, the hostages are released - the suffering in Gaza ends..fundamental principles, from the rule of law to free and fair elections” while openly saying she will ship weapons in contravention of the International Court to a certified illegal occupier committing plausible genocide who has been asked to leave. Everything from the literature to the published story is a lie in bedding the doctrine of discovery in the Abraham criminal consciousness of the mythology. I think it needs to be constantly challenged especially the abelism of its patriarchy.
Yep.
They have essentially broken the fourth wall. They used to be able to somewhat pretend that 'law and order, western values, the other side are terrorists so we must be firm blah blah blah' but by now it has all come too far into the open so they are right at the verge of switching to 'you know what? Yes, we are a thinly veiled tyranny and we don't give a shit who knows it'. The question is what happens then.
'I invite you to look into what England, Germany and France are doing right now with journalists...'
Yeah, I know right...it's dystopian and scary to think of the precedent that's been set. The citizens need to strongly oppose such oppressive measures.
Strongly. And to their credit, a lot of people are freaking out, which is why we are seeing some of the idiotic repressive measures on journalists being reluctantly walked back. But a lot more people should be freaking out a lot louder.
I really appreciate your writing and thoughts on this topic. As well as some of the points others have pointed out above.
Of course, where we draw the line is always going to be arbitrary. But for me personally it goes where speech turns into threats.
For most of us who are too young to remember what went on in the East blocks / USSR as well as in the McCarthy era in the US, it is difficult to imagine how censorship can be that sinister. But it was, and it hasn’t gone away.
As you say, banning people from expressing their thoughts and opinions IS a slippery slope… Because the question will always be then; Who decides what is “good” and what is “bad”?
Thank you again for your writing 🍉
Yes, the arbitrary line will forever be an issue, especially since most people who want tobdo harm know very well how to pretend they DON’T want to do any harm. I absolutely agree threats should be sanctioned.
There is also this question of do you want an enemy who stabs you in the back or in the front, you know? Let’s say any sexist or racist speech is 100% forbidden and we drive them all underground - what then? Now we don’t know what they’re doing. Targeted minorities know well how to take cover. I’d rather hear their stupid rhetoric and face it head on.
It is a scary thing, when governments sanction expression. I mean it’s happening right now around Palestine and is far worse than I expected of the west, and frankly my expectations weren’t high… also all we need to do is see how all of the US still reacts to the word ‘communist’… it’s worse than any slur apparently, which is also an interesting showcase of the power of government propaganda.
Yes. Driving those things underground doesn’t work. And there are a lot of things we already don’t see or cannot see…
Oh yeah, the ones out in the open are just a hint, they know they shouldn’t advertise.
It really hit me when I realized how many fake accounts there were. Like I get not wanting visibility but when it’s a clearly fake account and you’re running around insulting people and posting toxic shit….
There could be controls against that but the apps don’t care.
Yes 🙌 I have been thinking about how the discourse on SM has changed since 2016 and how it’s become ever increasingly hostile since and how many of these accounts stirring stuff up are just toxic bots. Not actual real people.
I think a lot of trolls are bots or ai too.
Of course that said, there are a probably enough people who have those kinds of beliefs but I think many of these counter comments and toxic comments are not from real people, but programmed by real people…
That’s the thing, ‘bots’ have no agency, they are set up by someone. But whether AI or human content farms in Malaysia or wherever, with tons of people sitting in massive warehouses and just cranking out comments. I talk a lot with ChatGPT and I do think a lot of the troll comments are still human, though not genuine of course. Though I could be wrong.
What’s fascinating to me is how the bad people are always a step ahead. I really think most of us regular reasonable people genuinely don’t know that there even exists such a phenomenon as a ‘comment farm’, where you pay some money to a bunch of unfortunate people in a poorer country to just crank out ‘engagement’ to suit your agenda - whether to fakely compliment your product (every stupid ‘make 6 figures in 30 days by selling your dryer lint!!’ course with seven thousand comments on each post going ‘wow, amazing, life changing!!!’) but also a lot of the ‘censoring’, piling up to insult or intimidate random people who they see as ‘too woke’ or whatever, queer people, minorities, and since more recently anyone saying a word against Israel… (even if it’s Jewish people themselves…) so there’s definitely an agenda there, where these people have figured out they can a) hook 500 cheap mobiles together themselves and make 500 fake accounts or b) pay relatively little money to someone who does this professionally.
This is also how ‘Russian interference’ in the last election supposedly happened…. I mean it happened, the ‘supposedly’ part relates how we’re apparently supposed to REALLY care when it’s Russians doing it but not when it’s Israel, or us. In fact they probably don’t want to crack down on these mechanisms of manipulation because they find them useful. The same reason why for 20 years now we all know most of our clothes and tech are put together by basically child slaves, but…. we like clothes and tech? So nothing ever changes.
Spot on again. <3
I've experienced the same with Instagram. Another tactic of Insta is to hide comments at the bottom of the comment section, with a disclaimer which must be clicked 'these comments may be offensive' or something like that. Most people would never click and so these comments are hidden. The comments I've seen there are never offensive.
If you go on twitter and find Israelis or their supporters, they often brag about removing critical voices from social media and even worse, such as getting them fired from their job. Some of the comments I've seen are absolutely vile and (ironically?) I'm sure their toxic behaviour and equating criticism of Israeli genocide to anti-Semitism is actually causing real anti-Semitism. I think that any group of people behaving that way would attract hate.
Sorry I forgot to mention that I think when people report comments enough, that person is kind of marked by the algorithm as a spammer. Either that or using keywords which are marked as controversial and I think comment length also plays a part as my longer comments are more often marked as spam. It can be ridiculous, eg when a person made a video about the word c*not, lots of people had used it outright in the comments but when I used it in a comment my comment was flagged and removed and I was threatened with a ban, which happened immediately after I'd made the comment, which must mean that my comments there are going through a harsher automated moderation process than those of others.
Autocorrect. I meant c*nt.
oh yeah, absolutely, all of this.
'They' (And 'they' here is not just the Israel supporters, it's all the trolls in general - MAGA types, Andrew Tate types, antiabortionists, the lot) have a whole series of very smooth running tactics on how to mass-report people who they feel are doing damage to their cause, by being, like, too genuine and good and objective and shit. And yes they absolutely collude to take people down. We have seen so many witch hunts and ridiculous firings in the first few months. And it's really not just the people who get the knife - it's also literally everyone else, seeing it happen and suddenly running their hand protectively over their own neck thinking 'man I sure don't want THAT to be me.....'
You arrest a few journalists and other journalists go more quiet. You fire a few protesters and people think twice about being seen at protests. You destroy the accounts of a few content creators, or doxx them, make them feel unsafe, whatever, and suddenly fewer people are speaking up. It's as sinister as it is familiar.
I think the same thing happened to me because the number of my posts that got flagged and taken down is just ridiculous. I only posted a tiny part here, I didn't even save most of them, and out of the ones I saved there are lots more that are just not that fun to read but basically in the same vein, or on totally unrelated subjects. I personally can't find a single word in these that goes against any sort of community guideline imaginable. But that's what you get when there is a censorship mechanism and it decides you're the bad guy.
Yes, and the process is not transparent, and there's no way to appeal... A lot of the time the comments I have removed have nothing to do with anything controversial. There are no keywords which could be offensive. Maybe my comments are just longer than average. It's wrong to censor people in an unfair way like this and give them no chance to fight the 'dark' policy. It makes me not want to bother interacting and I think that's their endgame. They're creating echo chambers.
Oh yeah it’s exactly what they want, for us to go away. I’ve had a lot of totally random comments blocked too. About exercising, or just giving someone encouragement, totally random stuff.