JK Rowling reveals she is survivor of domestic abuse and sexual assault

[DGuller]

The point is that hindrance can be composed entirely of consequences.  And technically in Soviet Union it wasn't illegal to criticize Stalin if you were a party member, it's just that other freedoms the party members had have effectively nullified the freedom of speech.

That's the larger point here.  There are a lot of freedoms around, not all of them compatible with each other.  There can't exist both freedom of speech and freedom to hire a hitman to whack someone that insulted you.  For one to exist the other has to go, de jure or de facto.  Same applies to a freedom of speech and a freedom to cancel someone.

[Zoupa]

The point is that hindrance can be composed entirely of consequences.  And technically in Soviet Union it wasn't illegal to criticize Stalin if you were a party member, it's just that other freedoms the party members had have effectively nullified the freedom of speech.

That's the larger point here.  There are a lot of freedoms around, not all of them compatible with each other.  There can't exist both freedom of speech and freedom to hire a hitman to whack someone that insulted you.  For one to exist the other has to go, de jure or de facto.  Same applies to a freedom of speech and a freedom to cancel someone.

Well then using your definition no one has ever had or ever will have freedom of speech. Any social interaction has consequences.

[Valmy]

The point is that hindrance can be composed entirely of consequences.  And technically in Soviet Union it wasn't illegal to criticize Stalin if you were a party member, it's just that other freedoms the party members had have effectively nullified the freedom of speech.

That's the larger point here.  There are a lot of freedoms around, not all of them compatible with each other.  There can't exist both freedom of speech and freedom to hire a hitman to whack someone that insulted you.  For one to exist the other has to go, de jure or de facto.  Same applies to a freedom of speech and a freedom to cancel someone.

Well then using your definition no one has ever had or ever will have freedom of speech. Any social interaction has consequences.

I don't think either of you are wrong here. It is a balance.

I do not think it is as simple as: well we didn't stop you from speaking out beforehand so you have freedom of speech.

[Solmyr]

Not to mention that checking what you say before you say it is actually good practice. We all do it in all sorts of social situations.

[Oexmelin]

The blind spot of "Freedom of speech" is the issue of power. To be fair, it's not entirely a blind spot: freedom of speech is usually defined in relations to one very specific power, that of the state. It is perfectly fine with the inequality of power being expressed in the rest of society, with certain people having power to censor others, and with certain people having a lot more power to broadcast their ideas than others.

That is what critics want to bring attention to. People who want others to suffer consequences for their speech do so with the understanding that, for some individuals and some groups, the consequences were infinitely less than for others. Some speech uttered by Black people cost them their lives, while the same, in the same context, by white people, did not.

I am obviously sympathetic to that aim, if only because it brings attention to the tacit imbalance of power embedded in a principle that people have been taught to see as "neutral". But what *should* be the consequences of bad speech? That's the part that is usually left unsaid, and I am uncomfortable with this blind spot. Because "social consequences" of speech is not a unequivocally positive things. It can lead to ostracism, isolation, and violence. It's dangerous to replace something that is blind to imbalance of power, with something that is agnostic towards its consequences, or the mechanisms of its enforcement. In promoting the "social consequences of speech", many are reinforcing either the power of private entities (employers firing employees at will), of institutions (university hierarchies deciding for the good of all), or of group momentum. "Social consequences of speech" may work well where there is a healthy sense of society, and where it also includes strong mechanisms of protection, and reintegration. Villagers cast out some people who were deemed unfit for living within the community; but they also had a high threshold for morons, because a) they usually were related to you, and b) you just couldn't survive if you cast out everyone. I am not sure it is our moment, right now, and thus, I think it feeds more into the neoliberal moment than what its promoters have realized.

[DGuller]

The point is that hindrance can be composed entirely of consequences.  And technically in Soviet Union it wasn't illegal to criticize Stalin if you were a party member, it's just that other freedoms the party members had have effectively nullified the freedom of speech.

That's the larger point here.  There are a lot of freedoms around, not all of them compatible with each other.  There can't exist both freedom of speech and freedom to hire a hitman to whack someone that insulted you.  For one to exist the other has to go, de jure or de facto.  Same applies to a freedom of speech and a freedom to cancel someone.

Well then using your definition no one has ever had or ever will have freedom of speech. Any social interaction has consequences.

Hence why I used "prohibitive" in front of consequences, even though grumbler finds that vague.  The set of possible freedoms that exist is much larger than any set of freedoms that can all co-exist at the same time in society, hence why we choose which freedoms we have and which we don't, and which freedoms need to have a limit placed on them in order for other conflicting freedoms to not be eliminated in practice.  I argue that a freedom of speech cannot exist with the freedom to cancel without one of them getting the short end of the stick.

[Razgovory]

The freedom to cancel is freedom speech.  Your argument isn't that freedom of speech can't survive while there are prohibitive consequences, your argument boils down to "freedom of speech is incoherent."

[DGuller]

The blind spot of "Freedom of speech" is the issue of power. To be fair, it's not entirely a blind spot: freedom of speech is usually defined in relations to one very specific power, that of the state. It is perfectly fine with the inequality of power being expressed in the rest of society, with certain people having power to censor others, and with certain people having a lot more power to broadcast their ideas than others.

That is what critics want to bring attention to. People who want others to suffer consequences for their speech do so with the understanding that, for some individuals and some groups, the consequences were infinitely less than for others. Some speech uttered by Black people cost them their lives, while the same, in the same context, by white people, did not.

I am obviously sympathetic to that aim, if only because it brings attention to the tacit imbalance of power embedded in a principle that people have been taught to see as "neutral". But what *should* be the consequences of bad speech? That's the part that is usually left unsaid, and I am uncomfortable with this blind spot. Because "social consequences" of speech is not a unequivocally positive things. It can lead to ostracism, isolation, and violence. It's dangerous to replace something that is blind to imbalance of power, with something that is agnostic towards its consequences, or the mechanisms of its enforcement. In promoting the "social consequences of speech", many are reinforcing either the power of private entities (employers firing employees at will), of institutions (university hierarchies deciding for the good of all), or of group momentum. "Social consequences of speech" may work well where there is a healthy sense of society, and where it also includes strong mechanisms of protection, and reintegration. Villagers cast out some people who were deemed unfit for living within the community; but they also had a high threshold for morons, because a) they usually were related to you, and b) you just couldn't survive if you cast out everyone. I am not sure it is our moment, right now, and thus, I think it feeds more into the neoliberal moment than what its promoters have realized.

Well said.  Another problem with Solmyr's point of view is that it can be applied to other things such as homosexuality, and they have been not too long ago.  Want to be gay?  Fine, you're free to be gay, but that doesn't mean that you're free from the consequences of being gay.  Our customers get weirded out by gays, sorry, you're fired. 

I think Solmyr's attitude towards freedom of speech is conditional on the "consequences" being directed against the people he disapproves of.  We didn't always live in the times when employers were tripping over each other to virtue signal, and there is no guarantee that it will be that way in the future.

[Sheilbh]

I am obviously sympathetic to that aim, if only because it brings attention to the tacit imbalance of power embedded in a principle that people have been taught to see as "neutral". But what *should* be the consequences of bad speech? That's the part that is usually left unsaid, and I am uncomfortable with this blind spot. Because "social consequences" of speech is not a unequivocally positive things. It can lead to ostracism, isolation, and violence. It's dangerous to replace something that is blind to imbalance of power, with something that is agnostic towards its consequences, or the mechanisms of its enforcement. In promoting the "social consequences of speech", many are reinforcing either the power of private entities (employers firing employees at will), of institutions (university hierarchies deciding for the good of all), or of group momentum. "Social consequences of speech" may work well where there is a healthy sense of society, and where it also includes strong mechanisms of protection, and reintegration. Villagers cast out some people who were deemed unfit for living within the community; but they also had a high threshold for morons, because a) they usually were related to you, and b) you just couldn't survive if you cast out everyone. I am not sure it is our moment, right now, and thus, I think it feeds more into the neoliberal moment than what its promoters have realized.

I agree with this and in terms of its opponents especially, I'm always very unclear on what "cancelling" means - what is the consequence.

But this also links to a question of what free speech is in an age of social media platforms and what role they play in it. Because if we imagine a past when people had freedom of speech they also had rigorous gatekeepers on the way to a mass platform, the newspapers would publish and the TV wouldn't broadcast people outside of a sort-of agreed range of views. So freedom of speech was maybe bigger in the sense of what you could say or talk about, but the audience was smaller. There'd be kooks on Speakers' Corner or you'd have to self-publish pamphlets.

The other side of that is that I think there are genuine questions of whether there's almost a right to access/use those social media platforms. It basically is the question of are they publishers or just dumb pipes - closer to the NYT or the telephone network (and this is an argument the tech companies haven't answered themselves because their revenue depends on them reading what we do, their regulatory/liability safety depends on them just being a dumb pipe).

And in my head that is the clearest sense of cancelling someone - it's trying to get the alt-right/anti-semites/racists off Twitter, YouTube etc. We've seen the impact it has on someone like Yiannopoulos when his Twitter platform's gone.

[Zoupa]

The point is that hindrance can be composed entirely of consequences.  And technically in Soviet Union it wasn't illegal to criticize Stalin if you were a party member, it's just that other freedoms the party members had have effectively nullified the freedom of speech.

That's the larger point here.  There are a lot of freedoms around, not all of them compatible with each other.  There can't exist both freedom of speech and freedom to hire a hitman to whack someone that insulted you.  For one to exist the other has to go, de jure or de facto.  Same applies to a freedom of speech and a freedom to cancel someone.

Well then using your definition no one has ever had or ever will have freedom of speech. Any social interaction has consequences.

Hence why I used "prohibitive" in front of consequences, even though grumbler finds that vague.  The set of possible freedoms that exist is much larger than any set of freedoms that can all co-exist at the same time in society, hence why we choose which freedoms we have and which we don't, and which freedoms need to have a limit placed on them in order for other conflicting freedoms to not be eliminated in practice.  I argue that a freedom of speech cannot exist with the freedom to cancel without one of them getting the short end of the stick.

I mean, yeah, sure. Not sure what the point of your line of thought is. We should call it differently?

[grumbler]

Hence why I used "prohibitive" in front of consequences, even though grumbler finds that vague.

I find it a circular argument.  "Prohibitive things prohibit things" isn't an argument.

[viper37]

I have no idea what Viper and Raz are actually talking about since their conversation is entirely in the passive aggressive voice 

Raz believes Quebec nationalists like me are sending english speakers and immigrants to work camps in the North and as such feels like he should help these kindred souls to break their chains

No, I just want to protect classes of people you don't like.

So you want to protect terrorists and neo-nazi scums?  good.  You have a future waiting for you at the end of law school.

[viper37]

The freedom to cancel is freedom speech.  Your argument isn't that freedom of speech can't survive while there are prohibitive consequences, your argument boils down to "freedom of speech is incoherent."

like planting a fire cross in front of your new neighbours to welcome them in town.  It's freedom of expression.

[Zoupa]

A short story in 3 slides on the consequences of your actions:

[Valmy]

Assault is illegal so not really applicable to this discussion.

Though I appreciate the imagery