The Freedom of Speech Thread

[Berkut]

I feel like we (on both left and right) have lost the ability to distinguish between attacking the argument someone has made, and attacking the person who made the argument.

...

Finally, there are limits.  Some ideas are so odious that they need not be tolerated.  Typical exceptions are for direct calls to incite violence, or direct calls to incite hatred.  But these need to be narrowly drawn.  "Trans people need to be raped and murdered" has no place in any kind of public discourse....

I generally agree with your analysis. The challenge is that the place where that line is drawn - and who decides where it is drawn - is hotly contested.

I think that is too simplistic.  At least in Canadian law  there are clear legal boundaries in both our criminal and human right laws which would prevent that kind of speech.

The more interesting question is what we are discussing in this thread.  Does freedom of expression include protection from consequences of that speech in the private sphere.  And the related issue of whether protests against certain speech should occur on university campuses.

Another strawman. Nobody in this or any other thread on Languish that I can recall has argued that "freedom of expression includes protection from the consequences of that speech in the private sphere".

Could you just review in your head what you type and think "I am saying what other people think - is there anyone who would agree with my characterization of their position" before you post it?

[OttoVonBismarck]

Free speech is an important principle that should apply broadly, not just involving government.

However, the parameters should obviously vary situationally.

Due to its monopoly on police power, its influence over basic civil freedoms and democratic government, the government's ability to curtail speech should be extremely narrowly limited to very specific extreme situations (i.e. imminent call to violence, riot incitement, fire in a crowded theater), civil offenses like defamation/libel/slander should be very narrowly constructed (i.e. American model, not the bad British model.)

I also believe institutions like schools, whether public or private, should try to allow as much free speech as is possible without it being a disruption to the process of basic education. I broadly think this should be a guiding principle even of fully private schools, albeit I don't think the government should intervene to force it to be so without some compelling hook (i.e. using the leverage of potential government funding that might accrue to a private school.)

Obviously various proceedings you cannot have untrammeled free speech--a court during court proceedings for example has to be able to keep order and quiet, as do legislative bodies and etc.

I even more broadly think that even private companies and private organizations (like private message boards like this one), should try to allow a reasonable amount of free speech. This is a lot squishier than dealing with government, but I think there are few organizations that are improved by having extreme restrictions on speech, and while this is outside of government purview, it should be a guiding principle that you generally let people speak their mind without some compelling reason to restrict it.

I also think certain special case private companies--like the operators of very large and pervasive social media networks, should potentially be looked at as "common carriers" and subject to much greater government scrutiny of how they regulate content.

[The Minsky Moment]

Whenever the issue of cancel culture in the university setting arises, my question is always how prevalent is this problem and how serious?  There seems to be lots of argument by anecdote, and using isolated anecdotes to draw broad conclusions.  One case often mentioned is Gordon Klein - the UCLA lecturer (not a professor despite news reports to the contrary) who was suspended after rejecting an email request to grade black students with leniency in the wake of the George Floyd protests.  However, my sense was that Klein got himself in hot water not because he didn't give lenient grading treatment but because he wrote a snarky and condescending email that prompted an angry response from his students. When the furore died down, he was reinstated.  The Trial of Socrates this was not.

There is an advocacy group out there tracking academic "cancellation" incidents - they claim over 200 incidents going back 12 years.

https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/New%20Documents/academic-cancellations-updated-february-18-2021.pdf

 That's not entirely insignificant, but given the size of US higher education it's not a screaming crisis either.  And the details on many are questionable.  Any incident where students send a petition or complain is deemed a "cancellation" even if there is no consequence that follows.  Also included on the list was DePaul's denial of tenure of Norman Finkelstein, which elides over the very serious issues raised about Finkelstein's scholarship.  Another example of a true cancellation was Florida Altantic's termination of James Tracy, a professor of communications and media studies who claimed that Sandy Hook was a hoax.  While this incident arguably fits the definition of a cancellation, in that case I can see the university's position.  A number of other incidents involve advocacy or defense of sexual relationships between adults and children, which is not what I think most people think about when attacking "cancel culture" and also raise obvious issues of concern for university administrators.

Bottom line is that measured by tangible negative consequences, cancellation does not seem to be a major problem at US universities.  The potentially bigger concern is whether the fear or threat of reaction is chilling speech on campuses.  This is often discussed and argued about, but hard to measure.

[Berkut]

Whenever the issue of cancel culture in the university setting arises, my question is always how prevalent is this problem and how serious?  There seems to be lots of argument by anecdote, and using isolated anecdotes to draw broad conclusions.  One case often mentioned is Gordon Klein - the UCLA lecturer (not a professor despite news reports to the contrary) who was suspended after rejecting an email request to grade black students with leniency in the wake of the George Floyd protests.  However, my sense was that Klein got himself in hot water not because he didn't give lenient grading treatment but because he wrote a snarky and condescending email that prompted an angry response from his students. When the furore died down, he was reinstated.  The Trial of Socrates this was not.

There is an advocacy group out there tracking academic "cancellation" incidents - they claim over 200 incidents going back 12 years.

https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/New%20Documents/academic-cancellations-updated-february-18-2021.pdf

 That's not entirely insignificant, but given the size of US higher education it's not a screaming crisis either.  And the details on many are questionable.  Any incident where students send a petition or complain is deemed a "cancellation" even if there is no consequence that follows.  Also included on the list was DePaul's denial of tenure of Norman Finkelstein, which elides over the very serious issues raised about Finkelstein's scholarship.  Another example of a true cancellation was Florida Altantic's termination of James Tracy, a professor of communications and media studies who claimed that Sandy Hook was a hoax.  While this incident arguably fits the definition of a cancellation, in that case I can see the university's position.  A number of other incidents involve advocacy or defense of sexual relationships between adults and children, which is not what I think most people think about when attacking "cancel culture" and also raise obvious issues of concern for university administrators.

Bottom line is that measured by tangible negative consequences, cancellation does not seem to be a major problem at US universities.  The potentially bigger concern is whether the fear or threat of reaction is chilling speech on campuses.  This is often discussed and argued about, but hard to measure.

I think the knock on effect is much more relevant then the specifics of universities cancelling anyone.

The universities, to me, are more a canary in the coal mine, since they should be the *last* place we should tolerate the mob influencing speech.

As I mentioned in my "Steelman" post, I think there is an important argument to be made about how significant a problem this actually is, even outside of the particulars of the university cases.

It's hard to have that discussion however when the people you need to discuss it with just absolutely deny that there is any such thing as cancel culture to begin with, and accuse those who want to talk about it of being closed minded bigots. It's kind of amusing and ironic though...

[Malthus]

I'm not nearly as concerned with the actual content of left/right culture war stuff, as with the malevolent enemies in places like Russia and China who are deliberately stirring the culture war pot (and many others) to create division within our societies.

Freedom of expression is indeed a valuable thing. Can anything be done about malevolent state actors targeting us with disinformation and outrage trolling,  without endangering freedom of expression too much?

[The Minsky Moment]

There are 20 million students enrolled in nearly 6000 institutions in the US.  So of cours there are always going to be incidents and conflicts of every kind and nature.

I'm not denying the possibility of a "woke chill" but it's hard to speak intelligently about it absent any ability to meaningfully qualify or quantify the extent of the phenomenon.

[The Brain]

FWIW there is no way I would take part in the public debate. Being branded untouchable for opinions I hold or have expressed would be bad enough, but being so for opinions that are the complete opposite of the ones I hold or have expressed would be too unpleasant. Since people who like mob justice aren't exactly the sharpest minds they often get things completely wrong. Me not making my voice heard in society may or may not be considered a negative, but mob justice is certainly silencing voices far from the world of academia.

[crazy canuck]

You did not expect that answer because you don't listen to what I say, only what you imagine the closed minded asshole you've constructed in your head would say.

Everything depends on the resources at hand, and expression doesn't get a pass.

There are only so many slots for speakers, so of course someone has to decide who gets to speak at some finite place like a University. How is this a surprise?

 I away your analysis of what I DID say, rather then your shock that I didn't line up with the 4,567 strawmen you constructed for me

You did say you would make the decision based on resources.  Rather than continuing to name call, try to explain your position.

No I said that because resources are limited, someone HAS to make decisions on how to allocate those resources.

That is simply true - it is not a "position".

Nor did I say I would make a decision based on resources - I clearly laid out exactly how I would make my decision, and you fucking ignored it, and instead, constructed yet another fucking strawman that I would "make the decision based on resources".

Finite resources mean a decision MUST be made. It says nothing about how you will make that decision.

I don't understand the distinction you are making.  How do you reconcile a commitment to freedom of expression with a decision to stop a student group from holding hosting a speaker based on principle of limited resource allocation?  What resources are you thinking about here?  It is the student group hosting the speaker, not the university.

[crazy canuck]

I feel like we (on both left and right) have lost the ability to distinguish between attacking the argument someone has made, and attacking the person who made the argument.

...

Finally, there are limits.  Some ideas are so odious that they need not be tolerated.  Typical exceptions are for direct calls to incite violence, or direct calls to incite hatred.  But these need to be narrowly drawn.  "Trans people need to be raped and murdered" has no place in any kind of public discourse....

I generally agree with your analysis. The challenge is that the place where that line is drawn - and who decides where it is drawn - is hotly contested.

I think that is too simplistic.  At least in Canadian law  there are clear legal boundaries in both our criminal and human right laws which would prevent that kind of speech.

The more interesting question is what we are discussing in this thread.  Does freedom of expression include protection from consequences of that speech in the private sphere.  And the related issue of whether protests against certain speech should occur on university campuses.

Another strawman. Nobody in this or any other thread on Languish that I can recall has argued that "freedom of expression includes protection from the consequences of that speech in the private sphere".

Could you just review in your head what you type and think "I am saying what other people think - is there anyone who would agree with my characterization of their position" before you post it?

Berkut, you have argued strenuously against cancelling someone - is that not a consequence of what people have said.  I don't understand the distinction you are attempting to make.

[crazy canuck]

I'm not nearly as concerned with the actual content of left/right culture war stuff, as with the malevolent enemies in places like Russia and China who are deliberately stirring the culture war pot (and many others) to create division within our societies.

Freedom of expression is indeed a valuable thing. Can anything be done about malevolent state actors targeting us with disinformation and outrage trolling,  without endangering freedom of expression too much?

Its a good question.  I have wondered about the Liberal Democratic commitment to Freedom of Expression given what happens on social media platforms.  But I keep coming back to the importance of openly criticizing those ideas and driving them out. That is how it is supposed to work.  One of the problems we have is freedom expression has come to be understood in some circles as the right to say whatever one wishes and not suffer consequences of expressing those ideas.  That is where I think we have gone wrong and what needs to be fixed in order to vigorously address the issue you have identified.

[Berkut]

There is nobody arguing that "  the right to say whatever one wishes and not suffer consequences of expressing those ideas. "

Nobody. You can tell because nobody has said that, and everytime you repeat it, nobody says "Yep, that is definitely what I think"

[OttoVonBismarck]

I'm probably among the more conservative posters on these boards, and frankly I think cancel culture does not meaningfully exist. It describes a very uncommon phenomenon whose entire existence has been memed into culture primarily by right wing media, but also by some of the weird "libertarian" types like Bill Maher and Joe Rogan, who have both cried about "political correctness" for decades. It just isn't a significant thing in real life. It is, unfortunately, a significant "topic" because it affects our politics, and it affects our politics because a right wing propaganda effort causes it to do so.

I see no obvious good answer to that--if you engage with the propaganda as valid, you're already ceding ground since the propaganda is designed to hurt one side of the political aisle. If you reject it as propaganda, you also cede ground because to people that don't understand it is propaganda, it just seems like you're refusing to engage in the issue.

The reality is there is probably no good answer other than to promote Democratic party propaganda and ignore Republican propaganda, and let the dice fall where they may--as it is now the GOP has a very professional propaganda arm backed by many individual billionaires. The left's efforts are extremely weak on this front by comparison, and probably needs to be improved and the Dem leadership should be working with left leaning billionaires to build up partisan "information" outlets to counteract things like Breitbart, GatewayPundit, DailyCaller etc. Note that traditional news media cannot fight these battles.

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally on this area around disinformation concerns this piece is worth a read:
https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/

I work in a slighty adjacent area and one of the biggest things you notice working in that area, is the number of people whoquery whether adtech or behavioural targeting or whatever else works at all, to what extent and what are the bits that work. A lot of it is really difficult to actually quantify and breakdown. So much of it sits within the walled gardens of Google and Facebook doing what they want - but with little to no independent verification. Publishers aren't really sure they're getting a good deal, ad agencies aren't really convinced they're getting value for money - and no-one is even sure that it really does its job of matching advertising to individuals (I think we've all experieinced the weirdness of some adverts targeted at us).

In Europe the business model is on the way to collapse because of regulations but Google and Facebook are doing everything they can to keep the entire market in their walled garden - and in the industry, from speaking to people, there is a reasonable degree of scepticism that actually the emerging alternatives might work better. Separately it is slightly mind-blowing to me that a huge chunk of two of the biggest companies in the world are fundamentally about selling advertising inventory.

In the disinformation world it's a bit like the Cambridge Analytica thing - they definitely broke the law and were wildly misusing people's personal data. There is very deep doubt over whether any of it actually worked. The reports about them are based on their marketing and sales pitches to prospective clients, but everyone who looks at what they're actually doing with data is very dubious if there's anything particularly special or effective about it as opposed to a generic adtech agency posing as master manipulators.

There is a bit of me - as the article points out - that thinks there's a bit of an echo with the Cold War era brainwashing scare. You had Madison Avenue, sociology, psychology, fear of Communism all swilling together and creating a discourse that produced The Manchurian Candidate or The Ipcress File - and prompted Western experiments with it that had very real and troubling effects. Basically I wonder if disinformation itself is disinformation - because the big beneficiaries are the platforms who sell advertising space. I mean what's a better pitch than we're so good at advertising we can even destabilise entire societies?

[Josquius]

Proving Cambridge analytica worked is a difficult task but given half the stuff you saw people beleiving around the ref it seems very likely. And when the margins are so wafer thin it made all the difference.

[Malthus]

I'm not nearly as concerned with the actual content of left/right culture war stuff, as with the malevolent enemies in places like Russia and China who are deliberately stirring the culture war pot (and many others) to create division within our societies.

Freedom of expression is indeed a valuable thing. Can anything be done about malevolent state actors targeting us with disinformation and outrage trolling,  without endangering freedom of expression too much?

Its a good question.  I have wondered about the Liberal Democratic commitment to Freedom of Expression given what happens on social media platforms.  But I keep coming back to the importance of openly criticizing those ideas and driving them out. That is how it is supposed to work.  One of the problems we have is freedom expression has come to be understood in some circles as the right to say whatever one wishes and not suffer consequences of expressing those ideas.  That is where I think we have gone wrong and what needs to be fixed in order to vigorously address the issue you have identified.

I agree that this is how it is supposed to work. In the free marketplace of ideas, bad ideas should be driven out by good ideas.

What happens, though, when a state actor pays employees to flood the marketplace of ideas with bad ideas? What if people become convinced that the marketplace of ideas is just a clearinghouse for various types of lies - to the point where they cease to care about the truth (or even to believe that anything can be an approximation of the truth?).

I was firmly in the camp of 'given time, the marketplace of ideas is self-cleansing'. That truth will win over lies. However, the events of the past few years have made me question that conclusion, and wonder if it is more an article of faith than an inevitability. Perhaps it is true in the long run, I don't know, but in the short run liars can and do win - the whole Trump saga for example - and they can inflict enormous damage on us.

Our societies have their flaws to be sure, but there are still things worth fighting for - the rule of law and freedom of expression - and there are enemies out there who clearly want to use these things against us. To an extent, they have been successful, though Putin for example has undone much of his own work in this respect recently.

The paradox is that in order to save the system that makes freedom of expression possible, it may be necessary to put some sort of controls on expression - assuming the marketplace of ideas is not truly self-correcting when under state-sponsored assault.