Obvious as it may sound, people with authoritarian beliefs hiding behind free speech actually consider it as a weakness akin empathy. It allows losers like them to amplify their reach despite not being in power. They abandon their “free speech absolutist” postures the moment they think they are in power.
yes
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Yes. Technology may change, people’s awareness & recognition of the application of ethical principles may change, however that doesn’t mean the principles themselves change.
In terms of ethical reasoning, the essence of a matter may remain the same regardless of superficial guises (like technology). Adapting to a technology means applying the same general principles to novel, special cases. The principles concern rights & moral obligations people have to each other. Technology isn’t essential or relevant: the use of technology to perform an action is irrelevant to whether that action is right or wrong. The principles themselves can be timeless, immutable, and concern only essentials necessary to evaluate actions. Thinking otherwise indicates confusion & someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
Well, you’re wrong. They’re ultimately ways of disseminating expression. Just because you think some shiny, new, whizzy bang doodad fundamentally changes everything doesn’t mean it does.
It probably indicates lack of historical perspective. These problems you think are new aren’t. People have long been complaining about lies spreading faster than truth, the public being disinformed & easily manipulated. In the previous century, the US has been through worse with disfranchisement, Jim Crow, internment camps, violent white supremacy, the red scare, McCarthyism. Yet now contagious stupidity spread through automations is an unprecedented threat unlike the contagious stupidity of the past? Large scale stupidity isn’t new. Freedom of speech was essential to anti-authoritarian, civil rights, and counterculture movements.
There’s something contradictory about trying to defend liberal society by surrendering a critical part of it.
Not really. Decentralization is part of the solution.
Some people never liked Twitter.
This reads like arguing for sake of arguing because calling out nazis as liars about their interest in free speech has got to mean abandoning freedom of speech.
We could go on and on, but this is a nice summary statement here. Thank you.
No duh insincere people claiming to advocate for free speech don’t really mean it. This isn’t exactly new or debatable: what is argued with it is debatable.
Earlier, you write about “statements nearly impossible to implement” & looking for “solutions” as if free speech needs solving. It doesn’t. Free speech is its own solution: it means free for speech you dislike and for speech to answer it. There’s nothing to solve but a lack of dedication to & endurance of free speech.
Not to be lifted out of context, “people’s awareness & recognition of” is an important part of that quote.
It doesn’t mean their application to the same circumstances changes. What changes is people’s awareness/recognition, not that it applies or how (it always applied the moment it was possible to apply). Like finally recognizing equal rights apply to women or minorities. Or that protesting topless is protected speech. Or that free speech applies to communication over new technologies.
If you got that, though, then it’s a nice summary.