It's more that the SPAM issue shows that "speech people" don't have an actual working methodology of distinguishing 'good' speech from 'bad' speech any more than the very people they complain of being censorious.
Even "free speech absolutists" are not actually absolutists, because almost all of them have the asterisk of "within the law." The law is quite arbitrary too, with my most favorite bit of nonsense being obscenity law. The point isn't that you should allow everything all the time, it's that in general banishing ideas or expressions because they're immoral sucks, and I don't like it out of principle. There are, of course, other reasons why we limit expression, and some of those are more reasonable in nature, even if it's not always a good idea.
That all having been said... SPAM and harassment are not problems because of the expression itself, they're problems because of the disruptive patterns of behavior. The point is not that you can't say something, or have a given opinion, or etc.
I'm not really sure how this came to be everyone's ultimate catch 22 on free expression when there's more obvious caveats, such as how arbitrary the law is. But as arbitrary as the law is, it's like gofmt. Nobody's favorite, but everybody's favorite. (This is possibly one of the worst HN analogies this month, which now that I think about it, should probably be a thing someone tracks.)
"That all having been said... SPAM and harassment are not problems because of the expression itself, they're problems because of the disruptive patterns of behavior. The point is not that you can't say something, or have a given opinion, or etc."
Okay, but to ban speech on this is once again to pass judgment on its value to the contribution of the discourse or whatever avenue for communication is at issue. That's why the absolutist position is ridiculous. It isn't navigable from any perspective save for the very perspective they are already criticizing.
Also, I'm not sure why you chose the word arbitrary. That's not what arbitrary means. Obscenity laws aren't arbitrary at all, they are based in specific judgments related to a community's perception of what is and isn't acceptable. I'm not saying obscenity laws are good or especially well-reasoned, but they are clearly not arbitrary. Perhaps you meant subjective/un-objective?
What counts as "obscene" sure feels arbitrary, but fine. Subjective.
> Okay, but to ban speech on this is once again to pass judgment on its value to the contribution of the discourse or whatever avenue for communication is at issue. That's why the absolutist position is ridiculous. It isn't navigable from any perspective save for the very perspective they are already criticizing.
The key point that I've been failing to convey effectively is very simple: with SPAM, the expression itself is not the problem. If you post it 10,000 times responding to unrelated people, that is a problem.
(I realize that commercial SPAM is possibly what you are referring to here but... That sort of SPAM is more or less permitted on social media, so it's kind of neither here nor there.)
This generally follows: if you DM someone to yell racial slurs at them, you are harassing them. It's not about the platform banning naughty words, it's about banning disruptive conduct. The conduct is about the behavior, not the ideas or expressions expressed in them.
The "absolutist" position is basically never actually "absolutist". I initially thought people were interpreting it literally as a joke or something, but it seems like it has been taken pretty seriously. Yet, there are exceedingly few people who think that unprotected speech like CSAM should just be allowed. They DO exist, but I have a feeling the speech absolutists you are referring to do not. Doesn't that already make this discussion moot?
How is obscenity arbitrary? What's considered obscene is related to what's considered not acceptable in society... you are acting like people arbitrarily decided that ducks are obscene...
>The key point that I've been failing to convey effectively is very simple: with SPAM, the expression itself is not the problem. If you post it 10,000 times responding to unrelated people, that is a problem.
You have conveyed that but it is not a useful metric by which to filter things from an absolutist standpoint because you have to make a value-judgment on the worth of the speech in regards to the venue... exactly what I said before.
>This generally follows: if you DM someone to yell racial slurs at them, you are harassing them. It's not about the platform banning naughty words, it's about banning disruptive conduct. The conduct is about the behavior, not the ideas or expressions expressed in them.
It's not that its disruptive... its that its harassment which is already a civil action and likely criminal in your jurisdiction as well. If you are gonna talk about how arbitrary laws are... maybe know a law or two?
>The "absolutist" position is basically never actually "absolutist". I initially thought people were interpreting it literally as a joke or something, but it seems like it has been taken pretty seriously. Yet, there are exceedingly few people who think that unprotected speech like CSAM should just be allowed. They DO exist, but I have a feeling the speech absolutists you are referring to do not. Doesn't that already make this discussion moot?
I'm not Elon Musk saying Im buying Twitter in order to support free speech... so don't look at me! I don't have problems with content moderation because I'm not naive.
