I found this exceptionally worded and well-written but also rather beside the point. The more salient debate is over social sanctions, not legal proscription. It's more about discourse norms than speech laws.
I found this exceptionally worded and well-written but also rather beside the point. The more salient debate is over social sanctions, not legal proscription. It's more about discourse norms than speech laws.
I agree with Berny Belvedere that my post was mainly about the violation free speech by governments rather than by private entities and thus off-topic. I did say, however, if one wants to object to someone else's expression in some non-physically-aggressive manner (in the libertarian sense) then they are welcome to do so on the principle of equal liberty. This takes us closer to the point at issue, because we now see that objections to so-called 'hate speech' or 'misinformation' have started to use methods that can get persons fired, contracts cancelled, homes picketed by demonstrators and worse, sometimes approaching physical force.
I see no way to persuade those who use such tactics to gain control of the public narrative to stop doing so as long as such tactics continue to work. Thus, the only alternative is to apply the principle of equal liberty and use the same tactics -- plus creative new ones -- in response. It's pointless to whine about the breakdown of what Aristotle called "civic friendship".* If those with a liberal or libertarian or conservative turn of mind wanted to prevent that breakdown they would not have allowed the capture of their culture by the forces of collectivism, the dead end of which is, of course, genetic collectivism, including the so-called 'identity politics' in which former unique individuals disappear into whatever group the arbiters of such 'identities' wish to place them.
I understand that this is a rear guard action. The racial/sexual collectivists have a shockingly great majority of the power in academia, including K-12; media, including newspapers, television, Hollywood, cable, and internet social media; and even in so-called Big Tech, where dissenting voices can be silenced by being deprived of the business services modern communications require.
I see no way for American individualism to win against these odd except by having all the leaders in the anti-collectivist camp unite in a coordinated online movement to create a Civic Friendship Internet, where free expression will not be punished. The only way to achieve this that I can see is to (1) insure that none of the technical essentials for free expression are held as monopolies of the collectivists and (2) getting rid of centralized moderation of public forums and establishing user-driven moderation protocols, so that we will see sponsors of, for example, Pete's No-Porn-No-Spam-All-Else-Goes Protocol, Mona's Teen-Safe-Protocol, the Progressive-Safe-Space Protocol and so on. Some might couple with Subscribe/Ads/No-Ads protocols -- for example, where the user content is basically the whole content. Protocol sponsors could be amateurs, businesses in the editing business, of course, even user-guided robots, but they must not be 'cancellable' by any member of the Civic Friendship Internet, so that the users have the choice of their preferred protocol (if offered by the protocol sponsor) on any Civic Friendship website they visit. That is, for one kind of site I may want one type of editorial protocol, while on another, another. The editorial protocols would adapt to changing situations and evolve on the survival of the popular principle.
Such a Civic Friendship regime would actually _deserve_ the protection of Section 230: the website can arrange their interface in any way they like, post anything they like as a publisher under the same rules as print, but would have neither the burden nor the opportunity to 'censor' anyone. It would be just like the original dream that inspired Internet pioneers.
Meanwhile, for those who are not interested in civic friendship but in political power obtained by crushing dissent, We will have to retaliate in creative ways, including 'fund me' type sites for the purpose of 'insuring' free expression cannot be destroyed by economic tactics and for the character assassination attempts respond with appropriate portions of bile and ridicule.
P.P.S. I'm going to subscribe to Arc Digital if anyone likes any of my proposals enough to do something with them, I will give them money, at least, and perhaps I can do more.
P.P.P.S As for 'socially acceptable' line drawing this depends entirely on the social context. I may elaborate later.
Lots of interesting thoughts. I don't quite understand exactly what you're proposing. But feel free to reach out to me at any time: berny@arcdigital.media
I found this exceptionally worded and well-written but also rather beside the point. The more salient debate is over social sanctions, not legal proscription. It's more about discourse norms than speech laws.
I agree with Berny Belvedere that my post was mainly about the violation free speech by governments rather than by private entities and thus off-topic. I did say, however, if one wants to object to someone else's expression in some non-physically-aggressive manner (in the libertarian sense) then they are welcome to do so on the principle of equal liberty. This takes us closer to the point at issue, because we now see that objections to so-called 'hate speech' or 'misinformation' have started to use methods that can get persons fired, contracts cancelled, homes picketed by demonstrators and worse, sometimes approaching physical force.
I see no way to persuade those who use such tactics to gain control of the public narrative to stop doing so as long as such tactics continue to work. Thus, the only alternative is to apply the principle of equal liberty and use the same tactics -- plus creative new ones -- in response. It's pointless to whine about the breakdown of what Aristotle called "civic friendship".* If those with a liberal or libertarian or conservative turn of mind wanted to prevent that breakdown they would not have allowed the capture of their culture by the forces of collectivism, the dead end of which is, of course, genetic collectivism, including the so-called 'identity politics' in which former unique individuals disappear into whatever group the arbiters of such 'identities' wish to place them.
I understand that this is a rear guard action. The racial/sexual collectivists have a shockingly great majority of the power in academia, including K-12; media, including newspapers, television, Hollywood, cable, and internet social media; and even in so-called Big Tech, where dissenting voices can be silenced by being deprived of the business services modern communications require.
I see no way for American individualism to win against these odd except by having all the leaders in the anti-collectivist camp unite in a coordinated online movement to create a Civic Friendship Internet, where free expression will not be punished. The only way to achieve this that I can see is to (1) insure that none of the technical essentials for free expression are held as monopolies of the collectivists and (2) getting rid of centralized moderation of public forums and establishing user-driven moderation protocols, so that we will see sponsors of, for example, Pete's No-Porn-No-Spam-All-Else-Goes Protocol, Mona's Teen-Safe-Protocol, the Progressive-Safe-Space Protocol and so on. Some might couple with Subscribe/Ads/No-Ads protocols -- for example, where the user content is basically the whole content. Protocol sponsors could be amateurs, businesses in the editing business, of course, even user-guided robots, but they must not be 'cancellable' by any member of the Civic Friendship Internet, so that the users have the choice of their preferred protocol (if offered by the protocol sponsor) on any Civic Friendship website they visit. That is, for one kind of site I may want one type of editorial protocol, while on another, another. The editorial protocols would adapt to changing situations and evolve on the survival of the popular principle.
Such a Civic Friendship regime would actually _deserve_ the protection of Section 230: the website can arrange their interface in any way they like, post anything they like as a publisher under the same rules as print, but would have neither the burden nor the opportunity to 'censor' anyone. It would be just like the original dream that inspired Internet pioneers.
Meanwhile, for those who are not interested in civic friendship but in political power obtained by crushing dissent, We will have to retaliate in creative ways, including 'fund me' type sites for the purpose of 'insuring' free expression cannot be destroyed by economic tactics and for the character assassination attempts respond with appropriate portions of bile and ridicule.
--Ralph
*P.S. For "Aristotle's on Civic Friendship" see: https://orb.binghamton.edu/sagp/197/
P.P.S. I'm going to subscribe to Arc Digital if anyone likes any of my proposals enough to do something with them, I will give them money, at least, and perhaps I can do more.
P.P.P.S As for 'socially acceptable' line drawing this depends entirely on the social context. I may elaborate later.
Lots of interesting thoughts. I don't quite understand exactly what you're proposing. But feel free to reach out to me at any time: berny@arcdigital.media