The admin of sh.itjust.works has been approached but as of yet has failed to reply to concerned Lemmy users. I’m glad Beehaw admins look out for us by cutting off instances that host communities like this.
The admin of sh.itjust.works has been approached but as of yet has failed to reply to concerned Lemmy users. I’m glad Beehaw admins look out for us by cutting off instances that host communities like this.
loudest free speech proponents are 100% of the time bad faith actors who want to spread alternative facts type shit
eventually they turn into communities like voat or /convervative where dissent is banned/soft banned, or they defend shit such as /jailbait or antivax
I don’t remember which comedian, but one made a joke a while back that has resonated as absolute truth with me. People only use “free speech” as a defense when they’re trying to say shitty things.
@iAmTheTot *Things that the mainstream perceives as shitty. Imagine if slaves were still illegal, and anyone campaigning for their abolishment was not allowed to speak on social media. See why you need free speech now?
And you might say ‘That’s different, slavery is bad and advocating for its abolishment is good, but advocating for Donald Trump is bad’, but that is the point.
‘I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’
@Jeze3D @Digital_Eclipse @50gp
wow, you’re telling me that if you just make up a world where things are different, things might need to be different? enlightening stuff, thank you. a great argument for unfettered freedom of speech here.
Most of the time people bring up “free speech”, its when free speech isn’t even being threatened: they’re just being told their opinions are bad or people don’t want them to get paid for expressing those bad opinions. If your defense of your statements is focused on the free speech aspect, its because you don’t have a reasonable justification. Those who campaigned against slavery defended their positions with arguments about why slavery is bad instead of saying slavery should be abolished otherwise you’re violating my free speech.
This is where you misunderstood. The problem here isn’t slavery is bad and advocating against it is good and how that compares with the_donald. It’s that in the US, many countries in the EU, Australia, and New Zealand*, getting arrested or harmed by the government simply for speaking isn’t something to worry about. So, the people who use “free speech” to hide behind are, almost by default, bad actors. Even if you count mainstream (the citizens), no one is trying to harm the person speaking. In this case here it is also the opposite. What these racist fkers say (and do) can certainly hurt and harm other people, and they are doing everything they can so they don’t have to be responsible for their own speech. Hence, the “free speech”. It’s a similar tactic to opposers blending into a group of protestors and trying to sabotage by staging violence.
Now, if it’s another country where free speech is not where it should be. I’ll use my own country and it’s outdated and stupid lese majeste law as an example. Free speech here isn’t completely polluted by those bad actors yet because it still holds a very real value to combat tyranny. So, what I’m saying is this “free speech” problem in the US is a first world country problem, which should not be confuse with what free speech is about in more oppressive regimes.
People already heard what they had to say long ago, and it’s not welcomed. At this stage it’s about not letting them run all over everyone else. It’s not as if they have anything different to say from before. The answer is still the same, their racism is bad, their anti-science believes are bad, their disinformation is bad, their actions toward the LGBTQ+ communities are unacceptable etc. What else is there to listen to?
*Purposely left out Canada here.
I couldn’t disagree more. The ACLU are the biggest defenders of free speech in the world. Opponents of free speech are far more dangerous than advocating for free speech.
Downvoted for supporting free speech and the ACLU. Tell me again who are the extremists? Because fuck a Nazi but they aren’t the ones trying to silence discussion in this thread. YOU ARE.
there’s a neverending sea of guys like you who personify this panel, huh
There’s a never ending sea of people like you who just make assumptions about others. You know fucking nothing about me and have already dismissed my position in favor of free speech because you’re so incredibly biased and not open to conversation. It’s not surprising that someone so opposed to any opinions contrary to their narrative is opposed to free speech.
it is a bit wild to get indignant about me immediately writing you off as Yet Another Annoying, Probably White, Probably Cis-Het Man who doesn’t understand why the minorities and transes are so uppity when you literally opened with “Opponents of free speech are far more dangerous than advocating for free speech.” you do realize how that comes off on an instance with a ton of minorities and LGBTQ+ people who are currently having that freedom of speech used to advocate for things up to and including their systematic murder, correct?
I oppose your reactionary, thoughtless response. You think that attempts to silence them is righteous. I think you’re every bit as misled and confused as they are.
And fuck you for your assumptions about my race and gender as if they’re at all relevant to the support of free speech.
You’re just like those people you despise. You make ignorant assumptions, assume righteousness, and refuse to have open discussion. You’re using the EXACT SAME in-group out-group dynamics that are toxic as fuck.
When you find yourself in opposition to the positions held by the ACLU, you’re probably fucking wrong.
okay so no, i guess you don’t get how this comes off. i’m not even going to dignify your false equivalencies or appeals to the ACLU as if they are infallible or can’t be criticized for some of the positions they take (however principled). i think it’s telling that you’re screaming about how insulting it is for making “assumptions” about you–yet you in no way deviate from how a person who my assumptions apply to would respond here. to put it another way: you’re not beating the Yet Another Annoying, Probably White, Probably Cis-Het Man allegations, and this space isn’t for you. go away.
We are explicitly anti-free speech. In the context of this document on what we stand for, making a statement that “free speech is good” without addressing any of the issues we bring up isn’t operating in good faith towards us, so you should not expect us to treat you similarly.
Inaccurate: there are no slurs, guns, not even a dogwhistle on the fash side. angry rant about awful people and ‘freeze peach’ omitted
Thanks for your work on beehaw <3
Part of the issue is that the “nazi” line is being placed haphazardly. For example, this comment will be enough for some people to put me on the “nazi” side, without knowing anything about me.
if you have to pre-emptively say this, this is already a self-report. i have literally never been called a Nazi (or anything similar) for saying political things online, and neither have the vast majority of normal people with sane things to say.
Mfw self reporter doesn’t realized they self reported
i mean, the beehaw modteam has definitely been called nazis by lemmygrad
“It’s just a differing view point that I think [x] people are the root cause of all the problems in society. In fact, I daresay society would be better without them. I’m not opposed to finding ways to get rid of those people and that they just shouldn’t exist. Why can’t you be civil about me implying genocide against a group of people that have actually not caused any harm to anyone?”
To be fair, I see this said about republicans, and even center/independents, all the time. Dehumanizing is never good.
I’ve seen plenty of actual death calls for gay and trans people. A Texas pastor even talked about lining up gay people and shooting them. Or that trans people should be eradicated completely. Donald Trump himself even reposted a tweet where the first sentence was, “the only good democrat is a dead democrat”.
Can’t say I’ve seen nearly anywhere near as much about republicans. Not as many people nor prominent figures. Sure, they’re called corrupt and maybe stupid or harmful or other words but I don’t remember Biden endorsing “the only good republican is a dead republican”.
Obviously if someone says that republicans should all die, then yeah. That’s just as bad. And it does happen. But not nearly as often as minorities get targeted. You’re still right. Dehumanizing is absolutely not good and you should judge each person as an individual. But just realize there’s quite a bit of difference in scope.
That’s a pretty poor metric/goal, but you’re obviously right. But, dehumanizing large swaths of strangers is bad. That template, used by anyone, is bad. Full stop.
There’s free speech, i.e. the government cannot persecute you for what you say, and then there “free speech”, i.e. people expecting others to platform speech they find repulsive.
The alt-facts folks aren’t being silenced. They’re free to keep on talking. No one is obligated to host them and their words, however.
For eight goddamned years already we’ve been subjected to their “idea” - more like “mockery” - of Free Speech.
They’ve had their chance, and they proven over and over and over and over again that they act in bad faith, that wherever they rear their sick little heads, they are there to deliberately fill with noise, to fill with lies, to doxx, to corrode.
Nobody hates Free Speech as much as THEY do, and it’s not even close.
They are a bigoted, stubbornly-ignorant circlejerk that incites violence, that wants to watch the world burn.
These creatures delight in the suffering of others, and should be dealt with in the exact same manner as this space should deal with Al-Qaeda or NAMBLA if they decided to plant their unholy seed here.
Free Speech doesn’t figure into it anymore, not after all the shit that’s gone down for the past eight goddamned years. A line was crossed a long, long time ago.
Defederation opinions aside, free speech should be protected from a legal standpoint, and the ACLU is all about that. I’m glad you pointed this out, sorry about the downvotes - free speech is an important legal right.
To add my perspective - in terms of defederation, I’d say that is an example of a healthy boundary, which needs to be respected as well. If folks collectively want to create a personal boundary that they don’t want to discuss antivax theory in their space, that’s also cool. We set up boundaries like this all the time as communities - churches are a good example. Sure, you can legally swear in church, but the community set a boundary that they don’t want that there, and they might punt you out of the community if you disrespect it. One of the nice things about the Fediverse is that free speech is “legal”, as is you can use the software freely for whatever you want to say or discuss because of the open source license, but there are also tools like defederation to create reasonable boundaries among communities.
I hope more folks start to think of it this way as federation catches on and that this concept helps make room for nuance in discussion again. Healthy boundaries that keep you psychologically safe are good and necessary. In real life, we wouldn’t think it’s good or healthy to let someone constantly badger or berate us or talk about things we don’t want to discuss anymore. We’d say “end the conversation and walk away”. I think it’s okay to bring those boundaries to the internet too.
Biggest doesn’t mean loudest. ACLU typically embodies the quote “speak softly and carry a big stick”. Their actions often speak louder than their voices, and when they do speak its generally not shouted at the top of their lungs.