No Stupid Questions

Many good things have already been said, but I want to add one thing.

If you want an coherent framework that allows free speech but no hate speech, look at consequential ethics. As opposed to rule based ethics (free speech absolutionists).

I.e. we want to maximize the amount of common knowledge (flow of information or free speech) because it leads to the best results over time. If we want to maximize the flow of information, we cannot be absolutionists, because that puts us in a local minimum (failing to optimize properly). In other words, we need to restrict certain free speech to achieve maximum effective free speech.

This thread alone is showing me how divisive this question is for a lot of reasons. Just the meta-question of "what's the definition of 'free speech' in this context?" on its own makes it a shitshow to answer, let alone the rest of it.

It says in the name. 'Free', 'speech'. If I can say it, you can't silence it. Anything more restricted is not 'free'.

If that's what it means to you, then no, "hate speech", whatever it may be, is included by definition. There is no ambiguity. But that's a pretty inflexible answer that doesn't satisfy.

Well that's a stupid and useless definition of "free speech". Obviously some things that can be spoken aren't 'free speech', because they aren't constructive, they're not good-faith conversational, they are a form of harm, etc."

Sure. Under that definition, it's totally possible.

But congratulations, by restricting what 'free speech' is in any way whatsoever, you've invented an implicit judge who rules what is and is not free speech. (And, likely as well, rules what is and is not "hate speech".) That only kicks the can down the road to the question of, "Is this a fair judge?" And now we are back in the shitshow where we began, we just painted the walls a new color.

"Free speech" as Americans in particular are so worked up about is a nickname given to one of the amendments of their constitution, which is a clause about disallowing the government from punishing anyone for their speech. Any implication of rights relating to speech outside of this context is a gross misunderstanding.

If that's the definition you're going with, then yes, obviously it's possible, because that's where many of us are at right now and have been at for ages. That makes it a rather nothingburger of an answer because it dodges the implicit question of whether we should uphold "free speech" as a principle outside of this context, whatever that may mean.

The way I see it, the two answers on the extreme ends are cop-outs that don't actually help anyone, and any answer that exists in the middle just becomes politics. Is it possible to allow "free speech" and simultaneously stop "hate speech"? Yes, with adequate definitions of both. Will any solution that does so be satisfactory to a critical mass of people, randomly selected from all people? Haha no.

Others have brought up the inherent tension in the idea, but there are some potential avenues that try to avoid the pitfalls of the issue. For example, distributed moderation, where you subscribe to other users' moderation actions, allows anyone to post something while also allowing anyone to ignore them based on the moderation actions of those that they trust. If you combine this with global moderation of outright illegal content and mandatory tagging of NSFW/NSFL posts, which are generally considered to be necessary or at least understandable restrictions, then you have a somewhat workable system. You could argue that a platform that allows community moderators to curate their own communities also allows free speech and blocks hate speech, but that only works if the mods are always fair, which... yeah, no lol

Free speech as in, the freedom to express valid political speech and criticize the current government? Sure. Easy.

Free speech as in, the ability to say whatever the hell you want, including threatening, harassing, or inciting hatred and genocide against people? No. No you cannot.

Yes. There is no contradiction. Freedom or speech is the freedom to discuss or criticise as part of a discussion, in particular the freedom to criticize those in power without the fear of repercussion. Discuss sensitive topics to all your hearts desire. Hate speech does not intend to discuss anything. Hate speech is there to target, to threaten, to belittle, to dehumanise, to attack. Hate speech is violence.

Edit; As usual with this topic "free speech absolutists" emerge, often accompanied by elaborate use of language and a thesaurus. And as usual they are not really into the entire "free speech" as in "freedom of discussion", but rather "freedom of consequences" for themselves. Well boo hoo, ain't that a pearl clutching shame of a slippery slope to the strawman of "who are the real Nazis" when not supporting your freedom of unadulterated hatred to run free into the world.

Look into the of Paradox of Tolerance.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Freedom is always relative. No one has absolute freedom. No matter how much I want to go without sleep, I can't do that. No matter how much I don't like gravity, it limits me (or liberates me, depending on my view). I have the freedom to jump off a highrise, but will that freedom actually do me good? Absolute freedom is not necessarily a good thing as it can harm myself and others.

Therefore free speech doesn't mean I can say whatever I want. It means that I have the right to express my opinions publicly. But there must be restrictions to balance the right to free speech with the need to protect individuals and society from harm (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech).

Edit: formatting

Depends on what you mean by "free speech". If you mean absolute free speech in the sense that all voices are present and heard, then no, because it blocks out the hateful voices. But you can't have that while allowing for hate speech either because hate speech silences the voices of its target. So no such thing can exist. If you want a platform with "free speech", you need to decide who gets the freedom and how much of it. There has to be a limit somewhere, whether it's explicitly set or not.

Yes, free speech doesn't mean necessarily free speech absolutism

It depends on how much of an absolutist you want to be. No government allows absolute freedom of speech. Libel, slander, and incitement of violence are all forms of speech that are illegal in basically every country. If your platform refuses to remove these forms of speech, you would be protecting what is generally not considered to be free speech, and it's possible you could even be held legally liable for allowing that kind of speech to spread on your platform.

If you decide not to be a free speech absolutist, and instead define free speech as legal speech, then things get complicated. In the U.S., the Supreme Court has held multiple times that hate speech is protected under the First Amendment, so censoring hate speech would mean your platform wasn't allowing all forms of, "free speech." However, the U.S. has much broader protections on speech than most Western countries, and hate speech is illegal in much of Europe.

So, TL:DR; free speech is a sliding scale, and many countries wouldn't consider hate speech to be protected form of speech. By those standards, you could have a platform that censors hate speech but still maintains what is considered free speech. However, by other countries' standards, you would be censoring legal speech.

The best way to think about this is https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moderation-is-different-from-censorship

Lots of places already exclude hate speech from free speech, for an example I am familiar with (because I live there), Australia has a right to freedom of expression and opinion but does not protect speech that incites discrimination, among other things. As far as I'm concerned that is still a right to free speech, not the least because hate speech inherently limits the voice of its victims.

No

No, because free speech includes all speech. Even the speech we disagree with.

We don't technically have free speech in the US either. You can't make death threats or shout "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater.

It will probably never be free speech happening. It's always been free speech with exceptions.

I think one measure of society is how strictly it imposes some kind of penalty for people that use speech that crosses those boundaries. No one should get away with racist comments and not be penalized in some way. Not necessarily legal penalties, I mean including smaller stuff, like limiting the pool of potential friends. There's a lot of range with these.

Another measure would have to do with what the penalties even are.

I think to achieve that you'll have to redefine the upvote/downvote system. Currently upvoting and downvoting is synonymous with "I agree" or "I disagree", but what it should represent, is whether a contribution adds or subtracts value from the conversation.
This way if somebody wants to troll their contribution will be vanquished.
Further more, hate speech is usually backed by topics that are indeed worthy of discussion, but are often ill-expressed and prevent any for of civil discussion.

First you need to define free speech.

Let’s use Call of duty as an example. People love to think of MW2 lobbies as free speech. Male Gamers used their “free speech” to make any women feel unwelcome the minute they spoke. White Gamers listening for any signs of non-whiteness to ridicule. Was this free speech? Or just a group imposing its views on everyone who stood out on the platform? Activision just wants to sell as many copies as possible. So those Gamers get the boot, now those women and minorities feel the freedom to play and speak again.

If the speech is used as a battering ram to relentlessly berate, shame, silence, and enforce groupthink, then there is a chilling effect on the more truly free speech of others.

Using this logic the only way to have a truly free speech platform is to keep these mobs in check, and remove or limit their hate speech.

In theory.

In practice it would be very hard and you would require very rigorous definitions of what constitutes hate speech that would have to carefully examined on a case to case basis. So basically you're building a small legal system.

That's impossible to do with volunteer moderators working for free.

Short answer: no. But one should define terms, especially with legal implications.

"Hate Speech" always sounded a bit Orwellian to me. Just like "Homeland Security". People should be allowed to speak about what they hate, even if it's bigoted, racist, sexist, etc. if free thought and inquiry are valuable human rights.

In general, I believe the jurisprudence of free speech in our country (USA) essentially says beyond, libel, slander, inciting violence, or sedition, the government can't imprison you for expression or forcibly silence you in a public forum.

Private organizations and companies can regulate speech within their domains and property to the extent that they don't violate other laws or rights of other parties within and without their said domains and property.

I think that's pretty fair.

No. Absolute free speech means allowing people say whatever they like and that means anything. You can spam somebody with messages telling them to kill themselves. You can put a loudspeaker in front of somebody's house and play a message on loop telling them to kill themselves. You can openly call for somebody to kill another person and not get in trouble for enticing a murder. You can shout down anybody you like and tell them to shut up or threaten them, all you have to do is be louder and look like you have the means to kill them in order to intimidate. And that will all be fine because if someone tries to stop you from expressing your opinion, they will be infringing on your right to absolute free speech.

It does however create a paradox: if someone uses their free speech to infringe on somebody else's free speech, what can be done? You can't tell the person infringing to stop because that would infringe on their free speech. After all, they have a right to absolute free speech, don't they? So, if you say "your right to free speech ends where the right of somebody else's begins" then it's not absolute anymore.

It also opens a can of worms as to what counts as expressing free speech and what counts as suppressing it. Does blocking somebody on a platform infringe on their right? Does muting? If the rule is "right to speak, but no right to be heard", what counts as speech? Does typing and hitting send count as free speech? Well, I could give you an app with a textbox and a send button, disconnect you from the internet, and you could write everything you want, hit send and it never leaves your computer but you did express yourself, didn't you? Or maybe the sounds coming out of your mouth count as speech / expression ? Well, I could gag you, you can make sounds and that's speech, right?

So no. I don't believe absolute free speech can exist.