Ok but what if someone figured out where you lived, doxed you and got a mob of angry racists to threaten your family? Maybe it was a joke, but given the amount of extremist angry conservatives these days maybe that threat of violence is real.
Do you think that is ok? What if so many people were hate messaging you that it utterly overwhelmed your ability to even go on your favorite social network? What if you woke up one day and one of those internet users drove by your house and left a note threatening your life on your door?
These aren’t hypothetical questions, this is what awful people do when you don’t curtail hate speech (and actively support it like musk does). There are REAL WORLD violent consequences for it and if you have never felt the fear from being targeted by a mob of irrationally angry strangers that want to hurt you than you just don’t really have any meaningful perspective to talk about “free speech” like you are.
Sure some of the hypotheticals I brought up are also illegal, but there is always a throbbing tumor of bigots spewing hate speech at each other at the heart of this kind of thing that these actions grow out of. These people need to be isolated, shamed and alienated from normal social circles for their behavior or things become dangerous for real human beings. You don’t negotiate with these people, you show them the door when they start spewing hate speech.
Neither do I, which is why I support not allowing hate speech because the end goal is always violence or the threat of violence whether the people spewing it are conscious of it or not. The lame hateful racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic jokes that punch down at stereotypes are an advertisement for an ideology of hate (like a lightbulb for moths) and a test to see if that hate will be allowed to flourish in a community.
Obviously, moderation can be problematic, it isn’t easy. That is why we need many communities with their own moderators making their own judgement calls based on context what kind of behavior is acceptable and what isn’t.
Ok but what if someone figured out where you lived, doxed you and got a mob of angry racists to threaten your family? Maybe it was a joke, but given the amount of extremist angry conservatives these days maybe that threat of violence is real.
Do you think that is ok? What if so many people were hate messaging you that it utterly overwhelmed your ability to even go on your favorite social network? What if you woke up one day and one of those internet users drove by your house and left a note threatening your life on your door?
These aren’t hypothetical questions, this is what awful people do when you don’t curtail hate speech (and actively support it like musk does). There are REAL WORLD violent consequences for it and if you have never felt the fear from being targeted by a mob of irrationally angry strangers that want to hurt you than you just don’t really have any meaningful perspective to talk about “free speech” like you are.
Sure some of the hypotheticals I brought up are also illegal, but there is always a throbbing tumor of bigots spewing hate speech at each other at the heart of this kind of thing that these actions grow out of. These people need to be isolated, shamed and alienated from normal social circles for their behavior or things become dangerous for real human beings. You don’t negotiate with these people, you show them the door when they start spewing hate speech.
No, that’s where I draw the line. I don’t believe inciting violence should be covered under free speech.
Neither do I, which is why I support not allowing hate speech because the end goal is always violence or the threat of violence whether the people spewing it are conscious of it or not. The lame hateful racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic jokes that punch down at stereotypes are an advertisement for an ideology of hate (like a lightbulb for moths) and a test to see if that hate will be allowed to flourish in a community.
Obviously, moderation can be problematic, it isn’t easy. That is why we need many communities with their own moderators making their own judgement calls based on context what kind of behavior is acceptable and what isn’t.
I disagree that the end goal is always violence. And I think what constitutes “hate speech” is subjective and cannot be fairly enforced.
Power is the end goal. Violence will be used when no more power can be obtained by legal and nonviolent means.