<story><title>Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive</title><url>https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-06-19/protests-free-speech-first-amendment</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TuringTest</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; how can we share out most wonderful and beautiful ideas with each other&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to create channels with limited audiences, where you can set an expectation of which ideas are acceptable and which are not.*&lt;p&gt;It always has been, but the the arrival of new communication methods has disrupted the traditional channels, and now every idea is propagated to a much larger and looser audience, which aren&amp;#x27;t aware or don&amp;#x27;t share the expectations of the sender.&lt;p&gt;We need to rebuild the architecture of communication channels around this principle of limited audiences sharing a common understanding, and reshape the current &amp;quot;free&amp;quot; massive communication tools so that they respect this principle instead of exploiting the benefits of popularising aggressive messages for their shock value.&lt;p&gt;This compartmentalisation of channels would do much more for freedom of expression than the current &amp;quot;everyone gets a distorted and contextless version of the original message and can have their say&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;* By the way, this is the reason why explicit Codes of Conduct are a &lt;i&gt;good&lt;/i&gt; thing for online projects. Without them, you simply get a &lt;i&gt;default&lt;/i&gt; implicit code of conduct based on the expectations of the dominant group; which is not a good solution for people coming from any other group.</text></item><item><author>AHappyCamper</author><text>I understand that there are a lot of people who are hurting right now, and I empathize with their pain, but how can we share out most wonderful and beautiful ideas with each other or convey important information to the public if we believe there might be serious reprisals against us if we &amp;quot;say the wrong thing&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;For example, I personally helped work against slavery on the Black Market in the Middle East, and I wanted to raise awareness of this issue.&lt;p&gt;But now I have to be worried that I&amp;#x27;ll insult people by using the term Black Market, and will also insult people by giving off the impression that the the Middle East is a 3rd world primitive place where they buy and sell slaves.&lt;p&gt;There is no &amp;quot;right&amp;quot; way to convey the issue above without offending someone. So what should I do? Just shut my mouth and don&amp;#x27;t say anything? Then the slave trade will continue to operate freely...&lt;p&gt;All speech besides threats of violence needs to be free, or we can&amp;#x27;t progress as a society.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>loudtieblahblah</author><text>This ignores that the web has birthed a global culture of people where participation in online discussion is the majority of their lives.  And they sit around looking to be offended to raise their own social value amonst their online peers.&lt;p&gt;Being offended is about obtaining value and for mobs to obtain power.&lt;p&gt;The two way street of both trying to not offend AND the listener trying to honestly interpret what is being said goes out the window&lt;p&gt;Whenever you have a bad actor on either side of communication, it breaks down.&lt;p&gt;The common wisdom, though, is that the bad actor is always the speaker.&lt;p&gt;And its simply not true.&lt;p&gt;The other problem is, as a culture, everyone is responsible for everyone else&amp;#x27;s emotions.  No one is asked to be responsible for their own.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have a problem with codes of conduct per se.&lt;p&gt;I do have a problem with a culture that constantly asks people to not be responsible for how they process information. Even negative, even offensive information.&lt;p&gt;Relationship therapists teach couples to use &amp;quot;I&amp;quot; language vs &amp;quot;you&amp;quot; language to express feelings (Google it if you don&amp;#x27;t understand)&lt;p&gt;This way you take responsibility for how external stimuli makes you feel rather than making your partner wholly responsible and thus making discussion adversarial&lt;p&gt;This problem is happening in FOS projects or even just social media in general.&lt;p&gt;Everyone is a soccer player, falling down, grabbing their leg hoping to get the most people feeling sorry for them, claiming 1% if the bullies and edgelords out there are some dominant social group.  It&amp;#x27;s crap</text></comment>
<story><title>Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive</title><url>https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-06-19/protests-free-speech-first-amendment</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TuringTest</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; how can we share out most wonderful and beautiful ideas with each other&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to create channels with limited audiences, where you can set an expectation of which ideas are acceptable and which are not.*&lt;p&gt;It always has been, but the the arrival of new communication methods has disrupted the traditional channels, and now every idea is propagated to a much larger and looser audience, which aren&amp;#x27;t aware or don&amp;#x27;t share the expectations of the sender.&lt;p&gt;We need to rebuild the architecture of communication channels around this principle of limited audiences sharing a common understanding, and reshape the current &amp;quot;free&amp;quot; massive communication tools so that they respect this principle instead of exploiting the benefits of popularising aggressive messages for their shock value.&lt;p&gt;This compartmentalisation of channels would do much more for freedom of expression than the current &amp;quot;everyone gets a distorted and contextless version of the original message and can have their say&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;* By the way, this is the reason why explicit Codes of Conduct are a &lt;i&gt;good&lt;/i&gt; thing for online projects. Without them, you simply get a &lt;i&gt;default&lt;/i&gt; implicit code of conduct based on the expectations of the dominant group; which is not a good solution for people coming from any other group.</text></item><item><author>AHappyCamper</author><text>I understand that there are a lot of people who are hurting right now, and I empathize with their pain, but how can we share out most wonderful and beautiful ideas with each other or convey important information to the public if we believe there might be serious reprisals against us if we &amp;quot;say the wrong thing&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;For example, I personally helped work against slavery on the Black Market in the Middle East, and I wanted to raise awareness of this issue.&lt;p&gt;But now I have to be worried that I&amp;#x27;ll insult people by using the term Black Market, and will also insult people by giving off the impression that the the Middle East is a 3rd world primitive place where they buy and sell slaves.&lt;p&gt;There is no &amp;quot;right&amp;quot; way to convey the issue above without offending someone. So what should I do? Just shut my mouth and don&amp;#x27;t say anything? Then the slave trade will continue to operate freely...&lt;p&gt;All speech besides threats of violence needs to be free, or we can&amp;#x27;t progress as a society.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>haberman</author><text>&amp;gt; The trick is to create channels with limited audiences, where you can set an expectation of which ideas are acceptable and which are not.&lt;p&gt;Do you mean that a community could allow argument X, but disallow counter-argument Y? That sounds like a recipe for an echo chamber.&lt;p&gt;I definitely see the benefit in saying that certain &lt;i&gt;topics&lt;/i&gt; are out of scope for a given community. But saying which ideas are acceptable and which are not sounds like codifying the dominance of an official viewpoint.</text></comment>