<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>marcus_holmes</author><text>That was always implicit in group discussions. As others have said, Codes of Conduct aren&amp;#x27;t creating new rules, they&amp;#x27;re just making them explicit instead of implicit.&lt;p&gt;Let me give you an example: you have a group of friends. Two of your friends have recently experienced a miscarriage. The implicit rules in your group have now expanded to include &amp;quot;no dead baby jokes&amp;quot; (depending on how dark your group&amp;#x27;s humour was, this might always have been a rule). The reason for this expansion is that two members of the group will now be hurt, upset and offended by those jokes. Making a &amp;quot;dead baby joke&amp;quot; is now a good reason to think the offender is an insensitive idiot, who probably isn&amp;#x27;t someone you want to be friends with.&lt;p&gt;This is no different from &amp;quot;no jokes about fags&amp;quot; when your group includes gay people. But sometimes, some people insist on being able to make &amp;quot;fag jokes&amp;quot; because &amp;quot;snowflakes are over-sensitive&amp;quot;. Of course, they may not know the group includes gay people, and the gay people in question may not want anyone else to know their sexual orientation (none of anyone else&amp;#x27;s business). So it&amp;#x27;s better to spell it out explicitly that &amp;quot;fag jokes&amp;quot; are not allowed, even though there are apparently no gay people in the group. This is what a Code of Conduct does.&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are Purity Spirals that end up pushing this to extremes. But that&amp;#x27;s a separate issue. Codes of Conduct are still a really good idea.</text></item><item><author>high_derivative</author><text>I find codes of conduct meaningless. They will go on in very general terms about &amp;#x27;hate speech&amp;#x27; which is just synonymous with &amp;#x27;anything that anyone feels offended by&amp;#x27; now.&lt;p&gt;I would argue that code of conducts were a symptom of the start of the problem.&lt;p&gt;The strategy of the grievance class:&lt;p&gt;- Propose a code of conduct which surely nobody can disagree with, it&amp;#x27;s great to have rules and be nice to each other.&lt;p&gt;- Design the code of conduct so any perceived offence falls under it&lt;p&gt;- Wield it as a tool to push out any dissenters</text></item><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>lucaspm98</author><text>I agree that if there are rules, it&amp;#x27;s much better to make them explicit instead of implicit. I also think your example makes sense, but I&amp;#x27;m not sure it applies to larger groups or public forums. There are simply too many people to avoid discussing every topic that could offend someone. I&amp;#x27;m not saying overt racism or homophobia is okay, but especially when it comes to humor it&amp;#x27;s almost unavoidable that it can hit too close to home for someone who sees it.&lt;p&gt;In public discussions there has to be some baseline ability by the reader to accept that they can be offended while the value of what was said to the rest of the audience may outweigh their own feelings. The implicit rules of what is acceptable to talk about, especially online, have been getting stricter to the point of being ridiculous in my experience.</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>marcus_holmes</author><text>That was always implicit in group discussions. As others have said, Codes of Conduct aren&amp;#x27;t creating new rules, they&amp;#x27;re just making them explicit instead of implicit.&lt;p&gt;Let me give you an example: you have a group of friends. Two of your friends have recently experienced a miscarriage. The implicit rules in your group have now expanded to include &amp;quot;no dead baby jokes&amp;quot; (depending on how dark your group&amp;#x27;s humour was, this might always have been a rule). The reason for this expansion is that two members of the group will now be hurt, upset and offended by those jokes. Making a &amp;quot;dead baby joke&amp;quot; is now a good reason to think the offender is an insensitive idiot, who probably isn&amp;#x27;t someone you want to be friends with.&lt;p&gt;This is no different from &amp;quot;no jokes about fags&amp;quot; when your group includes gay people. But sometimes, some people insist on being able to make &amp;quot;fag jokes&amp;quot; because &amp;quot;snowflakes are over-sensitive&amp;quot;. Of course, they may not know the group includes gay people, and the gay people in question may not want anyone else to know their sexual orientation (none of anyone else&amp;#x27;s business). So it&amp;#x27;s better to spell it out explicitly that &amp;quot;fag jokes&amp;quot; are not allowed, even though there are apparently no gay people in the group. This is what a Code of Conduct does.&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are Purity Spirals that end up pushing this to extremes. But that&amp;#x27;s a separate issue. Codes of Conduct are still a really good idea.</text></item><item><author>high_derivative</author><text>I find codes of conduct meaningless. They will go on in very general terms about &amp;#x27;hate speech&amp;#x27; which is just synonymous with &amp;#x27;anything that anyone feels offended by&amp;#x27; now.&lt;p&gt;I would argue that code of conducts were a symptom of the start of the problem.&lt;p&gt;The strategy of the grievance class:&lt;p&gt;- Propose a code of conduct which surely nobody can disagree with, it&amp;#x27;s great to have rules and be nice to each other.&lt;p&gt;- Design the code of conduct so any perceived offence falls under it&lt;p&gt;- Wield it as a tool to push out any dissenters</text></item><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>andreareina</author><text>Can you point to examples where you feel they&amp;#x27;re done well? Whenever the subject comes up it&amp;#x27;s always the egregious ones that are pointed out so I&amp;#x27;d like to see the other side.</text></comment>