Hi JB Carroll,

The XKCD cartoon is spot on. I spent many years as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. JWs have been involved in a number of free speech cases. One of the most recent cases that went to the Supreme Court was Watchtower vs Stratton Ohio in 2002. I was in the faith at the time and we were happy about the ruling in our favor. In 2007 I left the faith and now look back upon this with a slightly different perspective.

The main thing I now appreciate is protection of free speech is not the same as endorsement. And of course, as the cartoon point out, free speech does not mean one is obligated to listen to a religious sermon brought to their door. It is just that one cannot expect the government to get involved and shield one from hearing speech which might offend. On the other hand if one asks the speaker to leave private property that is their absolute right and any continued presence will be trespassing.

In another case Westboro Baptist Church was permitted to "protest" in a public space an otherwise private funeral. Clearly everyone can see the court permitting such is not at all an endorsement of the speech itself. And when WBC complains of "persecution" it is blindingly obvious such counter protests are the direct result of their horrid rhetoric.

Freedom zero of Free Software is the freedom to run a program for any purpose. Nothing stops WBC or Nazis from creating their own network. But to assume one has some right to the private resources of others to promote hatred is neither what free software or free speech is about.

Thus at the end of the day, if I find folks are often offended by what I say and do, as tempting as it might be to assume the fault lies with my audience, perhaps there are some valid reasons I have not taken into account.

Cheers,
-Randy

Great post! I agree with @randygalbraith@diasp.org. There's nothing to stop the Nazis, WBC, whoever from starting their own networks. The instant I see that hateful stuff I hit the Ignore button.

@Brian Ó 🐟 has a great point too: Start banning the people they hate and they'll all cheer you on.

Hi Amy,

Some make an odd assumption that folks must listen to them. Unfortunately there is way more crackpot theories that float around than one has time to investigate and debunk. Michael Shermer, who writes for Scientific American, offers this solution: ask the proponent to cross check his/her theory with reliable sources first. If one has a novel view of physics, run it past a high school physics teacher at a minimum.

I often suggest the Wikipedia test. In my experience the site is actually pretty reliable. Wikipedia was one of the sources used by IBM Watson to play Jeopardy!

Cheers,
-Randy

Hi Adam,

Fellow Canadian here! Albeit we moved to the USA in 1998. I recalled the case when a University in Canada warned Anne Coulter that certain speech in Canada could run afoul of the law. It was played up as an example of intolerance. It seemed clear enough to me the University was merely wanting her to be informed.

Even though 1st amendment free speech is a fairly strong legal principal here, there are many practical ways it can also be subverted. For example here in Arizona: “Mesnard said he has decided is that the public has concluded that SB 1142 would chill the rights of Arizonans to peacefully protest. And that, he said, makes the legislation politically unacceptable.”

I don’t know all the ins and outs of SB1142, but I do believe it illustrates how laws against rioting or conspiring to riot can wind up impacting freedom of speech. Here is the link:

azdailysun.com/news/local/hous…

Cheers,
-Randy

Pods are not governments!

Sometimes platforms get even bigger and more powerful than governments. The bigger a platform is, the less tolerant we should be towards its censorship.

If you don't like Nazis, just block them on your personal account. Pods should never do this.

The bigger a platform is, the less tolerant we should be towards its censorship.

Good thing D* is small and obscure then.

Pods should never do this.

Although I have a reflexive dislike for being in the majority, I also try to avoid embracing statements that include absolutes, like never.

@Sapiens

I disagree with you on this one, @Miloslav Číž. “Pods” are someone else’s computers and they can do whatever they want with their private property.

In turn let me friendly disagree with you on this :)

Property is in no way a magical "do anything you want" ticket, though nowadays it is often seen this way. You can not do unethical things with your property. Big-scale censorship is unethical.

Also note that I am not talking about law, it is most likely legal. I am talking about what is the right thing to do. Censoring content just because you disagree with it is not the right thing to do, even if law say it is. Law is imperfect.

@Brian Ó 🐟

Would you support censoring people posting child porn?

No, I am pro freedom of any kind of information. I do not support creation or selling of such material, but mere sharing or possession of what's already out there should be okay.

@Ted

Would you be willing to disagree with a friend’s comment if they made that remark when you were a guest in their house (their property)?

Sure.

And if you were the host, would you insist your guest leave if they expressed an unpopular opinion?

Comparing an online social platform to your own house is actually very misleading. Your house is your safe place not meant to be a public forum. More like a small private chat room - I'd feel safe kicking people out of there. But Diaspora pods are different. They're more like villages or cities you're a mayor of. I wouldn't kick anyone out of a city for talking about anything.

What I find funny is going by the current ranting and ravings, it's like they're saying ISIS should have just been permitted to run wild on the Federation by everyone.....
because "free speech"

meh.... personally, was happy to see the Federation cared about as much for the ISIS spooky kids as I do myself. Can't say I felt "free speech" was being interfered with (they could still setup their own pods) as much as there were just a bunch of folks in the Federation that didn't want to deal with a bunch of haters.

A podmin banning someone’s account isn’t censorship. Racist assholes are free to go spew their vile opinions somewhere else. If you stood in a restaurant and started saying anti-semitic things to everyone, is it censorship for the manager to make you leave and ban you from ever coming back?

No. You have no right to be free from the consequences of your actions.

Granted, I think Thea gave idea worthy of thought:

Diaspora will not grow that much more if the fraud of podmins becomes well known. Would you join a new social media site if you know that these podmins sometimes just delete everything you created, just because they dislike you? As much as I hate #Facebook, even #MarkZuckerberg says he won’t delete things like #holocaust-denial just because he finds them abhorrent:
timesofisrael.com/facebooks-zu…

Maybe they did it on purpose, maybe it was a freudian slip, but the way I read their statement, notably given the public track record of Enterprise consumer social media at this point (from Intelligence Community surveillance ties and data security leaks on to things like Google's "Selfish Ledger"), it comes off sounding like "We do not care for these Federated protocols and are attempting to tarnish their public image to slow/stop interest in them. We would prefer people remain in the current centralized Enterprise domains."

But it's not just remain in the Enterprise domains, but remain on them under some weird notion that even in lew of Snowden leaks, Vault 7 leaks, Intel bugs, Google outright removing and or burying all sorts of information, Facebook underhanded sharings and mass social experiments, and more, that one should view the Enterprise consumer sectors as somehow being more open and "free".
the thought boggles my mind, but direct quote from Theaitetos is direct.

Hi Everyone,

Interesting discussion. Governments, companies, communities and individuals censor for various reasons. Even in the USA which has strong freedom of speech legal protections not all spoken or written words are protected. For example slander and libel can be found to be illegal in court with various consequences. Even saying something that is truthful, if it is private information, can be found in court to be an invasion of privacy.

Generally I think most folks see freedom of speech as a good thing because the lack of it can lead to abuse of power. Free speech can allow the less powerful to be speak critically about those who hold power. Censorship is a tool often used by those in power to silence those who would criticize them.

The problem of course is powerful rhetoric, even if it just be in the form of speech, can be harmful. The rise of Hitler in Germany is often pointed to as an example. Mass misinformation on subjects like vaccines, leaded gasoline, global warming, etc, can likewise have negative consequences. Thus small scale censorship pushes back against this from editors on Wikipedia to peer review used in science journals. A reference to the toleration of child pornography presents us with an argumentum ad absurdum. In reality though, even normal pornography faces forms of censorship even in the USA. Arguments that has pushed back based on free speech have been through the courts. Although the arguments go back and forth, the idea that free speech equals no censorship at all hasn't so far been sustained.

Below the realm of government the general answer is degree of censorship is a choice of the entity based on their concerns and standards. Once I openly acknowledged that I believed in the theory of evolution and had doubts about the existence of Jehovah God, I could not longer be one of Jehovah's Witnesses. I had no right to insist that they allow me to spread my views at the Kingdom Hall. My choice was to either remain silent or leave. I chose to leave. But... then it gets interesting. When I openly celebrated Christmas after having left for over two years, the local elders made a seemingly simple announcement at the Kingdom Hall: "Randy Galbraith is no longer one of Jehovah's Witnesses." A simple truthful statement. Or was it? Actually it is a coded message for "Randy Galbraith is the moral equivalent of the sexual deviant mentioned in 1 Corinthians 5 and henceforth should be shunned."

And the shunning happened and due to freedom of speech and freedom of religion I had no legal way to stop such slander. But by the same token the leadership of Jehovah's Witnesses have no authority over the diaspora* pod administrators, so I'm free to relate this account to the extent such is tolerated here.

In summary freedom of speech generally speaks to the limits of governments to silence critics. It is not a guarantee one will not face censorship from various non-government entities. How such entities employ censorship and the reason for such is their business. As difficult as it might be the recourse we generally have is to go elsewhere. I may not be able to get my anti-vaccines views printed in JAMA, but there are many other venues where I can publish my views.

Cheers,
-Randy

Hi professor rat,

I haven't been on diaspora* for that long. I actually haven't seen that many pro-Nazi or anti-vaccine posts.

For the record, even though I said "my anti-vaccine views" it was just for the sake argument. I believe in vaccines. However my parents did not get me vaccinated as a child. This was so, because, back in the day, JWs espoused anti-vaccine views. Modern JWs still refuse blood transfusions, but they don't object to vaccines.

Cheers,
-Randy

@Ted @Brian Ó 🐟

I'm hearing that you want to have a space online where people can feel safe and accepted for who they are (Muslims, gay people, and other groups). Have i understood?

Sometimes platforms get even bigger and more powerful than governments. The bigger a platform is, the less tolerant we should be towards its censorship.

@Miloslav Číž

+1

Seems to me that diaspora is a special case though since people can join other pods?

Property is in no way a magical “do anything you want” ticket, though nowadays it is often seen this way. You can not do unethical things with your property. Big-scale censorship is unethical.

+1

My two cents: I have a wider view of freedom of speech than in the comic: diasp.eu/posts/08128b8023df013…

I’m hearing that you want to have a space online where people can feel safe and accepted for who they are (Muslims, gay people, and other groups). Have i understood?

Not precisely. I want every space everywhere to be free of fucking Nazis.

@Ted I appreciate you haven't taken the easy way of just calling me a pedo and outing of the debate, which is how it typically goes. Let me in turn try to be rational and open to your challenges.

When I think about whether censorship is ever acceptable I can think of one area where it may do more good than harm: filtering content for children viewing. I'd still allow them to watch more stuff than most parents, but the really bad stuff that could mark them for life I'd probably hide. The same might go for mentally ill people who may be similar to children.

Other than that there is information I admit that has to be censored/hidden/kept secret because we don't live in a perfect world and people are dicks. Directly exploitable data such as passwords therefore have to be censored when they're leaked. This is kind of an extreme example of where the lack of censorship as a relatively simple solution would do a great harm, so I agree with that.

But aside from these I always suggest focusing on punishing concrete crimes and preventing them with education etc., rather than just lazily preventing them with censorship, because while censorship may be very effective in controlling people, it has too many harmful side effects - basically like a drug. It should only be applied very lightly when there is no other solution. It's a lazy solution with quick beneficial effects but much worse long-term effects. So when talking about how things should be, I say there should be no censorship in an ideal society - just as an ideal healthy person doesn't need to take any drugs.

@Ted I have some catching up to do since yesterday :)

About your first question i'm more concerned about censoring of political speech, for me it would probably be good to censor the sort of content you bring up

Thank you @Sunyata. Yes, I want to support the idea that d* is a place where people are free to share their views, but I am struggling with the idea that some embrace - that there are no limits to free speech.

@Ted Okay, as i understand you don't like when people talk in absolutes, where there is no room for discussion or for exceptions to the rule? Do you want people to be flexible and open to different ideas rather than seeing things in black and white?

@Sapiens

So if the server is my property, I can post child porn on it? You kill yourself with your own logic.

There has to be a general set of laws (e.g. constitution) and then individual subjects (e.g. cities) are allowed to add their own rules, but mustn't break the general law (constitution). Here the constitution should be: no censorship. Property doesn't give you the right to do anything with it.

There is conjured up law.....
ala the U.S. Federal government says one can have a conversation with a $20 bill (money is speech), kick Walmart in the balls (corporations are people), and pizza is a vegetable (because it has tomato sauce).

Despite the laws, last I checked, I can't just grow pizza in the garden.

Then there is the fact that when we jump, we come down......
no one said we had to, just seemed there was this unwritten law called gravity.

There is the conjured illusion.
And there is reality.

I think people confuse which realm "Freedom of Speech" hails from.
I wouldn't suggest being a nazi skin head and walking down inner city Detroit at night goose stepping while chanting "ALLES IST MEIN UBBER ALLES! SIEG HEIL!"
Not attacking anyone, just goose steppin and chantin down the street in inner city Detroit at night enjoying the cool breeze.
Fairly sure that in less than a half hour, such a skin head would not only find out the reality of "Free Speech", but folks in the area would have effectively proven how much they don't believe in free speech.
One can flip the dynamic and have some militant black panther type trying the same around Forsyth, Georgia.

Keeping these ideas of illusions and reality in mind as it applies to things like "laws" and "courts" and "justice".....
I find the thoughts of Richard Stallman on law worthy of thought....
something along the lines of "Telling the difference between a good and bad law is fairly easy. If the law ensures or expands maximum options, it's probably a good law. If the law creates LESS options and restricts, it's probably a bad one."

now i'm gonna head off to go plant some pizza

@Alien (A23P) not sure I completely understand - are you saying there is the law of reality that says free speech cannot be without limits because people can't handle it?

Because that is true. I'm arguing we should change people then - yes, it's hard to change people and until we're there we'll probably need some minimal censorship in place, which I could probably live with - as a temporary "lesser-evil" solution. However it seems to me this is not the case, people still think censorship of extremist ideas is okay as a permanent solution. To me it is not.

Also most will probably say we have to change laws to suit people, but I won't. Unlimited free speech is what we need in an ideal society and people have to learn the tolerance of free speech. A Nazi openly talking about Nazism is okay, a Nazi involved in fist fights or beating minorities is not. So really, I will never support the easy way of censorship as an okay solution to some problems. To me it is practically never an okay solution to anything.

So to sum up: censorship as an immediate lesser-evil solution to big threats right now - okayish, but let's aim and make it a priority to get rid of censorship completely and once and for all. And even when applying censorship out of necessity, always say it is evil.

Hi Miloslav,

Thanks. My reference to spamming and flood attacks was an argument from extremes. To give a starting point that some forms of content blocking that might be labeled censorship will exist. That this form of censorship is required to sustain basic functionality that in turn protects freedom.

Other than these extreme cases we generally object to censorship on the grounds of freedom. When we’re free to criticize those in power without being censored the end result is respect for freedom. When folks are free to talk about minority views without being censored again freedom wins. Here in the USA the LGBTQ community and their supporters used free speech to effectively sway public opinion from a majority view that same-sex marriage should be disallowed to a majority view that it should be permitted.

The free speech rights of the LGBTQ community is the same as the Nazi community. Yet the minority view of Nazis has not prevailed, because it could be argued, unlike the LGBTQ community the factual and moral foundation of their views are faulty.

Yet, at the same time, in regards to personal censorship freedom would dictate that it remain your choice. That you remain the sovereign of your computer and me mine. That any thing less is autocratic and freedom reducing. Because to disallow someone from censoring content they find objectionable on their own computer is the opposite of freedom. The remedy is not force of law, but our own freedom of speech. That is, we can make the case to the owner of the pod not to censor. If they do it anyway, that remains their prerogative.

The USA constitution famously has freedom of speech and religion as the first amendment in the bill of rights. But it also has the odd third amendment about quartering soldiers. Thus we don’t even need to use extreme examples of child pornography, ddos and Nazism. If the government created a law that compelled pod owners to host content for public good, how would we feel? Perhaps some sort of public alert system. Actually it raises the same issue. To what extent do we as a society want to assert rights over the private property of others – even while doing so seems to serve some public good?

The answer given by the 3rd amendment is to be very careful. Because even seemingly good laws can be co-opted by bad actors to bring forth harm.

At the moment the diaspora* network is intentionally bounded to pod authority. This could be changed if the community so desired. Wherein choices were made at a higher level of governance. Alas, that is the model of Facebook and Twitter. It is the very model that the diaspora* sets out to breakdown for a very good reason. The distributed model, whether it be disaspora* or the Internet itself greatly reduces the possibility of an effective attack on freedom, wherein a powerful entity can simply attack the head authority.

Now, I’m not a pod owner, but if I was I would argue for my right to control the content of the pod and censor content I find objectionable. I do believe that some forms of rhetoric can be powerful and harmful. Intentionally promoting hatred of minorities is not something I would want to aid and abet. If some form of network governance insisted that I must, well, then I would leave the network. On the flip side, because of the ugly history of censorship, it would be a decision I would not take lightly. By allowing folks to be themselves, including occasionally saying seemingly offensive things, we can broaden our views and cultural understanding. In Canada the word “squaw” is generally considered offensive, yet when I moved here, the congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses I attend was called the “Squaw Peak” congregation (JWs name their congregations based on nearby land marks).

Cheers,
-Randy

@Alien (A23P)

You keep saying something about Detroit and some other cities -- I totally believe you street law is what applies there rather than the official law, but that's just a local thing. Real laws are important and working in most situations. We can't simply abandon them because they're hard to enforce somewhere in the world.

Law should be the minimum, most important parts of morals, so it's definitely worth discussing.

I am mostly talking about how things should be and what the ideals are and what we should be aiming for, because there seems to be a disagreement on this. You may be right in some things you're saying, I don't necessarily disagree with you, but you're talking about different things - the effectivity of enforcing law in general etc. Here we would be getting into anarchism and similar stuff.

@Miloslav Číž may rant all he wants about what he wishes the law to be, but meanwhile (and whether he likes it or not) he has to abide by the Terms of Service of the server he is using diasp.org/terms whose jurisdiction "resides in the courts of Missouri, USA. New York, USA. Oregon, USA" which effectively and fortunately restrict his "free speech" by not allowing him to use that server to post:

• Pornographic content of any kind; merriam-webster.com/dictionary…
• Artistic content that depicts minors or images/language that sexualises minors;
• Automated content posting of any sort. No Bot, RSS readers, or scripts that post content automatically from other sources may be used.
• Content that is libelous, defamatory, bigoted, fraudulent or deceptive;
• Hate Speech as defined by Article 20 of the ICCPR: ohchr.org/en/professionalinter…
• Content that is illegal or unlawful, that would otherwise create liability;
• Content that may infringe or violate any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, right of privacy, right of publicity or other intellectual or other right of any party;
• Mass or repeated promotions, political campaigning or commercial messages directed at users who do not follow you (SPAM);
• Private information of any third party (e.g., addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, Social Security numbers and credit card numbers); and
• Viruses, corrupted data or other harmful, disruptive or destructive files or code.

@Miloslav Číž can always host his own Diaspora pod, but I guess he won't because that would make him directly responsible and liable if he breaks the law, so he prefers to use someone else's computers while advocating that the laws be changed so that pod owners cannot censor what he calls his "free speech". I find that more than ridiculous.

I hope this doesn’t stir up the discussion here, but i just wanted to share a quote by Noam Chomsky which has been eye-opening for me:

If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise.

@Sunyata

+1

@Sapiens

You're basically saying "tough luck" to me - and I agree. I know the law is not on my side, but I haven't been convinced by anyone that my views are wrong. I am totally satisfied with this outcome.

@Sapiens is taking real law and showing how it extends beyond streets @Miloslav Číž
where illusions get ran over by reality.

granted, s/he rather pointlessly throws in mention of courts of illusion laws (IMO)...
i say pointlessly as i have a feeling sapiens is fully aware of not just whats about to happen to a lot of those, but what is already rolling out on them (ala , among else, runs those over all the time.)

so what i do now is to only read posts from these people separately from my other aspects / feeds, then i am mentally prepared and don’t feel bad when reading the posts

nods
thought this worth repeating

The only pods that would hopefully claim themselves as ‘private’ are those that are, well, actually private (select group of people)!

-@Harka
fixed

@Adam Clark: My point precisely! A private business has no requirement catering to anyone: gays (since there was a big story about not receiving a cake), blacks (Rosa Parks), vegans, communists, far-right or extreme middle, women, children....you name it. Anything goes since it's private, I suppose.

To come back to Diaspora pods: it's a rare thing to see the exact terms of service for a pod, if we want to call it that. Most bannings, at least those publicly known, were usually based on vague and nebulous reasons, few of whom have actually been made open. Therefore the contrary to your argument would not be, why users don't simply find a new pod, ut why do such people make a public pod available in the first place, if they simply want to enforce their personal dislikes?!

But let's assume it's ok, then we need clear TOS descriptions of what's ok and what is not on public pods. Because running a public pod does come with a responsibility, and if not accepted as such, you shouldn't run one for other people.

As an aside: all this censoring, banning and non-federating is all good and dandy but will simply accomplish only one thing: the death of the ecosystem itself by strangulating the free exchange needed to thrive. But that's another issue.

That's fine with me on most points. To comment on your statement: "If anyone feels a podmin is overextending, they’re free to go elsewhere."; this requires, that the podmin is actually open about it. Not what I've seen so far on Diaspora. The only way to make an informed decision as user is to have blacklisted/non-federated pods listed transparently and any and all user bannings made public, including specific reasons to have done so.

That said, I consider entire pod-banning (cutting off from federation with one's own pod) to be exceptionally arrogant on part of any podmin, since the decision to engage or not is removed from all users. Hence the need for transparency, so that users can actually decide for themselves, as opposed to having things decided already for them.

I find it unacceptable that certain people insist on wanting to use someone else’s computers and resources (without paying for them) while refusing to follow the server’s Terms of Service (a violation in itself) and, for good measure, want to impose their own rules by playing the victim card with their own interpretation of free speech. It is clear that such abusive freeloaders are the real tyrants. <

That's a perfect summary, @Sapiens!

Hi Adam,

[I believe in the US your laws are currently a little conflicted, and will be sorted out in due time. This baker case is fairly high profile and it sounds like the reason the state decision was overturned was due to the state penalizing the baker due to religious beliefs, which really doesn’t say anything about whether the baker should be forced to treat people equally or not.
In Canada, we have the charter of rights and freedoms, and it’s pretty clearly spelled out that one can not discriminate on such terms, so religion or not, you don’t get to tell people to take a hike out of your business based on them being gay, or of a particular skin colour, or gender, etc. However, it would still be entirely appropriate to kick someone out of your business for hate speech, libel, or any other of a number of things that are against the law.]

I wanted to comment on this earlier, but didn't have the time. The NPR story on why the Colorado decision is "narrow" and not likely to pro-discrimination to become the norm:

npr.org/2018/06/04/605003519/s…

I'm Canadian by birth, but became a US citizen in 2010. The first amendment here is a bit different than how the Canadian Charter protects free speech and freedom of religion, but runs along the same line of thought. In this case one of the justices said the case had been compromised "by the comments of one of seven commissioners at a public hearing — comments that Kennedy said disparaged Phillips' faith as "despicable" and comparable to comments made by those who sought to justify slavery on religious grounds."

I think it would be almost certain that in most States a gay couple could walk into a bake shop and buy an already made cake or design and expect to complete the transaction without discrimination. And if they ran into discrimination would find the law on their side. Where it could get more difficult is if they asked the baker for a custom design and wording, perhaps something like "God Loves Gays." The first amendment protects the right of someone to remain silent. Apple recently referenced that in regards to the FBI request for them to author a program to break into an iPhone the FBI had in evidence.

Cheers,
-Randy