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Notes -
Kanye West is banned from Twitter. So obviously any definition of free speech absolutism doesn't include him.
Snark aside - and the anti Elon crowd is quite snarky - the whole free speech for people in meltdown or not quite mentally stable is interesting question. My approach to human rights have often been - approve of them as long as I get to define who the humans are. So it turns out that my approach to free speech is that while I will go to extremes to protect the free, I don't consider the incoherent ramblings of a drunken hobo as speech.
On the other hand while it is easy to say "Cut his access to the social networks until he has cool down, so he stop hurting himself" and probably it is the best thing to do - I can see how a policy of for your own good can be used to cull all the edgy content.
I am free speech maximalist (note that's different from absolutist) and I would have shut Kayne West down.
Twitter provides a platform for much more free speech than, say, the NYT or Reddit.
Famous people posting swastikas on Twitter -- the steelman version of his picture is that he's telling Jewish people they should forgive Nazis, which seems to be a totally nonsensical position -- is a great way to get the platform shut down.
In this instance, removing one person's ability preserves the platform's availability for many others.
This is interesting to me - I'm a leftist who is generally in favor of more content moderation than less. What's interesting is that my thought process is literally exactly the same as yours - I value the platform's experience as a whole much more than I value individual accounts. Although far from perfect, most of the platforms have very clear rules about how to avoid suspension and sometimes even offer a warning. Since these platforms are so valuable too so many people, I don't really have a problem with a stricter content moderation policy. Like you, I also value freedom of speech, expression, & ideas. I just think that content moderation is useful as well.
In my leftist circles, we'd all pretty much agree with your statement. What are the differences between mainstream ideas on content moderation and free speech maximalism?
By two counts:
Mainstream ideas on content moderation would be to remove anyone that posts some sort of swastika. I would only ban a person with significant publicity who singlehandedly could cause a large advertiser exodus.
Mainstream ideas on what causes "experience degradation" expands over time, e.g. first swastikas, then failure to use gendered terms, etc. I would optimize for the experience of the, say, 1 S.D. above-average tolerant person rather than the 1 S.D. below-average tolerant person.
The corollary of point 2 is that sites get more tolerant over time in my view (as people become desensitized to seeing mildly offensive views), but less tolerant over time in the current paradigm.
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Can you define free speech maximalist? Because it's weird to see a phrase like that proposed as consistent with censoring swastikas.
I'm not trying to maximize free speech Y-intercept; I'm trying to maximize free speech AUC over time.
If it's 1995 and your goal is to allow for maximum degrees of freedom in human sexuality / sexual identification, you first amplify only homosexuality (mildly to moderately unacceptable relative to the population's current position); only once that's accepted do you amplify transsexuality. If you skip step 1 there's a huge negative reaction that works against your goal.
P.S. Thank you for framing it as a question rather than other commenters who just made a bunch of assumptions.
This "free speech maximalist" position is compatible with unlimited censorship if free speech is deeply unpopular.
It's confusing to appropriate the label of a group with fundamentally different stances to your own. Believing that women staying in the kitchen maximizes female welfare and freedom doesn't make one a feminist. There's other labels for that set of beliefs that more accurately convey useful information to the audience.
I do find this phenomenon very interesting. I've encountered people many years ago who told me that if I really despise modern feminism so much, I should call myself a feminist and work to reform it from the inside. When is it appropriate to do it, and when it it not? I know that I call myself a liberal, partly to try to "reclaim" the label, partly because it makes people (in my circles, anyway) not just want to write you off as crazy or hateful, and partly because I do believe in classically liberal values, even though liberalism really does more often than not mean leftism these days.
But in general, I am often against such appropriation. Like you say, it's highly confusing, and it seems really intellectually dishonest in certain cases.
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To save the freedom of speech, we must curtail unpopular speech!
Hard pass. Calling this "free speech maximalism" is an insult to the intellect.
Yes, let's make sure Twitter gets bankrupted / regulated out of existence, that'll show those censors!
To be clear (copied from another post of mine):
"If I were Musk and you posted that on Twitter, I wouldn't care. Nobody knows who you are and I agree the image is largely harmless. Maybe some NYT journalist compiles the '500 incidents of anti-Semitism' but it can largely be shrugged off since only the disproportionately-loud chattering class cares what the NYT says.
If you're Kanye West and have been actively in the news for being anti-Semitic, recently required my intervention to un-ban, and have been posting progressively "edgy" things, then you're damn right I'm going to ban you to maintain the commercial viability and existence of my platform."
Fine, but call yourself a free speech pragmatist.
Touché
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I mean, I do honestly think that Twitter going out of business could be good for free speech. It could result in a bunch of Twitter copycats trying to all start up and take their place, and it may be a while, or never, before the dust settles and one of them is crowned the new Twitter. It'd be great if everyone didn't have to go to one single company who owns the monopoly on the public discourse, and would likely allow for greater diversity in speech.
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I don't know where you're coming from with this position, it's not something I've encountered before. But uncharitably, it sounds like something someone who's anti-free speech would say if they wanted to get pro-free speech people onboard with censorship. "Hey, censoring specific people really maximizes the amount of free speech over time, trust me!"
You might have some point, but I think it's far too abusable, and also far too inscrutable to know what'll actually work and what wouldn't.
Uncharitably, the other side of the table sounds to me like "I get to feel superior on some edgy corner of the internet, and then whine about it as my side continually loses battle after battle in the culture war".
Well, then, I think you've just let us know exactly what side of the debate you really fall on, if you view what most of us would consider to be pro-free speech in such disdain.
I guess this is how conversations go when both sides frame things uncharitably?
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I don't think you are. There is nothing about a combined swastika + Star of David logo that is even remotely illegal, much less likely to get Twitter shut down. (Wikipedia has hosted this page for over a decade.) This incident has definitely made a lot of allegedly "pro-free speech" people (especially Elon) tell on themselves though.
I will go as far as to say that if a mildly edgy logo, purely visual with no possibility of genuinely harming anyone besides possibly hurting their feelings, is where you hit the free speech red line button, not only are you not a "free speech maximalist", you're not even a supporter of free speech to any degree.
I disagree that posts can be judged in isolation.
If I were Musk and you posted that on Twitter, I wouldn't care. Nobody knows who you are and I agree the image is largely harmless. Maybe some NYT journalist compiles the "500 incidents of anti-Semitism" but it can largely be shrugged off since only the disproportionately-loud chattering class cares what the NYT says.
If you're Kanye West and have been actively in the news for being anti-Semitic, recently required my intervention to un-ban, and have been posting progressively "edgy" things, then you're damn right I'm going to ban you to maintain the commercial viability and existence of my platform.
You're trying to maximize free speech Y-intercept; I'm trying to maximize free speech AUC over time.
Then you're not a free speech maximalist if you're compromising for commercial viability.
By this logic, I'm a freedom of movement maximalist if I choose a world where seven octillion sentient beings live their entire lives in boxes with 2 feet to move around in over the present one. I don't subscribe to "a sextillion dust specks in a sextillion eyes" logic. It leads to too much transparent absurdity.
I'm not even saying you're wrong strategically. A tactical retreat over X maximalism all the time is sometimes best for X. (Though in this particular case I actually think that it's wholly unnecessary and that it's very unlikely that anyone was actually going to seriously move against Twitter over this.) I just don't think it's reasonable to call yourself what you claim to be.
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If advocacy for Jewish forgiveness of Nazis leads to the shutdown of the platform. That's not exactly an argument that Jewish people don't have outsized influence, only that we shouldn't talk about it.
No one is arguing that Jews don't have an outsized influence in some cases. It's the narrative that forms from that statement. The issue is people taking that statement and assuming that Jews must be using this outsized influence for evil, bad reasons. One statement is true, the other is baseless conspiracy.
It's like pointing out that white men have had an outsized influence on US power because most US presidents were white men. This is a true statement. Saying that white men are engaged in a conspiracy to maliciously keep and wield their power over everyone else is an unfounded conspiracy.
Lastly, one of these 'facts' has led to a deadly historical event and the other hasn't. We can't forget about context when talking about this.
Noticing the outsized influence of Jews in some cases when they tend to represent a very small minority of the population, and noticing 'white' men have been most of the presidents during periods where people of European ancestry represented significant portions of the population is fundamentally different.
You're arguing the over representation of Jews in some cases led to a deadly historical event?
No, I'm arguing that the line of reasoning that starts with 'jews have an outsized influenced' has resulted in pretty heinous outcomes.
I think men is also a key term here - why hasn't there ever been a woman president in hundreds of years while making up 50% of the population? We know the answer to that question. So what about the Jews? We also know the answer to that question too. There's a ton of history that explains why some industries have a higher percentage of jews. The real history is very different than any mainstream conspiracy explanation.
You're arguing that talking openly about the outsized Jewish influence has led to historically poor outcomes for Jews?
Are those the only options, outsized influence or death?
At the moment the US is one elderly man away from the first lady president. I'm not sure it would be an improvement.
Are you suggesting ethnic or gender nepotism as the reason for the white male presidents?
Are those the only options, outsized influence or death?
My point is very simple: Talking about the outsized influence of Jews has led to very bad things in the past. No, talking about it again does not mean that the holocaust will happen again. I'm not sure where you got that. All I was saying is that we ought to be more careful when talking about this issue because of the issues it has caused in the past.
My point here was to simply show you that outsized influence doesn't always have a nefarious, conspiratorial narrative. Sometimes there's a clear path that shows how groups came to be.
Is in-group preference or ethnic / cultural nepotism nefarious or conspiratorial?
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There's a difference between pointing out that Jewish people are like 50%+ of University Presidents, and asking whether it makes sense for those same individuals to advocate for Affirmative Actions whereby Asian students get downranked, and posting Nazi symbols.
Which one of those is bad, pointing out a fact or pointing out an injustice?
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Why do you think so? Do you think the harm Hitler brought upon the Jewish people so great it can never be forgiven, and Jewish people should maintain this reservoir of resentment and hate in their hearts forever? Or do you think their Jewish people are incapable of Christian forgiveness - or maybe it is the Jewish faith that precludes it? Something else?
I don't know what @was thinks, but I think Hitler should apologize first.
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I think that no Nazis really exist anymore (obviously there are some people -- it rounds to zero) so that there's really nobody left to forgive. Certainly the concept of being genocided doesn't need to be forgiven?
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Can anyone tell me, what did he say about the Nazis/Hitler? I’m reading secondhand sources that he praised them somehow but I’m curious what he actually said.
He also said that Hitler invented highways and the microphone. That got a genuine laugh out of me.
Timestamped YouTube link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=inSgi4uWv-Y&t=136
Lmao, you’ve gotta love it
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Alex Jones said that it was unfair that Ye had been compared to Nazis/Hitler, and Ye replied that N/H weren’t all bad. When Jones eventually felt like he had to start isolating himself from Ye by saying, “I don’t like Hitler.” Ye replied, “I like Hitler.”
Ah, thanks.
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It seems like it would be better for you just to go watch the videos, they aren't hard to find. I'm not sure why you are soliciting more secondhand information when you don't trust the secondhand information you already received.
Yeah, I didn’t know it was from a video and not a tweet.
The responses here helped me figure it out ;)
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Famously, Ghandi also had controversial things to say about european jews under the power of nazi germany. Famous people have weird takes, sometimes.
That wasn't at all severable from Ghandi's whole philosophy. Either you buy that Jews should have offered their necks to the butcher's knives but refused allegiance, or you don't buy Ghandi's philosophy.
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But given what you say your position is, where do you draw the line? Couldn't you apply your same reasoning to saying that Trump shouldn't be allowed on Twitter, or that more strict that speech regulation should be applied? People can always make the case that someone's free speech is suppressing someone else's.
Unfortunately I don't think bright lines exist for most things (i.e. most absolutist positions are untenable -- is spam free speech? there's no incitement of violence.) I think the left has historically been really good at amplifying something that's just far enough to change people's minds but nothing that's considered truly abhorrent (e.g. first gay marriage, then transgenderism; not the reverse).
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He seems to have stumbled across the symbol of the Raelians somewhere, and thinking it had some sort of Jewish Nazi significance, posted it.
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