let’s be clear that racism, misogyny and homophobia is not free speech and everybody knows that
I relate to her goal but the argument is a mess: “this is not free speech” is an arbitrary restriction, and she’s pushing that restriction as a dogma (“everybody knows that”, in that context, conveys “this is not up to debate because I say so”).
A better way to handle this is to treat freedom of speech as a quantity, and seek the maximisation of the freedom of speech for all parties involved. Then it’s easier to address the issue with hate discourses: even if someone’s ability to utter a hate discourse increases that person’s freedom of speech, they decrease the freedom of speech of the group whom the hate discourse is directed to, by a lot. As such, if you seek maximisation of freedom of speech, you need to restrict the ability to convey hate discourses.
Bonus points:
it forces you to take the impact of an utterance into account, before deciding “nope, you can’t say this here”;
it forces you to take context into account, as the same piece of discourse may cause different effects depending on where it is uttered;
it shows that it’s more important to protect descriptive statements over prescriptive ones.
Now, on the Bible. Blue jacket guy asked “if I were to quote the Bible on Twitter should my account be banned?” - it depends on what you’re quoting from the Bible, the impact of that into the audience, and what it conveys through that context.
If you’re quoting it to show explicit support to homophobia, I think that you should be banned. If however you’re quoting it as a historical curiosity, even the same excerpt should get a pass.
I agree that intent is more important than words. It’s incredibly easy to be disingenuous, and impossible to prove. Influential people take that to the bank.
I relate to her goal but the argument is a mess: “this is not free speech” is an arbitrary restriction, and she’s pushing that restriction as a dogma (“everybody knows that”, in that context, conveys “this is not up to debate because I say so”).
A better way to handle this is to treat freedom of speech as a quantity, and seek the maximisation of the freedom of speech for all parties involved. Then it’s easier to address the issue with hate discourses: even if someone’s ability to utter a hate discourse increases that person’s freedom of speech, they decrease the freedom of speech of the group whom the hate discourse is directed to, by a lot. As such, if you seek maximisation of freedom of speech, you need to restrict the ability to convey hate discourses.
Bonus points:
Now, on the Bible. Blue jacket guy asked “if I were to quote the Bible on Twitter should my account be banned?” - it depends on what you’re quoting from the Bible, the impact of that into the audience, and what it conveys through that context.
If you’re quoting it to show explicit support to homophobia, I think that you should be banned. If however you’re quoting it as a historical curiosity, even the same excerpt should get a pass.
I agree that intent is more important than words. It’s incredibly easy to be disingenuous, and impossible to prove. Influential people take that to the bank.