Post from jayclees | Squabblr - Social Discussions
squabblr.co
The terms of service have been updated. With the exception of racist content, the use of slurs (racial or otherwise), targeted harassment, and incitement of violence, Squabblr is now a free speech platform.

So I mean, most of us knew this beforehand and being on the fediverse we probably do not really care, but what was always on the horizon has no happened, the owner of Squabblr finally had enough having to be a decent person and has decided that his site is now “free speech purism”, so he gets to continue to insult LGBTQ people like he always does.

Seems from the comments that some other admins disagreed with the decision (so there were some decent people on that site!) and either left or were removed.

Not entirely surprising the whole thing, granted.

(edit)
Also, apologies as this isn’t truly reddit news but Squabblr was one of the sites frequently brought up in /r/redditalternatives so I figured this might still be relevant?

  • MomoTimeToDie@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    1 year ago

    if you allow it, you’re lowering a lot the freedom of speech of those who’d be targeted by it. It’s a lot because they’ll disengage and leave

    I disagree that this is lowering free speech. Those people who leave are still entirely within their ability to stay and continue speaking. Free speech isn’t lesser just because someone doesn’t feel like speaking

    • Lvxferre
      1·
      1 year ago

      The problem with this reasoning is that it could be used to justify banning any speech (not just hate speech) and still claim “we’re banning it but ackshyually we aren’t reducing your free speech. You’re still able to say it, it’s just that you don’t like the consequences of saying it here.” Because even people under the worst dictatorships out there are still able to voice censored discourses.

      Instead of looking at the ability of the individuals, IMO it’s better to look at the effects in the social environment. Hate speech targetted at a group effectively makes them leave and/or stop speaking. As a result, the discourses that they were voicing get silenced with them, and the social acceptability to voice those discourses goes down. The environment in question becomes less free as a result.

      This might sound like abstract “WORDS WORDS WORDS”, but IMO it has a bunch of desirable consequences:

      • It avoids the special pleading claim that “hate speech isn’t speech”, while still allowing you to ban it under certain circumstances.
      • There’s less room to misuse the ban against hate speech towards legitimate/non-hateful discourses. Specially when you get environments infested with witch hunters, that sometimes are as bad as the witches that they claim to hunt.
      • It gives you grounds to get rid of specially stupid, noisy, obnoxious or obtuse users, regardless of what they say, provided that their presence shuts other users up.
      • It’s flexible enough to address even a 4chan-like “mods? what mods?” approach or a Beehaw-like “be nice or get out” one, because it forces you to take the userbase into account.
      • You don’t need to deal with blackbox concepts like “feelings” and “intentions” and the likes.
      • MomoTimeToDie@sh.itjust.works
        11·
        1 year ago

        Hate speech targetted at a group effectively makes them leave and/or stop speaking. As a result, the discourses that they were voicing get silenced with them, and the social acceptability to voice those discourses goes down. The environment in question becomes less free as a result.

        This is where I don’t agree. Hate speech doesn’t make anyone leave. It has no power nor authority over people to make them do anything. No matter how much someone spams “kill all removed”, it doesn’t actually do anything. If someone leaves, it’s entirely because they aren’t personally interested in being there. This is in contrast to censorship from the platform, where there is the ability to unilaterally force a user to not participate via bans or removals.

        It’s the same idea as how free speech applies to the government not censoring the town square. Someone leaving because they don’t enjoy what people say is not an infringement on anyone’s speech, but the government arresting people based on what they say is.

        Just not censoring people offers nearly all the benefits you claim your perspective offers.you don’t have to worry about misuse of censorship because it isn’t used at all, and it is entirely devoid of “feeling” and “intent”, and the other things like ability to an undesirable speech isn’t particularly relevant when discussing a free speech platform.

        • Lvxferre
          11·
          1 year ago

          This is where I don’t agree. Hate speech doesn’t make anyone leave.

          You’re moving the goalposts from “it doesn’t hamper your ability” to “people don’t leave”, Reddit style. And you still placed the goalposts where you won’t score.

          If you want to know how stupid your claim (that boils down to “I dun unrurrstand! Speach don’t do nothing!”) sounds like, you don’t need even:

          No, you don’t need those things. A tiny bit of reasoning should be enough to show that, if you shit constantly on the groups that a person belongs to, the person will eventually leave or shut up.

          Speech has power over people, regardless of authority, no matter how much you pretend that it doesn’t - it makes people do things, it makes people not do things. This is fucking obvious for anyone with a functional brain dammit.

          If you want to continue this conversation, then show a bit more depth of thought than you’re doing currently. Otherwise, I won’t waste my time further, OK?