Social media posts inciting hate and division have “real world consequences” and there is a responsibility to regulate content, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, insisted on Friday, following Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking programme in the United States.
I stated my point very bluntly in the comment you replied to above. Freedom of speech is not “merely a restriction on government”. It is a concept that exists outside of government entirely. And it has everything to do with anywhere speech is expressed, including private platforms.
Rights only make sense in the context of governments, which have the power to strip my rights through imprisonment. I have no right to speech on a private platform or on private property, I am there at the pleasure of the owner. So talking about rights (esp freedom of speech) makes no sense outside the context of government.
That’s why I argue that rights are a restriction (or a check) on the power of governments. Only a tyrannical government will attempt to abridge my rights.
Yes, it exists outside of government as a function of your nature, but that means nothing outside the context of an authority with the power to strip it away.
We weren’t talking about the “right” to free speech. We were just talking about free speech.
Ok, and what does that mean if not the right to free speech?
Just because the far right tries to change the definition to forcing private platforms to letting them say what they want doesn’t change anything. That’s not free speech, that’s restricting the platform owner’s speech. Free speech is a restriction on the types of laws governments can pass regarding speech (i.e. forcing a major platform to accept a user’s speech would certainly be a violation).
The political right can’t change that definition for the same reason the political left can’t force deplatforming of “hate speech.”
It just means being allowed to say what you want. It has nothing to do with rights or laws.
Uhhhh that’s the opposite of what’s happening. The UN is the one trying to change the definition to pretend it means something other than what it does.
Yes. That is the very definition of free speech.
The platform is not the one being censored. The users are.
It seems we’re arguing the same thing.
The far right in the US argues that “free speech” means forcing large SM orgs to give them a platform, and this UN goon seems to think it means silencing “hate speech” (I guess freedom from speech?).
Both are wrong.
Yes that’s what it means. The platforms are under no obligation to give it to them, but if they don’t allow certain types of speech, that is the definition of censorship (the opposite of free speech). It is their prerogative as a private platform to censor speech.
The UN goons think silencing hate speech is not censorship. It is. Let’s stop playing senseless semantics games and just own it. Say “yes we are censoring hate speech” because arguing that it’s not is dishonest.