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I would characterize it more as "It should be legal for any given person to speak to any given willing audience without interference." Trebly so on the internet, where generally an audience seeks out a speaker and the speech doesn't interfere with anyone who hasn't actively sought it out.
The right to free speech has as a necessary corollary the right to hear. As in, a speaker and a listener/the audience both have an interest in the right to free speech, and both are 'infringed' when a speaker is censored.
That's less the case when someone starts throwing punches, there is no consent, implied or otherwise, to receive a punch, vs. the consent to hear a given speaker. Unless it is in an agreed upon boxing match, of course.
I'm sure you could find a listener who's interested in hearing the nuclear codes, or, as another user put it more saliently, the coordinates of a military unit at the frontline that you're entrusted with. The listener's right and interest to hear things is not exactly under question.
What's under question is why any society would want to have free season on coordinating violence/malfeasance. Classify all communication as "speech" and thus "free", and you get bizarre anarchy where no opsec can be enforced and no threat can be reacted to until it is made true on. Make exceptions, and you get to argue over the extent of the exceptions.
I approach you in a dark alley from behind and tell you to empty your pockets with my hand half a second away from retrieving my open carry gun and shooting at you. That should be legal, shouldn't it? All I did was speak to you. If you felt threatened, that's entirely on you. And besides, don't you have the right to hear what I have to say?
I mean, I still support contractual rights to restrict the spread of information, such as nondisclosure agreements and even certain forms of copyrigght.
The constant tension between the "INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE!" philosophy and "Some information can cause harm" is everpresent.
Ahh, this takes me back to arguing this stuff on 4chan and reddit back in the day.
What is your specific intent in uttering these words? Is it to give me some useful information that I desire to hear or that I requested to hear? If not, then surely I am entitled to take that into account when I judge how to respond to your speech.
"It should be legal for you to utter those words" and "it should also be legal for me to shoot you on the spot if you utter those words" are not in fact in tension.
In this case, the restriction on speech is more practical than anything. You wouldn't utter those words for fear of being shot. No third party needs to 'interfere.'
You would probably welcome an opportunity to hand over your valuables without a fight, rather than get shot/stabbed wordlessly and have no choice in the matter.
I'm sure you're very badass, but I do believe the advantage is on the robber's side here. I specified that the gun is holstered because I expected a gotcha about brandishing, but really, brandishing is a fake crime as well.
More generally, I do support shooting people who called you a slur on Twitter. Perhaps if more progressives did that, people wouldn't give them such information that they didn't desire to hear.
Ironically you've presented a scenario that I can claim expertise in, since one of my jobs is in fact self defense instructor. This precise scenario is one I have thought about and trained on literal hundreds of times.
The calculation I have to make is based on whether I think your gun is real, whether it is loaded, whether you have the wherewithal to pull the trigger, and, ultimately, if I'm faster than you. Which I probably am because, as stated above, I train for this.
And in the vast majority of hypothetical cases I would... hand over my stuff without a protest and let you go on your way. Simply the easiest resolution once you've pressed the matter. But you have acted in such a way that I will consider ALL options on the table. And my calculation will adjust based on whether I have loved ones with me and whether I have reason to believe you would kill anyway.
Simply put, YOU have to make a calculation too, and if your calculation has already included the possibility of being shot yourself and you STILL take this action, I can't speak well of your judgment.
And once YOU have made a statement that shows you are willing to kill me (or someone else) to obtain mere possessions, by my perfectly, coldly rational logic you have forfeited any argument for why you shouldn't be killed in return, so the only question is whether I think that is necessary to protect myself.
Similarly, if you claim that you want to suppress the speech of others, I would HAPPILY support restricting your speech because you can't really complain about being treated the way you already agreed its fair to treat others.
Symmetry is nice, like that.
It sure would. But you've already stated that its on twitter, so the means to do so would certainly not be present unless you go to the effort of locating and hunting that person down, which seems like a LOT OF FUCKING EFFORT when you could just walk away from the screen. Or you could just use twitter's own tools to mute the words you don't want to hear/read and block the people you don't want to interact with.
So there's a certain level of implied consent if you consider a particular set of words offensive enough to kill over... and yet you don't avail yourself of readily available tools that will prevent you from seeing those words at all if you don't wish.
I now recall that we've disagreed before on the meaning of the word "fairness". Yet again, you seem to have your own definition for "symmetry" as well.
It is not "symmetrical" to kill in the process of robbery and to kill in self-defense. The latter is a more "fair" act, even in a situation that is not evenly matched. I doubt even your training would provide you with the means to quickly and accurately evaluate any attacker in order to make your self-defense perfectly, rationally "symmetrical" (the classic home invasion scenario - few on this forum would say they'd hold themselves back from shooting the invader, even if he's not obviously armed and threatening). This does not matter in a sane legal code because as one who has not initiated the aggression, you are in the right.
Am I correct to assume that if I want to suppress others expressing a certain set of ideas A, you would support restricting my speech entirely? That's hardly symmetrical, and not very fair either. What would be symmetrical and fair is to support restricting my speech around the set of ideas A. You'll find that many people readily agree to such proposals. In my view, that supports my interpretation of fairness. People tend to agree to fair counterproposals and reject unfair ones.
I don't think this can be done before encountering the random person who'd say the words to me. Similarly, you can't shoot a robber before they appear and try to rob you. Instead, you rely on implicit intimidation to deter robbers. Instead of putting the onus on every possible robbery victim to "block" them, many would-be robbers decide not to rob in the first place.
If your proposal is that freedom of speech isn't absolute, I simply ask you to delineate the exceptions to it. And if you want to apply those exceptions to others, you must be fine with them vigorously being applied to you.
And it can't be simply something like "The N-word is forbidden." More like 'words which are offensive to a particular racial or other identity group can be silenced and/or punished." At which point, if you use any words which any racial or other identity group finds offensive, then you, too, will be silenced and punished.
If your position is broader than that, such that "No racially discriminatory language whatsoever," then again, I will apply the same to you.
All I'm saying is that denying someone the blanket protection of 'free speech' as a principle means you aren't later entitled to claim that same protection for yourself. And honestly, I'm not going to protest for you if somebody else is arbitrarily silencing you since I wouldn't expect you to do the same for me.
Yes, this is the preferable outcome, but I am making it crystal clear what my intentions are in the event that somebody expresses intent to rob me.
Again, can't complain about the consequences if I've warned you in advance about the risks.
I suppose the core of our disagreement is that I do not expect you to act symmetrically. I expect you to act in the worst faith, because you do not actually like symmetrical restrictions on free speech, you just dislike when yours is restricted in any way. This makes moot any discussion of fairness.
For example, in response to "don't call people nigger on the public square" I would expect you to invent "offense" for the most milquetoast word describing you that was never considered a grave offense. Musk reportedly banned the word "cis" on twitter despite his aura of a free speech warrior. I'd expect you to behave in bad faith similarly. You're welcome to deny that.
Please refrain from insisting others don’t actually believe what they say. On the occasions when it’s true, it’s rarely productive, and vice versa.
If you think there’s a contradiction, there are better ways to prosecute it.
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I don't think this is a accurate summary of this policy, and the implementation is more limited than the policy. There's supposedly an interstitial on mobile (app?), but on desktop, I don't even get that (and I've gotten interstitial for 'fuck'!), and I'd know.
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Oh this is interesting. After interrogating free speech to such an extent, surely you'll be able to give us a precise way of determining what is a "grave offence".
I see the word "cis" pop up ony feed all the time, so I have no idea what you're talking about. By contrast, progressives have argued at length how they should be able to call people "cracker" or "gusano", or invented offense at completely mundane things like the OK handsign.
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