Slashdot Mirror
EFF Takes On Online Harassment
Gamoid writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has identified online harassment as a major challenge facing free speech on the Internet, and lays out its plan to fix it. They say, "Online harassment is a digital rights issue. At its worst, it causes real and lasting harms to its targets, a fact that must be central to any discussion of harassment. Unfortunately, it's not easy to craft laws or policies that will address those harms without inviting government or corporate censorship and invasions of privacy—including the privacy and free speech of targets of harassment. ... Just because the law sometimes allows a person to be a jerk (or worse) doesn’t mean that others in the community are required to be silent or to just stand by and let people be harassed. We can and should stand up against harassment. Doing so is not censorship—it’s being part of the fight for an inclusive and speech-supporting Internet."
The route from "this is harassment that should be censored" to "this is something we 'all' disagree with so it should be censored" is a very slippery slope and the internet is piled high with the bones of dead forums who fell down that path. What is harassment? I can't say, "I'm going to kill you" but can I say "I wish you were dead"? Can I say "I hope your dog dies"? "You are an idiot for these reasons"? Can I say "Go play in traffic"?
There are various hug boxes on the internet where even vigorous disagreement backed with reason is seen as harassment. A more appropriate question than "should harassment be stopped" is "Who should be permitted to define harassment for a community"?
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Well, as long as it's not a case of "your rights end where my feelings begin" then there isn't really a problem. If things are legal, who cares? Beyond that, it's an enforcement issue. Individual sites already have their own policies, so if a user is not satisfied with the policies and enforcement of the site they are using, that is not a problem as the user can discontinue using the site.
Hundreds of posts of people talking past each other coming right up.
Censorship is always, absolutely unacceptable. A person that raises his hand to censor another should have that hand cut right off!
"You can't take away people's right to be assholes! That's who you remind me of... an evil Mr Rogers." - Simon Phoenix, Demolition Man
Are we to assume that because France is having trouble, the EFF should stop and we should just not bother?
"Oh, they're dealing with something terrible, I suppose I should just be quiet and accept the abuse I suffer because, hey, at least I'm not being murdered!"
People tend to see anyone disagreeing with them as "harassment".
Note how I will get down-modded "troll" for the following sentence: I think Xbox One is a better platform than Playstation 4.
Not edgy enough? How about this radical opinion: For all it's flaws, Windows 8's UI is many times more usable than whatever Ubuntu is trying to do.
Blood still not boiling? I don't think Jar Jar Binks was that bad of a character, considering that Star Wars is primarily a franchise designed to sell toys to children.
And this is a real and serious problem.
There is one local character with a personality disorder who carefully hides online and constantly, for years, weekly attacks and smears taunts and insults local people just going about their online and offline business.
If it were fair and open criticism, so what.
If it were a national site, so what.
If they were attacking CEOs or politicians or bureaucrats... good!
But for local communities it's a real problem when people with serious asocial problems use all of their efforts, for YEARS, on a weekly basis, to simply do their best to degrade any and all online and even offline interaction and assassinate people's character out of simple avarice. They have a serious problem, and they make us part of it.
Such people always existed. There are people with profound social problems in this world who derive pleasure from hurting others in petty ways. But when you are talking about small communities, and easy carefully protected anonymity, and prolonged sustained effort fueled by a psychological disorder, you have a new phenomenon.
Not even just for the local community. It's not healthy psychologically and socially for the sick person to indulge their bad behavior rather than get help.
This article isn't my location, but here's a good write up from a few years back similar to what I and others in my small city have to deal with:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Online harassment is a symptom of a larger problem.
Time was you could deal with online harassment by clicking the block button. The ability for someone to follow you across forums and services was limited. Today, we insist that people use their real names, link their accounts and allow friend-of-friend connections on modern web services. We make them input their phone numbers, of all things.
We say to people "if you don't like it, don't use it". But there is no good reason for people to insist on these functions. They insist on them only because people have always been singularly identifiable, and some people find it odd to operate in a space where that might not hold true.
However, there is a good reason to insist we trash them: cyberbullying.
It's far easier to to dox people if you can google their name and get dozens of results. Far easier to follow people if they're linking their facebook account to things, and you've got a clandestine link to their facebook account. Automatic stalking.
Yet, when people like me suggest that this "publicity by default" concept is bad, and say that people should be allowed to delete accounts when they no longer need them, we are told "it's a post privacy world, deal with it" and "everything on the internet is pubic and permanent, deal with it".
Maybe that's not a good paradigm?
I think they should be clearly distinguished instead of throwing everyone on the same basket.
There are those people, like pretty much everyone on the internet that sometimes will get too bored, and will throw some hooks to cause some flame wars etc.. and well, this happens and sometimes its even fun, as it ends killing boredom.
But then there are the stalkers.
People that get fixated in making someone's life hell, someone that keeps "chasing the prey", that seeks every place the victim goes and slanders and don't let it go etc..
Those are indeed truly evil and should be clipped somehow.
Since last year we've seen the legitimate criticism from a customer revolt misrepresented (on an incredbile scale) as "harrassment."
And there was also harassment that was described as harassment. Gemergate was/is mess, with lots of problems from lots of directions. Simplistic posts like yours here that are just "my side" tribalism are part of the problem.
Read the fine article. Despite the misleading summary (oh, Slashdot, please never change. Especially not to Beta), the EFF is coming down on the side of free speech and against censorship, either by governments or by forum owners. When they say "We can and should stand up against harassment", they're referring to "counter-speech".
They later refer to GamerGate
And the context clearly implies that the latter is NOT what the EFF wants to happen.
The EFF isn't exactly suited to deal with armed extremists.
The likely outcome from this will be total loss of free speech rights, how else do you stop online harassment when literally anyone can say literally anything is harassment if they don't like it.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
A lot of people will be talking past each other on topics like this because we don't agree upon what is meant by freedom or by speech.
Sometimes the answers are easy. Many nations protect the people from the government with respect to the political freedom of speech. That's great, but harassment is rarely political and is usually an act of individuals or (non-governmental) groups. Yet expanding the definition of freedom of speech presents problems. Harassment is not about imposing upon people speaking loudly or frequently. It is about intimidation. This intimidation takes many forms: threats, diminishing one's sense of self, reducing a person in the eyes of others. All of this is to achieve a particular aim, by reducing a person's ability to respond to the harassment. That includes creating an imbalance of speech to favour the perpetrator (i.e. the victim cannot speak out). The question isn't so much, "is it a valid form of speech," as it is, "should one person's speech be able to suppress other people?"
We can and should stand up against harassment. Doing so is not censorship—it’s being part of the fight for an inclusive and speech-supporting Internet."
Bull shit, because who gets to define harassment? It's the beginning of the end of freespeech.
inclusive and speech-supporting Internet
?huh? Is that Newspeak?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Are we to assume that because France is having trouble, the EFF should stop and we should just not bother?
Of course not. But the EFF is treading on dangerous ground. Up to now they have mainly defended individuals against government attempts to censor or stifle speech. Now they are talking about going after individuals, for what some consider to be speaking freely. Many people that have supported the EFF in the past, may not be so supportive of this mission creep. Some of the harassment has been egregious, but that doesn't mean the EFF is the appropriate organization to "fix" the problem, or to even say what the "fix" should be.
It is /. and the EFF who are too, uh, "lazy" (yeah that's the ticket) to investigate the actual harassment. Once again, a Slashdot article makes reference to Gamergate in the context of harassment, but all the victims mentioned just happen to be on the anti-GG side. I'm beginning to have doubts that this is an honest mistake.
Pro-GG people have been doxxed:
http://imgur.com/BNlLKcn
So was the creator of #notyourshield, and his workplace was harassed until he was fired:
https://twitter.com/Moldybars/...
http://i.imgur.com/9ieHMu9.png
A prominent anti-GGer called for the doxxing of all Gamergate supporters:
http://i.gyazo.com/5db582013ac...
An article that claims to know all about Gamergate appears completely ignorant of the majority of relevant harassment, not to mention the Harassment Patrol. At least the pro-GG side makes an effort to detect, condemn, and report this shitty behavior, no matter which side it comes from.
Yeah, they also crow about Gamergate being dead, but despite all the funerals there's no body. Never mind what the anti-gamers say; they've been known to lie. EFF doesn't take sides on Gamergate, they only mention it as a "magnet for harassment", which I think is undeniable -- people on both sides have been doxxed, swatted, and mailed undesirable stuff.
It absolutely is, and the EFF is against it. Much of the section on "Companies Are Bad at Regulating Speech" is about it
And there was also harassment that was described as harassment.
And that would have been fair enough if they hadn't also
a) pretended the tiny minority (and third parties) carrying out harassment accounted for the entire movement, in a transparent attempt to distract from and cover-up for the corrupt journalists, and
b) completely ignored all the harassment coming from the anti-GG "direction."
Therefore the coverage was intentionally biased, and decidedly anti-Gamergate rather than anti-harassment.
Say, for whatever reason, valid or not, you perceive me as annoying and contrary and generally pin-headed, and you undertake to call me truly despicable names in the most contemptuous and filthy manner imaginable. Every day. Until you expire. Are you harassing me? No. You aren't. It wouldn't even rise to the standard of mild annoyance. Why? Because I am immune to such rhetoric under all but the most trying circumstances, and even were you somehow to reach such a malodorous level of offense, you're still 100% within the bounds of acceptable speech in my book; I just have to cope with it (which would require just about zero effort, I assure you.)
But the next person in line? They might break down into tears, wander off into the nearest bathtub, and slit their wrists if you simply called them a douchebag or implied they had too many pimples.
Whose fault is this? What is our responsibility in the matter of such weak, unprepared, or broken personalities? Should we pad the very walls and take out all the tubs and razors and knives and muzzle each and every one of us to prevent poor Cluetard McDimwit from wrist slitting lest something rises to the level of offense in the dim, dysfunctional reaches of what passes for his mind?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
Prepare your kids, and yourself, for exposure to the opinions of others, and gird yourself appropriately lest there is (gasp) an encounter with differing opinion, surprising and/or not-to-your-taste behavior, or OMFG, someone intentionally being nasty, crude or stupid. Or all or the foregoing. It is not anyone else's job to do this for you or your children; and it is not anyone else's responsibility if your failure to do so causes unrest, or worse, in minds you failed to prepare. Including yours.
In order to have freedoms, we must be educated well enough, and prepared well enough, to deal with them. If the fact that some cannot deal with them is sufficient to the cause to limit those freedoms, then eventually, they will erode away to nothing. Likely there will always be some personality on the borderline of collapsing at some provocation, imaginary or otherwise. Should we really attempt to tune our whole society to the lowest possible standard of discourse as a result?
Think very carefully before you endorse force of any kind as a remedy for "offense." To borrow somewhat from Jefferson, if it does not pick my pocket, break my leg, or falsely portray my reputation in some measure likely to cause material or financial consequence... then no remedy is called for; no coercion of law appropriate; and no sympathy required.
Having said that, the owner of any private venue has every right to set arbitrary limits on speech and behavior within the venue. You don't like it, leave. End of story. Such r
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Bullshit. Freedom of speech is not freedom to be an asshole to anyone at any time. Words can hurt people. You can drive someone to kill themselves with nothing but speech. Happens all the time. Like it or not there are reasonable limits to your freedom when it affects others. The EFF is asking the tough questions here about where that limit should sit. This is not mission creep, protecting electronic rights should ABSOLUTELY include the right to not be systematically harassed, intimidated and threatened by assholes online.
Ouch. Please read this.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Anyone can say they feel threatened or harassed by anything. It's the same reason why the FCC never defined what obscene content would be, it's not possible.
Freedom of speech is not freedom to be an asshole to anyone at any time.
Yes it is. You do not have the right to physically harm, or threaten, someone. But you certainly have the right to offend them.
Words can hurt people.
Sure they can, but there is no constitutional right to not be offended.
A lack of anonymity means people are held accountable, but that "accountability" is in the eye of the beholder, so it cuts both ways, and it definitely cuts against the person who isn't anonymous if others going after them are anonymous. The first thing that comes to my mind, then, is to have some degree of separation between anonymous/pseudonymous areas of communication and debate and "real name" ones. I'm not sure that's feasible (how to really draw such hard boundaries in such an interconnected age?) and I worry there'd be problematic results from such segregation. But it does seem to me like some of the more recent issues have been as bad as they've been due in no small part to a disparity of where the harassers and the targets are on the anonymous->pseudonymous->eponymous continuum.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Yes, actually. The events in France demonstrate, what happens, when somebody considers himself justified to do anything other than talk back in response to whatever speech he may find offensive.
I'd rather suffer being offended once in a while, than see the First Amendment get watered down the way the Second and the Fourth have already been...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
when somebody considers himself justified to do anything other than talk back in response to whatever speech he may find offensive.
I think people are willfully misconstruing the sort of thing the EFF is talking about. They certainly don't appear to be talking about things that are generally offensive, but specific, targeted harassment against individuals where they are hounded everywhere they go.
But since people are getting killed over comics, you shouldn't worry about the torrent of abuse directed towards you on every site you visit. Right? Just suck it up and be glad you're not dead?
The first GG link is about Felicia Day, and is actually one of the Guardian's more balanced pieces (which ain't saying much), including as it does Sam Biddle's "Bring Back Bullying tweets". It doesn't even include the word "misogyny", which is probably a first for the Guardian.
The second (broken) GG link is to some of Brianna Wu's nonsense -- but the EFF includes that link not to support but to criticize the proposed solutions included: "our first thought is to worry that such legislation will be misused to target victims, not the perpetrators of harassment".
The link about Sarkeesian (who did indeed get a death threat from someone who had been after her since long before Gamergate got started, confirmed by the pro-GG side.) doesn't even mention Gamergate, though it is tagged with it.
The "Open letter to the gaming community" doesn't mention Gamergate and doesn't say anything pro-GG would disagree with; you may recall when someone who was anti-GG started an "inclusiveness" campaign with a heart logo, lots of Gamergaters started using it, and the person running the campaign briefly added a message telling Gamergaters they weren't welcome in this inclusiveness.
But the EFF article isn't just about Gamergate, and counting links doesn't really show anything; for one thing it's easier to find anti-GG links in mainstream sources for obvious reasons. If you read what the EFF said in the body of the article, they're against censorship (both by governments and private companies who run online forums) and they don't consider "harassment" the sort of thing anti-GG considers harassment : "Weâ(TM)re not talking about a few snarky tweets or the give and take of robust online debate, even when that debate includes harsh language or obscenities". I certainly can't see them endorsing the idea that politely disagreeing with hateful mentions of oneself (a.k.a "sea-lioning") is harassment.
We can and should stand up against harassment.
EFF meeting:
Lets make a search engine?
- Google done that
Lets make the world more connected?
- Facebook/Twitter did that
Fuck it, lets enforce our own laws on the world and get donations to do it.
- Roger that. Lets create an issue that doesnt really need to exist and make people fall for it. Lets ignore the things that really matter like world hunger, corrupt governments and corporations. But hey, at least EFF will get popular sifting shit down peoples throats that DOESNT REALLY MATTER.
Challenge accepted.
http://sjwar.blogspot.com/2014...
You said a single. There are many references to this case, and it's not the only case, but you can do your own homework.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
It is a slippery slope regardless. And we know, where it leads — Illiberals have been advocating banning "hate speech" for years. Guess who will be deciding, which speech is hateful? Ministry of Truth can't be far behind...
Right.
Strawman.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
How about you retaliate or report the problems ti the site owners getting them a ban. Or perhaps you could draw a cartoon with them holding hands with the prophit mohomed while a jew sodomizes a pig and Jesus marries them?
Or better yet, just do something else for a while? Its not like using different accounts or email addresses or visiting people face to face instead of online, going to the park or something is going to kill you/them/anyone. Why do we need laws for something so easily dealt with knowing those laws will eventually be morphed into encroachments on free speech and likely make that cartoon idea illegal because it bothers people.
Freedom of speech is not freedom to be an asshole to anyone at any time.
Yes, it is, in fact, exactly that. Freedom of speech is utterly useless if it only applies to speech "everyone (or, more likely, "you and people who agree with you") approves of."
Nobody has the right not to be offended, but people do have the right not to be stalked or harassed.
That means I'm free to state my opinion. What I'm not allowed to do is follow you around, waiting for you around every corner, repeating whatever vile thing I want.
Saying somebody is an idiot on Facebook is one thing. Spreading rumors is another. Stalking is another. Again, I don't know why we need special cyber-laws, because many of these things are ALREADY illegal without specific cyber-laws being needed.
* Following somebody around wherever they go, online or not: stalking
* Spreading untruths with intent to harm or defame: libel/slander
* Creating false facebook profiles, etc: impersonation
etc
I got banned from there a couple of months ago, pretty sure it was I called out Rose Eveleth, posting on one of her articles that her old site titles "Ladybits" is just as sexist (actually far more so) as Matt Taylor's shirt. I emailed them, and their reply: "I've checked in Disqus and it unfortunately looks like you have been blocked by one of the moderators. Banning is done at the discretion of our moderators - typically when a user engages in personal attacks or uses other uncivil language - and we support their judgement. Additionally, I cannot view which comment resulted in your account being blocked. My apologies. "
I did nothing of the sort, all I did was point out the chain showing she's a hypocrite. No wonder old-school newspapers are dying if huge papers like The Atlantic don't even have control over their own webpage, and are just accepting on faith whatever unknowable actions their volunteer "moderators" are doing. I know I could go register again, but that's not the point. The Atlantic loves their free speech, but seem brain dead defending others on their own web site.
Yes, it is, in fact, exactly that.
No it isnt. Making physical threats to someone is being an asshole and that is certainly not covered under freedom of speech.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Ah yes, blaming the victim.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Now they are talking about going after individuals, for what some consider to be speaking freely.
Some people don't understand free speech, so what? It's like the free market. It doesn't exist without some care.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Harassment is somewhere in between physical threats and being a general arsehole. It's a sustained campaign of asshattery towards an individual, with threats but not necessarily physical harm.
The law says you can't do it. Things like stalking are illegal, even if the purpertraitor doesn't lay a finger on the victim.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What about an individuals freedom to live their life free of harassment?
In the US there have been instances of people protesting at funerals. They turn up with banners like "murderer" or "god hates fags" and start screaming at the mourners. Sometimes bikers turn up to keep them back, so that the bereaved family can try to bury their loved one in peace.
In Europe that isn't tolerated. People have the freedom to have a private, peaceful funeral without harassment. Europeans consider themselves to have more freedom than the US in this respect. Freedom of speech does not extend to harassment.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Physical threats and suggestions of violence fall into the realm of stalking. Just because some of the harassment is taking place online as opposed to in front of a live audience doesn't actually matter.
We can most certainly be assholes. I can call you ten different names under the sun, but those are my opinions. You can call me all kinds of terrible things, but unless I let your none sense actually affect me, it won't matter.
Psychology and dealing with your own emotions should really be taught. Things like boundaries, building self esteem and personal self worth are things that most of us have to figure out the hard way over many years. I actually paid for a ton of video lectures on these topics and more and I learned a great deal about how and why I feel certain emotions and the different ways to respond to them.
If I would of had that information as a teenager and digested even half of it, I'm sure I would of been much happier. Today, I have a great deal more confidence and self esteem and some random nobody is not going to drag me down with words.
You do not have the right to not be offended.
Get rid of anonymity. If users can hide behind a veil of online anonymity, if they can always be relatively assured that no one is going to trace down that AssH/\t350 is really Wendel Jeppers of 113 Terrace Dr., Apt. C, Meat Hollow, KY, and that there is almost no chance that one can deliver a summons to him, you will not get rid of harassment. Couple that with the fact that there is no authority which can get rid of a troll once and for all, that they can sign up with a new anonymous account, and it's easy to see that the EFF folks are idiots in this case.
It's all good to have folks stand up and decry harassment when it happens. We'd all like to think our better angels triumph over evil. They don't always (or is that often?). That's why we need identity, laws, and authority. Because certain idiots in this world need to be separated from polite society (and hopefully rehabilitated before being let back into that society) because they do cause harm.
The good news is that Bayesian probability and AI will soon be good enough to identify trolls, harassers, and other assorted knaves by the way they write - write enough like a troll, watch your post get bounced and your account cancelled - no appeal, go away. We'll have control. It's probably not the kind you want though, as these technical solutions always have collateral damage.
So, Internet idiots, you've all been warned several times. Are you going to grow up, act like adults, and control yourselves or are you going to be leashed? Your choice.
That is all.
Doing so is not censorship—it’s being part of the fight for an inclusive and speech-supporting Internet.
> Bullshit. Freedom of speech is not freedom to be an asshole to anyone at any time.
Yes it is actually. You have just fallen off the slippery slope that a great deal of us are worried about. You have quite effectively identified the big problem with any attempts to "fight online harrasment".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You do not have the right to physically harm, or threaten, someone. But you certainly have the right to offend them... there is no constitutional right to not be offended.
I went to a talk a few years ago by a brain scientist. His results were that the brain response to a physical injury is pretty much the same as the brain response to insults and swear words. Does the constitutional injunction refer to the suffering that's inflicted, i.e. a brain response? or does it refer solely to the physical injury even in cases or people where this doesn't cause any suffering?
...is the same way we fight spam - filter it.
Seriously, just have a plugin in your browser that censors the words you don't want to see, and *BAM*, we're done. No need to control the troll, just don't look at them.
I find your characterization to be inaccurate. Freedom means the ability to do something, as opposed to the ability to not do something. Every time people are restricted from some action, their freedom diminishes, which would be going in a negative direction.
I would not argue with the contention that in many ways, freedom in the US is diminishing; but I would insist that this is not a condition that is justified by our constitution. We never really were able to meet the standards of our own constitution, and today, we are presently being subjected to unauthorized government action that is eroding our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms quite severely in a number of areas. Ideally, something would arrest this process, but it doesn't look like there's much hope for it. So I'll be primarily discussing our constitution and our ideals here; please understand that I am well aware that the reality is often "other."
In the EU and within member countries of the EU, restrictions on what you may do as an individual, harming no one, extend beyond matters of speech. Nazi memorabilia -- sale, purchase, collection -- serves to demonstrate how individual freedoms are repressed by state actors to the detriment of the citizens (and which also provides a rather sobering mechanism to suppress history.) Collecting people's passports at their hotel demonstrates another way individual freedom is restricted, in this case, the freedom to travel and the freedom to control one's own data. Being forbidden to keep arms limits the ability to defend home, family, business and employees from criminal elements, and that's a very significant negative.
I honestly do not see how these kinds of things can be described as "positive freedoms"; they directly reduce freedom without providing a gain in freedom elsewhere, and so seem to me to be inherently negative with regard to freedom overall. You would have to present an excellent defense of your contention in these contexts to change my outlook on this.
Most rights generate limits when colliding with other rights, whether they be the same right, or another. A classic go-to is "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins." The key to making this idea work as best it can is a very careful determination of where the nose is; in the case of speech, if the "nose" consists of simply hearing something as it does in some places outside the USA, I would assert that the limit is set incorrectly. When government uses coercion backed by force to limit one's ability to express an opinion in a public venue, characterizing that as a positive seems more than wrong; it seems ridiculous.
When speech does more than communicate words -- for instance, should it fall into liable or slander -- then limits arise, because we're no longer dealing only with communication. We're dealing with harmful aggression in a very real and concrete sense. In the USA, as elsewhere, reputation is something of value, and attempts to damage it unjustly are viewed quite dimly by most of our body of law. Other examples include coercive speech, other threats, harmful volume levels, and various types of concrete incitement to action. So there's no perfect freedom of speech here, nor do I think there should be, but in the matter of expressing one's opinion and the communication of ideas, we're definitely quite free, and a good deal more so than those in the EU are in some of the member states.
Although I think your characterization of "negative" is inaccurate, I'd be very interested to see what you have to say in regard to the bad things you think we are free to do without interference. Again I am speaking of our constitution and our ideals, not the current state of unauthorized law, which restrict us as much, and in some
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
While insults and swear words may hurt - it is a self-inflicted injury. There was a time when me, and many of my mates underwent a transformation by being subjected to order of magnitude more insults and swear words - they stopped hurting, within a few weeks of "practice". So much so that some swear words took on the shape of terms of endearment - literally, if only informally.
While martial arts training can make many physical injuries also less painful - there are 2 significant differences. Training required here stretches into years not weeks, and yet it doesn't work against extreme force e.g. bullet from most guns. "Training" against swear words and insults takes only weeks and completely immunizes against extreme forms of swear words and insults.
(Note that threats of injury are not included in insults and swear words for the above 2 paragraphs).
So it can be argued that the constitutional injunction refers to the suffering that is inflicted by the perpetrator, not oneself.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
If possession of anything to do with the events was prohibited, yes, in fact it would provide a chilling effect.
But if you were to buy the lab coat, or a box of unused envelopes that said "from the desk of..." of some idiot who mixed up some anthrax and put such a thing on display with a plaque explaining what it was, that would be both interesting and provocative of conversation where reason could be brought into play. Nazi uniform, medal, helmet, sigil, patch, letterhead, enigma machine? Same thing. I'll get to firearms below.
As to your first point, no -- but the real question here is, does this have anything to do with the line you posit? Does that line even exist? Let's look closely and see.
With memorabilia, we are talking about, at best, things like daggers, officer's swords and Lugers. Usually we're not even talking about those, but instead, flags, patches, uniforms, medals, a whole range of non-weapon artifacts and records.
These things add no notable destructive power to the individual that making them illegal eliminates. None at all. Take the Luger, for instance. Can't own a Nazi Luger? No, but you can own other pistols, rifles, and etc. Many of them far more destructive, longer range, etc. Hunting is legal (yes, even in Germany) and of course knives and rolling pins and pitchforks and poisons and so forth are in every home. So clearly, we're not talking about anything to do with adding destructive power not already easily available. I have a Luger, you have a Desert Eagle, You're going to make the bigger hole, believe me. You have a quality .222 scoped rifle, I have a Luger, you can shoot me dead before I can even see you in the distance.
So memorabilia and WMD do not exist on a continuum from one to the other. Which was my whole point. WMD are dangerous force-multipliers, hence deserve some special treatment. Memorabilia is not, and does not. But wait!
In the (rare, enormously expensive) case where a historical object actually might be a force multiplier -- say we were talking about a Messerschmidt fighter or a Tiger tank -- then there are other laws that reasonably control ownership, arming, firing and operation of such a thing -- Nazi or otherwise. That would exist on a continuum with WMD. Because it's pretty much that. The amount of damage you could do with a working Tiger (or fighter aircraft) before you could be stopped would be amazing (we've actually seen this happen in the US with older US tanks.) But note that the reason the working Tiger or fighter would be prohibited has nothing at all to do with the fact that is an historical object; it's because they can crush things, blow huge holes in things, drop bombs, all the while being basically unstoppable until very scarce resources are brought to bear upon the machine in question. And in turn, those remedies may create more of a mess. So no tanks or fighters without oversight (and usually, permanent neutering. Concrete down the tank barrel, removal of machine guns and bomb racks, etc.)
Now, WMD. Does that change what an individual can do, multiply their force as does the Tiger tank? Of course it does. More so. So you see, memorabilia do not exist along a continuum with Tiger tanks and WMD. Therefore, the rules applied to WMD should not be applied to memorabilia. Your posited "line" does not exist. It's apples and strudel. No comparison. Memorabilia does not provide force multiplication.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.