Wrong. In the US legal system, hate speech basically isn't a thing. That doesn't stop SJWs from trying to pretend the term has specific meaning or relevance to legal matters.
Don't be misled by the way that Prof. Tsesis treats Virginia v. Black in that Politifact article. The Supreme Court treated the act in question as a true threat. A message -- spoken, written, or through an expressive act -- cannot be proscribed on the basis of being "hate speech". To be punished by the government, the message must fall into one of the recognized exceptions to the First Amendment's protections, and hate speech is not one of those.
Have you ever read the US (or foreign) antitrust laws? This kind of converted action by dominant market participants -- especially if (as seems likely) they get caught putting anything except terrorist media in the database -- is extremely easy to prosecute as illegal collusion.
Yes, I mentioned that two-pronged test in my first comment. It doesn't help you, because a hyperbolic threat can still be understood as a true, but not literal, threat.
On the Internet, nobody can tell you're a dog, and a lot of nonverbal clues about intent also get washed away. Without more clues to hint at the relationship or intent behind the hypothetical statement here, though, a reasonable person certainly could take it as a seriously meant threat to injure or kill.
Sure, but exaggerating a threat doesn't inherently make it less credible as a threat -- only as a literal statement of intended harm. You need additional context to establish that the statement was meant mostly as hyperbole. A statement that is intended as a threat is not protected by the First Amendment (see, e.g., Elonis v. United States).
What's your authority to say that the threat has to be "credible"? I can't find it either in Supreme Court precedent or in the post by Ken White that you linked to.
You're being daft and you're lying. Americans have argued over immigration, with much of the public against it, for basically all the major waves of immigration to the US. Chinese and other Asian immigrants on the west coast; Irish, Italian, and others on the east coast. And during that, contrary to your claim, neither "tradition" (whatever that is supposed to mean relating to immigration) nor law has been "100% open borders".
Do you distinguish between "hate crime" laws and "hate speech" laws? The discussion had been about the latter, but you talked only about the former.
In typical US usage, a hate crime would be something that is a crime regardless of motivation, but exacerbated by there motivation being animus against the victim based on racial, ethnic, national origin, sex, sexualized orientation, or similar factors. Hate speech usually means little more than harsh criticism than can, in some person's mind, somehow be tied to some group identity.
Project much? The US has had varying degrees of immigration restriction over time, but it was never "100% open borders", and anti-immigrant hysteria in North America predates the US. It's quite unfounded to claim that traditional Americans must support unrestricted immigration.
In the US, something like that would probably be considered a "true threat", and that's one of the well-known and uncontroversial exceptions to the First Amendment's protections for freedom of speech.
But maybe the EU protects making statements that are meant as physical threats, and perceived as such by an objective person?
You said that arguing for a registry of Muslims (an argument which absolutely no one has actually made) would imply that a registry of Christians would also be appropriate. It wouldn't imply that, because only one of those religions has been responsible for millions of recent deaths.
Which atrocities (involving Americans) has Christianity recently been a major motivation for? Comparing recent events to long-ago history is one of the stupidest forms of moral equivalence.
I was not as clear as I might have been about what I meant by "we". When I said "we" should try to do those things, I meant it in a broader sense than you and I as individuals. By "we" I meant whatever level of society wants to protect itself -- from coalitions of countries down to towns or neighborhoods. If individuals want to take part, even just by assigning blame, they should take the responsibility to understand the people they're blaming.
And who gets "other"ed when someone says that "profound democratic immaturity" got Donald Trump elected? Is it the people who voted for Trump, or did the speaker other himself?
It is pretty funny to tell college students that other people are immature, though.
Well, sure. We should try to understand who wants to harm our society or its members, why they want to do that, and how to stop them. It's entirely appropriate to assign blame, but when we do, we ought to be as narrow as possible so that we don't blame innocents or potential allies.
Which recent mass murders do you blame on hate groups? The Orlando nightclub shootings? Attacks on the Bataclan theater or Charlie Hebdo? Ambushes of police officers? The attack on the Family Research Center in Washington DC? (The last two do not meet the usual definition of mass murderer, but I can't think of many mass murderers in the US where either the killer or a group claimed that the killer had such an affiliation, or was inspired by the group.)
Twitter doesn't get a choice about whether to comply with a subpoena authorized by a court (e.g. FISC), unless they want to make like Lavabit. Donald Trump would probably find it hilarious if they did that.
Will, it certainly starts with "othering" some group, blaming many or most of a society's problems on them, and trying to drum the rest of society into a bunker, "us or them" mentality regarding the out-of-group.
Whether that out-group is Muslims or traditional Americans is up for debate.
The repeal of Glass-Steagall was a recognition that banks had basically already figured out how to work around it, through money market accounts and similar products that fit either "investment bank" or "retail bank" regulation but effectively acted like the other. Even Sen. Glass realized (back in 1935) that the prohibition against mixing the two was harmful, but FDR and Congress killed Glass's efforts to repeal it.
At any rate, the repeal of Glass-Steagall had approximately zero effect on the formation or collapse of the housing or lending bubbles. It was a worldwide problem, Glass-Steagall was only law (and only repealed) in the US, the repeal was a long time before the collapse, and there were a lot of other factors -- like government re-interpretation of what constituted illegal red-lining -- that contributed much more.
Blaming the 2008-2009 recession on the repeal of Glass-Steagall is ahistorical and economically ignorant.
"Greed", also known as people wanting to make a living, and sometimes they can use scarce resources more efficiently, and thereby do or make something cheaper than the other person. "Competition" for short. But moochers call it "greed".
Public opinion is formed in substantial part by ordinary people making praise or criticism, especially when they provide reasons that convince other people. I don't need to compel Twitter by law or write them a letter. You suggested that I provide an alternative service; I've been there and done that, and now you have the gall to ask what else I plan to do? Stop being an ass!
I submitted that Twitter claims to apply their rules equally to all people, but they seem to actually apply them with a heavy bias. You responded with a vapid argument that absolute neutrality is impossible, and that studies challenging Twitter's supposed neutrality might themselves have bias. That really does not engage with my claim, and it is the kind of argument that usually devolves from moral relativism: Instead of trying to observe relevant facts and assess what they mean, you just throw up your hands, give up, and pretend that observation and assessment are futile and only likely to reflect pre-existing biases.
You droned on about how true neutrality was impossible, and how studies of bias are themselves biased, and so forth. That's why I said too much moral relativity has rotted your brain, and restated why my complaint wasn't about some Platonic ideal of neutrality.
I am not trying to compel Twitter to do anything. I am criticizing their heavy-handed bias and their dishonesty about it. Meanwhile, I've been programming for two of the largest IRC networks for longer than Twitter has existed. Neither has ever had a political bias in how they apply their (relatively few) rules about what can be said.
Sure, but I never appealed to the First Amendment, just the principles behind it. On top of that, Twitter lies about how they enforce their rules, so we can't look to the written rules to determine whether they are acting immorally, illegally, or both.
Unbiased Twitter, applying their rules equally to all users, should get along wonderfully with unbiased President Trump, applying laws equally to all Americans.
Personally, I think neither will try very hard to actually apply rules even-handedly.
Too much moral relativism has rotted your brain. My beef with Twitter isn't that they fail to be neutral. It's that they don't even try, and they lie about that.
Slashdot Mirror
Wrong. In the US legal system, hate speech basically isn't a thing. That doesn't stop SJWs from trying to pretend the term has specific meaning or relevance to legal matters.
Don't be misled by the way that Prof. Tsesis treats Virginia v. Black in that Politifact article. The Supreme Court treated the act in question as a true threat. A message -- spoken, written, or through an expressive act -- cannot be proscribed on the basis of being "hate speech". To be punished by the government, the message must fall into one of the recognized exceptions to the First Amendment's protections, and hate speech is not one of those.
Have you ever read the US (or foreign) antitrust laws? This kind of converted action by dominant market participants -- especially if (as seems likely) they get caught putting anything except terrorist media in the database -- is extremely easy to prosecute as illegal collusion.
Yes, I mentioned that two-pronged test in my first comment. It doesn't help you, because a hyperbolic threat can still be understood as a true, but not literal, threat.
On the Internet, nobody can tell you're a dog, and a lot of nonverbal clues about intent also get washed away. Without more clues to hint at the relationship or intent behind the hypothetical statement here, though, a reasonable person certainly could take it as a seriously meant threat to injure or kill.
Sure, but exaggerating a threat doesn't inherently make it less credible as a threat -- only as a literal statement of intended harm. You need additional context to establish that the statement was meant mostly as hyperbole. A statement that is intended as a threat is not protected by the First Amendment (see, e.g., Elonis v. United States).
What's your authority to say that the threat has to be "credible"? I can't find it either in Supreme Court precedent or in the post by Ken White that you linked to.
You're being daft and you're lying. Americans have argued over immigration, with much of the public against it, for basically all the major waves of immigration to the US. Chinese and other Asian immigrants on the west coast; Irish, Italian, and others on the east coast. And during that, contrary to your claim, neither "tradition" (whatever that is supposed to mean relating to immigration) nor law has been "100% open borders".
Do you distinguish between "hate crime" laws and "hate speech" laws? The discussion had been about the latter, but you talked only about the former.
In typical US usage, a hate crime would be something that is a crime regardless of motivation, but exacerbated by there motivation being animus against the victim based on racial, ethnic, national origin, sex, sexualized orientation, or similar factors. Hate speech usually means little more than harsh criticism than can, in some person's mind, somehow be tied to some group identity.
Project much? The US has had varying degrees of immigration restriction over time, but it was never "100% open borders", and anti-immigrant hysteria in North America predates the US. It's quite unfounded to claim that traditional Americans must support unrestricted immigration.
In the US, something like that would probably be considered a "true threat", and that's one of the well-known and uncontroversial exceptions to the First Amendment's protections for freedom of speech.
But maybe the EU protects making statements that are meant as physical threats, and perceived as such by an objective person?
If you had any point in that wall of text, you sure hid it well.
You said that arguing for a registry of Muslims (an argument which absolutely no one has actually made) would imply that a registry of Christians would also be appropriate. It wouldn't imply that, because only one of those religions has been responsible for millions of recent deaths.
Which atrocities (involving Americans) has Christianity recently been a major motivation for? Comparing recent events to long-ago history is one of the stupidest forms of moral equivalence.
I was not as clear as I might have been about what I meant by "we". When I said "we" should try to do those things, I meant it in a broader sense than you and I as individuals. By "we" I meant whatever level of society wants to protect itself -- from coalitions of countries down to towns or neighborhoods. If individuals want to take part, even just by assigning blame, they should take the responsibility to understand the people they're blaming.
And who gets "other"ed when someone says that "profound democratic immaturity" got Donald Trump elected? Is it the people who voted for Trump, or did the speaker other himself?
It is pretty funny to tell college students that other people are immature, though.
Well, sure. We should try to understand who wants to harm our society or its members, why they want to do that, and how to stop them. It's entirely appropriate to assign blame, but when we do, we ought to be as narrow as possible so that we don't blame innocents or potential allies.
Which recent mass murders do you blame on hate groups? The Orlando nightclub shootings? Attacks on the Bataclan theater or Charlie Hebdo? Ambushes of police officers? The attack on the Family Research Center in Washington DC? (The last two do not meet the usual definition of mass murderer, but I can't think of many mass murderers in the US where either the killer or a group claimed that the killer had such an affiliation, or was inspired by the group.)
Twitter doesn't get a choice about whether to comply with a subpoena authorized by a court (e.g. FISC), unless they want to make like Lavabit. Donald Trump would probably find it hilarious if they did that.
Will, it certainly starts with "othering" some group, blaming many or most of a society's problems on them, and trying to drum the rest of society into a bunker, "us or them" mentality regarding the out-of-group.
Whether that out-group is Muslims or traditional Americans is up for debate.
The repeal of Glass-Steagall was a recognition that banks had basically already figured out how to work around it, through money market accounts and similar products that fit either "investment bank" or "retail bank" regulation but effectively acted like the other. Even Sen. Glass realized (back in 1935) that the prohibition against mixing the two was harmful, but FDR and Congress killed Glass's efforts to repeal it.
At any rate, the repeal of Glass-Steagall had approximately zero effect on the formation or collapse of the housing or lending bubbles. It was a worldwide problem, Glass-Steagall was only law (and only repealed) in the US, the repeal was a long time before the collapse, and there were a lot of other factors -- like government re-interpretation of what constituted illegal red-lining -- that contributed much more.
Blaming the 2008-2009 recession on the repeal of Glass-Steagall is ahistorical and economically ignorant.
"Greed", also known as people wanting to make a living, and sometimes they can use scarce resources more efficiently, and thereby do or make something cheaper than the other person. "Competition" for short. But moochers call it "greed".
Liberals are even easier to bait, and more resistant to reality.
Public opinion is formed in substantial part by ordinary people making praise or criticism, especially when they provide reasons that convince other people. I don't need to compel Twitter by law or write them a letter. You suggested that I provide an alternative service; I've been there and done that, and now you have the gall to ask what else I plan to do? Stop being an ass!
I submitted that Twitter claims to apply their rules equally to all people, but they seem to actually apply them with a heavy bias. You responded with a vapid argument that absolute neutrality is impossible, and that studies challenging Twitter's supposed neutrality might themselves have bias. That really does not engage with my claim, and it is the kind of argument that usually devolves from moral relativism: Instead of trying to observe relevant facts and assess what they mean, you just throw up your hands, give up, and pretend that observation and assessment are futile and only likely to reflect pre-existing biases.
You droned on about how true neutrality was impossible, and how studies of bias are themselves biased, and so forth. That's why I said too much moral relativity has rotted your brain, and restated why my complaint wasn't about some Platonic ideal of neutrality.
I am not trying to compel Twitter to do anything. I am criticizing their heavy-handed bias and their dishonesty about it. Meanwhile, I've been programming for two of the largest IRC networks for longer than Twitter has existed. Neither has ever had a political bias in how they apply their (relatively few) rules about what can be said.
Sure, but I never appealed to the First Amendment, just the principles behind it. On top of that, Twitter lies about how they enforce their rules, so we can't look to the written rules to determine whether they are acting immorally, illegally, or both.
Unbiased Twitter, applying their rules equally to all users, should get along wonderfully with unbiased President Trump, applying laws equally to all Americans.
Personally, I think neither will try very hard to actually apply rules even-handedly.
Too much moral relativism has rotted your brain. My beef with Twitter isn't that they fail to be neutral. It's that they don't even try, and they lie about that.