> a factual statement -- people either are not paying attention, or are being misinformed -- is unkind.
That is bluntly unkind. You've taken an opinion and phrased it as "a factual statement." The "fact" you're positing is that there are two camps, those that don't understand because they are purely ignorant, and those that don't understand because they are intentionally fed false information. (How charitable!)
What was the original "factual statement" again? I don't even know, because you've told "me" that whatever my opinion is, if it disagrees with yours, then I'm in one of two camps and they're both wrong.
(NB: you didn't tell me anything, I'm just trying to engage you in this thought exercise that you seem to want to have.)
The idea that "free speech" == "only protection from state censorship" is an americanism, and not some universally accepted dictum.
Historically it wasn't even always the state that suppressed free speech - it was often some church, mobs of "concerned citizens", the private interests owning the press, the profits of cinema studios concerned with citizens boycotting lewd movies and thus self-submitting to things like the Hays code (which was self-imposed by the "motion picture industry", and so on.
If "free speech" is good, there's nothing wrong for asking for less or no censorship in the media, in social media, in the workplace, in arts, and other places...
It’s impossible to come up with a doctrine of free speech that allows for person A to say what they want, but does not allow person B to express outrage or opprobrium about what person A just said. It’s also well within person B’s rights of free association to not interact with person A because of what person A said.
Of course a literal mob threatening violence is absolutely suppression of speech, very very few people want that. But people saying that they view you negatively because of what you’ve said is not a mob, and is in fact free speech in its own right.
>It’s impossible to come up with a doctrine of free speech that allows for person A to say what they want, but does not allow person B to express outrage or opprobrium about what person A just said.
Nobody asked for that. B should be able to complain about what A said all they want. They just shouldn't be able to censor A.
>It’s also well within person B’s rights of free association to not interact with person A because of what person A said.
It is, though it can be a way to create extremist groups that don't interact and exchange ideas between them, and thus an echo bubble.
>Of course a literal mob threatening violence is absolutely suppression of speech, very very few people want that. But people saying that they view you negatively because of what you’ve said is not a mob, and is in fact free speech in its own right.
People saying you should "kill yourself" or "be fired" from your unrelated job because of what you said on your personal social media account, and managing to do it is ok?
Or maybe it's just OK today, where it's just "bigots" that get this treatment?
Because one can easily imagine a past America with social media (or a future America if the conservative tides change), where someone saying they're pro this or that progressive cause gets you mob-fired. In fact it's not hard to imagine, as it happened, even without social media: word of mouth in smaller communities, print media, etc were enough.
Is that the precedence people doing that want to set, or are they just enjoy their temporary power are a lynch mob, like those that used to haze them back in the day?
It’s not about precedence or what’s “OK”, it’s about how free speech works in general. You still cannot possibly create a system where person A can say something that’s against the prevailing norms, and persons B through Z can’t say “you should be fired” and consider it to be “free speech”. Regulating speech based on content or the number of people saying it is not free speech.
(The few exceptions, such as directly encouraging a crime are very narrow. For example, expressing bigoted opinions is legal, saying “there’s a <X>, get them!” Is not, because it’s a direct and specific incitement to commit a crime).
Those that bully others and encourage suicide should receive social opprobrium for being toxic. They are typically well within their right to say such odious things, but we are also within our right to call them out and shun them from polite society. Freedom of speech doesn’t just apply to nice speech.
You can suggest that such pressures are mercurial, and that businesses shouldn’t cave to the crowd demands. In many cases you would be right, but in general if your attitude is that humans should ignore social pressure when you don’t like it, you will be continuously disappointed. If you attempt to regulate that, then you no longer have freedom of speech, period.
I find your comparison of social disapproval via opt-in social media to a lynch mob that killed minorities in cold blood to be completely gross. Comparing the two overstates the former and trivializes the latter in a way that I don’t think people should find comfortable.
There’s no need to run counter factuals about social media powered past, plenty of people were actually killed for expressing progressive sentiments long before the era of social media or even mass media. A couple hundred people having it out over 280 characters is fine, and comparing that to lynch mobs is both historically illiterate and sensationalist.
I realize it perfectly well, but you chose to quote only half of what I said and then try to push an interpretation based on that. By the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines, this is an unkind thing to do!
Please don't accuse others of not paying attention. It's not nice, and it does a bad job of communicating your message.