The problem I have is that so many people have come to think of “free speech” as meaning that all speech and all ideas are equally good/valid/desirable in any context, and that any criticism of speech or any attempt to establish conventions around what types of speech are desirable in any context is a violation of free speech. Some people even seem to be under the impression that you somehow become more free by deliberately saying things that are widely considered to be false/harmful/abhorrent.
You're being downvoted, and I probably disagree with you (maybe not; hard to say without hearing more of your position), but I think it's important to be clear about what does and doesn't fall under the rubric of "criticism" because this is so often confused in the debates that I witness or participate in (including here on HN). When an angry mob physically beats someone, burns their business to the ground, or petitions their employer to terminate their employment (or incites others to do the same), these are acts of violence or intimidation and not merely "criticism". One can't say "the mob is merely exercising their own free speech rights to criticize the original speaker" as a rational defense. This is intimidation. Criticism is refuting their ideas.
>petitions their employer to terminate their employment
Whether you agree with e.g. internet mobs doing this sort of thing or not, it's usually perfectly legal and happens all the time. And many (most?) would agree that's perfectly fine when someone in authority/in a public facing position does something that's clearly bad behavior.
What's less clear is when someone rank and file says or does something dumb and it ends up on YouTube or simply somehow offends someone with a big following. The reality is that if you become a liability to most companies, they'll just follow the path of least resistance and show you the door.
> Whether you agree with e.g. internet mobs doing this sort of thing or not, it's usually perfectly legal and happens all the time.
It might "happen all the time" nowadays, but that doesn't tell us whether or not it's sustainable or just. Moreover, I'm very skeptical that it was ever normal historically, at least not for any portion of our history that was worth repeating. I'm at least a little bit skeptical that it is "perfectly legal"; more likely that it hasn't been well and widely tested in court because it is in fact novel.
> And many (most?) would agree that's perfectly fine when someone in authority/in a public facing position does something that's clearly bad behavior.
I don't think this justifies it. Most people don't understand what happens to a civilization when the mob becomes the de facto justice system or why we have an actual codified legal system. Most of these people probably don't understand that the mob could turn against them at a moment's notice (although I think many are coming to this realization and consequently abandoning the "mobs are great!" position).
> What's less clear is when someone rank and file says or does something dumb and it ends up on YouTube or simply somehow offends someone with a big following. The reality is that if you become a liability to most companies, they'll just follow the path of least resistance and show you the door.
People don't even need to do anything "dumb". Mobs come for people all the time for stating unapproved facts or holding unapproved beliefs or for simply being born with the wrong race or gender. This is a national problem (I would even say it's our most significant modern social justice issue--of course here I'm using "social justice" literally, not to be confused with Social Justice the ideology) and we ought to do something about it.
I don't really disagree with any of that. It's just hard to say that collective action can be used for evil as well as good so it should be restricted. I'm not sure how you even do that in a non-authoritarian way. But it can certainly be a problem. See e.g. https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-ove... (assuming facts are as presented)
The reality is that it's entirely rational for companies to basically fire first and ask questions later.
> It's just hard to say that collective action can be used for evil as well as good so it should be restricted.
We're not talking about "collective action" in general, we're talking about mobbing specifically. Mobbing (like other forms of vigilantism) is never good. Enforcement is a different matter--I think there are couple of ways to approach it that would have a huge difference and wouldn't be authoritarian at all:
1. Make it harder for employers to terminate employees on the basis of mob action. In other threads, others have talked about various "cooldown policies"--employers aren't allowed to fire an employee on the spot for ideological offenses, but must wait 90 days to see if it's still a problem. Another candidate solution would be making it employers liable in some way for terminating an employee in response to a mob or perhaps for ideological offenses altogether (at least not those that create a hostile workplace environment for some sensible definition of the term).
2. I would also look into ways to regulate social media. It's clear at this point that social media is detrimental to our society in many ways ranging from addiction to toxicity to inciting mob violence. Social media companies are allowed to curate sensational and "fake news" content at their convenience, but they claim to be "dumb pipes" when held to account. Make them choose whether they are curators or dumb pipes and if they choose to be curators, hold them accountable when they curate content that threatens or incites violence, etc.
I'm sure there are details to work out with both of those proposals--I'm not going to completely solve the problem in an HN post, but I'm very confident that both of these proposals could be fleshed out into effective policies which together could marginalize the problem. There is a third option which is to simply enforce the laws we already have--when individuals threaten or incite violence on social media, we should prosecute them regularly (these cases are rarely prosecuted today). I don't think this option is as effective (it wouldn't prevent people from demanding a person be terminated) and it's certainly more costly.
We probably only disagree about whether or not it’s a matter of ideological purity as opposed to creating a hostile work environment (notwithstanding arguments that would define “hostile work environment” in terms of one’s puritan ideals).
I don't know that there's a way to distinguish "ideological purity" from just any beliefs or conventions around what types of speech are appropriate for work.
You absolutely can; just don't define "hostile work environment" in such a way that a person's private (out of the workplace) beliefs would constitute a violation. Sexual harassment and racial slurs in the workplace? Violation. Promoting fascism or communism on your personal Twitter (provided your personal Twitter really is personal and not professional)? No violation. Sexual or racial discrimination in the workplace? Violation. Seems tractable enough to me.
No, a "hostile work environment" is one in which one's colleagues are unable to do their jobs effectively. That should be lawyered more precisely, but we needn't flesh it out here. No one's job depends on everyone adhering to the very narrow ideologies that mobs are enforcing today.
You are wrong. Most people that support true free speech don't believe that all ideas are equally good. That's false. They believe that all people should be allowed to express their ideas, regardless of how great or how disgusting they may be.
The reason is that if you try to stop people from speaking freely, eventually over time the tables will turn against you, meaning you won't be able to speak freely.
We need the laws that protect our most vile haters to speak freely, so that in the future if they gain control somehow, those same laws will protect us. If you start carving out exceptions because "those people are obviously wrong", well when the tables turn, like they always do, they will use those same ideas against you.
The other benefit from this is that when people are allowed to speak freely, you can see what they are actually thinking, instead of having their ideas get stifled and brought underground. This is exactly what happened with Trump and how he got voted, and why all the polls were wrong about Trump and Brexit. People who held different ideas were driven underground, and they spoke at the voting booths. That's dangerous.
> The reason is that if you try to stop people from speaking freely, eventually over time the tables will turn against you, meaning you won't be able to speak freely.
I think there are ways to "try to stop people from speaking freely" that are acceptable and indeed vital. We as a society generally have conventions around what speech is appropriate, and we generally teach people (both explicitly and implicitly) to, for example, ask for things nicely, compliment people, express gratitude, etc. And we as a society generally "punish" people who violate these conventions by being reluctant to interact with those people. I don't see this as a violation of freedom of speech in any sense.
And also, I don't really agree with the mode of argument of "eventually the tables will turn against you." I don't oppose strict legal consequences for murder, for instance, because one day someone might frame me for murder. I support the legal consequences for murder and I support various mechanisms to increase the likelihood that only actual murderers receive those consequences.
> We as a society generally have conventions around what speech is appropriate
80 years back you would not be able to express freely your defence of homosexuality. Before that you would not be able to "talk back" to the pope. Said conventions are rarely sane or fair.
> And we as a society generally "punish" people who violate these conventions by being reluctant to interact with those people.
Or mob on them by calling them to be banned from a conference or to get fired.
> I don't oppose strict legal consequences for murder
There are victims in murder. There are no victims when you express your opinion about something. In my experience most people who get censored are not bigots, in fact they even follow the wider social conventions, the issue is that they do not follow the specific social conventions that the extremist groups that are anti-free speech want to enforce.
No, your analogy is wrong. It's not increasing the legal consequences for murder. What you are advocating for is loosening the description of what murder is. That's the point.
When you loosen what constitutes a "crime", then yes eventually the tables will turn on you, because those with the power will use it to the fullest they can. That's the nature of fascism. When people can no longer even ask a question or engage in a discussion and instead are outright cancelled without actually engaging in the act, then that is what "loosening a definition" is.
> Most people that support true free speech don't believe that all ideas are equally good. That's false.
I don't think that most or even many people believe that all ideas are equally good, but there are absolutely many people who invoke "freedom of speech" in their opposition to efforts to argue or establish that certain speech is bad.
