So I mean, most of us knew this beforehand and being on the fediverse we probably do not really care, but what was always on the horizon has no happened, the owner of Squabblr finally had enough having to be a decent person and has decided that his site is now “free speech purism”, so he gets to continue to insult LGBTQ people like he always does.
Seems from the comments that some other admins disagreed with the decision (so there were some decent people on that site!) and either left or were removed.
Not entirely surprising the whole thing, granted.
(edit)
Also, apologies as this isn’t truly reddit news but Squabblr was one of the sites frequently brought up in /r/redditalternatives so I figured this might still be relevant?
Sucks. We had lots of fun there when it first started. But I’ve deleted my account now. It’s hilarious to watch Jake try and make an empire. What a loser.
Funny, during the boycott of Reddit when squabbles was growing, I signed up and created two new communities - one for earbuds and one for vaporents (dry herbal vaporizing).
My earbuds community was quicky approved, but the vaporents group took almost a week before it was approved. It’s almost like the site’s owner (since back then he had no mods or admin team) was hesitant when it came to something possibly clandestine in nature. I guess drugs aren’t cool, but hate speech is?
The sole motive behind transforming a three-month-old online forum into a “Limited Liability Company”, which they did, appears to stem from either intentions of selling it or the reception of funding, consequently relinquishing your authority over it.
I’ve legit never heard of Squabblr or this… Discuit? What even are these?
Squabblr was called squabbles until a very recent rebrand. You may’ve known it under its old name instead.
That was this stupid Reddit + Twitter mix, right? Never understood why some people were hyping that platform up so much.
It’s pretty alright. The dev is pretty fast, churned out a majority of the site between a month before reddit killed 3rd party apps and today. Decently responsive to requests and stuff too. But the site just didn’t grow, and the head dev was never okay with giving up sole leadership.
Sites that are centralized and therefore have the same potential problems as reddit.
IMO if sites want to take a “free speech” approach without allowing bigots, maybe they should adopt the Canadian law. We don’t have free speech, we have what’s known as “freedom of expression”. Essentially, we can say whatever unless it’s hate speech or bigoted.
Yeah, Canada has censorship, but it’s essentially just to censor racist idiots and homophobic fools.
And Canada fucking sucks.
A way to improve it further is to see freedom of speech as quantitative, try to maximise it for all parties involved, and look at the consequences of banning a certain discourse or not.
Using hate speech as an example:
- if you forbid it, you’re lowering a bit the freedom of speech of those who’d otherwise voice it. It’s only a bit because they’re still allowed to voice non-hateful discourses there.
- if you allow it, you’re lowering a lot the freedom of speech of those who’d be targeted by it. It’s a lot because they’ll disengage and leave.
So by banning hate speech you’re actually increasing the overall freedom of speech, even if reducing it a bit for a certain audience.
The same reasoning applies towards other situations. Like “that fucking user” doing the online equivalent of megaphoning so nobody else is heard; misplaced porn, gore, or other things that a lot of people would rather not see; harassment (it is performative speech, and yet you need to prevent it).
I feel like this covers what you’ve linked about freedom of expression in Canada, but it’s a bit more practical and flexible to adapt into online communities.
Also, it’s important to take into account that there’s a hierarchy between discourses, when trying to maximise freedom of speech: descriptive > prescriptive > performative.
if you allow it, you’re lowering a lot the freedom of speech of those who’d be targeted by it. It’s a lot because they’ll disengage and leave
I disagree that this is lowering free speech. Those people who leave are still entirely within their ability to stay and continue speaking. Free speech isn’t lesser just because someone doesn’t feel like speaking
The problem with this reasoning is that it could be used to justify banning any speech (not just hate speech) and still claim “we’re banning it but ackshyually we aren’t reducing your free speech. You’re still able to say it, it’s just that you don’t like the consequences of saying it here.” Because even people under the worst dictatorships out there are still able to voice censored discourses.
Instead of looking at the ability of the individuals, IMO it’s better to look at the effects in the social environment. Hate speech targetted at a group effectively makes them leave and/or stop speaking. As a result, the discourses that they were voicing get silenced with them, and the social acceptability to voice those discourses goes down. The environment in question becomes less free as a result.
This might sound like abstract “WORDS WORDS WORDS”, but IMO it has a bunch of desirable consequences:
- It avoids the special pleading claim that “hate speech isn’t speech”, while still allowing you to ban it under certain circumstances.
- There’s less room to misuse the ban against hate speech towards legitimate/non-hateful discourses. Specially when you get environments infested with witch hunters, that sometimes are as bad as the witches that they claim to hunt.
- It gives you grounds to get rid of specially stupid, noisy, obnoxious or obtuse users, regardless of what they say, provided that their presence shuts other users up.
- It’s flexible enough to address even a 4chan-like “mods? what mods?” approach or a Beehaw-like “be nice or get out” one, because it forces you to take the userbase into account.
- You don’t need to deal with blackbox concepts like “feelings” and “intentions” and the likes.
Hate speech targetted at a group effectively makes them leave and/or stop speaking. As a result, the discourses that they were voicing get silenced with them, and the social acceptability to voice those discourses goes down. The environment in question becomes less free as a result.
This is where I don’t agree. Hate speech doesn’t make anyone leave. It has no power nor authority over people to make them do anything. No matter how much someone spams “kill all niggers”, it doesn’t actually do anything. If someone leaves, it’s entirely because they aren’t personally interested in being there. This is in contrast to censorship from the platform, where there is the ability to unilaterally force a user to not participate via bans or removals.
It’s the same idea as how free speech applies to the government not censoring the town square. Someone leaving because they don’t enjoy what people say is not an infringement on anyone’s speech, but the government arresting people based on what they say is.
Just not censoring people offers nearly all the benefits you claim your perspective offers.you don’t have to worry about misuse of censorship because it isn’t used at all, and it is entirely devoid of “feeling” and “intent”, and the other things like ability to an undesirable speech isn’t particularly relevant when discussing a free speech platform.
This is where I don’t agree. Hate speech doesn’t make anyone leave.
You’re moving the goalposts from “it doesn’t hamper your ability” to “people don’t leave”, Reddit style. And you still placed the goalposts where you won’t score.
If you want to know how stupid your claim (that boils down to “I dun unrurrstand! Speach don’t do nothing!”) sounds like, you don’t need even:
- to tie the huge recent growth of Mastodon, or its strong queer presence, with a Twitter exodus that boils down to “Musk will let hate speech grow rampant here”; or
- to look at old news, where celebs encourage people to fuck off platforms that allow hate speech; or even
- to read news about LGBTQ+ users leaving social media due to something adjacent and often overlapping with hate speech, namely harassment.
No, you don’t need those things. A tiny bit of reasoning should be enough to show that, if you shit constantly on the groups that a person belongs to, the person will eventually leave or shut up.
Speech has power over people, regardless of authority, no matter how much you pretend that it doesn’t - it makes people do things, it makes people not do things. This is fucking obvious for anyone with a functional brain dammit.
If you want to continue this conversation, then show a bit more depth of thought than you’re doing currently. Otherwise, I won’t waste my time further, OK?
Since “free speech” is a dogwhistle, what should a hypothetical place actually interested in free speech as more than just a bigotry shield call what they’re trying to do? Some place interested in allowing discussion of objectionable topics without bigotry?
Yes, whatever, those don’t exist anywhere, you don’t need to respond with that tidbit. Humor the hypothetical here.
Frankly I’m just wondering how we let “free speech” become a dogwhistle. Is water in a bottle a dogwhistle because trump drank one one time on video (with two hands, remember that scandal?) Is coffee a dogwhistle because racist people also drink coffee? Not everything is a “dogwhistle” nor should it be considered as such simply because the words “free speech platform” are used instead of “non-censorious communication service.” Tipper Gore and her Moral Majority have been fighting free speech since Jello Biafra used an H. R. Geiger painting on a record insert she bought her kid, I’ve been complaining about censorship since she got “Parental Advisory” slapped on CDs limiting my ability to sneak music past my overbearing mother as a child (mostly seditious music, anto-religious music, or music by POC, mind you, which is racism), I’ve been bitching about radio beeps and edits since I can remember, free speech has always been a highly regarded value of mine and I’m not going to let those people steal it or their enemies bully me out of supporting it.
It’s because shit-heads love to hide behind objectively good ideals. They want to deflect criticism of what they’re saying or doing into criticism of the ideal. “Oh, you hate free speech!?”
It’s coded language in the right context – “free speech platform” with a wink and a nod.
See also: “Patriot”, “protecting children”, “thugs”, etc.
One can “not hate free speech” while also “hating what you are saying.” These are two separate things, it’s like saying “I like soda, but I don’t like pepsi.” There are other sodas, and there are other “things to say” besides racism. In this instance, tell the hypothetical person you’re talking to who said “oh you hate free speech,” “No, I’m all for free speech, and I’m also for freedom of association. I don’t like what you speak about, so I choose not to associate with you.”
Sure, in this context maybe it is a wink and a nod, but saying “free speech is a dogwhistle” and insinuating every free speech activist since Jello “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” Biafra is actually a secret right winger is patently ridiculous and it is a trend I’ve been noticing recently, and I will exercise my right to free speech to criticize the practice as you are free to ironically exercise your right to free speech by asserting that free speech is actually a dogwhistle.
To your see alsos:
“Patriot” and “Thug” I’ll give you, but “Protecting children” isn’t a “dogwhistle,” it is a manipulation tactic and it is used by all sides everywhere. Every time I hear it for any reason I am immediately suspicious of one’s motives. It is unsurprisingly effective on parents too, but since I’m not one and don’t want kids I have a pretty good immunity to it.
It’s not complicated. Today if someone uses the term “Free Speech” the vast vast majority of the time they are talking about being able to say shitty things without consequences. The remainder are mostly people who misconstrue Free Speech as something that applies to non-governmental entities and finally actual real cases that get settled in court.
It’s hard to find a name because nowadays people often use terms like ‘bigotry’, ‘hate speech’ and ‘bad faith’ to refer to anything they don’t like so they can shut down discussions.
Call it “Open Discussion”. Make it clear that the purpose of the site is to allow for discussion from all walks of life and perspectives, but that it has to be actual civil discussion. Outright hatred and bigotry, as well as arguing in bad faith, aren’t helpful or productive in an open discussion, and as such would be shunned and banned. This way, you can still have opinions that aren’t “mainstream”, but you won’t be removed as long as you’re civil and respectful about it. Doing this will attract people who are really interested in hearing other perspectives and sharing their own, instead of alt-right shitheads looking for another place to infest.
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You don’t need to label it. The vast majority of the internet will allow anyone acting in good faith to discuss their ideas. Every single time someone complains about being muted/silences/shadow-banned etc you can bet they subscribe to right-wing ideology using dog whistles or other hateful rhetoric. I was never banned anywhere for being Pro-Hillary instead of Pro-Bernie. I was downvoted sure, but that’s everyone elses prerogative. I wasn’t silences because some of my posts were hidden due to it. It’s asinine to claim that, and that’s what these people are whining about.
