Founder of Voat, the 'Censorship-Free' Reddit, Begs Users To Stop Making Death Threats (vice.com) 266
New submitter scullyitsaliens writes: The Reddit clone Voat has reportedly been contacted by a "US agency" about threats being made on the censorship-free website, according to its founder Justin Chastain. In a post on Wednesday, Chastain (who goes by PuttItOut on Voat) told users they need to "chill on the 'threats,'" as the platform had been officially approached by an unnamed agency over some of its content. Chastain said he didn't want to litigate free speech, but that Voat would cooperate with law enforcement and remove "gray area" posts if asked. Voat users took offense to the perceived curtailing of their ability to post racial slurs and endorse violence.
The 1st Amendment is not carte blanche (Score:2, Interesting)
People really need to learn that the first amendment doesn't allow like carte blanche speech.
It actually prohibits threats of violence or calls for violence.
So I don't see why this dude doesn't just get rid of that content.
Anti-censorship doesn't mean illegal content.
Re:The 1st Amendment is not carte blanche (Score:5, Insightful)
It actually prohibits threats of violence or calls for violence.
It actually says no such thing. But that meaning has been interpreted over a long, long time of court precedent and it's as good as law.
Re:The 1st Amendment is not carte blanche (Score:5, Insightful)
>"It actually says no such thing. But that meaning has been interpreted over a long, long time of court precedent and it's as good as law."
True. Also, it would be illegal to post copyrighted stuff outside of "fair use" or postings later to be found libelous (which requires a court ruling on each one). But the 1st Amendment wouldn't apply to private conversations being filtered by non-government, anyway.
I think the issue with free speech [writing] on the Internet means up to and excluding explicitly ILLEGAL speech (which isn't much, at least not in the USA, thankfully). The problem with many social/conversation platforms is not that they are scrubbing illegal speech, but that they are curtailing OTHER speech they don't like. And they are also doing it secretly.
It gets complicated when the site has "presence" in other countries who have a very twisted view of free speech, or no such concept at all.
We might not like cursing, trolling, lies, harassment, and whatever-'isms, but once a company starts to try and regulate those, it quickly spirals out of control and becomes far too easy to suppress things the company or the echo-chamber deems it just doesn't want out there. Free speech is NOT (and should never be) about being "free" from things you don't want to see or hear or things that make you or others "feel bad".
Probably the safest approach is user-based moderation with strong user-based meta-moderation (like Slashdot does). You can still choose to read at any moderation level, but you (the reader) can also choose to hide things most moderators find to be objectionable. The company is, theoretically, completely hands-off, unless it has a court order to remove something (and even then, it would be nice to have a place-holder showing that).
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The problem with many social/conversation platforms is not that they are scrubbing illegal speech, but that they are curtailing OTHER speech they don't like.
More accurately, speech that the user's don't like. Believe it or not much of the pressure to ban certain types of content comes from users who object to being confronted with shock images, pornography, and certain types of hate speech.
They are after all commercial, for-profit companies. They do whatever makes them the most money.
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They are after all commercial, for-profit companies.
I agree and would like to add that there are two major groups involved.
1.) The commercial, for-profit side
2.) The free membership side
The membership provides content for free and the companies profit from that gift, plus the company profits from any data it can collect about the member.
There's actually a third member of arbitration:
3.) Terms of Service
ToS is a binding contract between the company and member that say (paraphrasing) "We, the Company, get everything and you, the Member, get nothing.
Additionall
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>"More accurately, speech that the user's don't like. Believe it or not much of the pressure to ban certain types of content comes from users who object to being confronted with shock images, pornography, and certain types of hate speech."
I believe it. But that, can be effectively managed with user-based moderation by user-tagging things with "explicit", "sexual", "gross", etc (much better than just one-dimensional + or - ratings). I just want to see such power in the hands of the users, not in the han
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Tagging will just turn into another form of trolling and freeze peach warriors will complain that it's censorship anyway.
If all they really wanted was just a platform to publish on then Gab would be fine. But they want to be on Twitter and YouTube, because that's where the audience is, that's where the money is. So they will just say tagging is "censoring" them.
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I think the issue with free speech [writing] on the Internet means up to and excluding explicitly ILLEGAL speech
A concept of "free speech" which excluded "explicitly ILLEGAL speech" would be completely and utterly meaningless. Any law which abridged the freedom of speech would make that speech explicitly illegal, and thus not protected. The freedom of speech exists specifically to protect speech which the government would prefer to make illegal.
Anyone willing to entertain the idea that speech per se can be illegal in the first place is not an advocate for freedom of speech. And yes, that includes defamation and libel
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Say it agin, and I'll come around and Nut yer!
--
Swuvvle-eye McLoon
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That would be libelous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Exactly. Which is why I said:
"But the 1st Amendment wouldn't apply to private conversations being filtered by non-government, anyway."
Re:The 1st Amendment is not carte blanche (Score:5, Funny)
Similarly, slander and libel are not considered free speech and you can be held accountable for your actions (speech) and made to be restitution for financial harm caused as a result of that action. Even then, there's still a great deal of latitude and public figures lose those protections. So even though you have no way to truthfully prove that Donald Trump has had carnal relations with a goat, you can still march out into the middle of the square and proudly proclaim, "Our President is a goat fucker! He fucks goats!" and the most the government will tell you to do is stop blocking traffic.
* Apologies to people named Bob Smith. I don't mean to disparage you by implying your a fan of the New York Yankees, but if you are, I hope you get fucked with porcupine.
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These are not exceptions. They are things that are illegal no matter the method - speech is just one method. The law is not made about speech itself, but about the thing.
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But it's not the speech that's illegal in those cases. That's the point.
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At the same time, threats of violence can be counted as assault.
I love how all this stuff is coming up of death threats and such on twitter and whatnot now because everyone takes it so serious.... When probably 99% of it is "Internet Badasses" thinking they look cool. It's too bad this isn't something that ever died down.
Though it also reminds me of Internet Baddassery happening on a Heavy Metal festival's forum years ago. Two guys were arguing and one was saying "You wouldn't say this to my face, you
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If the words "no law" are open to interpretation, then the law is no damn good! And the judges are corrupt!
Good news Gluesniff, those aren't the words that end up having to be interpreted. The amendment doesn't just say "no law," after all. And if it did, we wouldn't even need the rest of the document.
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You appear to be contradicting yourself. First you say that folks don't have a right to not be offended, which clearly indicates that saying certain things can cause offense (a consequence) and then you say that speech shouldn't have consequences. Can you clarify?
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"or calls for violence"
The rebel founders with their calls to arms definitely weren't saying the people shouldn't be able to raise a call to arms. Death threats made to specific people are another thing altogether.
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"When someone makes credible death threats"
Credible death threats don't generally come in the internet message board variety.
Re:The 1st Amendment is not carte blanche (Score:4, Insightful)
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Hmm, I can't seem to find the part that prohibits threats of violence or calls for violence...
So, can you point out the part that does that (prohibits threats of violence) please?
Re:The 1st Amendment is not carte blanche (Score:5, Insightful)
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Hmm, I can't seem to find the part that prohibits threats of violence or calls for violence...
So, can you point out the part that does that (prohibits threats of violence) please?
Congress hasn't. But the Supreme Court has, through decisions and tests, determined that certain types of speech are not protected under the First Amendment. That's their Constitutional role: Legislative enacts, Executive enforces, and Judicial interprets.
Re:The 1st Amendment is not carte blanche (Score:4, Interesting)
Well that's because it's found in Article 3 Section 2.
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;—between a State and Citizens of another State;—between Citizens of different States;—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
Highlighted for you, the section indicates that the Supreme Court may rule on what the Constitution says in "Controversies". So if the Supreme Court says that The First Amendment does not protect incitement, well then, that's what it says. (395 US 444) Be it that you read it that way or not. I get the the arbitrary nature of that might rub folks wrong, but well your problem is with A3S2 and not Am1.
So if your question is "what legally allows the SCTOUS to rule that?" A3S2. If your question is "what right allows SCTOUS to rule whatever whim crosses their mind?" That's more a a philosophical one that no matter how long we talk about it we won't ever come to an agreeable position since the very nature of any government is to rule the people who are alive and since that changes all the time, there's never any one thing that just applies for all ages.
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Hmm, last I looked, later law overrides earlier.
And since the Bill of Rights is "later law" relative to the body of the Constitution, I think the "Congress shall make no law..." part overrides Article 3, Section 2.
Do note that the First Amendment can, arguably, be overridden by act of the several States. "Congress shall make no law..." doesn't actually say "New York shall make no law...", though it has generally been treated as "no, you can't get around the First Amendment by a State-level law".
Also, it
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You sound like the kind of person who thinks they can go free because there's fringe on the flag in the courtroom.
IOW, no, it doesn't work the way you say. In pretty much all your points.
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IOW, no, it doesn't work the way you say. In pretty much all your points
Here let me finish that sentence for you. "but I'm not going to point out any of those faults or explain how they are wrong because I either do not want to discuss the topic or more likely I have no idea about the topic and just generally disagree with you because I said so."
You sound like the kind of person who thinks they can go free because there's fringe on the flag in the courtroom.
No I'm the kind of person who thinks I can go free because a judge has explicitly told me that I may go free. That's mostly because I understand that when you enter a courtroom that judge that sits the bench is the guy in charge and i
Re:The 1st Amendment is not carte blanche (Score:4, Informative)
doesn't actually say "New York shall make no law...", though it has generally been treated as "no, you can't get around the First Amendment by a State-level law".
That's incorrect, the first amendment in lieu of free speech was incorporated. See 268 US 652 and 283 US 359. Per 14Am States must abide by the Federal understanding of incorporated rights, ergo States are not granted the right to self-determine the legal standard for free speech. All States have this fundamental understanding as the Union after the Civil War without opposition agreed to the terms of 14Am and States that rebelled had to adopt 14Am before reentering the Union. All States admitted post the Civil War have never known any state other than the one created in the 14Am.
Second...
And since the Bill of Rights is "later law" relative to the body of the Constitution, I think the "Congress shall make no law..." part overrides Article 3, Section 2.
1Am. indicates the Legislative with the wording Congress, and you pointed that out yourself. 1Am makes no mention of any limit to the Judicial. 1Am makes no reference to A3S2. The forbearing standing here is that the then Congress worded in A1 and A3 a difference in Congress versus the Judicial, ergo it would only make sense that had the 1st Congress intended a limitation on the Judicial, they would have rightly said so in 1Am, since those are all the same people who wrote all of that A1, A3, and the Bill of Rights. This is ability for the Judicial to look back was covered in 3 US 171 and you can gain a better perspective about the musings of the founders of this country about the idea in Federalist No. 78.
Also, it should be noted that threats of violence are not, in and of themselves, "incitement". Generally, under US law, "incitement" pretty much requires that someone be, well, incited. If you call for lynchings of your favorite group, and someone actually goes out and lynches someone, they can nail YOU for incitement. If you call for lynchings and noone pays any attention to you, not so much....
I'm not sure where you're getting that kind of read on law. Perhaps you should consult 18 USC 2101 as it indicates the overt act to attempt to incite an action, not that any action thereafter follows up. However, section (f) indicates that the States may also draw up their own ways of refining this law. But at the Federal level you don't actually need any real action to happen to be in violation of the law.
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Well that's because it's found in Article 3 Section 2.
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;—between a State and Citizens of another State;—between Citizens of different States;—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
... If your question is "what right allows SCTOUS to rule whatever whim crosses their mind?" That's more a a philosophical one...
It is right there at "The judicial Power shall extend..."
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Incorrect. The amendment process is the final arbiter in an issue. Example:
Jurisdictions pass laws making abortion illegal previous to 1974.
The Supreme Court decides in 1974 in Roe v. Wade that abortion should be legal.
The only thing that can override the Supreme Court is a duly ratified amendment to the United States Constitution, or a decision by the Supreme Court reversing the earlier decision.
The system is set up so that Congress always has an option to win, if the will of the People who elect the Con
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The Supreme Court decides in 1974 in Roe v. Wade that abortion should be legal.
That's incorrect thinking. The high court gets to pass down guidance to the lower courts. SCOTUS did not make abortion legal. A State can still charge a person for an abortion, however, no court in this country would rule in favor of the State should citizens follow the guidance outlined by the high court. So the State can charge them all they want, but they'll never be able to get a conviction so long as citizens follow the guidelines outlined by the court, because the lower courts have been told that
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https://supreme.justia.com/cas... [justia.com]
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f you can just "reinterpret" what is written, then there is no point in having the amendment process, which implies that such reinterpretation was not intended.
That's actually a great point. That was discussed in Federalist No. 78 and was a topic of regular debate in days of yore. I can assure you that if you walk into any sophomore level of college about law, you'll find plenty of folks who to this date are eager to debate that. However, I'll just leave my two cents as, "It depends on the Judge we're talking about as to the extent a Judge can just on a whim change things. Typically, Judges understand that sudden tosses and turns can quickly de-legitimize a co
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The Supreme Court doesn't get to interpret. They get to rule if a law violates the Constitution.
The difference between this:
the Supreme Court says the first amendment says the government can lock you away and torture you
and this:
the Supreme Court says a law which says the government can lock you away and torture you doesn't violate the Constitution
Is not particularly meaningful.
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So if the Supreme Court says the first amendment says the government can lock you away and torture you
SCOTUS can't order anyone to do anything. They only have the power to regulate their own being. So they can tell their Judges that drawing and quartering is no longer torture, but that only really matters if someone brings case against the State. It doesn't stop the State from actually torturing you. How that extents out into the Executive and the Legislative is one of those things you can read up on in Federalist No. 80.
The judges under this constitution will control the legislature, for the supreme court are authorised in the last resort, to determine what is the extent of the powers of the Congress. They are to give the constitution an explanation, and there is no power above them to set aside their judgment. ... The supreme court then have a right, independent of the legislature, to give a construction to the constitution and every part of it, and there is no power provided in this system to correct their construction or do it away. If, therefore, the legislature pass any laws, inconsistent with the sense the judges put upon the constitution, they will declare it void
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I'll bet you also can't find the part where it says a private company has to allow threats of violence or calls for violence on its private property.
But if you want to look, I'll wait here. Come back and tell me what you find.
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Shit that you own and is under your control. Like a website.
A more formal definition:
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He's Swiss. He doesn't have to follow U.S. law.
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Wait, but I thought Col. Sanders defeated Carte Blanche in the Freeze Peach Wars, and threats of violence were amended by the Federalist Papers?
Re:The 1st Amendment is not carte blanche (Score:4, Insightful)
So I don't see why this dude doesn't just get rid of that content.
Because he's a free-speech maximalist. Unfortunately, that viewpoint is now running into the facts of the real world, namely that some people are complete assholes.
Honestly, at this point, I'm eternally surprised by the number of people who are surprised when giving people a completely open, consequence free place to post results in a massive shitfest. This could have been predicted by, you know, looking at the rest of the internet.
Re:Wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
Their phrasing is wrong. But not having a law abridging speech nor a law against exercising speech does not make speech unable to break other laws. So the speech itself can be illegal even if the speech is technically all free and protected.
Re:That makes no sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Lying about your income to the IRS. That's protected free speech, but there are still legal consequences. Lying under oath in court - the speech is free, but the act of speech broke the law. Did you think this was a hard concept?
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It's a pretty stupid claim that perjury charges are somehow a violation of the perjurer's First Amendment rights.
That's the point. All speech is free. These are things that are illegal with speech being just an incidental part of it.
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You're proving my point.
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The "yelling "fire" in a crowded theater" example was from a WW I era Supreme Court majority opinion (in Schenck v. United States, opinion by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.), where the law banning the actual speech in question (political pamphlets urging draftees to resist induction) was ruled to be legal.
(Homes apparently changed his mind, at least somewhat, a few weeks later, as the fallout of this case began to mount.)
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Wrong their. Taking about OP. Supreme Court precedent backs me up on this. Spoken words can break laws even if the laws aren't about speech.
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Supreme Court is wrong. You're right - your religious interpretations are all we need.
Voat would ... remove "gray area" posts (Score:2, Flamebait)
Muh freeeze peach!
Sounds like he's getting exactly what he wanted (Score:5, Insightful)
Pseudonymous community + complete lack of any form of censorship, rules of conduct, or enforcement + the Internet = the worst behavior ever seen in humanity without actual mass murder.
Obligatory (not) XKCD (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll just leave this here:
Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [penny-arcade.com]
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the worst behavior ever seen in humanity without actual mass murder.
If they want to shoot off their mouths online instead of shooting off a pistol in a [racial term] [temple type] , maybe that's better.
Re:Sounds like he's getting exactly what he wanted (Score:4, Interesting)
If they want to shoot off their mouths online instead of shooting off a pistol in a [racial term] [temple type] , maybe that's better.
Unless they get radicalized online and the as a result go an start that shooting.
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Don't think the internet changed things. They were radicalized just fine by mass media.
Not just that (Score:5, Insightful)
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The guy basically built another version of 4chan and is expecting different user base? How?
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That can be generalised about any free speech havens. Who is the likely target audience? University philosophers, doctors, and engineers who enjoy the concept of free speech, or racist / otherwise disagreeable fuckwits who get booted from practically anywhere else.
When you're marketing a platform based solely on free speech you're basically running the advert: "Come hither intolerable fuckwits, this is your safe space." It should come no surprise at the quality of discourse that community brings.
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Same thing happened with Gab - billed itself as the free speech Twitter, and predictably became a cesspit of extremism from the very start.
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Really? (Score:2)
It makes me very sad that this hyperbole got upvoted insightful.
I can name hundreds of things "worse" than this.
How about Chinese organ harvesting for rich people from undesirables like Falun Gong/Tibetans/etc? [wikipedia.org] How about the 2,195 children who die every day from diarrhea? [cdc.gov]
I had to stand in a courtroom and listen to a judge say âtwenty-five years in prisonâ(TM) before I realized that freedom of expression could never be taken for granted.
â" Larry Flynt, Larry Flynt: What I've Learned
So you ge
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It's the kind of place that fakes up screen shots after every mass shooting. So hard to say for sure.
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they're celebrating Christian mass murderers (New Zealand)
The recent attack in New Zealand was not a Christian attack. Stop trying to incite hatred against Christians, it leads to things like the more recent attacks in Sri Lanka that had a higher death toll than New Zealand.
The New Zealand attack was anti-religious, not religious in nature. Feel free to condemn it but stop dragging in unrelated factors to push your own agenda.
but rabid misogyny, white supremacy and antisemitism are always tolerated and rarely questioned
I don't go to 4chan so I'm not sure, but does that merely mean it's like Reddit, where rabid misandry, white hatred and anti-semitism are al
I'm going to start my own (Score:2, Funny)
Oh yeah? I'm going to build my own platform. With blackjack and hookers. And my own legal compliance after barely putting up a fight - just like the other guys. Wait. Forget the free speech.
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It's the users fault. They want a FREE service that they will push to the absolute limits of the law just for the hell of it. Emphasis on the FREE part.
Legal defences cost money.
Re:I'm going to start my own (Score:5, Funny)
It's the users fault.
This is generally true of all things.
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In fact, forget the blackjack!
Keep the speech free (Score:2, Interesting)
Free Speech != Threats
You are free to say, "I should kill you!", "you should die!", or even "I wish someone would kill you!"
But you can't say, "I'm going to kill you!"
They're different.
Re:Keep the speech free (Score:4, Insightful)
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I never heard of "fatwa" so I looked it up. It means "a ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognized authority." Please correct me if that's not the only definition - I only looked it up on google.
I was talking about American freedom of speech. In America, everyone has to follow the same laws, so even our president (elect), although many may not like it, is welcome to say "You should die", "Lock her up", "Punch him in the face", "You can keep your healthcare", "I didn't have sexual relations wi
Re:Keep the speech free (Score:4, Informative)
A fatwa is just a legal ruling in Islamic law. Many people seem to think it's a death sentence, but it can actually be any ruling. There is also a myth about it being Muslim's duty to murder anyone sentenced to death by a fatwa.
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Are you just being an obtuse arse or did you really not understand the extremely simple statement I made?
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I never heard of "fatwa" so I looked it up. It means "a ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognized authority." Please correct me if that's not the only definition - I only looked it up on google.
I was talking about American freedom of speech. In America, everyone has to follow the same laws, so even our president (elect), although many may not like it, is welcome to say "You should die", "Lock her up", "Punch him in the face", "You can keep your healthcare", "I didn't have sexual relations with that woman. Mrs. Lewenski", "I'm not a crook" yada yada yada... but it's all perfectly legal.
And as many have found out - the reaction up to and including impeachement is 100 percent just as legal.
Sad to say - but people seem to think they can blurt out whatever they want, and no one is allowed to even react to it.
Wrong. People that say outrageous things like threatening someone they are going to kill them have the right to say it, but making terroristic threats is a crime, and arrests and convictions are made all the time of people exercising their free speech. They are free to tell people t
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If someone in America goes to jail for saying something, they had a horrible lawyer, or there's more to the story than words. On the street, the cops may think one way, but in a court room, actual law is practiced. From cop-to-cop, ideas change. From courtroom to courtroom, laws stay the same.
Here's a good video [youtube.com] that illustrates this concept, on the streets of America. Video breakdown:
2 guys are protesting cops in a public are. Cops come up and tell them that they're trespassing. They argue about the
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If someone in America goes to jail for saying something, they had a horrible lawyer, or there's more to the story than words. Google "jailed for making terroristic threats"
Here's a fairly good description of what constitutes a terroristic threat https://www.criminaldefenselaw... [criminalde...lawyer.com]
And no, not everyone who tells someone that they plan on killing them is going to be arrested. Doesn't mean it isn't a crime.
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Due to a recent supreme court ruling: Ignorance of the law is not an excuse, unless you are a cop and are making a 'reasonable' assumption of the law.
HEIEN v. NORTH CAROLINA
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I think that qualifies as "Rookie Mistake" lol. Great video, to a great point.
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People that say outrageous things like threatening someone they are going to kill them have the right to say it, but making terroristic threats is a crime, and arrests and convictions are made all the time of people exercising their free speech. They are free to tell people they are going to kill them as often as they feel like it. Those prison sentences are going to get pretty long however.
No one, that I can see, said that anyone is allowed to threaten to kill someone. I started this thread by stating the opposite.
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Depends, if the mob boss says "someone should kill you" then you might be legitimately worried.
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If you're talking to a mob boss, you're probably not worried about free speech. The mob has a very laid back mentality.
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You are free to say, "I should kill you!", "you should die!", or even "I wish someone would kill you!" But you can't say, "I'm going to kill you!"
Because I'm not the government, so I can "censor" what I want.
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Because I'm not the government, so I can "censor" what I want.
Not sure that you and I have the same definition of 'government'. If you operated the forum, you govern it. So you would be the government of your forum. Some Americans may even say that your forum-government is practicing fascism.
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Yes, you have your own personal definition of "government" not shared by any legal authority.
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Government is as government does. I have a governor in my state, and my son's 4-wheeler has a governor on it's accelerator. Mr. Miyagi would say, "different, but same." It may sound weird to hear "Web Governor", instead of Web Master, or "Network Governor" instead of Network Admin, but it's not wrong. I was just responding to the comment that CohibaVancouver made:
Because I'm not the government, so I can "censor" what I want.
No. You can censor that you want because you are the government. ...of said web forum.
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You can play semantics all you want. Words have specific legal meanings which must be used in the interpreting the laws. In this case, the web master is not a legal government, and not all your word games will make it one.
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I think the same thing. War of words is the beginning of the end of free speech.
Who cares? (Score:2)
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Some things are handled just fine by civil liability.
Bet that kid never has to work a day in his life now. Which isn't good for anybody, but still, money is good.
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The kind of idiot that kills someone.
One thing struck me in my years of working in the legal system, is theres usually plenty of warnings before a killing.
Murder rarely happens out of the blue, its almost always the exclamation mark at the end of a series of escalations. Starts off with conflict, then general threats, then violence threats, then death threats and finally a murder.
Theres a very good reason cops have no sense of humor a
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RegEx substitution + hilarity = a solid fix (Score:3, Interesting)
Just use regexes on the site to switch all instances of the word "kill" to the word "masturbate", and whatever tongue-in-cheek subs would be appropriate. Then watch as angry users scramble to delete their posts where they threaten things like, "I'M GOING TO MASTURBATE YOU!"
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Actually, there's an old George Carlin bit where he replaces the word "Kill" with the word "Fuck." [youtube.com] He's done some variations of this...
"Okay, Sherriff. We're gonna fuck you now. But we're gonna fuck you slow..."
"Fuck the ump! Fuck the ump!"
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I think we should boo da pest.
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6. CowboyNeal
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Thanks for taking one for the team. I figured it would be like gab.ai. I found twitter horrible in so many ways, so I thought I'd see what gab was up to. I open it up and the front page was racist anti-semitic cartoons like you'd see from the 1935 Nazi party. I'm again censorship, so my only real option is to simply avoid that stuff. Oh well.
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First a little confession: I used to be on Voat as well but stopped more than two years ago. It got too annoying to try and filter the awful content. It also had became evident the site wasn't getting better or non-alt-right users.
Then I took a look. Voat's front page right now has... well slightly more diversity than I thought...
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1 pro-white post (video "it's okay to be white!")
Technically that's not a pro-white message. That's an anti-anti-white message. Fighting racism isn't "pro-white".
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Have you travelled or are you an American?
I don't really see the diff, they're just convinced something else untrue is true on the other side of the ponds.
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I don't think its as much paid shills, as it is vehement anti-free speech people going to try to sabotage any platform that allows words they don't like. Kind of like the spam posters here do. Some people want to be tyrannical and force any opinion but their own into the mud. We have a few posters doing it in the comment section, and its the same ones on any subject they disagree with. I'm sure most of us know who I'm talking about.