[playpause]

Free speech absolutism doesn't mean you can get away with any crime just because it involved you saying something.

Even free speech absolutists agree that falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre in order to cause a fatal stampede is (and should be) a criminal act. But the crime is not the utterance of the word. You could commit the same crime by setting off a fire alarm. In either case, the crime is in the action of tricking a group of people into stampeding.

Similarly, impersonating a police officer is illegal. You could do this by lying (telling a gullible person that you are a police officer), or by wearing a police uniform in public. The criminal action is tricking people into thinking you're a police officer, whether you do it with lies or clothes. Lying itself is not illegal, but a lie may constitute an action that is criminal.

[timeon]

> Even free speech absolutists agree that falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre in order to cause a fatal stampede is (and should be) a criminal act.

Then they are not really 'absolutists'. Either you are free to speak or not. If you are considering something as criminal act and some other not then you are not 'free speech absolutists'. Words can have consequences yes, but you are here just arbitrary choosing which one can and which one can not have consequences.

[chomp]

John Stuart Mill is considered an absolutist and he invented the harm principal.

This is because shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater is not a free exchange of ideas, it’s enticement of injury.

Here’s the gist of it: “Mill argued that even any arguments which are used in justifying murder or rebellion against the government shouldn't be politically suppressed or socially persecuted. According to him, if rebellion is really necessary, people should rebel; if murder is truly proper, it should be allowed. However, the way to express those arguments should be a public speech or writing, not in a way that causes actual harm to others. Such is the harm principle: "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."”

[f38zf5vdt]

In what point in time or space has a human had the ability to communicate all of their ideas and not have consequences from them? There has never been a time in history in the United States where you could say or publish absolutely anything you wanted and were immediately absolved of all responsibility, government or otherwise, by invoking the first amendment. The US obscenity law still exists on the books today. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_obscenity_law

[Spooky23]

That’s why democracy and actual meaningful exchange of ideas is important.

When you allow human discourse to be reduced to Id driven animal urges, democracy doesn’t function well.

[joering2]

Bravo! He absolutely fell into his own trap! An this is why free speech is a complicated issue. And besides - one person would say "you get people to stampede", meanwhile the perpetrator will say "that's only your opinion, I'm a comedian, here is my Youtube Jackass channel where I do things like that all the time and my intention is never to hurt anyone!". How you gonna prove if he's genuine or not? Jury that has their own opinion? And what if he really IS genuine in just being a stupid joker? Okay, so now you gonna tell him "you cannot say that!". Then we back to square one - controlling free speech.

[cloutchaser]

This is a ridiculous twisting of what people are talking about, with no nuance, which life has. It's not just 0 or 1.

There are very clear rules that have been worked out in the legal system for what constitutes incitement to violence for example. It has to be actual call to cause physical violence, right where violence might happen, soon or immediately. If you are standing outside a house yelling burn it down, that is incitement. Yelling burn down the capitalist system on Twitter is not incitement, because it is not direct and it's not immediate.

What many silicon valley techies have now done is move things beyond the legal system, which has worked reasonably well for decades, and thought that they can create a better system. Except it seems in practice this is much more difficult than it seems. Posting pictures of the severed head of Trump seems fine them with them (legally, I think this is ok anyway), but posting a satire article of a transgender woman military officer is not, and gets your silenced. Oh, and let's just block the legitimate story of the president's son's laptop.

In a way this is an extremely arrogant and elitist way of acting, you are saying you are going to create a better legal system than the evolving common law one we've used for a very long time.

It's also pretty obvious in the last 5 years that this leads to all sorts of conflicts of interest, and Silicon Valley elites really don't seem to be doing a fair job. Surprise suprise, what legal experts and judges have refined over decades works better.

[garaetjjte]

>Even free speech absolutists agree that falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre

I would really want this stop being quoted so often, because the context in which it was originally used didn't advocate free speech at all.

[oceanplexian]

It's also logically inconsistent. Of course you want people to have the freedom to yell fire in a crowded theater. What if there was a fire??

[rpmisms]

Free speech absolutism, to me, means that the speech cannot be punished, but if the speech causes direct and immediate harm to others, you can be held accountable. Shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater is fine, but if there's a stampede and someone dies, you can be held liable at some level. I think that's a reasonable balance between zero suppression of speech and consequences for actions.