Bonum Certa Men Certa

Erosion of Free Speech and Tolerance of Opposing Viewpoints in Free Software Communities

"It is by the goodness of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either." --Mark Twain

Computer lecture



Summary: The concept of free speech is being reinvented by oversensitive people who nowadays expand the list of exclusions/exemptions (from scope of 'permissible' speech) to politics and criticism of large and highly abusive corporations

THERE is this old and pseudo-philosophical conundrum about free speech in general, e.g. tolerating the intolerant. Or questions like, are we tolerant for not tolerating speech that we perceive to be inherently intolerant?



"Having received about 40,000 comments in this blog, there are many that I strongly dislike; but we never censored comments, not even ones with racial slurs in them."The subject isn't new. The debate isn't unprecedented. There are, however, things that can be said in the context of free-as-in-freedom software.

Free speech absolutists have to be quite tolerant (and no, we're not talking about nazis who disguise themselves as "free speech") because they need to not necessarily respect but let words be spoken/written/published despite loathing those words. Cultural differences too are a factor.

Having received about 40,000 comments in this blog, there are many that I strongly dislike; but we never censored comments, not even ones with racial slurs in them. Those are just a reflection of what society is and we draw the line at physical threats (those are a special case and there are well-established laws for dealing with them, even restraining orders and arrests).

A speakerYesterday in IRC someone brought up Gab; well, Gab isn't an ordinary site because there are many violent cults there, ones that seek to implement ethnic cleansing and death threats are commonplace there. So put Gab aside as a special case. What's special about it isn't mere racial/ethnic agitation but its uniquely violent nature (including members proceeding to mass murder, based on things that inspired them in Gab, legitimising those acts). The management of Gab obviously does not condone such violence and it cooperated with authorities when it had to; but those who block Gab (e.g. Fediverse factions) have some legitimate grounds for doing so, noting the large proportion of violent (in nature, explicitly) output emitted from there.

So again, just to clarify, when we speak about free speech we do not include (within scope) every single utterance of nonsense, especially not calls for genocide. There have long been laws for dealing with these, aside from the realms of speech alone (many murders are preceded by threats, whether it's domestic violence or disputes over drugs; there's an interest in prevention of lethal/fatal violence).

Some hours ago Derek Taylor (also known as DistroTube) published this video/view entitled "If You Support Free Software, You Should Support Gun Rights" (similar to the sorts of things ESR likes to say) and last week he published a video that uses words like "virtue-signalling", "social justice warriors" etc. (coming across like part of a group that's widely perceived to be intolerant). I've spoken Derek Taylor online but not offline (he's in the US, very far from here) and I largely agree with him on many technical things (I strongly disagree with his older stance regarding Torvalds and Stallman -- a stance he may have changed since). But in Daily Links there's no reason not to include this "pro-gun" video, even if many of us do not share his views. The feature image for that video is of him holding a rifle. Stay classy, eh?

It's truly regretful that, putting "wings" aside (the political duality -- a superficial binary standard), a certain polarity in the Free software world now deems people or classifies people as either "left" or "right" (some go further and simplify with "anti-Trump" or "pro-Trump"). This is partly the reason why ESR, both co-founder of the OSI and for a period of time chief of the OSI, got banned by the OSI earlier this year ('canceled' from mailing lists, at least). His views on Free software -- oh, sorry... Open Source -- licensing did not seem to matter because his choice of words seemed political on the 'wrong' side of politics. This isn't the way to have an healthy and productive debate about software and ethical issues. Sure, we don't all agree about politics. And if ESR thinks that there's "vulgar" form of "Marxism" somewhere, let him say it. One doesn't have to agree with him. To outright ban him (from his own creation) says a lot about the lack of will to come up with a counter-argument. This is to be expected somewhere like China. Do we really wish to go down this route?

What I find a lot more concerning, personally at least, is censorship of people not for the 'wrong' political worldviews (the people who suffer the most from it call it 'wrongthink' or similar terms) but for criticising bad corporations. Here's an example that is very new and very disturbing:

bsd.network

Language of dictators: "if you give me lip about this, especially as a "joke", you'll get blocked and/or lose your account" (and he's not joking! Not tongue-in-cheek a statement!)

As an associate of ours put it: "In the bsd.network link [...] we see what CoCs are really about."

We recently saw the same thing in Rust/Mozilla/Reddit (banning Microsoft critics).

In an act of recognition and solidarity we recently reproduced many articles from Daniel Pocock, whom I believe got in trouble for doing 'too much' complaining about corporate influence if not takeover by large corporations such as Google and Microsoft (both pay Debian and the FSFE) -- two companies which his technical work (SIP etc.) seeks to make obsolete.

Dig a little deeper into the context of the above quip/toot and find this (pinned even):

bsd.network CoC

So the CoC seems to have been magically extended to, "do not criticise Microsoft" (an OpenBSD sponsor by the way; this is no secret). Do we want to go down this route of making it impermissible to criticise large corporations and oligarchs, especially those who pay us? If so, isn't that just bribery for silence? Are we enforcing politeness here or merely covering up misconduct and censorious behaviour?

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Debian GNU/Linux and Free Software Developer Daniel Pocock in Irish Elections This Month (Dublin Bay South)
Polling day in 15 days
Layoffs as Happy Stories in the Corporate Media
It's based on a longstanding pattern
In Switzerland, GNU/Linux Reaches Record Highs, But What About the Corruption?
Pocock is a disappointed citizen of Switzerland
At BetaNews, "Most Commented Story" Is Not a Story But LLM Slop! (Readers Talking to Bots)
They make fake stories with provocative headlines and then boast that these get many comments
[Meme] Swiss Lawyers/Attorneys Who Fake Qualifications and Rob People
Switzerland mostly guards its reputation by censorship of media
Just How Slow Has the News Industry Become?
We're drowning in garbage from fake publishers
 
Links 14/11/2024: Science and the Demise of Microsoft-Connected USPTO Director
Links for the day
For "X" to Die the Media and Politicians Will Need to Quit (Then, Advertisers Will Lose Interest, Even for Political Ads)
Fewer people are still there anyway
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 13, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Bob Should Tell Alice About What GitHub (Which Linux Foundation Outsources Code to) Does to Entire Nations, Following Donald Trump's Policies
"What's next, preventing access to Linux from non-NATO countries? Putting NSA backdoors in the kernel?"
It Took The Guardian More Than 2 Years of Musk to Realise What Twitter Was and It Took Twitter 4 Years of a President Trump to Realise What Trump Was
Trump was deplatformed only a fortnight before Biden became president anyway
[Meme] Google 80%, Windows 2%
"I'm going to f---ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f---ing kill Google."
Microsoft's Market Share Falls to 2% in Haiti
Throw in Android (now 80% of "the market") and Windows is down to 2%
Gemini Links 13/11/2024: Magic of Walking and Lest We Forget
Links for the day
Links 13/11/2024: USPTO Director Kathi Vidal ('Former' Microsoft Rep) Resigning, Censorship After Car Ramming Attack in China
Links for the day
Microsoft: Layoffs, Outsourcing, and R.T.O. as Cover for Mass Layoffs Without Severance Pay
Microsoft had mass layoffs pretty much every month this year
[Meme] The Addicted Lolicon Throwing Stones
"They've found my RMS attack site"
Jonathan Carter & Debian betrayed Joel Espy Klecker
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 13/11/2024: Red Tape War and Programming Experiences
Links for the day
Links 13/11/2024: "Make Your Laptop Last FOREVER" With GNU/Linux, 23andMe Mass Layoffs, Intel 'Resignations' Layoffs Loophole
Links for the day
More Than 3 Years After Vista 11's Release More Chinese Computer Users Still Use Vista 7 (Than "11")
it was "officially" released October 5, 2021
Things That Still Work OK (But We're Being Shamed for Using)
Using old stuff is nothing to be shamed of (or afraid to do)
Free Software is About Collaboration
WordPress limits it
Even the Managing Editor of BetaNews is Doing Slop and Spam
A Fish Rots From The Head Down
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 12, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 12, 2024
PERA Bill in US Senate Strives to Crush Caselaw, Making Patents on Mathematics and Algorithms 'Great Again'
Follow the money
BetaNews is Beta-Testing the Site as LLM Slop With Microsoft Propaganda Thrown In
Many of the people there are Microsoft boosters and they use slop as "filler" (for marketing)
Evolution of euthanasia & WIPO UDRP similarities exposed by W. Scott Blackmer
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 13/11/2024: Phasing Out 3G, Brian Kernighan Books, Tcl/Tk, Time to Ditch x86
Links for the day
Links 12/11/2024: A Lot of Censorship and SWNS at 50
Links for the day
BetaNews, Inc. Became a Spam Operation/Web Site, LLM Spew (Slop) for SEO Disguised as "Articles"
Published 5 minutes ago by Brian Fagioli...
Gemini Links 12/11/2024: Invidious Down and YouTube Addiction
Links for the day
Links 12/11/2024: Hey Hi (AI) Failures and COP29 Fakers
Links for the day
Latest Rumours of Red Hat Layoffs
Rumours or gossip is how almost everything starts
WordPress is for the 'Old Web'; the New Web Necessitates Static Pages
There are purely practical reasons to move away from WordPress and the likes of it
Biggest Debt Leap in Years, More Than Half a Trillion Dollars in Just One Month
We remind people (almost every year) that it's also "buynothingday"
Windows Falling to All-Time Lows and Microsoft Has Nothing to Replace It With
It's mostly Android (Linux) replacing Windows
Cybershow Has a New 81-Minute Episode on Digital Sovereignty and International Cyber-Relations
it is a high-quality show
Activism in the Digital Realm Can Never (and Must Never) Rely on GAFAM
This simply means that tech activists must completely abandon any hopes of finding allies in Google or IBM or whatever...
Golden Dawn(ald) and What GAFAM Means to Liberal Techies
In one single screenshot
IBM CEO Says Donald Trump as President-Elect is Good for IBM in New Interview With CNBC
most unprincipled CEO ever?
GNU/Linux Up to 6.1% in Finland (Almost 9% If One Counts ChromeOS Too)
Home of Linux (the kernel)
BetaNews Has Become a SPAM/Slop Factory, Brian Fagioli Publishes Fake 'Articles'
everything is now suspect in BetaNews
It's Morbid to Talk About Living People as If They're Dead
What happens to LLM slop when Brian Fagioli dies?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 11, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 11, 2024
Free Software and Love of Nature
It's not a coincidence that many Free software activists are also lovers of nature
Silicon Valley and GAFAM Were Never Liberal
spineless CEOs and founders aren't against Trump
Windows and 'The Desktop' Floundering
Microsoft should be extremely worried
WordPress is Bad for the Planet (Even If Many Still Use It)
the costs nobody wishes to talk about