How far does "Free Speech" go on SaidIt?

submitted by neovulcan from (self.AskSaidIt)

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]Jesus-Christ 19 insightful - 3 fun19 insightful - 2 fun20 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

This is not free speech in the strictest sense, every forum or site you use uses some form of censorship through rules/moderation. Though I'd say that Saidit has probably found a decent balance between the two in comparison to other sites. You can pretty much say whatever you want here so as long as you literally aren't shouting nigger over and over again. It's never as black and white as people make it out to be when it comes to freedom of speech and forums, because at some point you're going to get assholes that will use this freedom to stir the pot and just generally be nasty people. Some will use it to post all sorts of disgusting, inhumane shit.

You also have to take into account the server provider as most of them aren't as tolerant, they pretty much have you on strings if they threaten to close the site down as there aren't any better alternatives. The only way to ensure that this doesn't happen is to find a very dedicated member that's willing to run the site on their own servers. Which will cost money and time and will generally just be a mind fuck to get done.

[–]wristaction 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

It's a small community and the ADL doesn't recognize its existence, so it's left to self-regulate.

The actual principle involved is just people's ordinary understanding of what speech and speech freedom means. You only get into casuistic pilpul about which speech is not speech or which speech is "harmful" when the Stalinists cast their gaze on a platform. You see Socks try to do it upthread, but no one can take him seriously. That sort of thing would have to come from outside from a group which has leverage.

As it is, it doesn't seem as if that threat is present or even approaching here and the community here is surprisingly heterodox.

[–]Jesus-Christ 10 insightful - 2 fun10 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

True, but we've already had an experience where the provider buckled under one person repeatedly reporting IP2 for "harmful" content and they threatened to take the entire site down. Which forced Mag to remove the sub entirely for the sake of the site. So I can definitely see something like that happening if a group of losers with nothing better to do try to target us. Or as you say an outsider group with leverage.