this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
33 points (92.3% liked)

Ask Lemmy

33435 readers
1585 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

It seems to me a repeating pattern that once freedom of thought, speech and expression is limited for essentially any reason, it will have unintended consequences.

Once the tools are in place, they will be used, abused and inevitably end up in the hands of someone you disagree with, regardless of whether the original implementer had good intentions.

As such I'm personally very averse to restrictions. I've thought about the question a fair bit – there isn't a clear cut or obvious line to draw.

Please elaborate and motivate your answer. I'm genuinely curious about getting some fresh perspectives.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] subignition@fedia.io 4 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Really showing off your capacity for nuance in that comment

[–] Balerion@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Say what you like, but I just can't think of any way to write hate speech laws that isn't incredibly abusable. Handing the government an excuse to punish to people is inherently dangerous. While it's certainly necessary in some instances, I think we should be very, very careful about adding to the list of things you can get thrown in prison for.

[–] subignition@fedia.io 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

There is no situation where something is not abusable. doesn't mean you cannot have that thing. It means you figure out how to improve the consequences for the abuser.

[–] Balerion@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Right, but there are degrees of abusable. There's a difference between "yes, you could abuse this thing" and "this thing will inevitably be abused." In my opinion, hate speech laws fall into the latter category. I know of too many cases of them being abused... and worse, they don't even seem to do much to prevent hatred. See this article.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

That's an utterly trash article.

You may think that while there are isolated examples of abuse and absurdity, these laws nevertheless allow European nations to more effectively combat hatred.

No, I think that cherry picking extreme cases of people trying to abuse hate speech laws, not discussing the final outcomes of those cases including when the accuser was punished for abusing hate speech laws, and not examining their positive cases in any way shape or form, is obviously fucking asinine and doesn't prove the point the author thinks.

You’d be surprised to learn, then, that citizens in European countries with laws restricting hate speech and Holocaust denial experience worse rates of antisemitic attitudes than the United States, sometimes by a large margin.

No, I wouldn't.

  1. you can effectively combat anti-Semitism, but still end up with more of it, if you start with higher levels of anti-Semitism

  2. there are a million other factors effecting anti-Semitism, drawing a causal relationship between high anti-Semitism rates and whether or not they have hate-speech laws is asinine, kindergarten level, "reasoning"

  3. hate-speech laws are not just about anti-Semitism, but about literally every other hateful prejudice as well

The author of that article is, quite frankly, a fucking idiot at best, or an ideologue intentionally trying to deceive you at worst.

The on the ground reality is that in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Europe, etc, groups like the KKK will be investigated and prosecuted, and in the US they won't. If you think hate speech laws are so bad you're gonna have to find enough cases of abuse that they cancel out all the cases of far right terror groups being successfully disrupted, and here's the thing, you won't, because they don't exist.

There's a reason that hate-speech laws are broadly popular in the countries that have them.