I know it already is but should it be?
It really depends on who defines what hate speech is.
Is questioning the Zionist genocide hate speech? Is being an outspoken socialist hate speech against capitalists? Is stating you want to separate church and state hateful against Christians? Is supporting Palestine hate speech in the UK?
I’m a fan of free speech. Unless it is literally inciting violence or panic.
It’s fucked up innocent people holding Palestine action signs are being arrested in the UK. Attacking free speech is what leads to situations like that.
I feel like this is the only right answer and even then who decides what “inciting violence” is. As disgusting as it gets the only free speech in my mind is 100% free speech. Anything less is just free attack surface for those looking to oppress.
I think hate speech should be censored online and from the press, but allowed irl
Wanna say controvertial shit, own up to it in person lol.
Dont just hide behind a keyboard
(Should require a court to approve of such censorship
Something like a Grand Jury thats sitting for a long term, but require a 3/4 supermajority to censor it)
You cant sockpuppet IRL lol
Can you think of a useful purpose it serves?
No, hate speech should not be protected, and there’s an obvious reason for that. We already recognize that speech that purposely harms people is not protected, for example going into a theater room and screaming FIRE causing people to panic and stampede and killing someone the person will be charged with involuntary manslaughter. That is not so different from someone going online and saying “gay people should be killed” and causing people to go out and do that, in fact I would even drop the involuntary from the charges against that person, because his intention was clearly to incite someone to do it. I’m not taking away the responsibility from the person who committed the act, but this situation is similar to a how in a group planning a crime even the boss who was in every meeting telling people to commit the crime but did not actually participate in gets charged with. And the same excuses apply “No, I didn’t think that because I told them to go and kill someone they would do it” is not a valid defense for a mafia boss, and it shouldn’t be for any person with public influence.
If it were not, it would just be inviting the government take a massive dump all over it.
Despite the crapshow that is the current US government, you can’t be arrested for standing in front of the Whitehouse shouting your support for whatever idea or group you beleive in (granted you are a Citizen of the USA).
Compare that to something like the UK where people have been charged and thrown in jail for wearing a t shirt or holding a sign, even outside of a protest because the government can just designate whatever it wants to be “hate speech”.
Private spaces like social media are not bound by this which is fine, but social media is so ridiculously controlled and filtered as a result, that you’re better off sticking to a non mainstream platform (like lemmy) where your comments won’t get banned and deleted for stepping out of line.
You have to be a citizen for the constitution to apply?
No, its just that the current administration has been going around and depoting visa and greencard holders.
I really wonder how many people in this thread have ever had hate speech directed at themselves.
If it already is, because it had already been decided. People once again misunderstand what exactly the 1st Amendment even covers. It protects you from the government silencing your voice and expression, which is what someone like Trump has been working hard to do.
It does not and should not protect you outside from that. You do not have a case on your hands when you’re banned from an online forum for using hate speech. Because that forum, is not the government. Facebook, is not the government. Reddit, is not the government. So on and so forth.
Despite interesting debates. I think they all ignore the big issue: the internet.
The internet was set up by people who all deeply, deeply, deeply believed in the idea that in a pool of ideas the best will rise to the top. That pure freedom leads to the best humanity has to offer. It was the time of Richard Dawkins memes and evolutionary thinking. Dawkins, and all the new atheïsts, presented it like this was the way nature actually worked and that we should set up the internet accordingly.
All websites from twitter to reddit to even Lemmy has been set up in this manner… And whenever Lemmy when it gets popular, will suffer the same fate as all other publicly upvoted popularity aggregators. It’s all based on the same principles.
We’ve figured out that freedom of expression can only exist when there are strict rules around it and the enforcement that comes with that.
Isn’t it suspicious you’re the one who said “Fuck them” about Gaza children?
No, it should not. “My freedom ends where it starts infringing on other peoples rights.” is the basic law of humanity. Any law book should basically follow this line, and mostly actually do.
Forgive my ignorance, but how can words infringe on the rights of others? As a member of a minority class with several hateful and hurtful slurs (that were on their way to becoming hate speech prior to the second Trump administration) I understand that some folks can get very upset but I don’t think anyone has the right to not be upset. I could be misunderstanding something though.
When someone would scream into your face “Animals like you should be shot!”, wouldn’t it hurt you?
If someone spread lies about you or your family or your business if you had one, wouldn’t it do damage?
If someone spread the word that people of color or other minorities would do this or that (wasn’t it “Haitians eating dogs” or something recently?) and it led to people attacking this minority, wouldn’t it be dangerous?
Remember January 6th, where Trump whipped up the stupid to storm the Capitol? He did not use a cattle prod or stick, he only used words, and see what has happened.
And look closely at what the GOP is doing. They are spreading lies, and repeat them, until they fester and replace the truth in the hearts of the listeners.
And now tell me again that words can do no harm.
I mean I kind of see what you’re saying but it doesn’t really pass the smell test.
Yelling in someone’s face is assault. Spreading harmful lies about specific individuals or businesses is lible. Speech that incites violence is not protected by the first amendment. And the rest: January 6th and the misinformation machine aren’t something that can really be legislated. Lies unfortunately are protected speech unless they incite imminent violence. As much as I would like to hang the raid on the capital on Trump I watched his speech (and Bannon’s) and he only ever implies violence. The crowd whipped themselves up into the violence frenzy we saw that day.
Words absolutely can cause harm in the right conditions, but the ones that do the most damage would definitely not be hate speech. Fox News ran a segment last year where one of the hosts said homeless people should be killed and within a few days there were three separate incidents where armed men walked into homeless encampments and opened fire. I think the death toll was 9 people across the three events. But fox news spreading lies about ivermectin and masking during covid killed potentially tens of thousands. In the case of the homeless what the host did was already illegal, but the lies can’t be legislated.
The more I think about it the less I’m concerned about hate speech. The things that need to be illegal, inciting violence, already are, and the things that aren’t are murky at best and a slippery slope at worst. Especially when you consider who would be determining what is or isn’t hate speech. Right now the powers that be would label your comment as hate speech because it’s critical of the gop.
My only gripe with this is that the state in its current form cannot be trusted to be an impartial judge of what constitutes hate speech. We see today that many states around the world are using anti hate speech laws to suppress criticism of the state of Israel. Giving the state broad powers to crack down on speech that it deems hateful will inevitably result in the state deciding that all criticism of its actions or the actions of its allies constitutes hate speech.
As an alternative, I prefer that hate speech be met with social consequences rather than criminal ones.
Impartiality is key to any such decision. Not only when one is rightfully criticising the genocide in Gaza.
I don’t know why you are being downvoted, this is correct: “My freedom ends where the next person’s freedom starts.” We can do everything we want as long it doesn’t harm or encroach (and “harm” and “encroach” are loaded words in this context) on the next person. “Harm” and “encroach” here means you don’t diminish the other persons rights, at all.
“At all” is kinda contradictory part. Limiting harm to others would already necessitate limiting freedoms and the more people and closer together they live the more freedoms are limited.
Living in the middle of nowhere and a person can do almost whatever pops in their mind, almost absolute freedom.
Living in a city and there’s a long list of laws/rules/regulations that already limit what one can do. Not that those are bad limitations.
Individuals should not limit other’s freedom, and as such the law can restrict individual freedoms to that purpose.
I voted to raise my taxes to fund my local school. Now my neighbors have to pay more in taxes as well… Did I just harm them?
I think so, in the sense that the tax is enforced by state violence. The system should be redesigned such that the school is no longer reliant on extorting non-consenting parties in order to function effectively.
No, that benefits society as a whole by increasing education for the next generation. Which leads to better lives and more opportunities.
When something benefits the whole, not all individuals will see obvious benefits to themselves. But they still get to benefit from the outcomes, like better jobs more opportunities and such.
Ah, so it would have been harmful to vote against it.
The question is what is less harm? Increased taxes or lack of education?
Perhaps both of them harm (or help) different parties by different amounts. So maybe a system where “My freedom ends where it starts infringing on other peoples rights.” looks like a common sense framework, but when scrutinized reveals that it doesn’t really stand for anything at all.
Everybody should be able to say anything they want, and everybody else should be able to make fun of them.
Or choose not to hire them, or ostracize them.
Hate speech is free speech. So is recording that hate speech and making sure that everyone the bigot knows is aware of their bigotry is free speech too.
Or choose not to hire them
This just allows capitalists to decide what is acceptable speech.
Or choose not to do business with them, or choose not to help them on the side of the road, or choose not to invite them to your parties, or choose not to let them on your property, or choose to sign them up for all the useless email and mail spam you can find…
Don’t tunnel on one thing. A freedom for everyone means a freedom for the capitalists, and the communists too.
I generally agree it’s fine where there’s an “equality of arms”.
A freedom for everyone means a freedom for the capitalists, and the communists too.
By capitalists I mean business owners and/or bosses. Your boss shouldn’t be able to dictate what you can say outside your job. That just lets the owners of corporations control speech.
The problem is you hand government and courts the right to decide what is hate speech.
In the UK the government is already trying to classify anti-zionist speech as banned hate speech.
Laws are weapons, your enemies can use them against you.
Imagine living in Queensland rn. Where the phrase “from the river to the sea” is banned…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-05/qld-hate-speech-laws-passed-parliament/106420306
“Hey Bob, want to kayak from the river to the sea tomorrow”
Government seething intensifies
I’d rather know someone is a nazi then not know
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. A lot of extremists like to be heard. I like to know when they’re coming.
Charlie Kirk would still be a piece of shit today if he wasn’t out and loud about being a piece of shit.
Without a platform, he would likely have had a much smaller impact, and likely also not even be as extreme in his views.
Hate speech laws are fascist. As in, they are laws that differentiate between people. Some are protected but not beholden, while others are beholden but not protected. These laws are already used to protect cultist child abusers from criticism.
always remember that Jews are not Semites but saying anything negative against them is anti-semitism. while Palestinians are Semites but hate speech and hate crimes against them are allowed.
Yes because otherwise you can shut down speech you dislike by labeling it “hate speech”
Canada restricts hate speech, as does most of Europe.
Yet its the US with the speech suppression issues going on right now.
You shouldn’t base a law on “The current government is okay” simply because the next one might not be.
You shouldn’t base a law on “The current government is okay”
The definition of hate speech doesn’t change each time we get a new prime minister.
That implies the bad government will care about following the laws, or won’t change the law or its enforcement
Even with everything going on in America right now, it definitely doesn’t suppress free speech more than Germany or Britain. I mean the Palestine Action thing is still happening (while Reform gets to yap all day long, mind you).
And that’s why you need a democratic process and not a dictatorship that decides unilaterally what is fine.
On the other hand, if you protect the nazis, you are one of them and you are letting them oppress whoever they want.
Personally, I know what side I prefer.
you want dictatorship of the majority? That just means minority groups (which may be the more moral group, eg anti slavery in the past, women’s rights in the past, lgbt+ rights now, vegans now) will be oppressed instead. To protect minorities you need absolute free speech, not just democracy
I said a democratic process, not a majority vote. To protect minorities you need laws that protect minorities and individual rights, freedom of speech is secondary, and actually often contradicting with the first part of my sentence.
It’s no mystery why the ones throwing “freedom of speech” all day long in all conversations are the nazis. If freedom of speech is king, then hate speech is tolerated. What needs to be of the utmost importance is the respect of individuals, and freedom of speech becomes a consequence of that.
How can minorities exist if they don’t have the freedom to express their minority opinions even if they’re 'hateful" to others? It sounds like only sanctioned minorities would be protected under your system, which makes no sense.
What about hating billionaires, I expect you would think that 'hate speech " is fine?
If individuals are respected, then their minority opinions will be fine as long as they are not breaking the rule of not blocking other’s freedoms.
Billionaires are in many way hostile to society as a whole, and destroy the freedom of most people, by choice. Nothing forces them to do it, they aren’t born that way or whatever else, and they are breaking the rule of respecting other’s freedom; as such hating on billionaires is not hate speech, because they broke the rule first and are doing it willingly and with complete choice over the matter.
But you’re right, there shouldn’t be hate speech against billionaires, because they shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
Yes.
They should be encouraged to say whatever they want to say.
What they really want isn’t freedom of speech but freedom from consequence. And that’s something they shouldn’t have.
When is freedom of speech ever not equivalent to freedom of consequences from said speech?
Consequences as in the government punishing someone, and consequences as in people mocking and ostracizing someone aren’t the same thing. Just as the person who said something has the right to say that thing, other people have the right to for example not watch that person’s show anymore.
I don’t understand what you’re trying to ask, sorry.
