What Is Free Speech?

[jamil]

Here’s an example where defamation is criminal in Alabama. It’s a class B misdemeanor if a person falsely claims you’re a pedo. Politicians are excluded. It’s okay to call them pedo’s.

So no one in Alabama will be arrested for calling Biden a pedo.

 

[Ziggidy]

Is it free or wrong? I think it depends on where we are on the morality meter. Years ago we would have different answers but today we are faced with an influx of moral dilemmas. It’s the heart of society that will dictate what free speech is acceptable or not. Change society and change the law.

 

[jamil]

Is it free or wrong? I think it depends on where we are on the morality meter. Years ago we would have different answers but today we are faced with an influx of moral dilemmas. It’s the heart of society that will dictate what free speech is acceptable or not. Change society and change the law.

Almost all speech should be free, even speech that is immoral. The most obvious reason is who gets to decide what is moral? Claiming that men can’t get pregnant is immoral speech to some, but is plain, ****ing obvious to most. But the people with the political capital right now are the fringe who want that criminalized.

What speech is morally acceptable or not should not be a criminal issue. Civil courts can handle harm done by speech.

 

[Ziggidy]

Almost all speech should be free, even speech that is immoral. The most obvious reason is who gets to decide what is moral? Claiming that men can’t get pregnant is immoral speech to some, but is plain, ****ing obvious to most. But the people with the political capital right now are the fringe who want that criminalized.

What speech is morally acceptable or not should not be a criminal issue. Civil courts can handle harm done by speech.

What should be and what is are 2 different things.

Fact of the matter is that morality drives the law.

 

[Pepi]

Do what I say but don't do what I do

 

[Ingomike]

If the people in the two cases you mention keep it to themselves, that's one thing. When it gets shared to millions of people on the internet, that's entirely different.

So free speech unless said out loud doesn’t seem free to me…

 

[DoggyDaddy]

So free speech unless said out loud doesn’t seem free to me…

So you're okay with distributing AI-generated child porn? Or you'd be okay with someone creating a pornographic AI image of your wife and putting it on a billboard?

 

[Ingomike]

So you're okay with distributing AI-generated child porn?

We have learned that is already illegal, and no I don’t like it.

Or you'd be okay with someone creating a pornographic AI image of your wife and putting it on a billboard?

Is an AI image really an image of any particular person? Were those images of TS in fact TS? Aren’t the images a creation of AI, not an actual image of someone? I suspect a tack concerning laws will be consent but is the image really a specific individual?

In keeping with the KC Swifties, Mahomes was not happy a pic from the locker room of his dad bod was posted and viewed by millions, where will it stop. It is easy to say I don’t want a pornographic image of my wife out there, but where is the line? I believe we’ve also wouldn’t want many other contexts of images beyond porn posted of our loved ones, but it is a slippery slope.

 

[jamil]

Many believe as you do, though I fail to see where an individual infatuated with TS uses AI to create porn they like is slandering the subject unless they try to pass it off as real. And while the issue involving children is reprehensible do we make it illegal to think or draw cartoons, AI is just a technological way to visually create thoughts, no children are involved.

It's just TS's face on a body imagined by AI. It's not TS herself. I don't see how that's slandering TS. I think laws in a free society should be pretty much about protecting people's rights, and deciding, when rights collide, which side is righter. But in this case, TS doesn't have a right not to have someone put her face on an imaginary body, doing imaginary sex acts. But like you say, people don't have the right to allege that it's all real.

I think people get hung up on thinking that everything they think is reprehensible should be illegal. You can't regulate morality. You can only regulate behavior. And just because you find a behavior reprehensible, the question in a free society should be, was anyone actually harmed?

 

[jamil]

So you're okay with distributing AI-generated child porn? Or you'd be okay with someone creating a pornographic AI image of your wife and putting it on a billboard?

There are decency standards already. You can't put porn on a billboard nor should one be able to. But what someone watches privately is their own business, as long as it hasn't harmed anyone. It's the actual act that harms.

The internet, however, complicates things. I'm fine with laws against AI generated porn.

 

[greg]

Free speech?…. Lol

 

[jamil]

This thread is really going to separate the libertarians from the pretenders…

Yeah, that's basically a no true Scotsman statement. One is not either all libertarian or not at all libertarian. The question is how libertarian are you? I lean pretty libertarian on most things. I'm not a free speech absolutist, though. I don't think using one's celebrity influence to incite people to riot is protected speech.

I don't think AI child porn is protected speech. AI generated porn, yeah, whatever gets you off behind closed doors, but it creates a situation of conflicting rights that needs to be decided. Parents have a right to protect their kids from things that aren't age appropriate. Porn is free speech/expression; immoral, but is a right. However, I think society has a collective right to restrict its publication to consenting adults. It's a kind of public nuisance.

 

[jamil]

What should be and what is are 2 different things.

Fact of the matter is that morality drives the law.

I kinda think that this thread is about both, what should be and what is. Morally derived laws don't scale unless everyone has the same morals. And that's just not the case. The idea of federation helps to solve this problem. The idea of a constitution that limits government also helps solve the problem. Harm should drive the law more than morality, since most of morality is subjective. Harm is less subjective.

But, that said, even harm can be subjective. Is it really harming transgender people if you don't view them how they view themselves? Should someone go to jail for dead-naming a tranny? The people whose moral constructions are on the far left would think so. Some "artist" put a crucifix in a bucket and peed in it. He called it **** Christ. Should he go to jail for that? Some conservatives' with certain moral constructions would think so.

So when we talk about should, I think laws in a free society should not be based on subjective standards. They should be based on objective harm, and not subjective "harm". Being offended is not actual objective harm.

 

[jamil]

Free speech?…. Lol

Sue TPS! No! Throw them in jail! That's defamation!

 

[Leo]

What about the high school boys that put their classmates in AI porn?

What a time we live in.

A new technology, only recently available to the public, and already it has been used to display the sexual fantasy of adolescent confusion.

 

[DragonGunner]

Free speech is when our forefathers called each other names, trashed your family name and said anything they wanted to. If you didn’t like it you could have a dual or punch the guy out. Today I see someone posting a video on FB of some stupid guy doing a stupid thing and type, “That’s the dumbest thing I ever saw.” And get banned from FB for not bring nice. And you don’t dare say gay, pervert….or the ban hammer gets you. I like the old days better.

 

[injb]

Well we're clearly way past the point of "free speech" meaning only speech. It has almost always been understood to include most forms of expression - certainly the written word and even just images with no words.

Speech can be true, false, defamatory, libelous, threatening, seditious, satirical, journalistic etc. That's not meant to be an exhaustive list of everything that speech can be. But any medium that isn't capable of all these things isn't speech, and thus isn't protected by the "free speech" part of the constitution. You if you want any particular medium (be it AI generated images or whatever) to be protected, then it must also be exposed to the hazards or lawsuits or criminal prosecution when it crosses those lines. It shouldn't be possible to have it both ways.

So I say the laws are fine as they are. If I stick a photo of someone's head on a South Park body, that's protected by centuries of precedent. If I stick a photo of someone's head on a photorealistic AI-generated body, then maybe I'm making a statement that's not true and harmful to that person's reputation, and we have laws for that already.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

It's just TS's face on a body imagined by AI. It's not TS herself. I don't see how that's slandering TS.

If it's obviously and identifiably not a true image, I agree. If it purports to be true, I disagree and so does the law as I read it:

Chapter 5. Actions for Certain False Charges
34-15-5-1. Actionable Charges​

Universal Citation: IN Code § 34-15-5-1 (2022)
Sec. 1. Every charge of incest, homosexuality, bestiality, fornication, adultery, or whoredom falsely made against any person is actionable in the same manner as in the case of slanderous words charging a felony.
[Pre-1998 Recodification Citation: 34-1-62-1.]

Yes, Indiana code includes "whoredom" as a word...

I assume we can all agree there's a value judgement assigned to engaging in sex acts or posing nude for public consumption in our society? I assume we can all agree that value is not compatible with the *very lucrative* brand TS has?

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Free speech is when our forefathers called each other names, trashed your family name and said anything they wanted to. If you didn’t like it you could have a dual or punch the guy out. Today I see someone posting a video on FB of some stupid guy doing a stupid thing and type, “That’s the dumbest thing I ever saw.” And get banned from FB for not bring nice. And you don’t dare say gay, pervert….or the ban hammer gets you. I like the old days better.

So to be clear, you think being beaten or shot for saying something *is* free speech but being banned from facepage.com is *not* free speech?



Neither is gov't actors, though, so regardless probably not that relevant.

 

[DragonGunner]

So to be clear, you think being beaten or shot for saying something *is* free speech but being banned from facepage.com is *not* free speech?



Neither is gov't actors, though, so regardless probably not that relevant.

I’m afraid I went over your head.