Hyman Rosen 's Techdirt Comments

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• On the post: If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 May, 2022 @ 06:17am

  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/when-is-speech-violence.html

• On the post: No, Twitter Doesn’t Want To ‘Censor’ Anyone, It Just Wants Everyone To Stop Attacking Each Other

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 May, 2022 @ 06:16am

  But the flagging here is useless. It's just a down vote for less popular viewpoints or less popular people. For example, on a separate thread, I posted an excerpt from a Supreme Court decision that called social media the new public square, and that was flagged. Techdirt's flagging just shows that people will use whatever means they are given to censor speech and people they don't like.

• On the post: If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 May, 2022 @ 06:02am

  Which, of course, is why I said *mostly* correct.

• On the post: No, Twitter Doesn’t Want To ‘Censor’ Anyone, It Just Wants Everyone To Stop Attacking Each Other

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 May, 2022 @ 05:53am

  The Law of Merited Impossibility

  Rod Dreher invented this - "That will never happen, and when it does, it's because you bigots deserve it."

• On the post: If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 21 May, 2022 @ 07:20pm

  Public Square

  The Supreme Court disagrees with you: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=285661631352488303 "Social media allows users to gain access to information and communicate with one another on any subject that might come to mind. With one broad stroke, North Carolina bars access to what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge."

• On the post: If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 21 May, 2022 @ 06:52pm

  The fundamental thing wrong with woke gender ideology is that it is false, and yet woke gender ideologues demand that woke gender ideology must be affirmed by everyone. Men cannot be changed into women, there is no such thing as gender apart from sex, and you are only ever the sex of your body, and no one is "assigned" a sex. Societies have religious, social, and cultural taboos involving single-sex spaces. People who delusionally believe that they are a sex different from their bodies should not be allowed to force their way into single-sex spaces for which their bodies disqualify them. Public schools should never be permitted to hide the mental illnesses of students from their parents. Woke gender ideologues do not want trans acceptance, in the same way that gay people wanted acceptance for same-sex marriage, which was live-and-let-line. Woke gender ideology wants to force everyone to accept its false beliefs and punish people who refuse. In terms of actual acceptance, the Supreme Court has already decided that employers cannot fire trans employees for choosing to present and dress as the sex they wish they were. We do not "know" what best practices for trans people are. Psychology is political and its science is generally unreplicatable garbage. Woke gender ideologues who claim that their theories are "settled science" are knaves or fools.

• On the post: If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 21 May, 2022 @ 06:33pm

  Mostly correct, yes.

• On the post: If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 21 May, 2022 @ 06:28pm

  It is woke ideologues who like to call unassailable arguments against them "violence". It was the same woke ideologues at the tech platforms whose viewpoint-based censorship led to the creation of Parler that removed Parker from their app stores and payment processing. Woke ideologues cannot win arguments by truth, because their ideas are lies. They can only win by force.

• On the post: If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 May, 2022 @ 03:56pm

  Transwomen are men. That is true independent of how convincingly the men are costumed as women. But often, transwomen are presented in the best possible light for their appearance, such as Caitlyn Jenner having the benefit of makeup artists when appearing on magazine covers, and that can help sway opinions. Presenting unconvincing transwomen, whether it's Dr. Levine, or Lia Thomas looming over the other members of the swim team, can help sway opinion in the other direction.

• On the post: If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 May, 2022 @ 03:46pm

  I do not. I am not Texas, and I am not responsible for what Texas does.

• On the post: If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 May, 2022 @ 03:45pm

  It is a bad law, obviously.

• On the post: If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 May, 2022 @ 01:06pm

  I have said that very effective criticism, including successful satire, that demonstrates the weakness of someone's position to the extent that they are ashamed to continue holding and stating it, is good. That is not silencing, that is winning the argument. Woke ideologues do not believe in reality, only power, so naturally they see such winning as forceful silencing rather than the triumph of truth over lies.

• On the post: If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 May, 2022 @ 01:00pm

  They don't have to change. The point of criticism is to get them to realize they're wrong and change voluntarily. Woke ideologues are committed to the notion that people criticizing the platforms want to force them to change, because then they can hide behind the 1st Amendment and say that the platforms don't have to change. But criticism is not force.

• On the post: If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 May, 2022 @ 11:47am

  Because the point is to improve Twitter by criticizing its poor decisions and getting them to change.

• On the post: If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 May, 2022 @ 11:43am

  "Users are the product" is one of those things that sound wise but are actually idiotic. Unless you're expecting other people to give you things for nothing (which I suppose is woke Communist ideology), receiving services is always in exchange for something. It can be money, it can be attention, it it can be information. You are free to refuse the exchange, but you are not especially brilliant or insightful for doing so. The 1st Amendment doesn't apply to corporations, but the 1st Amendment is not all there is to free speech. Corporations don't need to honor freedom of speech, but they can choose to. If they want to claim to do that, they should do more than pay lip service to the concept.

• On the post: If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 May, 2022 @ 11:23am

  The Babylon Bee incident is very clarifying. Woke gender ideologues insist that the post is unjustified targeted harassment against a particular trans person and deserves to be banned. The other side believes that the post is an extremely effective attack on woke gender ideology (because Dr. Levine does not make a convincing woman) and is being banned precisely because of its effectiveness. Political debate has always been replete with insults, mockery, vituperation, and personal attacks. Platforms that value free speech should err on the side of allowing speech to stand.

• On the post: Despite DC Sound And Fury, Public Support For Regulating ‘Big Tech’ Is Actually Down

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 May, 2022 @ 06:02am

  Right there along with the ivermectin takers.

• On the post: Despite DC Sound And Fury, Public Support For Regulating ‘Big Tech’ Is Actually Down

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 May, 2022 @ 05:56am

  It is woke ideologues who talk about "people of color" as if not being white means that one will perforce agree with their nonsense. The woke have a blind spot so large that it reduces their vision to nothing; they cannot see reality, only the falsehoods in their own heads. Focusing on woke gender ideology is useful because it is so obviously false and yet so dear to the hearts of the woke. It is an accurate wedge issue because it makes people see that if the woke insist that such an obvious lie is true, it is likely that other things the woke claim are also lies.

• On the post: Despite DC Sound And Fury, Public Support For Regulating ‘Big Tech’ Is Actually Down

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 19 May, 2022 @ 08:50pm

  Things that are ridiculous should be mocked. If the mockery makes the believers so ashamed that they stop pushing their nonsense, so much the better. That is not forcing a stop to discussion. Rather, it is winning the argument decisively. For example, Tucker Carlson showed example after example of progressives saying how demographic change was going to win the day for them. If they're going to decry the Great Replacement, they ought not to be bragging about it at the same time. As for the "deadnaming", woke gender ideologues are, as usual, treating Orwell as a manual rather than a warning. "Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia." Here is the description of Juno on Netflix, "Starring Elliot Page": https://www.netflix.com/sg/title/70077553

• On the post: Despite DC Sound And Fury, Public Support For Regulating ‘Big Tech’ Is Actually Down

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 19 May, 2022 @ 05:55am

  "Support for Regulation"

  Woke ideologues are happy with the current state of affairs because the censorship they want has been outsourced to companies who have no obligation under the 1st Amendment to provide their users with freedom of speech. You can see their panic at the thought of Musk buying Twitter, because if he decides to stop Twitter from using viewpoint-based censorship, all the arguments they have made about companies having the freedom to censor as they like will be turned back against them.

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