Jeffrey, I think your proposal for banning hate speech is worth serious consideration. However, I don't care for the language of the paragraph you took from the Sonic Internet Security Appliances site, namely:
Pictures or text advocating prejudice or discrimination against any race, color, national origin, religion, disability or handicap, gender, or sexual orientation. Any picture or text that elevates one group over another. Also includes intolerant jokes or slurs.
sonicsys.com
IMO, it is both too narrow and too broad.
Too narrow, because it really does not cover the type of behavior that we have been complaining of. Nobody advocates "prejudice" -- but some people display it. Nobody would admit to advocating "discrimination" either; where E. is concerned, for example, he would say that he is protesting discrimination -- against Christians. And so forth.
Too broad, because I can see it being used to purge someone for using, say, the word "niggardly." Or for making innocent if awkward jokes that someone else chooses to look cross-eyed at. Communicating in cyberspace typically leads to all sorts of misunderstandings, so one needs to tread carefully here.
I would prefer seeing just a word or two inserted into the existing terms of use, to dot the i that is already there:
You agree not to use the service for illegal purposes or for the transmission of material that is unlawful, harassing, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, obscene, tortious, improper or otherwise objectionable, or that infringes or may infringe the intellectual property or other rights
of another.
Actually, perhaps the only words you need to add here are the words "towards any individual or group of individuals." After all, hate language can be harassing, libelous, abusive, threatening, hamrful, improper, or otherwise objectionable." Just because it is aimed at an entire religious/racial/ethnic/sexual group, rather than at a single specific individual, does not make it any less so. Quite the contrary.
I personally do not feel threatened by hate language -- because I am not likely ever to be the recipient of it: I am white, Anglo, Protestant, heterosexual, and all those other nice safe things. If I were a Jew, or a black, or a Chicano, or a homosexual, I am sure I would have a very different reaction.
I think we need to be more sensitive to the feelings of the targets of such messages. The addition of those few words might indeed give them the assurance that they can legitimately complain when the group to which they belong is being verbally abused and slandered. (Not that the rest of us should not complain on their behalf.)
One thing that I have noticed here really puzzles me. And that is what I see as an overconcern with "naughty" language, as against other, far more hateful, uses of language.
Now, I really do object when one person calls another a "s**t", but no more than I would if he called him a "cretin". Yet if someone is threatened with banishment for using a words like "s**t" not even as terms of abuse, but simply as expletives (as in -- "S**T! I just dropped a brick on my foot!"), few people rush to his (or her) defense.
On the other hand, if someone who habitually posts things like "to achieve their own selfish ends, the Jews have turned this country into a cesspool" is threatened with some kind of disciplinary action, there is much serious discussion about his constitutional right to free speech, etc., etc.
Am I missing something here?
A final question to you, Jeffrey. I don't quite grasp your distinction between "preaching" and "expression." That is, I do -- but I think it is too subtle a distinction to enforce in practice. In fact, if I were an administrator here, I would refuse even to try. What a nightmare!
Have you ever participated in one of those (God help me!) political threads??!! There are always people, on both sides of the fence, who run to the Adminstration complaining they have been insulted. Sometimes they have; but more often than not they turn out to have been the first to start the poop-flinging, if you will pardon the expression. (:-)
Passions (or preconceived opinions,if you prefer) run so high on such threads that even the most circumspect of posters at times may go further than he really means to. Is the resident thread fink then going to grab his post and trot off to the S.I. Administration with it: "Look, Mr. Y. is not just expressing himself here; he is -- gasp! -- preaching!!"
I am laughing, but please don't think I am laughing at you, Jeffrey. We have all wrestled with this problem mentally, and it is a b---- . (May I spell it out? No, better not...)
The point is, I think, that we need to focus not on the one-time, or even two-time petty "offender", but on the person who has a long-term, consistent, cumulative record of preaching hate messages. And, after thinking about this for some time, I have come to the conclusion that once the pattern of his messages & his delivery of them has become clear, the SI community should itself take steps.
Only after "collective" and "private" methods -- shunning, shaming, ridiculing, PMing, etc. -- been tried and found wanting, should recourse to SI Administration even be considered. (And remember, one does not have to demand the "ultimate penalty": perpetual banishment into the outer wilderness. There are less draconian measures one can employ to convey Official Displeasure.)
The ball's back in your court, Jeffrey!
jbe |
