What do you think are the strongest and weakest aspects of McElwee’s piece were and why?
11 thoughts on “Blog Post #13: The Case for Censoring Hate Speech (McElwee)”
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What do you think are the strongest and weakest aspects of McElwee’s piece were and why?
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As discussed in his piece, McElwee is calling for the censorship of hate speech. The strongest aspects of his arguments are his counter claims to the arguments supporting a “free market” of all ideas. For example, he challenges one journalist who says that hate speech on a social media platform eventually resolves itself because it happened one time on Twitter in France. To disprove this claim, he references a university study which compiled a map of over 150,000 homophobic, racist, and other prejudiced tweets in an 11-month span and proved that hate speech does not disappear by itself. He provides sufficient evidence to not only disprove his opponents’ argument but to also support his own. The only weak aspect of McElwee’s argument is when he talks about his own experience on Reddit to prove that minorities are left out of the public sphere. I believe he used very limited evidence. In addition to discussing his own Reddit experience, McElwee should have used more substantial evidence such as another study or a survey.
The strongest aspects of McElwee’s piece were about freedom of speech and to watch out for hate, not offenses. McElwee gave multiple examples of what kind of negative languages that were being used on a few platforms, especially Reddit. McElwee stated that “free speech isn’t an absolute right” which I agree with. Yes, we are allowed to express how we feel, input thoughts that are meaningful and be useful; however, what we say should not be everything that we are thinking about (as many already know). Our right to speak should not be intentionally targeting someone or a group. McElwee gave multiple examples of what kind of negative languages that are being used on multiple platforms. The weakest aspects of McElwee’s piece was giving a weak solution to Facebook’s policy. McElwee stated Facebook’s strict community standards, but it is not enough to reduce the amount of hate messages as European laws does. McElwee suggests that Facebook makes their policies stricter.
McElwee made a good argument for censoring hate speech. I agree with him that free speech is not an absolute right. When speech is used in a hateful manner to abuse others and cause harm, something should be done to stop them. His argument against people who defend this absolute free speech was his strongest point since he gave solid evidence from social media that showed what happens if not contained. I don’t think he really had any weak points, but if I had to choose then I wish he would’ve used more broad examples when discussing minorities on social media.
I think McElwee made really good points when he was supporting the censorship of hate speech.
I think McElwee made really good points when he was supporting the censorship of hate speech. He included evidence from charts and graphs that clearly show how there is a lot of hate speech and that action should be taken. I also like that he provides examples of hate speech that shouldn’t be on the internet when he references the Reddit posts about certain topics. Overall, I think that McElwee shows that he has passion for this topic through the tone he uses. I don’t think that McElwee has any specific weaknesses throughout the essay.
I think that McElwee excelled at trying to inform the audience about the topic while clearly stating what was wrong with hate speech and what can be done to help prevent it. I think that his strongest point is when he states that websites should follow a European-model hate speech policy that expunges hate, causing controversy but getting rid of hate in the long run. I personally don’t think that this piece has any weaknesses.
McElwe’s strongest argument for the censorship of hate speech is when he explains the purpose of hate speech online. He states that hate speech is mainly used to unite bigots and intimidate targeted minorities. Obviously, this is inherently wrong. But we can’t say that as a country we have free speech if we are censoring the view points of certain groups. This is where I feel that McElwe’s argument is weak. “Those who claim to defend “free speech” when they defend the right to post hate speech online are in truth backwords.” This implies that hate speech is not free speech which by definition it is. By censoring hate speech online we are restricting free speech. As a country we do not restrict free speech it’s punished after it is done.
Free speech has its limits. A classic example is shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded space is not an acceptable form of free speech. Each word has its consequences. Hate speech is a form of speech, but not an acceptable form of free speech due to it being at odds with the other elements of a democracy. Does free speech truly even exist? One can argue that since our minds are not completely free, our speech cannot be either. A society hinges on making sure things are in balance, which needs limitations. The comparison between the twittersphere and market economy illustrates one thing that was not mentioned, there is no true free market in this world. Every single economy has some form of government intervention such as taxes, subsidies, tariffs etc. To rely on the society and just the society to make sure the most vulnerable and minority within it is not hurt, is idealistic and naive. We have the government for a reason, the society cannot do everything on its own.
Restricting hate speech is allowing free speech to prosper more, by reducing trolls and attempts to debate in favor of something that is clearly unethical by masking it as an effort to utilize free speech, where it is in fact destroying the very foundation of democracy, only in which free speech is possible.
I felt that McElwee’s strongest piece for evidence for the ban of online hate speech was arguing that hate speech is an extension of action instead of an extension of thought which wouldn’t be covered by the original intentions of the first amendment. However, I felt that there were many weak aspects of his argument. The part that stood out to me was when he quoted Schopenhauer stating that those who spread ideas, especially harmful ones, should not be anonymous. I believe that this is weak because it fully encapsulates the issue I have with banning hate speech. Hate does not exist on the internet, but rather inside the people who propagate it. Banning hate speech will not get rid of hate. However, it will make hate anonymous. In my opinion, it is best to keep these types of people out in the open where we can keep an eye on them. If we actually want to try and decrease hate speech, I think it would be better to focus on why people fall into pits of hate so that we can address the sickness rather than its symptoms.
McElwee has a very strong argument for the censorship of hate speech. The strongest point for me was when the explained that hate speech is intimidating others, which is causing them to stay quiet. I like how MeElwee shows us that free speech is directly preventing people from speaking. The weakest aspect of McElwee’s piece was when he used examples of reddit. Personally I don’t think reddit is similar to Facebook or twitter. If someone is intimidated by a subreddit then they shouldn’t be on it. On Facebook or twitter anyone can comment hateful things. But on reddit you are usually in a group with shared interest who will most likely not comment hate speech.
I found that the strongest argument of this piece is when he called out how the idea of censoring hate speech is not necessarily going to lead to a totalitarian form of government. I find that point this out calls to how much fear plays a factor in these arguments of limiting hate speech as people are concerned that they won’t be able to say anything for having to think about offending a group of people or being a bigot. The weakest argument of the piece was when he discussed how certain Reddit threads should be removed because of how they have had historically impacted groups of people. While I understand that perspective, I find that the nature of that website is to allow for any niche to have a group of people around it and there are certainly groups of people who are bigots and racists. Reddit has actually banned certain serves (mostly bigoted ones) not because they were bigots but because of the way the people in the group violated their rules/policies.