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Squabblr now officially a "free speech" cesspool, admins removed or forced out by owner

squabblr.co Post from jayclees | Squabblr - Social Discussions

The terms of service have been updated. With the exception of racist content, the use of slurs (racial or otherwise), targeted harassment, and incitement of violence, Squabblr is now a free speech platform.

Post from jayclees | Squabblr - Social Discussions

So I mean, most of us knew this beforehand and being on the fediverse we probably do not really care, but what was always on the horizon has no happened, the owner of Squabblr finally had enough having to be a decent person and has decided that his site is now "free speech purism", so he gets to continue to insult LGBTQ people like he always does.

Seems from the comments that some other admins disagreed with the decision (so there were some decent people on that site!) and either left or were removed.

Not entirely surprising the whole thing, granted.

(edit)
Also, apologies as this isn't truly reddit news but Squabblr was one of the sites frequently brought up in /r/redditalternatives so I figured this might still be relevant?

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  • IMO if sites want to take a "free speech" approach without allowing bigots, maybe they should adopt the Canadian law. We don't have free speech, we have what's known as "freedom of expression". Essentially, we can say whatever unless it's hate speech or bigoted.

    Yeah, Canada has censorship, but it's essentially just to censor racist idiots and homophobic fools.

    • A way to improve it further is to see freedom of speech as quantitative, try to maximise it for all parties involved, and look at the consequences of banning a certain discourse or not.

      Using hate speech as an example:

      • if you forbid it, you're lowering a bit the freedom of speech of those who'd otherwise voice it. It's only a bit because they're still allowed to voice non-hateful discourses there.
      • if you allow it, you're lowering a lot the freedom of speech of those who'd be targeted by it. It's a lot because they'll disengage and leave.

      So by banning hate speech you're actually increasing the overall freedom of speech, even if reducing it a bit for a certain audience.

      The same reasoning applies towards other situations. Like "that fucking user" doing the online equivalent of megaphoning so nobody else is heard; misplaced porn, gore, or other things that a lot of people would rather not see; harassment (it is performative speech, and yet you need to prevent it).

      I feel like this covers what you've linked about freedom of expression in Canada, but it's a bit more practical and flexible to adapt into online communities.

      Also, it's important to take into account that there's a hierarchy between discourses, when trying to maximise freedom of speech: descriptive > prescriptive > performative.

      • if you allow it, you’re lowering a lot the freedom of speech of those who’d be targeted by it. It’s a lot because they’ll disengage and leave

        I disagree that this is lowering free speech. Those people who leave are still entirely within their ability to stay and continue speaking. Free speech isn't lesser just because someone doesn't feel like speaking

        • The problem with this reasoning is that it could be used to justify banning any speech (not just hate speech) and still claim "we're banning it but ackshyually we aren't reducing your free speech. You're still able to say it, it's just that you don't like the consequences of saying it here." Because even people under the worst dictatorships out there are still able to voice censored discourses.

          Instead of looking at the ability of the individuals, IMO it's better to look at the effects in the social environment. Hate speech targetted at a group effectively makes them leave and/or stop speaking. As a result, the discourses that they were voicing get silenced with them, and the social acceptability to voice those discourses goes down. The environment in question becomes less free as a result.

          This might sound like abstract "WORDS WORDS WORDS", but IMO it has a bunch of desirable consequences:

          • It avoids the special pleading claim that "hate speech isn't speech", while still allowing you to ban it under certain circumstances.
          • There's less room to misuse the ban against hate speech towards legitimate/non-hateful discourses. Specially when you get environments infested with witch hunters, that sometimes are as bad as the witches that they claim to hunt.
          • It gives you grounds to get rid of specially stupid, noisy, obnoxious or obtuse users, regardless of what they say, provided that their presence shuts other users up.
          • It's flexible enough to address even a 4chan-like "mods? what mods?" approach or a Beehaw-like "be nice or get out" one, because it forces you to take the userbase into account.
          • You don't need to deal with blackbox concepts like "feelings" and "intentions" and the likes.

          • Hate speech targetted at a group effectively makes them leave and/or stop speaking. As a result, the discourses that they were voicing get silenced with them, and the social acceptability to voice those discourses goes down. The environment in question becomes less free as a result.

            This is where I don't agree. Hate speech doesn't make anyone leave. It has no power nor authority over people to make them do anything. No matter how much someone spams "kill all niggers", it doesn't actually do anything. If someone leaves, it's entirely because they aren't personally interested in being there. This is in contrast to censorship from the platform, where there is the ability to unilaterally force a user to not participate via bans or removals.

            It's the same idea as how free speech applies to the government not censoring the town square. Someone leaving because they don't enjoy what people say is not an infringement on anyone's speech, but the government arresting people based on what they say is.

            Just not censoring people offers nearly all the benefits you claim your perspective offers.you don't have to worry about misuse of censorship because it isn't used at all, and it is entirely devoid of "feeling" and "intent", and the other things like ability to an undesirable speech isn't particularly relevant when discussing a free speech platform.

            • This is where I don’t agree. Hate speech doesn’t make anyone leave.

              You're moving the goalposts from "it doesn't hamper your ability" to "people don't leave", Reddit style. And you still placed the goalposts where you won't score.

              If you want to know how stupid your claim (that boils down to "I dun unrurrstand! Speach don't do nothing!") sounds like, you don't need even:

              No, you don't need those things. A tiny bit of reasoning should be enough to show that, if you shit constantly on the groups that a person belongs to, the person will eventually leave or shut up.

              Speech has power over people, regardless of authority, no matter how much you pretend that it doesn't - it makes people do things, it makes people not do things. This is fucking obvious for anyone with a functional brain dammit.

              If you want to continue this conversation, then show a bit more depth of thought than you're doing currently. Otherwise, I won't waste my time further, OK?

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