Say safe space one more time...

Quoted post


Guest

#10

2016-01-06 10:52

Complete freedom is impossible. My freedom to kill you conflicts with your freedom to live. Your freedom to silence me conflicts with my freedom to speak.

In an ideal world, 8chan would have an infinite capacity and no threads would ever die, meaning it would be impossible to slide a board out of existence. Also, it would be easy to find threads that interest you (like with a filter in addition to the catalog search). But that's not the way it is. The boards can only hold so many threads at once. In this sense, freedom of expression on any given board has a hard limit and as far as the top-level of threads go, speech is a zero-sum game.

You claim to care about freedom of speech, but you're actively hogging a huge portion of the space here by shitposting. Since we can't have absolute free speech, we have to settle for something else. The second best thing we can do is asymptotically increase the amount of free speech toward the limit. Within the existing restrictions, a mathematically ideal board would be filled with threads that accrue posts and viewers equally, until they hit the post limit, and only then would new threads would appear. That's not ideal for a thriving community; I'm just providing it as a point of contrast to what has been happening. Instead of approaching that, we're almost at the opposite extreme right now. We can't have complete freedom, so if you care about it you should try for the next best thing: more than we currently have.

Aha! That's exactly what you're after is it not? You're trying to make a statement. You're sacrificing some freedom now for more freedom later. But here's the problem with that. According to your own valuation of freedom, your actions only become justified if your opponents cave in to you, otherwise all you accomplished was to restrict freedom of speech. Your victory is not guaranteed. In fact it's so unlikely that you might as well write off the possibility entirely. Probabilistically the expected result here is no change in moderation, while you have wasted however much time people could have used to discuss the board topic. What you are doing is at complete odds with your stated goals.

But hold on, it gets even worse than this. This is infinitechan. The site's gimmick is your ability to create your own boards. If you are displeased with how a board pursues free speech (or doesn't), you are free to make your own board. You are free to speak there instead. You are free to shill that board on the other boards. You are free to put your ideas into action and make a better board. You are free to force a board's hand by providing stiff competition in the marketplace of marketplaces of ideas. You can protest board moderation (and even create pressure for change) without infringing on anybody's ability to speak whatsoever. You can do all of this purely via creative action.

Replies


Guest

#11 Re:

2016-01-06 18:55:34

#10: -  

 

Freedom is not a positive claim, it is a negative one. Freedom is the absence of coercion.