The FIRE website discusses a “hate speech” policy being considered by a Wisconsin school district. It’s outrageous even among current attempts to stifle speech. Here’s the draft policy for the Baraboo school district, so you don’t have to take FIRE’s word for it.
It starts with the favorite lie of censorship advocates: “Hate speech is not protected speech.” It invents an exception to the First Amendment out of whole cloth.
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I believe in paying for what I get. Various websites get my financial support when I think they’ve earned it. I’ve complained regularly on this blog about the news media, but Vox is more concerned with facts and objectivity than most, so it seemed worth a paid subscription. However, when I went to sign up, I was pointed at the terms of use, a document of 12,081 words. That’s long enough to be a novelette by the Hugo Awards’ definition.
Agreeing to terms of service without knowing exactly what they say can have serious consequences. By signing up for Disney Plus, you waive your right to file a wrongful-death lawsuit, or at least so their lawyers claim. Disney later backed off in that particular case, but it was a one-time exception in the face of heavy publicity.
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There has been discussion of whether science fiction/fantasy conventions in the US should be considered human rights risks along with countries like China and Uganda. Some people are already panicking. A post I came across on Bluesky said, “I’ve lost all my desire to attend Seattle Worldcon. Fully aware this is a first world sort of problem but wondering if other non Americans are felling the same?” Steve Davidson, the editor of Amazing Stories, has written: “For at least the next four years the United States will not be a suitable country for hosting Worldcon. It will not be a country that is generally reflective of Fannish values. It may very well become a country that is hostile to those values.” He recognizes that there’s no way to revoke the Seattle and Los Angeles Worldcons.
Giving in to worst-case assumptions this soon is a mistake, but it’s never too soon to consider the risks. What dangers might come to US cons in the next few years raise, and who would be at risk?
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As the election approaches, I’d like to offer an unpopular idea: There’s too much focus on the candidates. If you care about human freedom, it should be obvious that Trump and Harris are both inimical to it (thought Trump is far worse). However, they’re just symptoms. Whether we’re looking at sending the military into every neighborhood to expel people from the country or instituting price controls and handouts to create winners and losers, the underlying premise is the premise that a central authority should decide how things should be. This idea has gained in popularity in spite of all the evidence that it’s harmful. The Republicans have almost completely abandoned the free-market principles that once formed an inconsistent part of their platform. The Democrats have believed in a managed economy and growth in federal power and spending ever since Franklin Roosevelt, and they haven’t changed on fundamentals.
As the election approaches, writers spend many words on the candidates as people. News sites, no longer pretending to give news, jump on any little thing that makes their preferred candidates look good or their opponents look bad. Their goal is proxy power. People on social media do the same, often with even less regard for the facts and less of a reason. Their main line of argument is “I’m smart, anyone who disagrees with me is dumb, and if you’re smart like me you see that, right?”
If you write on current controversies and value human freedom, you can do something different. You can set a better standard. If enough authors and journalists do it, it can make a difference, pushing the national discourse in a better direction. It wouldn’t take much to make it less awful.
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Try to find a news source that just gives you the facts, instead of trying to sway your opinion in every story. You can find some on the local level, but national news sources that care about objective reporting are rare. You only have a choice between sites with “left-wing” and “right-wing” agendas. The result is that people don’t trust the news they get. They especially notice when people they like are hit with distortion and selective criticism. They’re likely to turn to sources whose biases match theirs, even if they’re less trustworthy than the mainstream ones.
This is a big factor behind Trumpism. A site which bashes him day in and out, pulling quotes out of context and picking on minor things, is less convincing than one which presents the facts and lets people draw their conclusions. When they repeatedly note that Trump has failed to back up a claim with evidence, yet never do the same with Democrats who do the same, people dismiss the stories as hit pieces. I just came across a CNN top headline: “Trump’s wild and lewd rhetoric reaches a new extreme.” I try to keep myself informed, I know Trump is horrible, and I don’t want to read that article. Do they really think anyone inclined even a little favorably to Trump is going to think, “This article may contain important facts. I should read it.”?
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Yesterday I logged into LinkedIn, and shortly afterward I got an email saying:
Your request to activate Remember me on your Firefox, Mac OS X in Boston, Massachusetts, United States was not successful. This is because you have 2-Factor Authentication enabled on your account for additional security.
This was followed by information plausibly matching my last login. However, I didn’t know what “Remember me” is, and I certainly didn’t intentionally activate any feature by that name yesterday. This sounded like a bug. I went into LinkedIn’s help, which makes it difficult to contact a human, and eventually figured out how to report it. If it was happening to me, I figured, it must be happening to others.
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Multi-factor authentication is a valuable security measure. If someone guesses or steals your password, it’s another barrier to their getting into your account. Using an application that generates access codes is one of the better ways to do it. Several applications are available, most of which use the same protocol. The Open Authentication architecture sets the standard, and many applications implement it, offering advantages or disadvantages. I’ve used Authy from Twilio for some time, but it’s time to leave.
The biggest dangers of using a 2FA application are a breach in its security and the loss of its availability. Authy has been deficient on both counts. In June, Twilio suffered a data breach. The exposed information wasn’t critical, but it could aid malicious parties in getting 2FA codes by trickery. Worse, Authy’s availability on various devices and computers has been erratic.
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On September 17, 2024, Kyle Fellers and Anthony Foote wore pink armbands with an “XX” on them to a game as a protest against the Bow, New Hampshire school district’s transgender policies. They did not interfere with the game, annoy the players, or do anything else. However, the school officials didn’t like the protest, so they called it “harassment” and issued an order banning the two from subsequent games. This was a classic violation of First Amendment rights, and the two took the town to court. United States District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe has overturned the ban, though for the present they may not wear the armbands at the games.
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A year ago today, Hamas conducted an orgy of brutality against innocent civilians. Such things have happened many times, but this case was unusual in attracting the support of a small but significant number of Americans. I don’t normally venture this deep into politics, aside from First Amendment issues relevant to writing, but I have to say something today.
I’m not talking about people who want peace or who object to Israel’s conduct in the war that followed. I’m talking about people who supported the massacre and want Israel wiped off the map. Also, we have to recognize that even groups with despicable goals have the right of free speech. They do not, however, have the right to physically interfere with other people’s legitimate activity.
Yesterday, as reported in the news, “Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators temporarily blocked traffic on Storrow Drive in Boston on Sunday during an emotional rally on the eve of the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel.” Given the timing, any protest should have said something against that slaughter. The report doesn’t mention anything of the kind.
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Legislation all over the USA is attacking freedom to communicate over the Internet. Some states have enacted age-verification requirements that endanger anonymous speech and limit minors’ access to information they may urgently need. Others are enacting bans on “deceptive” information, leaving open the questions of just what will be deemed deceptive and how people can defend themselves against such claims. An example of the latter is California’s AB 2655, recently signed into law. FIRE and the First Amendment Coalition have issued statements against it, while left-wing media sites have often been sympathetic. I posted earlier about how AP gave Harris’s call for “oversight” and “regulation” of websites as merely wanting “increased accountability.”
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