A new regulation from the Supreme Court holds Meta, X, and other online platforms accountable for content and user safety, setting Brazil on a collision course with the Trump administration.
The same way your right to wave your hands ends before they reach other people’s faces, free speech can’t include speech infringing on other people’s dignity (in the legal/philosophical sense).
Regulating speech within this frame is as bad as stopping a bar fight by dragging the instigator away.
You are thinking about dignity and imagining a British aristocrat drinking tea from a fine porcelain cup with the pinky held up while plotting world domination. That’s the vernacular meaning of dignity.
In the context of human rights, dignity is the natural right of every single person to be valued and respected for their own sake, and to be treated ethically.
You don’t infringe it by saying that your government is being managed by incompetent or immoral people. You infringe it when you say women belong in the kitchen and not in the office, or that black people are naturally inferior to white people, or that gay people don’t have right to love who they love, etc.
The same way your right to wave your hands ends before they reach other people’s faces, free speech can’t include speech infringing on other people’s dignity (in the legal/philosophical sense).
Regulating speech within this frame is as bad as stopping a bar fight by dragging the instigator away.
Actually, that’s exactly what free speech is for. Nobody needs free speech to tell their neighbor their hair looks nice today.
You are thinking about dignity and imagining a British aristocrat drinking tea from a fine porcelain cup with the pinky held up while plotting world domination. That’s the vernacular meaning of dignity.
In the context of human rights, dignity is the natural right of every single person to be valued and respected for their own sake, and to be treated ethically.
You don’t infringe it by saying that your government is being managed by incompetent or immoral people. You infringe it when you say women belong in the kitchen and not in the office, or that black people are naturally inferior to white people, or that gay people don’t have right to love who they love, etc.