It seems to me a repeating pattern that once freedom of thought, speech and expression is limited for essentially any reason, it will have unintended consequences.
Once the tools are in place, they will be used, abused and inevitably end up in the hands of someone you disagree with, regardless of whether the original implementer had good intentions.
As such I’m personally very averse to restrictions. I’ve thought about the question a fair bit – there isn’t a clear cut or obvious line to draw.
Please elaborate and motivate your answer. I’m genuinely curious about getting some fresh perspectives.
A government that’s democratically elected by the people should have the ability to restrict hate speech and threats of violence, but there shouldn’t be criminal penalties, because then that could get abused. Such laws should require 2/3 supermajority in legislature to pass, (or 60% if its via referrendum).
Example: The government should be able to take down a website saying “[Race] is superior than [Another Race]”.
The reason why no criminal penalties is because many countries in the EU are now abusing hate speech laws to jail anti-genocide protests. If something is a good cause, naturally the message will still spread despite censorship. Conversely, white supremacist groups would have a harder time spreading their hatred from their basements if their websites keep getting taken down and they have to go outside to do it. (Yes they could use VPNs, but its harm reduction. Less people will go on those sites, less people radicalized.)
TLDR: Hate speech websites, newpapers, tv channels, should be taken down. But no criminal punishment should be imposed. That’s would be my compromise to avoid anti-hate-speech laws from being abused to jail dissent.
Who decides what is considered hate speech and threats of violence?
The rest of your comment indicates you’re aware of the vagueness of these terms (and existing instances of regulatory abuse).
Ideally it should be the legislature that propose these laws, and the people should vote on it via refereendum (60% supermajority is a good idea to prevent tyranny of the majority).
As for actual enforcement, an attorney of the state (“state” as in polity) would present a list of websites, news articles, video, video games, news channels, etc… to the judge of an independent judiciary, and demonstrare why they qualify as “hate spech” to be taken down, and the judge reviews it and either grants the “takedown warant” or refuses it. Then it can get appealed to higher courts if the losing side disagrees.
I’m not a lawyer, so the specfic wording of the law would need more legalase, but that’s the general concept of it.