It seems pretty spot on to me! A "vehicle", like "hate speech" or "words that glorify violence", is an category that humans create, and the things that fit in that category vary from person to person and situation to situation.
I'm curious — what do you think a better analogy would have been?
think the fundamental difference is that “vehicle” can be broken down into a number of concrete subcategories that cover the vast majority of vehicles that people use in practice, while “hate speech” and “speech glorifying violence” are often very nebulous and hard to define.
It's true that “vehicle” can be vague, but it's also true that in many contexts it's well-defined. The very common ”no entry for vehicular traffic” road sign applies to bikes and mopeds and cars, but not pedestrians, wheelchair users and roller skaters, for example.
Similarly, you can operationalize the “no vehicles allowed in the park” rule by enumerating the different types of vehicles people might wish to drive in the park:
- A bike? No.
- A moped? No.
- An unpowered scooter? Yes.
- A powered scooter? No.
- A skateboard? Yes.
- Roller skates? Yes.
- A wheelchair? Yes.
- A powered wheelchair? Yes.
- A car? No.
etc. The point isn't whether you agree with all these decisions (maybe skateboards shouldn't be allowed in the park?), but rather that you can enumerate two or three dozen vehicles and cover virtually all the vehicles people might possibly use in real life. Occasionally new categories need to be added (e.g., electric bikes or drones weren't really common 30 years ago) but mostly this can settle all possible debates.
And yes, it's still possible for some weirdo to build a supercharged wheelchair that can go 80 kph, but that's the extreme exception, and if the guy keeps driving through the park at 80 kph repeatedly eventually he will get arrested and then he will claim he is in the right because he's driving what's technically a wheelchair, and then a judge will rule that a wheelchair that can go 80 kph isn't actually a wheelchair in the sense intended by the law, and the rules will be updated to say “powered wheelchairs with a maximum speed of 15 kph” and that's the end of that.
The problem with “hate speech” and “glorifying violence” is exactly that they are very hard to nail down in an objective and clear way, and the majority of cases where someone is banned for “hate speech” involves vague and subjective judgement.
For a concrete example, Donald Trump was banned from Twitter on the grounds of inciting violence by tweeting “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.” There is some really creative reading going on in here. How would you substantiate the rule against inciting violence in a way that it clearly covers this statement? People aren't allowed to announce that they won't be attending some event? That seems overly broad. Sitting presidents aren't allowed to announce they won't attend their successor's inauguration? This feels like it's overly specific, covering only this one event.
So that's the fundamental difference here. “No entrance for vehicles” is a rule that can be operationalized by enumerating and defining the kind of vehicles that people might think of using to enter the park. While “hate speech” defies objective definition.
I don’t know why we insist on pretending that there’s no way to figure out what counts as “hate speech” or “glorifying violence”. If you look on any social network you’ll find you can report people for saying things that clearly fall under those categories. Like if you’re calling someone a slur, or threatening them, or telling them to kill themselves, those are all pretty clearly out of bounds!
And, I mean, to be clear: there will always be weaselly “oh-but-I-didnt-technically-break-the rules” comments like that Donald Trump tweet. But the whole point of this is that you’ll never be able to make a rule with an objective definition! These are not mathematically defined sets; someone will always need to make a judgment call.
> I don’t know why we insist on pretending that there’s no way to figure out what counts as “hate speech” or “glorifying violence”.
what if this was a forum that rebels to the gov't are using to discuss how they will form the revolution? Is that now disallowed, because what they discuss could be considered hate speech?
What if this group of rebels (or freedom fighters as they call it) is someone you personally want to support?
What if this group are labeled terrorists by other governments?
It's not so black and white tbh. It's only black and white when you imagine yourself to be the authority.
Can you not with the victimhood mentality? There isn’t a single major social network — let alone many — on which explicitly calling for genocide does not run afoul of the moderation policy, and we both know it.
I'm curious — what do you think a better analogy would have been?