Did all Tor developers, users and exit-node administrators get a vote in this? Or is it a small minority who decides this course?
Free speech also includes speech you may not agree with and just because you accept someone's (or some company's) donations doesn't mean you're "associated" with them.
Privacy, surveillance, and censorship are political debates. According to your logic, Tor shouldn't choose sides on those either.
I don't understand this view. Tor is inherently a political project.
That mission might be political - but the politics follow from the mission not the other way around.
The mission I’d personally like out of a product that fits Tor’s space is: the ability to unconditionally communicate securely and privately over the public Internet.
Saying that mission is inherently political, sure, you’re going to exclude people who disagree with the mission. That’s kinda the point.
But saying that the narrow politics of that mission means the organization should be broadened to take additional political stances that would exclude people who otherwise would participate in advancing the mission?
I don’t know how that follows.
> But saying that the narrow politics of that mission means the organization should be broadened to take additional political stances that would exclude people who otherwise would participate in advancing the mission?
They're not really excluding anyone. If you read the blogpost, they're not even stopping their technological partnership. They are just stopping co-branding themselves to avoid being seen as directly associated with Mullvad. That doesn't exclude anyone. Co-branding is a position of added trust on top of the baseline of being aligned with anyone who shares your views, isn't it expected that an organization might be pickier if it has to sign under another organization's brand?
> Members of the Tor community have asked us to explain how continued collaboration with Mullvad fits with the Tor Project's human rights mission.
> Our decision followed a thorough due diligence process that involved extensive discussions with community members, staff, and the board, a staff survey, and detailed financial analysis and scenario planning.
Tor is not a democracy and doesn't purport to be. The article outlines the due diligence they have already done, and they're writing this as notice to their community, in response to questions from it.
Developers are not machines. They are human as well and can have stances. That’s natural.
This is esp. true for Tor. They are providing privacy services to begin with.
> Did all Tor developers, users and exit-node administrators get a vote in this? Or is it a small minority who decides this course?
This is addressed in the announcement.
> Free speech also includes speech you may not agree with and just because you accept someone's (or some company's) donations doesn't mean you're "associated" with them.
Tor didn't stop taking the donations nor did they stop cooperating with Mullvad on development.
What they did is pause "joint promotional activity" and review the language of what they had published about Mullvad to avoid implying an endorsement or alignment of values.
What problem do you have with that? This seems like precisely the avoidance of side taking that you are advocating.
The principles of free speech can be held by individuals and organizations, even thought they don't have as much power as the government.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" doesn't necessarily need to be scoped to just "... from government interference".
Case in point: legal or not, people cancelling speeches and people, shutting down legal speech, do NOT stand for freedom of speech. In fact, I've often heard them say "I don't particularly care about freedom of speech", verbatim,
It's tiring to see people make the case that because the government was not involved, that it's by definition completely unrelated to free speech. Like, you clearly know that's not the case, from this follow up.
Of course the right to free speech does not extend to compelled speech, as you say.
ACLU defended the Nazis because they support free speech. But "free speech" of course doesn't compel them to. But clearly if they had chosen not to, they'd show they care less about free speech than they say.
Like the ACLU of today, who have said that they'll only defend speech they agree with, or something to than effect. Well, morally, do you actually have that value anymore?
Except that heckling and shouting down a speaker is speech too. And thus your argument is incoherent: do you want to restrict speech that impedes other's freedom of speech? If no, then the hecklers must be given free rein; if yes, then the case can be made to restrict racists' freedom of speech as they try to restrict some other people's freedoms, including the latter's freedom of speech.
How about industrial megaphones?
Your free speech only extends so far as it doesn't prevent, prior restraint, someone else's free speech.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
What you just said is the antithesis to free speech.
No. If the goal of your so called speech is to physically stop someone else's right to free speech, then you are just a thug and don't actually hold this value.
And like I said, many people who do this prevention of free speech admin it explicitly in so many words. They do not care about free speech.
Not very absolute though, and why are calls for violence somehow different from other icky things like sharing AI-generated nude images or selling people dangerous weapons?
I respect the moxie of the free speech absolutists and I'm glad there are some of them in the world. I personally tend to think things are a bit more complex than that, but if you're going to be an absolutist, then be an absolutist and allow all speech, including calls for violence.
you disagree with freedom of association?
Your point is moot. If speech is entirely absolute until violence is threatened, some of the most destructive crimes in modern society would become entirely legal.
Even under U.S. law, free speech has well-defined limits.
I have yet to meet a free speech absolutist who was actually absolutist. At best they still struggle with violent speech and at worst they buy out a large social media platform and start censoring shit they don’t like.
> you have to draw a line somewhere.
So the entire subject is now moot, I gather.
You're free to say whatever messed up stuff you want to me, and I'm free to tell you to "Go F*CK Yourself"
There are other universal exceptions which I'm guessing you are forgetting:
* Slander
* Fraud
* Treason (actual treason - e.g., passing info
to the enemy in a war for survival)
Unfortunately, real life always has grey areas; no simple algorithm can address it.
At the end of the day, you either engage with the speech and argue against the idea, or you appeal to authority and hope it is worthy of your trust. Personally, I'm a little too jaded for that.
It's not always simple; it's not always perfect; but practically we do it all the time as a matter of course. Everyone makes decisions like that every day; every authority makes those decisions - managers at work, politicians in hearings; the public does it listening to political messages, parents do it listening to teenagers explaining where they were all night ...