Let me ask you a question. What makes a good argument? What makes you want to lean towards one side more than the other? It may be how you feel about a topic, or how you were taught to think about a topic. In my opinion, a writer really needs to draw me in and prove to me very clearly why he/she is right and I am wrong. In the article, “The case for Censoring Hate Speech on the Internet” by Sean McElwee, McElwee has some good arguments with good support, while he has some bad arguments with little support. For his good arguments, he refutes an opposing view and has credibility. On the other hand, he fails to state his source and compromise with the opposing side.
One of the few things McElwee does great is he refutes an opposing view. In the article, he states, “A typical view of the case against expunging hate speech comes from Jeffery Rosen, who argues in The New Republic that…” (548). In this short excerpt. McElwee states the source of where he got this information. In the text given after this quote, Jeffery Rosen states that all these big social media groups should be able to handle hate speech on their own. McElwee bounces back and says that even though it is easy for big companies like Reddit and Twitter to filter hate speech, they just let it happen and focus more on the big changes that happen. For McElwee to note something like this is powerful because it shows how some companies only care about making money and that whatever is said on their site is pointless.
The other thing that McElwee does okay is Credibility. For example, McElwee adds this into his essay: Frank Collins, the neo-Nazi prosecuted in National Socialist Party v. Skokie (1977), said, “”We want to reach the good people, get the fierce anti-Semites who have to live among the Jews to come out of the woodwork and stand up for themselves.” ” (549)
This is a good technique to use because you can actually go back and look up the text log of the case and you can find when Collins says this phrase. McElwee uses this example to show one goal of hate speech. For it is an attempt to tell bigot’s that they are not alone. What this means is that anyone who has the same opinion about hate speech should stand together. This is pretty much just saying that each party stands together by their sides. With the source that we were given, we know that it is a very reliable source and that it will not change.
In the recent paragraph, I talked about McElwee having good, credible sources. This is also something he failed to do in his essay a lot. In his essay, McElwee says, “As Arthur Schopenhauer said…” (550) or “Jeffery Rosen argues that…”(550) or “As Jeremy Waldron argues…”(550). Each of these examples do not have any sources in the text. There are no foot notes, or any kind of sources in these sentences that show where he got their arguments from. This is very bad to have because as a reader, I would wonder who these people are or where they said these statements. Though each person’s argument/statement is a well written one, there is nowhere we can find where they said this. For all we know, it can be made up and fake. This example shows how important it is to always state your source. It can cause problems and people will start to lose interest in your side of the argument.
The last topic that I saw that was weak was that he had one really weird argument. In this argument, he didn’t have any source to back it up and what he said wasn’t really strong anyways. In his essay, McElwee states this: Some people argue that the purpose of laws that ban hate speech is merely to avoid offending prudes. No country, however, has mandated that anything be excised from the public square merely because it provokes offense, but rather because it attacks the dignity of a group… Such standard could easily be applied to Twitter, Reddit, and other social media websites”(550).
Though McElwee does state an opposing argument, he doesn’t say anything to rebuttal. Yes, he states the fact that the standard could be applied easily, but does that really solve anything? To me, if I was arguing about this topic and I said that, it would sound like I have nothing good to say. There is no strength in this argument and it seems like I wasted my time reading it. He really just states an argument and makes it seem like it’s something he can’t comeback from. He also states, “The goal is for companies to adopt a European-model hate speech policy…”(550) Though this supports how the standards could be set, it doesn’t say anything about how it can be achieved, what the public can do to help, or what route each company can do to reach it. It’s just there.
Having looked through this article again and looking for these strengths and weaknesses, I noticed a few things. The essay is not a very strong persuasive essay, it doesn’t have much support from research, and it seems more like an opinion essay. In my eyes, the weaknesses that I have mentioned stick out more than the strengths. Though Sean McElwee refutes opposing views and has some credibility, He fails to state his source multiple times and includes a very useless statement.
