You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

It's the other way around: these phrases are neutral observations and reasonable opinions, perhaps reasonable reactions to insanity of well-known political slogans - importantly, it's something a random person can come up independently, without reading the exact words first. But at some point, these phrases rapidly become politicized, and this catches a lot of people off guard.

You voice your thoughts, fully expecting the audience to consider it neutral, but it so happens that your words pattern-match to a phrase that became a political slogan somewhen in the last few months, and boom, your audience hates you. You just stepped on a political landmine[0].

It seems to me than in the past 5-10 years, social discourse became littered with such political landmines, and at this rate, it's very hard to keep up with the list of phrases that can blow up in your face.

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[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25968760

I no longer think there is a sincere effort to reduce extremism.

When you view what platforms and governments are doing through the lens of their thinking they can create just enough managed extremism to use as a pretext for both crackdowns and further leverage, they are in fact succeeding magnificently.

The question isn't whether they will succeed at creating or suppressing extremism, but whether democratic governance will survive the hell they are about to unleash. When it all happens, remember to act surprised.

> It is extremely odd to find so many on Hacker News arguing for laws to say "that server you own and run in your house that hosts a small web forum...that's a public space now,

I mean if for you the scale simply doesn't come into equation, then yeah, I guess Twitter, serving millions and millions of users and being used for communication by many public figures is exactly the same thing as a random server in someone's basement serving 100 people talking about some niche subject.

Of course there has to be a line drawn to distinguish the two, and I don't know where it should be drawn. I think it's a tough call.

But then, in the case of FB and Twitter, maybe this has "run out of hand"? Maybe those platforms became public forum in spite of the companies' wishes? Let's assume that's the case. Does that mean we shouldn't do anything about it?

> There are no laws governing how a corporation defines it's "values" as an entity and it certainly has no need to follow that - freedom of speech is my freedom to lie through my teeth publicly about everything I believe, for example.

It is, but your doing that exposes you to my freedom of calling you a liar. Hence, the "moral" component I talked about in my previous post.

I think where the government should come in is when you're trying to get everyone inside your private space, to use it as a general communications medium (as opposed to niche, interest-based), and then you cut off those you don't like for whatever reason. Would you be OK with a utility, say the electric company, denying you service because they don't agree with your – non-illegal! – use of their electricity? If not, why's Twitter different?

> However, Facebook, Twitter and other similar companies only put out a tool. This tool is then used by this or that person to speak this or that argument. FB doesn't actively and directly help speaker A anymore that they help speaker B.

Facebook actually deliberately manipulates people's feeds in order to promote content that will increase engagement. Twitter does the same by default.

> Just as if I shout in the town square it's my speech that I shout. It doesn't become the mayor's speech because it's in his town or the square's architect because he built it in such a way that my voice can physically be heard.

The town square is public property. If you instead decide to step inside a private business and shout they can have you removed from the premises.

> Like the power company. Maybe they don't like their electricity being used to spread some "wrong" ideas.

Electricity is regulated as a utility and as such wouldn't be allowed to cut service for that reason. A bakery could refuse to bake cakes with swatiskas on them if they so chose for example. Where the private business's choices on refusing service runs into trouble is when they refuse service based on a customer's race/ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.

There's a common idea I see sometimes in discussions about weapons of war - would it be good if everyone only made defensive technologies? Say no to fighters and bombers, but yes to surface-to-air missiles? Say no to guns, but yes to anti-ballistic protection?

But to this, the answer is: every defensive technology can be used as an offensive weapon. I can pack my SAM turrent on a truck and drive all the way to your city, and start shooting down your airliners, and you won't be able to do anything about it, because whatever guns you scavenge from a museum mean nothing to my anti-ballistic vest.

This is what I think of when I see people who purposefully inject themselves into communities, feign offense and call society for help. Using means of protection as weapons.