Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why do you host offensive content?

nearlyfreespeech.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 169 posts

Re: Why do you host offensive content?

#131

Post by UncleMeat »

waynecochran wrote: post #67
UncleMeat wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and to lots of us we believe that certain ideas are simply harmful with no benefit. We don't disagree on the principles. We disagree on where the lines are drawn.

Some have suggested one place a line can be drawn: It's always OK to "attack" an "idea" but never to "attack" an individual.

And others have suggested different lines or suggested that certain ideas fundamentally attack individuals by their very nature.

I've never met an actual free speech absolutist. I've just met people who tolerate certain forms of hate speech.

Re: Why do you host offensive content?

#132

Post by UncleMeat »

waynecochran wrote: post #122
mikestew wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just means that a person inclined to downvote your comment saw it within seconds after posting. It’s not like there’s a shot clock for posts.

"saw it" bit did not "read it"

It takes far less than 15 seconds to read your post.

Re: Why do you host offensive content?

#133

Post by UncleMeat »

jimbob45 wrote: post #123
UncleMeat wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've known how to refute genocidal racism for ages. The ideas aren't new and the reasons why they are garbage aren't new. Yet these ideas still exist and still spread. Why has the market of ideas not destroyed these ideas? If the market cannot destroy even the most terrible ideas that humans have ever devised, what does that really say about the market?

You have to keep refuting it for each new generation just like you have to teach each new generation the law of conservation of mass despite it having been proven over and over for centuries.

Then it is clear that the idea that the marketplace of ideas will simply defeat evil is a fraud. We will have to spend literally forever publicly arguing that it is a bad idea to murder everybody belonging to a given race.

We don't have a "marketplace of ideas" for alternatives for the conservation of mass. We teach kids one thing in school and move on. Why do we behave differently for other topics?

Re: Why do you host offensive content?

#134

Post by UncleMeat »

waynecochran wrote: post #90
UncleMeat wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've known how to refute genocidal racism for ages. The ideas aren't new and the reasons why they are garbage aren't new. Yet these ideas still exist and still spread. Why has the market of ideas not destroyed these ideas? If the market cannot destroy even the most terrible ideas that humans have ever devised, what does that really say about the market?

It is especially important for the more abhorrent ideas like "genocidal racism" to be exposed. Silencing it and driving it underground will have the opposite effect of what we want. The reasons racism is wrong needs to be constantly reposted -- we forget and repeat our mistakes too often. That is why we have holocaust museums. In fact the dangers of racism become more obvious when you let the racists speak! Let them.…

Precisely how is an underground movement that cannot spread their ideas in public going to repeat the holocaust? How is forcing people to stay silent about their nightmarish beliefs going to possibly be worse than what we've already witnessed?

People just take it as an axiom that forcing ideas underground makes things worse but that seems like an idea that requires some support.

Racism is a security vulnerability in our brains. These ideas aren't propagated through reason. They are propagated by exploiting cognitive loopholes. Sitting down with your kid and showing them a whole bunch of fascist propaganda and then having a rational discussion with them isn't going to have the effect you want.

Re: Why do you host offensive content?

#135

Post by root_axis »

stcredzero wrote: post #120
root_axis wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many of them are illegal. No they aren't. Point me to a law stating that any of those are illegal besides the "revenge porn" example that I outlined. > If it's illegal, then it's no longer protected by the principle of Free Speech So are you saying that anything the government deems illegal doesn't fall under the "principle of Free Speech"? > No. Ethically, that would be wrong Sorry, I'm not understand what you mea…

> Many of them are illegal. No they aren't. Point me to a law stating that any of those are illegal besides the "revenge porn" example that I outlined. That's dishonest quoting. The last quote should include my assertion that many of those would be evidence of illegal activity. If I post the source code of your personal project online If that was done without permission, if that information was obtained illegally, th…

> That's dishonest quoting. The last quote should include my assertion that many of those would be evidence of illegal activity.

It's not dishonest, it's literally your exact quote, copy and pasted in whole, verbatim. Your "evidence of illegal activity comment" is written later in the post, and I didn't respond to it because it's completely irrelevant. You stated those things are illegal. I explained that they're not and asked you to point to some evidence that they are. The fact that you are now saying they're "evidence of illegal activity" is just you moving the goalpoasts.

Anything can be considered "evidence of illegal activity" IF it implicates one in a crime. Using your reasoning, a bloody knife is illegal because it's "evidence of illegal activity". Well... no, it could just as easily be evidence that I cut myself making dinner, so there is no reason for you to bring that up except to shoehorn my examples into the category of illegal activity even though they aren't actually illegal.

> if that was done without permission... if that information was obtained illegally... If the contents were recorded from a private conversation in a home here in California...

So only IF you qualify everything I wrote with examples I didn't use which are actually illegal. You've got some balls to lecture others on dishonest argumentation when you can't even honestly tackle the argument as I wrote it. Unless you decide to post some links to laws showing that those examples are illegal, I am just going to move on from this part of the discussion because you're objectively wrong here. They're NOT illegal.

> The following two aren't illegal, but they're just morally reprehensible in a way which even transcends ideology

So are you suggesting that things you deem as morally reprehensible should be exempt from your "principle of Free Speech?"

You also did not answer my question about whether or not it is "ethically wrong" to delete comments from your personal blog.

Re: Why do you host offensive content?

#136

Post by blackflame7000 »

UnFleshedOne wrote: post #43
homonculus1 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, even libel should be legal. If something damaging is a lie then it should be subject to civil penalties--but the government in no way should have the power to silence ideas by declaring them lies.

How would collecting a fine from all parties publishing a libel be different from silencing that particular idea?

It wouldn't be but that's ok. The intent is for that disagreement to be adjudicated on a case by case basis in the court of law instead of legislated because one size doesn't fit all in this case.

Re: Why do you host offensive content?

#137

Post by ataturk »

Frondo wrote: post #54
Nursie wrote: post #7

> "Finally, censorship is always bad, for a variety of well understood reasons that we don't need to repeat here. But in the case of some types of content, it has special dangers. When you censor a web site based on the extreme or dangerous views of its creator(s), you haven't stopped those people from thinking that way. You haven't made them go away. You certainly haven't stopped the people who hold those views from…

I used to be much more of a free-speech absolutist. It wasn't til I started reading about how genocides start that that started to change for me. There is a pretty direct line drawn between speech and violence against out-groups; anyone who says otherwise would do well to read about the Rwandan genocide and their 200 days of public radio broadcasting demonizing the Tutsis prior to the genocide itself. After all, if t…

You're equating state sponsored propaganda to free speech? Please. They were going to murder those people with our without the consent of the rest of the ignorant masses.

You might as well be a 2nd Amendment absolutist because at least if the Tutsis had been armed, they would not have been such easy targets.

Re: Why do you host offensive content?

#138

Post by BubRoss »

smsm42 wrote: post #59
djsumdog wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't have privilege. People toss around that word a lot and it's used incorrectly, as it is here. Say you walk into a store and are followed or stopped quite often for a receipt check. If you're black in certain parts of the world, this is quite common, but much more rare if you're not black. The privilege is a result of a system. You cannot say x people have privilege, and likewise people get offended when p…

> People don't have privilege. I don't know. If you have the power to shut down a whole product line for a trans-national corporation with a single complaint, isn't that a kind of privilege? I certainly can't do it, you probably neither. But some people can. If you have a power to decide what is allowed to be spoken and what gets you removed from the platform, who is allowed to speak and who should be met with violen…

That's not privilege, that's power.

Re: Why do you host offensive content?

#139

Post by whiddershins »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #105
whiddershins wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure you are correct. Libel has a pretty narrow definition and clearly leaves the realm of opinions and ideas to a different realm of willfully lying about someone with the intent to harm them personally. The fact that we remove libel protections from public figures including politicians already makes this an extremely narrow subset of speech. Arguing that this is just another example of an arbitrary line wi…

But the point is, why is libel illegal at all? I can mislead someone in order to get someone to buy something from me, but if I lie about a person it's not okay? Why is reputational damage worse than monetary? The fact that it's okay to libel a public figure (a fact I didn't know until now!) further underscores how arbitrary it is. At what level of renown are you a "public figure"? How is it measured? We should be as…

Lying to someone to get them to buy something is in many if not most cases called fraud, and is illegal on those grounds.

This is where speech becomes a kind of action: misleading people in business, directing people to do harmful or illegal things. It’s actually pretty interesting how consistent the common thread is ... incitement to illegal acts or misrepresentation which results in tangible harm.

Re: Why do you host offensive content?

#140

Post by lliamander »

I tend to look at it from the perspective of the listener. Do I, as a individual adult, have the freedom and responsibility to make up my own mind about other people's ideas or not?

I believe I do, and so I think there should be a platform for free speech. I believe this even though I largely do not wish to consume much of what people might term offensive.

I appreciate platforms which curate and moderate content as a form of customer service. What I don't appreciate is entities (governments or corporations) taking a moralistic stance as if it is their duty to stamp out bad ideas from existence.

Post reply on HN