Aether – Free, privacy-sensitive public communities

I'm not waving any hands. I'm firmly advocating self-filtering over authoritarian censorship as a means of regulating community content platforms. I am also explaining that I believe my stance is in tune with our guiding political principles in the US because it is the option that does not systemically promote oppression.

> that's not the world we've chosen to create,

What? It is exactly the world we intended to create in the US (you might have missed my caveat, and I noticed your spelling of favor). I'm referencing political philosophy from the federalist papers and from the prior art they're somewhat inspired by. Many of the people who founded the US were religiously oppressed and sought to create exactly a world that would prevent such oppression from manifesting again. It's where the whole separation of church and state comes from.

> and it's hard to understand how you can earnestly compare racism and homosexuality.

I'm not sure I follow. I'm not comparing homosexuality and racism. Where did I do that? But since you mention it, it actually sounds like you might not be aware of the extent to which homosexuals have historically been persecuted, experienced oppression, and had their liberties and even lives taken from them.

> Are violent racists oppressed when they're not permitted to deny the rights of minorities

Violent racists are jailed when they commit acts of violence. They could claim the mere existence of some class is oppressive and not allowing them to eradicate it infringes upon their rights. It's unlikely that strategy would get them anywhere because the right to genocide is not a universally understood and acknowledged human right (in the US, anyway).

Nobody is ever allowed to deny rights that we the people have agreed to defend--it's illegal because it's oppressive--that's the point. We are all supposed to enjoy the liberties we've agreed are core to our constitution, not just those of us who are "right". Saying, "Blacks aren't people" or, "Kill the Jews" does not deprive members of the respective class (or anyone) of their person-hood, or their liberty so we tolerate it even though it's stupid.

> Perhaps when you're philosophising (sic.) in comments on the internet about civil liberties they're the same but in the real world they are not.

I guess the internet isn't real life? If so, why do you care so much about de-platforming and censoring toxic minority views on internet community platforms? Anyway, I do not believe the ends justify the means. I do not support oppression or removal of civil liberties so that we can gosh darn it eradicate those pesky racists. To do so would required us to declare them sub-human (by constitutional definition) and strip them of their liberties and remove them from our communities. "Let's round up all the racists and get rid of them..." That sounds a little -ist or -azi for my tastes.

As to your last paragraph, anyone who thinks xbone is better than PS4 probably isn't human so they never had a chance anyway (;

This sounds like it's definitely vulnerable to abuse. Democracy is nice, but I'm not sure it's a great idea in a situation like this where it's online with total anonymity and easy to vote fraudulently.

> "Aether keeps a 6 months of content by default. It's gone after."

I often want to search for stuff that seemed unimportant at the time a year or more later. We should focus on changing society so it's not so critical of statements people made years ago when they changed as a person, this is a better solution.

Skeptical of the value of community-building that Aether can provide, it seems like a novelty product to me. What is wrong with pseudononymous communities like Reddit & HN?

This invites tyranny of the majority. Which will mean for certain topics where the community dislikes open discussion and questioning of ideas, divisiveness will grow because bad ideas can not be effectively challenged.