191–200 of 366 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The disturbing minority has always been there, we just didn't used to take those fringe ideas seriously. 'Compromise' with the radical fringe is not inherently required.
The proper social immune response is mockery, not outrage or negotiation.
I have a foreign wife and it really drives home one truth: America is a very nuanced place. We have this idea of almost unlimited free speech. Which sounds great, but in practice, it is not really true. Because ultimately, Americans do not have equal rights. We see this over and over in different aspects of society. The Frederick Douglas example from Boston in the article is a great example of why free speech is good…
I doubt you will find any example where minorities suffered from too much free speech. The truth it that there are always some people who pretend to know better and put pressure on officials. These people are not friendly to any minority and should be disregarded. The people in power currently try everything to restrict speech, but it is also welcomed by a certain sheltered demographic whose worst part of the day is…
people of minority X are subhumans and should not be allowed the same rights as the rest of us!
Yes, minorities did not suffer from having free speech; they did suffer from others having it.
One major distinction this glosses over is the difference between making it so you can't read something (e.g., banning it), and making it so you aren't required to read something (e.g., removing it from the curriculum). Only the former is censorship.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Mind-boggling, Dan. What did he say that even remotely comes close to "ideological flamewar hell"? Is "leftists" the keyword? Is criticism of "today's leftists" forbidden here? Meanwhile this thread[0] that rants about the supposed evils of the "US right" (burning Harry Potter books? complaining abut D&D and heavy metal? what is this, 1995?) is not flagged, not dead, and not officially chastised, despite being severa…
looks like you just want to voice you disagreement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah totally totally. But then, its very funny to me that some of the people who complain the most about the censorship of "Right Wing" content by leftist big tech, are also, violently, over-my-dead-body, opposed to many kinds of community/government/centrally-owned collectivist platforms that wouldn't be under the influence of advertising. The Libertarian platforms that we have are the way they are precisely because…
The government has a pretty bad history of free speech. My preference would be many small communities that have different support models. Let some communities be ad driven, others pay to subscribe, others yet donation based. These all have pros and cons. The mistake is thinking there is a single solution.
Private corporations have radically more control over what its members say and repeat, than the government does. Might be that other governments are different, depending.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah totally totally. But then, its very funny to me that some of the people who complain the most about the censorship of "Right Wing" content by leftist big tech, are also, violently, over-my-dead-body, opposed to many kinds of community/government/centrally-owned collectivist platforms that wouldn't be under the influence of advertising. The Libertarian platforms that we have are the way they are precisely because…
The government has a pretty bad history of free speech. My preference would be many small communities that have different support models. Let some communities be ad driven, others pay to subscribe, others yet donation based. These all have pros and cons. The mistake is thinking there is a single solution.
We have basically every social platform we could ever want and we even invent more all the time, just not one that is literally central to everyone’s lives, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say we probably don’t want that particular one.
The application of censorship itself, not what is being censored, is the main symptom of the declining cultural health. The mentality that there are so universally wrong and right things that the right ones must be forced upon any mind, no matter the context, and the wrong ones must be extinguished no matter the context.
I have a foreign wife and it really drives home one truth: America is a very nuanced place. We have this idea of almost unlimited free speech. Which sounds great, but in practice, it is not really true. Because ultimately, Americans do not have equal rights. We see this over and over in different aspects of society. The Frederick Douglas example from Boston in the article is a great example of why free speech is good…
Is that so? I don't see why a speaker is entitled to an audience, let alone access to mass private communication.
I believe in freedom of speech. What I do not believe in is freedom of mass speech. Your responsibility to the truth should increase in line with your reach. Have 1000 followers in twitter and want to talk about starting the next holocaust? Great, say whatever. A million followers? Yeah, that’s a problem. I don’t know how this gets enforced, but we simply cannot give every lunatic a megaphone.
>"I don’t know how this gets enforced, but we simply cannot give every lunatic a megaphone." At least in the US you can't enforce it - and yes, any lunatic can grab a megaphone if they want. The best way to handle problematic speech is more speech, NOT less. Trying to pretend lunatics don't exist is irrational and often a pretext to just block people that others disagree with. Screw that. Safest place for lunatics is…
I’m on my phone, but there’s a whole bunch of studies that show the effects of banning radical speech on Twitter (think ISIS), and the outcome was, unsurprisingly, less radical speech on Twitter. It didn’t return, it didn’t evolve, it just… died.
Free speech is an important concept, but it’s important at both ends; it’s also free speech to deny someone access to your megaphone, should you happen to own one.
[0] https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~dyang888/docs/jhaver-2021-dep...
[1] https://theconversation.com/amp/does-deplatforming-work-to-c...
[2] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/deplatforming-parler-bans-qa...