811–820 of 868 posts
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Transgender issues are political when the government forces you to use made up terms like Xe/Xim or they/their instead of him/her to appease the mentally ill at the risk of being fined or jailed.
All words are made up and no one is going to fine you or jail you for being a jerk.
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I think you might want to listen to them more closely, I can't answer on their behalf. If, by chance, they're anything like me, then I agree that there's giant categories of prohibited speech that should remain so. Lying about medicine, slander, libel, incitement to violence to name a few.
They want the first amendment repealed as they say it protects racists, homophobes and transphobes. They say that liberal free speech laws led to Trump and free speech should be curtailed for that reason. They openly say that they are opposed to free speech. I am trying to present their views as neutrally as I can, but this is what they say and support.
I have a suspicion that there might be a communication barrier somewhere between you and your friends. I'm a bit out on a limb here, so forgive my presumptions if they're off base. I mean no offense.
It's possible that your friends have learned that, when talking to you, 'free speech' is only worth defending when it's offensive, neo-nazi style speech. Then, without making explicit the change in vocabulary usage, they run with it -- ending up in a bad spot where they're saying get rid of 1st Amendment. There's no winners in this story, just unfortunate misunderstandings.
Again, disregard if this is nonsense. I've been witness to similar disagreements in the past, so I'm offering my 2c since I think you're making the good faith effort to represent, even while exasperated, the views of your friends.
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It's confusing how you criticize leftists for not realizing that they could theoretically be the target of these attacks while citing an extremely well-known example of leftists being the target of these attacks. Leftists are generally aware of this risk, because today there is no shortage of similar social pressure against leftist ideas, and do not think it's a concern. The problem is not that it's never occurred to…
First, it's not "criticism" to ask a clarifying question. I understand that not having a good answer makes you uncomfortable, but that's not "criticism". Second, you do understand that it's possible to believe that both are bad, right?
I do understand that it's possible to believe both are bad. I am informing you that leftists do not. (There's probably a more general phenomenon where centrists say that tools that can be used towards bad ends are bad, and people of a particular partisan tendency say that bad ends are bad and not to be blamed on the tool. For instance, liberals are generally not in favor of expanded gun rights, because they understand that guns can be used towards bad ends. Leftists are generally in favor of expanded gun rights, because they understand that, and also understand that guns can be used towards good ends.)
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In that case, the rights of the (private) service provider are in tension with those of the (also private) individual, so it's a matter for legislation and the courts. Congress has passed laws protecting the speech of the individual within certain types of service providers, i.e. telecom/ISP/website publishers.
> Congress has passed laws protecting the speech of the individual within certain types of service providers, i.e. telecom/ISP/website publishers. Telecoms, yes, ISPs and Websites, no. FCC adopted regulations under statutory authority it saw as allowing, but not requiring, thatnfor ISPs, but later retracted them. Websites have liability protection for hosts for user content specifically to encourage host moderation o…
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HN is what it is because it is not free speech absolutist. Posts get flagged. People get banned. This keeps spam and shills down to a level that signal can stand out from the noise. So in theory, people here may be "free speech absolutists", but in practice, we enjoy the environment that the moderation here enables. At some level, we know via experience that free speech absolutism is not where we want to live. And ye…
I'm a "free speech absolutist", meaning: you can't be imprisoned or physically attacked for what you say. HN is a private space. It can have its own arbitrary acceptance rules, and that has nothing to do with free speech.
I've been following Hacker News for over a decade and my sense of the community is that it has always been overwhelmingly pro free speech at any cost (even in the cases where it would protect something outright illegal). Now I'm hearing from many in the same community that free speech has been "weaponized" and must be controlled for the greater good. What happened? Seriously.
The real question is if people actually want to live in a society with absolute free speech. I think that’s a no.
Hate speech is protected as long as it doesn’t involve violence, but in practice, hate speech almost always leads to violence.
Something people never talk about is how the founding fathers thought that virtue was a necessary quality for a democracy. If we lived in a society that held virtue in high esteem, there would be no limits to speech. But we don’t, our society values fame over everything, even money.
Plus, we live in a post truth era. People hate truth-tellers here.
That’s why we can’t have free speech.
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Well...there was the small matter of a violent insurrection at the Capitol Building by people who variously: flew the Confederate flag, believed Democrats eat babies, refuse to believe the results of the election, all of which are nonsense beliefs or causes that were magnified on social media. At some point people in general - and HN in particular - have to decide when to rein in bad actors crying wolf. Otherwise the…
I just have to point out that your comment reads to me like you are crying wolf. However, I'm not a US citizen so I don't follow the situation closely.
What are you trying to say anyway? Cool, so you don’t know what’s going on, and don’t particularly care. So what?
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The Democrats had their cult of personality in the Obama years.
Not even close. No one was talking about Obama splitting the party and seeking revenge against ideological bedfellows after serving only one term.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJFC1qFCgyA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTm5rp8r6fE&feature=emb_logo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOtGr1JFCnE&feature=emb_imp_...
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Gab's censorship of adult content is considerably stricter than obscenity law. They're not a free speech network, they're just a network where racism is permitted speech and anything they don't like is banned.
The main reason they banned "adult content" was simply that porn posters will fill any available online free forum. Reasonably enough, as a forum aimed at free speech, Gab wasn't eager to pay the hideous storage and networking costs of becoming another site like Tumblr, where that content had simply taken over...