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Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

I agree. "I hate you, you stupid [insert bad word]" whilst wrong, should be permitted.

"I hate you, you stupid [insert bad word] and I am going to come to your house and attack/kill/rape you" - get out the ban hammer.

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But again, who draw the line ? I don't feel threaten by somebody saying that to me on the net. I don't censor it even on my comments. Maybe somebody will feel threaten by something about going to "see what've done with your shitty new restaurant". Are you going to remove that too ?

And are you really sure the sure the line will not be moved after ? Because this is such an opportunity for politics. But also just for any entities with a moral or economic agenda.

And will the censorship be done by humans ? Or will machine will stop a quotation from a book or a movie containing it ?

Well, would threatening to kill someone in the real world be legal? I don't believe so. Or do you think the threat is less credible if given online?

That's not the point. The point is that it's a pandora box.

> That's not the point. The point is that it's a pandora box.

If it's a "box," then frankly, that box was opened long ago, long before the internet or computers.

`Censorship of hate speech on the internet` was opened long before the internet?

Censorship of hate speech through various mediums. Don't be pedantic.

I disagree. Banning threats like that would not have any negative consequences. If anything, it would encourage people to post more, as they no longer have to worry about dealing with that huge mountain of shit, which is incredibly demoralizing and discourages people from posting.

In the U.S.? "True threats" are illegal, but that only covers threats that are reasonably believable.

> Or do you think the threat is less credible if given online?

Do you not?

It's not happened to me, but yes I would think it less credible. However, I have a wife and daughter that might not.

I think the "true threat" is a good bar, though. It would stop things like the prosecution of a guy here in the UK that joked about blowing up an airport because his girlfriend's flight was delayed.

Well, this is politics. I gather that this is largely driven by the European Union...

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1937_en.htm

... so "the line" is basically whatever European Union says is "illegal hate speech" as per this announcement. (The announcement makes it seem that it is largely targeted at terrorism and racism, at least for now).

I agree with you, though, in that personally I'm not the biggest fan of "hate speech" laws. They seem like a ripe target for political abuse.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

>> They seem like a ripe target for political abuse.

What? It is already is in several places around the world.

Threatening to kill/harm someone is already illegal if the person on the receiving end of the threat has fear for their safety resulting from the threat. If people are so afraid they should consider the already existing methods we have of deterring criminal behavior.

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