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Comment by elgabogringo | Hacker News Reader

Everything and everyone the left disagrees with now gets labeled as "hate" and increasingly gets flagged and then banned. Why is the left so afraid of a debate?

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Twitter seems to really drag their feet deleting accounts of Islamic radicals inciting violence and Black Libes Matter sympathizers celebrating cop killings. If they even bother to do anything.

If you're going to police speech that's merely provocative, as Milo's is, and not expressly illegal (direct actual threats, child porn, etc) then you're going to get yourself in a position where you eventually piss everyone off. Twitter and Facebook are doing an excellent job of that at the moment with conservatives. We'll see long term how many users want to hang around a dry leftist echo chamber.

All these social media platforms are bad at this. They're in the business of facilitating discourse and giving people a platform to speak. IMO they have an ethical responsibility to protect speech in all forms, unless it's inciting violence/child porn/etc.

I can't say that they should disallow illegal speech because governments get this wrong, too. Like how many countries have laws forbidding hate speech. Those laws are as abhorrent as the speech itself because it's stifling discourse.

Do they? Do they have an obligation to protect the speech of all the people calling Leslie Jones an ape on Monday? What about the speech of those that are silenced because they know that the racist trolls will come out of the woodwork whenever they say anything?

Further, I can't believe that the discourse that is 'stifled' by hate speech terms and conditions on platforms like Twitter was ever valuable in the first place. I can't believe it's more valuable than the discourse of those who are silenced by harassment.

> They're in the business of facilitating discourse and giving people a platform to speak

Facebook started as a way to connect with classmates. Instagram started as picture sharing. Twitter started as a way to message friends.

At what point were those companies suddenly "in the business" of facilitating discourse? Who decides when they are? Why should we have laws that force a company to behave a certain way just because it's popular?

Thankfully, the US has clear laws about this, and private corporations can permit or reject users as they please, as long as they don't do it solely on the basis of gender, race, or religion.

Well if there are enough complaints about the guy, maybe it really is harassment and not just the same "culture war" nonsense. When people are constantly pushing the bounds of civility, and encouraging their followers to do the same, you need to reign it in or it ruins the platform for everyone else. It's not like there's a shortage of places for them to take their circus to.

Lefty here, many of us are getting sick of it too. Especially the double standard that is applied.

What debate was involved here?

The debate that's been unfolding for a couple months about the Ghostbusters movie as leftist propaganda.

I don't think anyone thinks that the new GB movie is a leftist propaganda, it's a bad movie and people now blame the reception on the fact that they've replace the cast with women. They could've used the American pie cast and it would not have mattered they made GB into a Tyler Perry movie that's why it tanked.

And what part of that debate was calling Leslie Jones an ape?

Speaking about Ghostbusters. Remember the 2nd movie where the mayor says "Being miserable and treating other people like dirt is every New Yorker's god-given right." And before that he said "What do you want me to do, go on television and tell 3 million people they have to be nice to each other?" LOL, I totally agree with this. Why is Twitter trying to be the nice police?

Good question, let's go check:

https://twitter.com/nero

> Everything and everyone the left disagrees with now gets labeled as "hate" and increasingly gets flagged and then banned. Why is the left so afraid of a debate?

Milo Yiannopoulos was banned repeatedly for violating the rules on Twitter by launching personal attacks and inciting trolling.

He was intentionally provoking bans to enhance the controversy surrounding his brand.

I'm not sure why you think he didn't get exactly what he wanted (except the permanency, I'm pretty sure he didn't want that part)?

https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/media

A barrage of pictures comparing Leslie Jones to apes and orangutans is not hate? It's a debate?

Were any of those pics from Milo?

Twitter has been going after Milo for a while. What twitter did was not just about his tweets related to her.

> Twitter has been going after Milo for a while.

And rightly so. He's a vile human being.

Considering that his main bread and butter is writing "Gater bait", it's no surprise that he's finally paying for it.

I'm sorry, but read through what happened to Leslie Jones yesterday and tell me that wasn't hate. This is not a matter of debate; it's a matter of harassment.

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