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Comment by threepipeproblm | Hacker News Reader

I probably didn't express my view well here. I did read the article & understand they aren't free speech absolutists.

Still wondering how free speech will play out here, because I wonder if they will stick to eliminating trolls or if their moderation will be subjective and "politicized".

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Probably depends on how you define politicized. Take the example of /r/fatpeoplehate... some people think banning it was simply eliminating trolls and abuse, while some people think it was SJW left-wing censorship.

There's no free speech if you want to ban "hate speech" or "trolling".

This more or less means removing all challenging opinions and basically focus on being an echo chamber even more so than reddit. Basically thought-crime policing

I think it can be easy to differentiate name calling and trolling from actual discourse. I say this, based on past participation in a local political forum that did allow a wide variety of viewpoints... including viewpoints that were banned on the forum that spawned us.

It seems to me that many sites who have censored particular viewpoints point to hate speech and trolling inappropriately. It also seems like people here do not have high expectations for Imzy, in this way.

I have more or less given up on online political forums, and these issues seem to come up less for hobby/tech topics.

How is preventing racism and slurs a thought crime policing? You're free to think all the dehumanizations of all the demographics you like. Many sites are available for you to even express them. You just are not allowed to do it at imzy. No different than say, not shouting slurs at black people in a cafe. That's not a thought crime issue, that's a "stop pushing out demographics out" issue.

While I understand it is tricky to properly moderate a forum without stifling dissenting opinions, it isn't impossible. You can censor clear, vulgar, abuse while not censoring challenging opinions.

Trolling, name calling, and abuse are NOT "challenging opinions", and removing them does not stifle discourse. There is no opinion that can't be expressed in a way that doesn't resort to abuse.

> This more or less means removing all challenging opinions and basically focus on being an echo chamber even more so than reddit. Basically thought-crime policing

If you think left groups never disagree with each other, you're sadly misinformed. Left wing groups are famous for splitting over disagreements. Don't you remember the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea?

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