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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

(I didn't downvote you)

> There has not been a real problem of [...] hate speech on HN

What do you have showdead in your profile set to? If you have it set to "no" you're going to miss a lot of it. But even so, there's plenty of it on HN.

Algolia search doesn't return killed comments, but there's plenty of rabid anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, etc on HN.

> HN has a HUGE misogyny problem and to a lesser extent holds a startling quantity of alt-right/neo-nazi posters, but their views only come across in the content they post here, not as a form of attacking other groups on the site or off the site

I'm not sure this is compatible with the 1st sentence I quoted.

Some people's freedom of speech silences other people.

View on HN

Thanks for joining the conversation. I wanted to steer my comment a little bit more to the last point you made about how racism and misoginy, no matter how subtle, does create a toxic culture which silences or intimidates others, but saying that REALLY riles up the "freeze peach" crowd here and I was concerned that making such a statement in an already upsetting comment would get me hit with the flaghammer. More to the topic at hand (and the parent comment), this is about the role of a site making active and aggressive steps to remove content or clamp down on the posting of content that is focused on organizing and attacking outgroups openly, something that does not occur here on HN. You are going to get comments colored with implicit racism or gendered bias, but nobody is grabbing pitchforks to intentionally attack anyone here.

HN, despite carrying all of the more socially regressive actors of the meatspace tech community is remarkably civil and kind

> Some people's freedom of speech silences other people.

While this statement might be somewhat true, the idea that someone would be censored for having an opinion that others find offensive is extremely frightening. Obviously if someone attacks a group based on a stereotype, or advocates discriminatory or harmful behaviour towards a group, that's one thing -- but suggesting censoring people because they may hold views that others don't like isn't a road you want to go down (who makes that judgement?)

> Some people's freedom of speech silences other people.

No, this is completely and totally incorrect. What is correct is that some people silence themselves in reaction to others' free speech. The power is all in their hands: they have the freedom to speak, but they choose not to use it.

That applies to me as much as anyone else: on some controversial topics I choose to speak my mind, generally because I think that there's a chance I can persuade others to see things correctly; on other controversial topics I don't believe that there's any chance to persuade folks, so I silence myself. What's the point of controversy if no-one will be persuaded? It's just trolling.

Regarding hate speech, I have showdead turned on and I've not really noticed a problem with it. There are a very few loons, but they get downvoted to heck and that's that.

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