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Comment by jackmott | Hacker News Reader

They don't ban Richard B Spencer who is a nazi.

Has he treaded carefully on twitter avoiding breaking the TOS? I imagine that, a- with the Milo ban, they wait for you to do something arguably in TOS violation if they want to get rid of you.

Correct, Twitter bans people who violate the TOS.

Being a Nazi is allowed under free speech though. Suppressing Nazi speech is the same as suppressing a social justice warrior right? You can't pick and choose your free speech.

>>Suppressing Nazi speech is the same as suppressing a social justice warrior right?

Nope, First Amendment does not protect hate speech.

Do you have a source? I'd be surprised to hear that's the case. My understanding was the first amendment covered all speech.

You are right, "hate speech" was not the right term to use.

That said, there absolutely are types of speech that the First Amendment doesn't cover:

http://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/initiativ...

>>In this country there is no right to speak fighting words—those words without social value, directed to a specific individual, that would provoke a reasonable member of the group about whom the words are spoken. For example, a person cannot utter a racial or ethnic epithet to another if those words are likely to cause the listener to react violently.

It does cover all speech; racial and ethnic epithets are still covered, just not in a very specific context. Which never applies in Twitter.

As I understand it, "fighting words" is _very_ context-dependent and narrow in modern jurisprudence.

See https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-... and search for "Trope seven".

In particular, application of "fighting words" pretty much requires that the speaker and listener were in close physical proximity, such that a fight could actually occur. Not really relevant to twitter, for the most part.

You are making stuff up. "hate speech" is not a thing in the first amendment. Hate speech is protected. There are countless court rulings on this.

Exhibit A: "in 1977 a federal court upheld the right of neo-Nazis to goose-step right through the town of Skokie, Illinois, which had a disproportionately large number of Holocaust survivors as residents."

WP article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

The First Amendment does protect hate speech. However, Twitter is not bound by the First Amendment.

>Suppressing Nazi speech is the same as suppressing a social justice warrior right?

No, but only because "social justice warrior" is a blanket perjorative for leftists, feminists, liberals, and anyone else right-wing antisocial types find annoying, not an actual ideology that people identify with, like nazism or white supremacy.

You can't suppress "social justice warriors" any more than you can suppress "cucks" or "landwhales."

Are you implying that the terms 'Nazi' and 'White Supremacist' isn't throw around by left-wing more sensitive idealists as a pejorative for people that hold conservative values? 'SJW' is a synonym for far-left ideologues, just as 'Nazi' has been used to describe the opposite end of the spectrum.

>Are you implying that the terms 'Nazi' and 'White Supremacist' isn't throw around by left-wing more sensitive idealists as a pejorative for people that hold conservative values?

No. While those terms are sometimes used by the left as general insults, they also describe actual movements, political ideologies and identifiable ideas.

However, "social justice warriors" don't actually exist, and the only equivalency that can be drawn between the views of one and the other, in the relevant context of free speech and censorship, is a false one.

In the past some minority rights activists described themselves as "social justice warriors"; it's a genuine subculture. There are a handful of people who still identify themselves that way.

"SJW" is about as well-defined as "alt-right" is. I also see the term SJW used by people on the left to criticise what they see as an over-emphasis on identity politics.

But one term is to you, a blanket pejorative used by anti-social types, and the other is not?

>But one term is to you, a blanket pejorative used by anti-social types, and the other is not?

I didn't mention "alt-right" and neither did the comment I replied to. Maybe you're reading something into my words that isn't there?

I was asking you a question.

I think you're running up against the ambiguity of language in the definition of "speech." Is verbally ordering a hit on somebody speech? Obviously. Is it the same thing that the ideal of "free speech" seeks to protect? Obviously not.

So you can't just say "This is speech, therefore it must be free speech." Advocating genocide and harassing people in minority groups are different in a very salient way from saying mean things about a politician.

If you run a bar or cafe and someone is spouting racist crap, you can say "Free speech is great and all, but i'm not paying to host you and it's damaging my business" and kick them out.

The two are nowhere near the same.

Federal courts and the founding fathers would disagree.

In that the government should not punish you for espousing either one, sure. However, we're talking about Twitter.

In the US maybe, but not in Germany. "Free Speech" can mean different things in different countries.

The question is not who is being suppressed, but who is doing the suppressing.

If US govt. wanted to get at a Nazi / alt-right account in the same way, it would have been just as much of a problem.

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