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Comment by orf | Hacker News Reader

Couple of thousand fines in a city of 8,700,000 seems sensible to me.

Not everyone values free speech quite as highly as the USA. It's important, sure, but it's not live or die. There are limits and spreading vile hate speech is one of them.

I also like the complete focus on the free speech aspect, completely ignoring the "we actually deal with racists here" aspect. How narrow minded.

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“Vile hate speech” can cut both ways unfortunately. Both of us agree that racism is a bad thing. But the American South during Jim Crow declared progressive speech as “hate speech” and tried to ban it.[0] So it’s better to not empower the government to decide what is hate and what isn’t, or you may elect a government that decides what you say is hate speech.

[0] “As we have seen, during the days of slavery and later segregation, laws suppressing free speech were often aimed at abolitionists and civil rights advocates, not at slave owners or Jim Crow advocates. This reflected social and political power in local states and communities where attitudes towards race were very different than today.“ https://www.hoover.org/research/harm-hate-speech-laws

> So it’s better to not empower the government to decide what is hate and what isn’t

The government cannot just arbitrarily expand hate speech to include something which is patently not hate speech. The courts would not uphold it, neither would the judiciary or the public at large.

10 years ago, I would have argued the same about the gov't just arbitrarily expanding asset seizure laws, but here we are.

If they made it law (which strictly speaking requires parliament, not the government), the courts _would_ uphold it.

Unless you get an extreme president who stacks the courts with extreme judges...

So I would agree except judges are even elected in some places in the south. The judiciary is not always insular.

Let's keep in mind here that there are many definitions of hate speech. In Canada, it's carefully defined as speech that actually incites people to a criminal act - so racism or other "vile speech" on its own doesn't qualify, you have to be actively making a credible threat or incitement to have others commit real actions.

Couple of thousand fines in a city of 8,700,000 seems sensible to me.

As someone who values free speech, even one fine is abhorrent.

Do you speak for all people who value free speech?

I think that by his (and my) definition of "people who value free speech", yes he does - because that is a part of the definition.

Everyone values speech they like. Valuing Free Speech means valuing the speech you don't like, too.

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