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Comment by happytoexplain | Hacker News Reader

This is a hyperbolic analogy and not useful. Sale of electricity and of general purpose computers are wildly less direct than providing a purpose-built platform for speech dissemination. Now, I don't think that banishment from those platforms for anything they define as "hate-speech" is guaranteed to be right for all definitions of "right", and it deserves real scrutiny, but your argument doesn't illuminate anything.

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It was refreshingly insightful. It clearly illustrates the problem with “no platforming,” a concept that is inherently censorship.

It's a common and obvious rhetorical tactic to manufacture an analogy that scales up the points you want to make and/or scales down the points you don't agree with. It's the same spirit as a strawman. I'm genuinely sad to see that called "refreshingly insightful" on HN.

Mm, a fair critique. This is one of the classic arguments where people feel strongly in one direction or another, and it takes very little effort to essentially set up a yay/nay vote.

We can find common ground, but I wish it were possible without restricting what people can say.

I would disagree. I think selling a person a computer/electricity which they use to make a podcast is as "wildly direct" as selling server hosting (social media platform) for the podcast.

What about grocery stores that sell food to the same person allowing them to exist and make those said podscasts? Are they as "wildly direct" as well?

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