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Comment by jhayward | Hacker News Reader

This is abstract idealism, uninformed by contact with the real world. Mobs happen. Moral panics happen. People are not at all, not at all, rational beings evaluating the logical correctness of arguments and using critical thinking to vet new ideas.

The common spaces have to be policed. People with bad intent have to be dealt with not left for everyone to deal with on their own. It is entirely possible to destabilize a society sufficiently for the social contract to break down simply by allowing bad actors to intentionally poison the social commons. You do not want to see that outcome if you are a non-sociopath human.

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Experience seems to indicate the opposite I think. The danger of niche mobs and/or terrorism is very real and scary, but losing our freedoms in order to address these perceived dangers is always far worse. For all the fear the "alt-right" has generated, exactly how many people have been come to harm because of them? They probably number in the dozens, which is a terrible tragedy but ultimately is that worth losing our fundamental rights? I personally don't think it is.

I would argue that the alt-right panic (as in, if I thought white genocide was a thing I'd be panicking too) + nihilist troll tactics elected Trump, which has caused much harm.

I think a world where those people were no-platformed more often might be a better world, but of course I can't know.

And getting no-platformed isn't losing rights, you can always make your own platform, it gets easier and cheaper every day.

You can't really "make your own platform" though. Ultimately the ISPs could shut down access to any website they don't think their customers should have access to. The only recourse would be for the censored to somehow construct their own physical internet infrastructure, which was so difficult and costly the first time that it was highly subsidized by the government.

And do you honestly think you should have the right to determine what elections should be considered "harmful" enough to shut down others speech? There is a wide range of opinion short of the alt-right but in the same direction that could be shut down too, for instance apparently a majority of white people think there is racism against now (https://www.npr.org/2017/10/24/559604836/majority-of-white-a...). Do you think this opinion is so wrong that it should be silenced from the public forum? Do you think it would even be possible to do so?

I'll keep your points in mind.

I would only insist on making a distinction between "a public form" and "the public forum"

As an owner of a machine, I see no reason I should be forced to host some conversation I consider harmful.

OTOH I would encourage ISPs to maintain a common carrier status just out of pragmatism. Once you memory-hole connections to some IP address, I think you become responsible for the content you serve. All or Nothing.

I agree with that. We need some way of differentiating between private sites and sites that be considered part of the public forum.

The experience of 1930s Germany and Italy, 1980s Rwanda, Serbia and Srebenincia, and just recently Myanmar apparently don’t register on your scale of “problem”. Why is that? It is a very misguided position to say that can’t happen here. US society has been building toward a populist-led Fascist break, with dehumanizing rhetoric by right-wingers, whipping up fear and hatred, forming armed militias and concentrating supporters in police and military, and now a true fascist as president. Why is it that it won’t happen here?

I think eroding free speech rights, especially in a time of increasing political extremism, will only make such tragedies more possible, not less. How long until extremists in power figure out a way to use the newly acceptable restrictions on speech in their favor? What happens if there is another 9/11 under Trump when freedom of speech has been sidelined? Can Trump then pressure companies to ban Muslims and political opponents off of the internet entirely "until we can figure out what the hell is going on"? Accurately predicting how loss of freedom will affect future tyranny is like accurately predicting the stock market, it just isn't going to happen.

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