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Comment by mrschwabe | Hacker News Reader

Why was Andrew Torba's comment (on this thread) - the CEO of Gab and subject of this discussion - downvoted and already censored ('dead') ? Absurd.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DooMz4QV4AEEuv4.jpg:large

Here is the link to his comment if you wish to reply:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18136380

And make sure you turn on 'showdead' in your settings otherwise miss key comments like this.

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Comments from banned users get killed automatically. I've unkilled that one. In the future, if you see a comment that shouldn't be [dead], that's what the 'vouch' feature is for: click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'vouch'. You're also welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and let us know, so we can unkill it. But please don't noise up the thread by posting offtopically about it.

Ok, fair enough - thanks for the prompt response.

> Absurd

The guy is banned, clearly because he's been an asshole to others. Since you have showdead, behold the kind of person he is: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=rvcamo

He seems... very in support of freedom of speech

Let's call it what it is: Freedom of hate.

As someone who regularly defends some pretty vile shit for ideological free speech reasons, it makes me uneasy how "freedom of speech" is starting to sound way too synonymous with "unrestricted license for nazis and assholes to spread their ideology and hatred even on private services".

The real damage neo-nazis can do is to turn people against the concept of free speech.

So I suggest we call this "Freedom of hate", instead.

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