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Comment by kmooney | Hacker News Reader

> We run the risk that the act of deplatforming can become as extreme as the hate speech it seeks to banish.

Let us cross that bridge when we get to it.

Indeed. The slippery slope is a fallacy, after all; you can in fact take a positive step without worrying about taking negative steps that are so absurdly different as to be almost caricatures.

Just because the slippery slope fallacy exists doesn't mean that every warning about unintended consequences is necessarily wrong. That would be a fallacy in the opposite direction.

Certainly. But observing unintended consequences of a specific action is quite different from claiming that that action is a slippery slope to further actions that are not in fact planned.

Pretty sure we're already here. Ignorant or evil folks won't become enlightened or good if they can't use the internet.

No, but they will be isolated, and an isolated person is powerless person.

Seems like a recipe for creating a lot of people with very little or nothing to lose.

Nah, I think the real danger is when they find others who re-affirm their convictions.

You are advocating isolating, deplatforming, etc.. These are tactics that hurt. Hurt people hurt people. If people are allowed to be heard and socialize, they gain happiness and are less likely to hurt people.

They are not isolated from each other, they are just detached from those who don't what to hear them.

Imagine that you have a piece of rotting meat. It's unsightly and it stinks. So you hide it under the carpet. Now it's gone from view, and the smell is nearly gone. But it's still rotting down there, and at one moment you'll have to face what it will turn into.

Your analogy fails for me because the rotting meat you refer to are free people. You speak of these people as if they should be controlled. Where is the room for their inalienable rights?

Really? You can't think of any isolated groups or individuals who have wrecked hell with bombs, guns, virii, etc? Or nukes for that matter.

Given that just shy of 30 years into this whole Web thing we're seeing it fuel probably the largest wave of white nationalism/authoritarianism/facism since WWII, it seems like that's the exact opposite of how it works.

Well, but they can use the internet. It's just that people who don't want to hear them (which is most people) won't hear them using the internet, and that is okay and not a restriction of free speech. They can communicate freely with people who care about their viewpoints over the internet, with people who want to communicate with them, but not on the platforms whose subscribers don't want to communicate with such people.

The right to free speech doesn't include the right to force your speech on people who don't want to listen to you.

Were we still talking about platforms like Facebook or Twitter, I would agree with you. But I think it's a bit different now that platforms like Gab are themselves getting deplatformed, because those are the places these people would go to communicate with people who share their viewpoints.

I have no desire to listen to that speech, so I just don't visit Gab. It's not like I've ever been forced to.

Once we reach that point it will be too late to do anything about it, because there will be no platforms left to stand on in order to challenge it.

"O Lord, this zealotry to punish the heretics could easily escape from the control of God's chosen and not only destabilize society but also cause us to perform un-Christlike deeds that the Church shall repent of for all eternity!"

"Let's inquisit that heresy when we get to it."

SOME TIME LATER

"Truly, monsigneur, this escalation of the Crusade to extirpate the Lutherans could spiral out of our grasp and trigger a continental conflagration that would disturb the harmony of the Catholic Church and cause us to finalize the fracture in Christendom in its entirety!"

"Let us rupture that schism when we come to it."

SOME TIME LATER

"O Puritan Lawyers! I cannot abide this constant seeking of devilry amongst the burghers; for though thy use the Devil chained and cowed, if the Devil escapeth thine chains placyd upon hym, might he wreck also thine own soul's of pleasant Albion forevermore?"

"Let us burn that witch when we come to it."

SOME TIME LATER

"Je dis, this never-ending mission to purify France of the Anciens Regime could easily escape the control of the Bourgeosie and not only destabilize society but also cause us to perform inhumane deeds against the Third Estate that we will regret in the Eye of Providence for all recorded history!"

"Let's get a-head of that when the time arrives."

SOME TIME LATER

"I say, these attempts to civilize the Savages of the outer colonies could easily escape the oversight of the Provincial Governments and not only jeopardize our economic interests, but enable the performance by Europeans of barbarisms that would surely be worse than the practices of the Savages in the first place!"

"Let us lift the White Man's burden when we reach it."

SOME TIME LATER

"I don't know Comrade, this ten-year-old five-year plan to purify Russia of the Bourgeosie could easily escape control of the Central Committee and not only jeopardize the Revolution, but also cause us to engage in the same Tsarist evils of terror that the Revolution was launched to eliminate!"

"Let's rehabilitate that kulak when we get to it."

SOME TIME LATER

> We run the risk that the act of deplatforming can become as extreme as the hate speech it seeks to banish.

Let us cross that bridge when we get to it.

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