Comment by papermill | Hacker News Reader

Comment by papermill | Hacker News Reader

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You would also be fine with LGBT or leftist "hate speech" being banned? Lets say china or saudi arabia tells youtube to remove content they find "hateful", would you support it?

Youtube can censor since it is a private company. But we are talking about the liberal cultural love of free speech, not a legal one. Especially in the US where we have defended speech for nearly 250 years. Now, we have a strong leftist authoritarian push to censor which I find abhorrent and dangerous.

What ever happened to the american ( and western? ) ideal of if you don't like it, don't consume it? As a person of color, I find people like you extremely dangerous and a threat to the american way of life.

And it's ridiculous that you claim "they are not censored in any way". They are by definition, being censored. Not by government, but by monopoly tech companies. Do you really want to live in a world where a handful of companies decide what we can see, hear and watch?

I can't stand the insane contradictory leftist rhetoric. On the one had, you claim tech companies are too powerful and evil and shouldn't be trusted. On the other hand, you want to give tech companies power to censor.

They already have the power to censor. There's no "giving" involved.

They don't do much because it costs money and they believe it's unprofitable. There's no noble "free speech" goal behind any of these companies, and you're deluding yourself if you think otherwise.

> I can't stand the insane contradictory leftist rhetoric. On the one had, you claim tech companies are too powerful and evil and shouldn't be trusted. On the other hand, you want to give tech companies power to censor.

This is actually a right-wing authoritarian stance: you're advocating that the government (or do you mean some other entity?) force private businesses to publish speech that they disagree with.

You're conflating private entities freedom to publish or not publish what they wish with censorship, which only comes from a legal authority.

The challenge is that, at least in the US, these platform have sought to secure themselves the "public space" status through Section 230 immunity under an economic difficulty argument. So, yes they are private entities, but they have been claiming to be public spaces who shouldn't be burdened with this.

> The challenge is that, at least in the US, these platform have sought to secure themselves the "public space" status through Section 230 immunity under an economic difficulty argument.

It makes perfect sense that they would be free to refuse to publish content they object to, even with 230 immunity, and the courts agree.[0]

> Do I lose Section 230 immunity if I edit the content? Courts have held that Section 230 prevents you from being held liable even if you exercise the usual prerogative of publishers to edit the material you publish. You may also delete entire posts. However, you may still be held responsible for information you provide in commentary or through editing.

[0] https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230

> This is actually a right-wing authoritarian stance: you're advocating that the government (or do you mean some other entity?) force private businesses to publish speech that they disagree with.

This is absolutely a false dichotomy. It is entirely possible to say that having private corporations dictate what people see and read is bad for society, without claiming that the government should force companies to publish anything.

Yes it the company's right to censor whatever content they want. It's possible to believe in that right while still saying it's wrong for companies to wield it in a certain manner.

Much in the same way you can believe in the right to free speech of the Nazis that marched in Skokie while simultaneously calling their actions reprehensible, it is entirely valid to criticize the censorious actions of these platforms while acknowledging that this is well within their legal rights.

The above poster acknowledged that private platforms are allowed to censor whatever they want. Repeatedly.

I really don't see how your comment is productive, as all it's really doing is putting words in the above poster's mouth that [s]he explicitly denied. What redeeming value am I supposed to see in your comment?

Apologies if this comes off as overly negative but it is very tiresome to keep seeing criticisms of tech companies' censorship met with, "It's entirely within their rights, you're the authoritarian one for advocating government-compelled speech." Doubly so when the previous comment not only didn't advocate government compelled speech of any sort, but repeatedly acknowledged that companies are legally entitled to ban whatever speech they want.

> It is entirely possible to say that having private corporations dictate what people see and read is bad for society, without claiming that the government should force companies to publish anything.

I mean, yes, it's possible. It's also delusional and paranoid to think that you can't post your hate speech, anti-vaccine delusions, and whatnot on your own damn platform.

We're entitled to free speech, but that's where it stops. We aren't entitled to free, global publishing platforms hosted at the expense of some other party.

You might complain that Youtube or whatever other "public" platform is where all the eyeballs are, so it's not fair that you can't publish anything you like there. Guess what, the reason the eyeballs are there is because these places curated their content so they didn't get their advertisers driven away by hosting vile garbage. This allowed them to scale more, host more content, and scale more, in a virtuous cycle.

There are sites that don't curate like this, and they're not successful publishing platforms. What do you need to publish that you can't get 8chan to host, anyway?

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