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Comment by paulgb | Hacker News Reader

> Not too long ago this was a classical liberal position. Today free speech is passé. Guess I'm just old fashioned.

It's not old fashioned, it's just that people differentiate free speech in principle from paying the server bills. Just as freedom of the press never meant the newspaper had to publish your op-ed, free speech online doesn't mean Twitter has to give anyone server space to post Nazi stuff.

(I agree that there should be more platforms, but that's why I've supported other Mastadon instances instead of Gab.)

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Which is why I welcome Gab forking Mastodon.

True, they may not have the same reach as everybody else, but they can have their own decentralised space to air their views and build their own stuff rather than relying on the mainstream social networks, free from censorship.

All the big sites face government pressure to censor. In addition anyone inside these companies that would support free speech has to walk on eggshells not to be fired for creating an unsafe environment - again the government's hand this time indirect.

Imagine the conversation: this is fake news, we should remove it. No it isn't fake. You're making me feel unsafe, ill have the government put you in a cage.

The problem is that Twitter's definition of "nazis" basically is "anyone we don't like, which isn't exactly useful for the overall benefit of humanity. Sort of like how FB recently said that they are going to deplatform white supremacists. Why not all supremacists, while you're at it, or don't pretend that you are doing something for any kind of greater good...

But it's not limited to "white" nationalists.

They recently deplatformed infamous anti-semite and black nationalist Louis Farrakhan. And before anyone says this guy has always been a crank: he was actively being courted by Repulicans like Jack Kemp in the 1980s back when his anti-communist views were deemed politically useful.

> And before anyone says this guy has always been a crank: he was actively being courted by Repulicans like Jack Kemp in the 1980s back when his anti-communist views were deemed politically useful.

Maybe such a claim is useful to you but it really doesn't hold up to scrutiny. I grew up in the 80s, in a conservative household, and in New York City - Jack Kemp's home turf.

His political career was effectively over by 1982, taking 6 years to really die and I don't think I heard his name mentioned a single time in the 15 years I grew up having to listen to conservative talk radio all day every day.

What I did have to hear though, starting from the beginning of Bob Grant's era through Sliwa's morning and Limbaugh's afternoon shows, was what a threat to American society Louis Farrakhan was. He literally was enemy number one in the crosshairs of right-wing talk radio hosts for nearly 20 years.

Jack Kemp was Bob Dole’s VP nominee and continued to praise Farrakhan into the 90s. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/10/us/kemp-praises-farrakhan...

I understand these days the conservative establishment is mostly in sync with what’s said on talk radio, but that wasn’t always the case.

Dole lost badly as I recall and Clinton regularly reminded people of Dole's age during his campaigning. Dole was widely thought to be too old to serve two terms and maybe not even a whole first term. Literally nobody wanted Kemp to be president were that to happen.

That seems to be a prime example of "too little, too late", and looks like a rather han-fisted attempt to appear fair.

> The problem is that Twitter's definition of "nazis" basically is "anyone we don't like

No, it really isn't. It's a minority of people calling for violent white supremecy.

You can still get away with that if you just dress it up a little.

According to their hipster in chief though, actually doing ethnic cleansing is perfectly fine though, if you are Burmese... That's rather hypocritical -- either ban all nazis, or don't pretend that you are not picking sides. And speaking of sides, if you ban nazis but not the equially murderous communists then I don't see how you can claim any high moral ground. And I haven't heard of any communist purges in the social media platforms.

Example?

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