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Comment by goodfight | Hacker News Reader

Censorship is a step in the direction of fascism. You have become what you hate most.

How is a business censoring their own networks related to fascism? Is the downvote button fascist? This is the classic "paradox of tolerance."

Why is it more acceptable when a business does it than when a government does it?

The same reason if I go to a stranger's house and start debating with them about my own political opinions they are free to kick me out. Free enterprise and private property are generally considered fundaments of modern civil society. Im all ears if you have an argument to the contrary.

We're not talking about people's houses.

In the context of business, California has already made that argument for me, making it illegal to discriminate based on political views.

> We're not talking about people's houses.

I'm talking about private property and the right to do with it as one pleases so long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others. When a group of people create a business this doesn't magically go away.

> In the context of business, California has already made that argument for me, making it illegal to discriminate based on political views.

Certain protected classes are legally protected from discrimination, yes. To my knowledge "advocating violence" is not a political view; this is what the r/The_Donald is being quarantined for.

Here's the original story accusing TD of advocating violence:

https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2019/06/24/A-pro-Trump...

Featuring comments with as few as 1 point.

Those are just an excuse to further restrict a community they've restricted several times in the past, without admitting it's for political reasons.

Okay, you've signalled that they do do it, but now there are not enough points of data. How many points of data is your burden of proof, before you agree?

"They"?

Those are comments from a few fringe users, buried so deep that most people never saw them.

Is that a reason to punish a community of hundreds of thousands of people?

That's like quarantining an entire city because a few people there are violent. That's not a good solution in the real world or online.

So is the burden of proof that the people commenting about inciting violence have to be "main" users before it's a problem?

What's your criteria for that? You're being pretty slippery right now by dodging questions.

I'd say handle it like we handle crime in the real world. Punish the offender, not the community.

Now will you answer a similar question? I spent a couple minutes looking through a single post on r/politics and found a couple of violent comments:

> Just do a 180 turn on gun reforms. They’ll take an armed population more seriously.

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/c5og99/there_are_...

> It's because protests don't achieve anything. ... Riots on the other hand...

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/c5og99/there_are_...

Do you think r/politics should be quarantined because of those two posts?

Unless that was an extremely unusual post, there are undoubtedly many more. How many more would make you want a quarantine?

That isn't a burden of proof though, which is what the question asked for.

You're basically saying that Reddit should never ban subreddits, which means that you don't even have a burden of proof for banning a subreddit. This means no matter what you're always against banning a subreddit on a privately owned website, yet you fawn at other reasons to justify it (fringe users, not enough data points, etc.)

Your proposed solution instead is that admins should police every user, when mods fail to, which just isn't scalable. Especially when the barrier to just creating a new account to bypass the ban is so low.

Privately owned doesn't mean they can do anything they want.

We've allowed privately owned companies to control the means of communication, without regulation.

It's time to bring back the laws that limited the phone companies and big three TV networks interference in politics, updated for the Internet.

That's not entirely correct. California makes it illegal for an _employer_ to discriminate against an _employee_ based on their political views. It does not make it illegal for businesses to discriminate against _customers_ based on their political views.

Companies are not free to choose with whom they do business. There are many constraints, not the least of which is it being illegal to refuse to do business with someone because of their race, sex, sexual orientation, and, in California, political opinions. Free enterprise and private property might have been fundamentals of civil society in the past, but that ship has long sailed since then.

> Companies are not free to choose with whom they do business.

For the most part, yes they are. For instance, every online business has a Terms of Service detailing many situations in which they will or will not do business with you. Race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, etc. are specific situations in which governments/society have decided that its worth restricting this freedom for the greater good. The existence of these relatively few exceptions does not negate their overall freedom to do business with whomever they please.

The quarantine isn't based off of political orientation though, otherwise r/republican and r/conservative would also be quarantined.

Allegedly it's based off a few fringe comments that Media Matters found, with mostly single digit points:

https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/c5sbpm/reddit_q...

Those aren't representative of the sub. What's the real reason?

I don't think anyone has a scientific answer on what is "representative" of the sub besides it's clear support for the president, but honestly it doesn't seem out of line with my experiences of the_donald.

Thank goodness we don't run the country based on possibly biased anecdotes

Fortunately, reddit has not yet achieved statehood.

Wouldn’t it be invasive to demand that anyone handle anyone else’s business? There’s two freedoms being negotiated there, and the law origins basically boil down to — by emphasizing the business owners freedom the market should be able to support a solution for the other (or you go build that business, if it is needed). Total freedom in that system is higher than in the one that demands anyone do business with anyone.

R_TheDonald is a forum on someone’s product, there’s a low barrier erected here, they could go buy a url and some servers and continue their speech.

> Wouldn’t it be invasive to demand that anyone handle anyone else’s business?

Maybe, but it's a very common demand.

Because the business is choosing who they use their resources to rebroadcast under their name and the government has a monopoly on violence.

The government is not guaranteeing that they will rebroadcast whatever you want to say, they are just not giving you consequences for saying it.

Businesses aren't imposing consequences of violence on speech, they just are choosing not to be a part of it.

Someone not listening to you is not censorship.

It's a step in the direction to fascism, that doesn't mean it is fascist. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The downvote button is part of a ranking algorithm from the userbase, deboosting is part of the ranking algorithm from the host. Would you like it if a "platform" tied an anchor on your success/views because they didn't agree with your opinions? Since you believe in the paradox of tolerance do you agree that the US shouldn't let Islamic migrants come due to their belief in vile things such as throwing gays off roofs?

The USSR heavily censored content, were they stepping closer to fascism? I don't think you're using facism in the right context here, maybe you meant something else?

When you start from democracy, censorship becoming prevalent is a step towards fascism, authoritarianism, socialism, communism, technocracy, etc.

As someone else pointed out, Reddit's not a democracy so they're not starting as one either. Unless you count their private corporation as a democracy of sorts, but then they're most likely acting in their shareholders' interests. Maybe you meant the word authoritarian instead of fascist?

The US is a democratic republic and they are a US based company, so they should lean towards the laws under which they exist. I'm not playing this semantics game with you.

Has Reddit as a company inacted violence or imprisonment against anyone on /r/the_donald ? That's what government censorship consists of.

If you're not playing a semantics game then when why are you calling Reddit the United States?

> It's a step in the direction to fascism, that doesn't mean it is fascist.

Insisting a private business promote any and all content from anyone whatsoever, no matter how abhorrent or anti-social, in a specific way, seems like a bigger step in the wrong direction. Content is removed from Reddit every day for violating various subreddit policies; the only thing changing here is the way /r/The_Donald is presented with the rest of the site.

> Since you believe in the paradox of tolerance do you agree that the US shouldn't let Islamic migrants come due to their belief in vile things such as throwing gays off roofs?

This has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

I disagree completely. This is the same thing as the paradox of tolerance. If you want a tolerant society, you have to be intolerant against intolerance. If you want a non-fascist society you need to be fascist against fascism. Otherwise the intolerant/fascist side gains a platform and turns the community intolerant or fascist overall.

"If you want a non-fascist society you need to be fascist against fascism." This statement says it all, the ends justify the means. Sounds like every terrible dictator or authoritarian society that has existed on the Earth so far.

Deplatforming is to toxic mindsets as an immune system is to disease.

That's a good parallel actually. There are immune system diseases where the system kills the good cells too because it can't discriminate correctly. You're right!

Not necessarily. The Soviet government was engaged in significant censorship and was not fascist. Same with the CCP currently.

Fascism implies censorship, but censorship does not imply fascism.

You are correct that fascists aren't the only ones who censor. But that doesn't make it something that should be a normal part of a free, democratic society. (Your Soviet and CCP examples highlight that, which may have been your point.)

I said a step in the direction to fascism. I never asserted that censorship itself requires fascism. They usually come hand in hand though.

You could also say that “not listening to speech you despise is a step in the direction of fascism,” and it’s an equally empty statement. I mean, I guess it’s technically true. But it also means that literally everybody is a virulent and unrepentant fascist in their social lives.

Remaining unbiased in the secular/science domain is critical to the future of humanity. If you are going to be biased, please at least do your research. Don't just browse twitter and think you are informed.

You do realize that /r/the_donald immediately bans anyone that isn't 100% on board with the agressive propoganda right?

Well yeah: It's a sub-reddit for supporters only. Not an uncommon thing on Reddit. Everyone can lurk, but only supporters can post/comment.

It's the same as r/politics, just for right-wingers.

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