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Comment by freeflight | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, but what about deplatforming speech I don't like?

These last few weeks I've had some really astounding conversations on Reddit. People are literally demanding censorship, doubling down on the "political correctness" enforcement aka "the fight against toxicity".

Yet at the same time, there's massive outrage over companies actually complying with that, as it happened with ActiBlizz, only then to backfire in a shitstorm along the lines of "Not that political incorrectness, that's the good kind, you are not supposed to censor that!".

Turns out that the same speech can be very politically incorrect in one place, while being considered the epitome of political correctness in another.

For companies that work on an international scale, this means there really is not much wiggling room, so they will end up rather over moderating than under moderating.

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I think you're seeing hypocrisy when it isn't there.

There's nothing hypocritical about US citizens not wanting US companies operating under US law to censor their US media for the benefit of the Chinese government, even if they may be perfectly fine with their own demands to censor their own media.

You may dislike it, but it's hardly an inconsistent position.

"I want this speech censored, not that speech". (I agree with this, I don't agree with that- so censor it).

Of course it's completely hypocritical. The exact specifics of the situation w.r.t China are irrelevant.

What they really want is for them to have the right to certify what speech is acceptable - by "they", I refer to the cancel culture crowd. Objective standards would work again their baises, so while they turn up the rhetoric on "hate speech", sometimes, they'll be making arguments for it, if it suits their political narrative. It's the classic "rules for thee, not for me" case.

Blizzard/China is particularly confusing, as they hate the grassroots organic support that Hong Kong has for capitalism, but don't particularly like China despite it being a socialist Mecca

Wouldn’t the socialist meccas be places like the Nordic countries?

Strong social safety nets and workers rights, freedom of expression and religion, etc?

I don’t think the people who identify as woke are in favor of top down party rule which stamps out dissent and free speech and puts Muslims in organ harvesting concentration camps.

I think they’re against unfettered capitalism where wealth accrues at the top while workers rights, infrastructure, and education crumble or are taken over by private enterprises which skyrocket costs for essentials at the expense of the citizens.

Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a lot of black/white thinking out there in these cloisters and communities where anything capitalist is equivalent to bad, but people who can’t acknowledge that the world’s a particularly messy place full of ambiguities, well, they generally don’t make good leaders as far as I can tell.

Nordic countries aren't socialist, they are regular market economies with high taxes. Those high taxes go towards healthcare for all, and a larger safety net.

Quoting Denmark's PM [1]: > I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.

[1]: https://www.thelocal.dk/20151101/danish-pm-in-us-denmark-is-...

Certainly, but I think that Nordic model is sort of the aim.

It provides socialism for essentials and capitalism for the rest with a relatively libertarian approach to personal beliefs.

I know it’s my preferred model.

> Objective standards would work again their baises

The thing is, what are "objective standards"? Even inside individual societies vastly different Overton windows exist.

As such it's impossible to have an "objective standard" for what accepted opinions are and whatnot, this even applies to the classification of content that seems pretty straight forward, like pictures.

The infamous picture of Phan Thi Kim Phuc aka Napalm Girl is by most people considered of historic importance and an icon for social movements that would be of utmost importance nowadays, the peace movement. Yet by "objective standards" of Facebook moderators [0], it's also child pornography/nudity [1] and as such was deleted.

The only reason this was even noticed was that a reporter tried to post it, and then followed up on it getting deleted. There is no telling how many people before him tried to post it but were denied, with no access to media to make it known or no drive to follow up on it, people just accept it and move on.

That's why there is also no telling how many other potential "Napalm Girls", have been censored out of awareness in this way, hidden from the public view like they never even happened.

Trying to apply this whole mess to the written word, to political opinions, that's even more problematic. It's also not exactly something new, Germany has been trying to do that for decades, literally censoring and banning movies, music, books, video games, controlling speech to such absurd degrees that even certain number combinations on license plates are banned because they are considered "Nazi-Code".

Did it work? Not really [2], it only made people more careful about where and how to voice their opinions, it also gave them a massive persecution complex which is pretty hard to deny things being as they are, and so the problem still keeps on festering while everybody pretends it doesn't exist because we've made it illegal to do the "wrong think".

[0] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/327887/pbs-th...

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37318031

[2] https://www.dw.com/en/germany-torch-wielding-neo-nazis-march...

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