I will let you state your opinion, but you don't get to demand immunity from consequences.
Some opinions are genuinely indefensible.
But... would I let myself attend an industry conference that's also being attended by someone who voted for a politician whose opinions or policies are hostile to me?
Yes. Of course.
I'd also attend a conference that's being attended by someone who thinks I'm going to hell when I die. I'd even attend a conference where one of the speakers thinks that. Because I don't have to trust conference attendees or speakers with my life or health; I don't have to interact with them at all, and if I do, it'll be in a busy public place; and if they were the kind of person to go into a blind rage when they meet someone like me in public, they probably would've done it already and gotten caught.
For a conference organizer, the primary question is how to make it a positive experience for as many visitors as possible, and that's the criteria they will use when determining who gets to visit.
If allowing a particular person to visit means several others will refrain from visiting, is it then a good idea to permit that? That's a value judgement for the organizers to make.
And if you think they made the wrong decision, feel free to tell them so or even to boycott it yourself, giving them a reason to consider other potential solutions.
That's part of it, but it's also a value judgment for everyone else to make.
In many cases, the rest of us in society care enough about how those decisions are made that we've passed laws prohibiting businesses from rejecting customers for certain reasons.
For example, if your market research shows that allowing Jews into your event results in lower overall attendance, because too many of the other potential attendees are anti-Semites who refuse to go to an event that allows Jews, you still don't get to ban them. We've established that making those opportunities equally available to all religions, ethnicities, genders, races, etc. is more important than maximizing profit. Even when that discrimination isn't illegal, it's often frowned upon by the culture.
And one reason for that is that we distinguish between the business deciding you can't visit them, and you deciding you can't visit them. We expect businesses to be inclusive, even if that means more people choose to exclude themselves -- because this way, the people who are excluded at least get a choice.
>And if you think they made the wrong decision, feel free to tell them so or even to boycott it yourself, giving them a reason to consider other potential solutions.
I've got no reason to attend a Kubernetes conference anyway, but I have the same interest as any other member of society in ensuring that people get treated fairly.
There's no universal legal protection against an entity responding to another person's general beliefs, if that entity consider those to be harmful.
We do not want to obstruct society from holding people accountable for harmful behavior.
Oh, you'll let me? How magnanimous.
How about:
* Nobody asked you.
* Who do you think you are that I would need your permission?
* I wasn't asking permission. I was asking for a indication of interest in genuine conversation. Something you clearly lack.
* What opinions I hold regarding controversial issues are my own. What I was offering was examples of (potentially) prohibited things some people believe that are more nuanced than the cartoon bigotry.
* see above
* your misinterpretation of my comment almost seems deliberate, so "no u"
* while they surely are your own, you don't get to demand that other people must ignore their own concerns if they belive your opinions make you untrustworthy or dangerous to them.
I am allowed to base my own opinions about you on what opinions you say that you have. And I am allowed to refuse to associate with you.
If you openly tell people that you want people like me dead, I will never let you do any job for me where my life might be at risk (like medical jobs or similar). You don't get to demand undeserved trust.
The whole point of this conversation was the suggestion that there might be non-"hateful" ideas being repressed, and important conversations that are prevented, that are prohibited by hate speech legislation. To suggest that I might actually want other people dead is a far reach.
I'm not quite sure what there is to misinterpret. Whatever your intent may be (and if it is different that what I describe here, please clarify) your words are pretty confrontational. You suggest I might want people dead, and then seem to vaguely imply you might have some ability to stop me if you don't like what I have to say. You talk about "letting" me share, and about "proactive intervention". What exactly would "proactive intervention" look like? Are you a moderator, or someone else with authority here? Are you someone with the ability and willingness to dox random anonymous strangers on the internet? Or are you just another member here with the ability to downvote/flag?
You would make it literally illegal to counteract such behavior online.
Your rule would necessarily punish Facebook for banning stalkers, punish reddit for banning racist subreddits if they're not strictly illegal, and so on.
The rule you suggest would protect their ability to harass others regardless of if that's what you intend or not. You can't just handwave away those consequences.
Can you prove that it's in fact not super trivial to circumvent bans on non hateful ideas (in non-totalitarian states)? Are here not millions of more websites besides Facebook et al? Is it not easy to go to another website?
The fact is that your proposed rule is far worse than the alternatives.
You're suggesting it's a better tradeoff to forcibly kill quality standards online so that everybody can express literally anything that's not illegal, when it's equally possible to just... Not make a law like that, and instead encourage people to go to other websites.
Each and every person should have their individual freedom to set their standards for what opinions and beliefs they approve of (the edge cases where certain collective decisions are socially harmful are covered by antidiscrimination law).
This extends also to website owners. This means that I as a forum moderator (in a different place, on reddit) has the freedom to ban others from my forum for engaging in what I consider abusive behavior. I get to decide if and when I want to take action.
The admins on Hacker News can likewise ban me from here.
Proactive intervention usually involves government censorship or police action, but can also be considered to cover blocklists and spam filters online.
Each and every one of us decides over our own "domains".
In spaces where I'm not a mod/admin (most of them, that is), "letting you" only means not reporting the account, etc.
Today's trade-off is that every person either accepts the rules for approved content that somebody else has set on their own website... Or your start your own website. Or both at once for that matter, it's trivial to visit multiple websites at once since most browsers have tabs.
If your opinion is banned in one place online, it's easy to go to another to post it. That's how the web worked since the very beginning!
What proposed rule? Please quote me so I know what you're talking about.
> Each and every person should have their individual freedom to set their standards for what opinions and beliefs they approve of
Exactly! Which is why I oppose hate speech legislation. I believe that I, as an adult, have the freedom to hear whatever opinions or ideas I wish and the responsibility to come to my own conclusion on the truth of such ideas. To use the force of law to restrict the expression of ideas merely because they cause offense conflicts directly both with my rights and responsibilities.
> Proactive intervention usually involves government censorship or police action, but can also be considered to cover blocklists and spam filters online.
My question to you, is what are you specifically threatening the context of this specific conversation? It sounds like you're not threatening anything beyond the powers granted to every user on this site, which makes your initial comment look like nothing but useless posturing.