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Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

Do you have a suggestion as to what to do about all the misinformation and hate out there? Clearly ignoring it or "drowning it out with correct information" is not working. I'm uncomfortable with censorship in any form, but am also not comfortable forcing companies to give a platform to sexist/racist/homophobic/transphobic/etc. drivel.

Definitely acknowledge and agree that this deplatforming-by-companies mindset is backfiring in this particular case.

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This only makes any sense if you believe that censorship will _only_ be used for misinformation, as opposed to information people do not like. Otherwise, you could end up raising the density of misinformation as "true" information is filtered out.

If YouTube existed a hundred years ago, and censorship of "misinformation" was an accepted practice, would there be any doubt that videos on women's suffrage, black rights, the perils of McCarthyism, that any of those would have stayed up?

I'm not questioning or debating that here. I'm merely asking what the solution is, then?

Why? History has proven time and time again that more speech is better than less speech. Better it be out in the open and freely attacked, then hidden and locked away so it can dwell and grow in the dark moist corners.

Events over the past ~5 years seem to put that belief/pattern in doubt. While I'm not so arrogant as to definitively assert that our current time is the grand exception to the rule, I think it's worth examining that perhaps what we're doing to combat disinformation and racist/sexist/etc. speech isn't working.

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