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Comment by lordlimecat | Hacker News Reader

The definition of free speech that stormfront likes is also the one that the supreme court has upheld and that is necessary for a thriving marketplace of ideas.

Bad, ignorant, hateful ideas are bad because they are wrong; if they were true, you would not call facts "bad". That being the case, the correct response is to defeat them with truth-- not censorship, whether state or privately enacted. Censorship is just admitting that you dislike the ideas but cannot argue them down with reason and are resorting to the cudgel.

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> you would not call facts "bad"

But we do. Any facts that cast certain religions (but not others!), or certain lifestyle choices (but not others!) in a bad light are considered _____-ophobic. Bad.

Facts are routinely politicized and made out to be evil.

> Censorship is just admitting that you dislike the ideas but cannot argue them down with reason

This is true. And this is why it is so hard to have an honest debate. Many people in the United States (perhaps elsewhere?) think with their feelings, and not facts or reason. The videos of people screaming over the top of presenters on college campuses are case-in-point.

The world as a whole is marching towards the cudgel. Hate speech laws are a manifestation of this. What remains is the removal of an individual's right to defend their life. After that we have tyranny.

==The world as a whole is marching towards the cudgel. Hate speech laws are a manifestation of this. What remains is the removal of an individual's right to defend their life. After that we have tyranny.==

In my view, the most powerful person in the world unilaterally shutting down companies he disagrees with is much closer to tyranny.

> In my view, the most powerful person in the world unilaterally shutting down companies he disagrees with is much closer to tyranny.

If he succeeds, it is definitely a step in that direction.

Doesn't have to succeed. That would of course be worse, but the threat alone does a lot of work.

How many media outlets are thinking twice before possibly attracting his ire?

> But we do. Any facts that cast certain religions (but not others!), or certain lifestyle choices (but not others!) in a bad light are considered _____-ophobic. Bad. Facts are routinely politicized and made out to be evil.

So true! People should consider why we call politically correctness that. We don't call them facts or truth, but that they can be said and not hurt "feelings".

> also the one that the supreme court has upheld

the Supreme Court certainly has not upheld compelled speech. And internet theories about private services as de facto public forums continue to be defeated in court (PragerU v Google being the most recent example).

See also the recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision on whether or not free speech applies on a private platform (spoiler: it doesn't).

"Despite YouTube's ubiquity and its role as a public-facing platform, it remains a private forum, not a public forum subject to judicial scrutiny under the First Amendment," the court said."

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/youtu...

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