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Comment by metalgearsolid3 | Hacker News Reader

Do you not understand that these non-approved views, for the most part, come from actual nazis? Like, real life nazis. People that will kill you because of your skin colour.

I've read a lot of bootlicking comments on this website lately from people who want to talk in upper abstractions about free speech and discuss moral theory. You are all completely missing the point. That black people are needlessly DYING because real life white supremacists are having their voices promoted and platformed on the internet.

When it comes to activists eating their cake and having it too, yea, those are the privileged facebook employees taking a paid day off as a way of making a statement. What a joke.

You know who needs their voices heard? Who needs free speech? Black people. And our society silences them through gruesome MURDER. Murders with no justice. God forbid someone get their tweet "fact-checked".

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I think most of the people who push for free speech understand that sometimes people say things that almost everyone disagrees with. It's easy to sit back and call something "hate speech" or "inciting violence" or any other set of labels but in practice those who push free speech understand that while the examples brought up are usually fairly clear it can be complicated in general. I would suggest you assume a bit more good faith from the people you're arguing against.

I don't think gp assumes bad faith. The problem I see is that free speech absolutism is currently serving as a platform to protect those who are making death threats in social networks.

Sure sometimes is difficult to discern whether a post was an actual threat or just figurative language, but is it really that terrible to delete a post that was calling to shoot people even when maybe the intention was "just figurative"?

I'm sorry, but calling a comment "bootlicking" does not imply good faith, nor does a claim that their viewpoint overlooks Nazis or murder.

But to your comment, which I think I can respond to: if I perform illegal activities on a platform, I don't think there's really a choice at that point as to whether the platform can take it down. Death threats, posting child pornography, infringing upon copyright…all of those are things you can go to jail for anyways, so it's not really a "free speech online" issue at that point.

Aren't you the bootlicker in this situation? You know what will help black people have a voice? Not giving government and corporations more power to censor people.

If you are against institutional racism, then stop giving institutions the power to perpetuate it. In one breath you say black people need free speech and to have their voices heard. Then the next thing you say is that institutions should be given the power to censor and silence anyone who has the wrong opinion. Right now you feel as if the culture is on your side and your opinions are the right ones, so you won't be affected by such censorship. One day you will find out harshly that culture changes, and your opinions now will be the wrong ones.

Do you not understand that these non-approved views, for the most part, come from actual nazis?

Facebook has been more than happy to censor Palestinian activists at the behest of the Israeli government.

https://theintercept.com/2017/12/30/facebook-says-it-is-dele...

Handing over control of what we read, see and hear to a private company that acts as judge and jury should obviously concern anyone that can imagine situations in which it would be better to hear things that powerful actors do not want you to hear. Existing legal frameworks are already problematic ( there are many obscenity, blasphemy, sexuality-related examples you can find in recent history), but at least they require some sort of legal process with some sort of public input.

It would be ironic if your cheerleading for censorship resulted in your _obvious_ hate speech against bootlicking nazis being taken down during the second Trump term using the mechanisms you did your own part in establishing.

It took 2000 years of anti-Jewish hatred and even then it required violence for Nazis to "win" that argument. The anti-Jewish hatred was protected by blasphemy laws, and the Nazis were banned in the 1920s and several of them prosecuted under hate speech laws. And then there was no freedom of speech in Nazi Germany.

Hardly a glowing recommendation for limits on speech. It's easy to argue against National Socialism and it's easy to argue against anti-Semitism as long as free speech is allowed. Allow people to argue instead of fight violently and the better argument will win.

If you don't think you have a better argument than a Nazi then I'm really worried for you.

Was I making an argument?

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