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Comment by WorkingDead | Hacker News Reader

Right, the healthy discussions over r/politics is what they should encourage. /s

Yes, /r/politics is an echo chamber. But there is an enormous difference between that and T_D. I don't ever recall seeing posts on /r/politics being stickied that called for violence, whereas that happened routinely on T_D.

Your comment is not sarcastic, it is misleading, misiniformed and ultimately destructive.

BS. The only difference between the two discussion groups is that TD dropped all the pretense. I have seen the same kinds of things that are loosely defined as 'calls to violence' in both places.

I don't agree with you, but even if I did, the "pretense" being referred to is "we don't actually want violence inflicted on the other party". I'd say that's a pretty important pretense to keep

The “only difference” between a group of fascist white supremacists who fantasize about violently exterminating their perceived enemies and a bunch of ordinary people in a community organized around discussing newspaper/news magazine articles who are scared about the growing threat of fascist white supremacists and want them voted out of office and removed from positions of power is that the former have “dropped the pretense”?

I guess that’s one way of looking at it...

"Dropped the pretense" is an inference you're making into the motivations of the posters.

Indeed, the difference between making a direct call to violence and an inferred one are very different things.

The problems with TD stemmed far beyond inciting or glorifying violence. As mentioned, the biggest problem with /r/politics is it's an absolute echo chamber. Not even in the same realm.

People on the donald openly celebrated violence in top upvoted posts. Tons of open racism. Politics has turned into a bit of an echo chamber compared to 10 years ago, but it is in no way the same as T_D.

That "dropping pretense" you describe carries a LOT more weight than you are giving it, in who it attracts, and the behaviors it promotes.

It's just a thinly veiled allusion to "dog whistling" which all of these supposed free speech zealots like to throw around whenever they feel that their safe space is being questioned.

I'm no fan of r/politics, but to actually believe that they're basically the same as TD is just wild.

I would very much like to see a study on that. Because of the reddit quarantine I can't use a subreddit analysis tool to compare the subs. The only conclusion I can see is that both politics and the donald is likely to share the same word as the most commonly used: Trump.

I would in particular be interesting to know if there is a significant difference in offensive words used in either sub.

T_D moved offsite to escape censorship from reddit, i will not post the url here but it is easily findable

Free speech isn't hard to understand as a concept. If someone says something you disagree with, you debate them. Echo chambers radicalize us all. No one is immune to the effects of groupthink.

So, how do you feel about the fire-in-a-crowded-theater exception?

Not sure what relevance an "exception" a judge made up to justify censoring protest against WW2 japanese internment camps has to this conversation.

Schenck was WWI (1919) and concerned anti-draft literature distribution. You've got the wrong case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

Damnit. Thank you.

Right spirit, completely wrong details. Story of my debugging life :D

You're allowed to shout that there's a fire in a crowded theater if there's actually a fire. No one has ever argued that there is an unlimited right to say whatever you want whenever you want (libel and slander laws exist and don't seem to be controversial). If you falsely shout that there's a fire and cause a stampede and people are injured and it can be proven that you did it with malicious intent, you will be prosecuted or sued, but this isn't fundamentally different than libel or slander laws. Finally, you should know that the "fire in a crowded theater" phrase came from a unanimous Supreme Court decision that endorsed censorship and suppression of speech that criticized conscription during World War 1.

Fire in a crowded theater is not an exception according to the Supreme Court and hasn't been for a while.

Clear and present danger is the standard.

According to the Supreme Court saying that all members of a certain minority group in must be killed, is covered under free speech, but saying that a specific member of that minority group must be killed at 9 p.m. tomorrow night, it's not free speech but clear and present danger.

I recommend you check this out:

https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...

Note that I don’t think that Reddit policing its content is censorship, I am only responding to the “fire in a crowded theater” Internet trope.

r/politics is where I always go to feel bad about myself and the rest of the world

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