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Comment by AlexMax | Hacker News Reader

So I've been sitting in this comment thread for a while and something has been bothering me. I'm noticing two things that are consistently brought up:

1. Free speech as some sort of abstract enlightenment ideal.

2. Cases of clear injustice in our past that stemmed from denial of free speech.

But that's not really why this article was posted, was it? It's really part of the ongoing modern conversations we're having around certain groups claiming their free speech rights are being infringed.

I think that injustice was done to Galileo, but I'm not going to shed a tear for somebody who was booted from an internet community for arguing that certain races have a lower IQ and LGBT+ folk are degenerates that need to be sterilized, even if they do it in a faux-earnest way.

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> for somebody who was booted from an internet community for arguing that certain races have a lower IQ and LGBT+ folk are degenerates that need to be sterilized

Usually this is not why people are booted off from platforms but rather because they do not follow a specific rhetoric or because somebody claims that they said X while they actually said Y. See the recent stallman case for example. I was actually censored from a certain platform for defending stallman's right to express what he thinks regarding pedophilia.

> for arguing that certain races have a lower IQ

Is this not a science related-debate? If anything this (in general things related to science) is the kind of speech that should be protected the most.

> Usually this is not why people are booted off from platforms

As someone who worked on a social media platform (large, but not one of the largest), I got to see the evidence that admins and moderators used to make their judgements (which they aren't given much time to do) and frequently the banned user mischaracterizes their actual behavior (both current and previous) and has an incomplete understanding of what the ToS says or the implications of the literal ToS text.

I don't know about Stallman or more academic exercises, but the average person arguing on social media is very likely to go over the threshold of acceptable behavior and may not even know what the threshold for which social media companies are required to report content to police.

The best thing platforms can do to mitigate some of these issues is to give public explanations of their ToS as the moderators are taught to interpret them (basically reduce the information loss from the ToS legalese) and to give moderators more freedom to explain exactly what behavior violated exactly what part of the ToS (reducing some of the confusion from ambiguity).

> I was actually censored from a certain platform for defending stallman's right to express what he thinks regarding pedophilia.

So? I've been booted from platforms over way less justifiable reasoning than that. When that happens, you go find a new place to hang out.

> Is this not a science related-debate?

Not anymore. As a species we lost our science privileges on those subjects after we realized what horrors scientific racism led to.

Banning someone from an internet forum or project is one thing.

Trashing a person's reputation and character through a targeted internet campaign (hello Twitter mobs) is another matter.

> Trashing a person's reputation and character through a targeted internet campaign (hello Twitter mobs) is another matter.

Isn't that also free speech? Or should free speech only apply to the first hypothetical individual stumping for "race realists"?

I think it is free speech. But I think it is also uncouth behaviour and will be looked back on with embarrassment by most who participated in it in a few years time.

I think the solution is a better mechanism to tune out people who are obviously (to us) insane or morally bankrupt. Unfortunately, I see no easy way to do that without strengthening our filter bubbles even more. Maybe widespread meditation practice would help the race realists and the bigoteers be more visible without having as much impact.

> will be looked back on with embarrassment by most who participated in it in a few years time

I hope you're right but I don't share your optimism. The "silent majority" has failed to stand up against this behavior so far; I'm not confident they'll draw the line in the near future.

Defamation, threats of violence, harassment, etc are not free speech, but they are central to Twitter mobs. I would also contend that a concerted petition for an employer to remove their employee constitutes a credible threat since employers often do terminate employees for being targeted by mobs. It really should be only a theoretical question; however, because we ought to have legal protection for employment that would declaw these mobs (especially since the mobs themselves are prejudiced on the basis of race, sex, religion, gender identity, etc--enabling them to have power over an individual's employment constitutes de facto employment discrimination).

EDIT: Downvoters, what do you object to? Do you really think defamation and threats are not free speech? Or do you not think these are cornerstones of Twitter mobs?

Overwhelmingly it is the identity-politics/SJW crowd that seems to be going after individuals, targeting the vulnerable, and attempting to ruin actual lives.

Yep. Anita Sarkeesian never had mountains of death threats sent her way. Nope never.

An acquaintance of mine was called out on fox news for "teaching the most anti-american class in america" (it was a class on police brutality). Death threats for months.

It is speech. I believe that they should be free to express it only if

- they allow their target to reply to it (and have it displayed alongside with their post) -- this is the most important

- they are being honest in their arguments (not intentionally constructing straw-men for example or repeating over and over the same thing that was answered before)

Free speech is only useful if applied to controversial matters. Everything else doesn't need free speech.

You're being downvoted but...you're objectively correct. As Noam Chomsky said, "if we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise we do not believe in it at all." Or Voltaire: "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

May I ask, what is the controversial issue you are most unsure you are on the right side about?

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