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Comment by nailer | Hacker News Reader

Sure:

> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant.

Could easily be used to ban Islam on Facebook. Or Scientology. Or far left / far right governments. Or Antifa / Proud Boys / other vigilante groups. Or popularly supported groups with a fringe element (BLM). Or free market capitalists, or communists.

As one should already gather from reading above, I am not suggesting that Facebook should ban any of these.

Ultimately every group doesn't tolerate something, and this argument could be used to ban them.

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To me a wholesale ban on a religion, whose practitioners vary wildly seems like a completely different thing.

Holocaust denial is pretty specific in comparison.

What % of a religion would need to be, say, anti-gay, before we deem the whole thing problematic and ban it from facebook?

The more I investigate "where to draw the line", the more I'm convinced we aren't capable of doing so in a just fashion.

I feel like any given region's propensity to say not like a particular sexual orientation is dramatically different from say holocaust denial that is straight up rooted in antisemitism.

So you're making a narrow case that holocaust denial is specifically bad and not endorsing more policing by facebook in general?

There's certainly precedent for holocaust denial being considered specifically and uniquely harmful, although it feels a little dated in the year 2020.

All hate groups seem dated, sadly hate doesn't seem to just sort of become a thing of the past :(

As far as you question goes to some extent yes. I wouldn't want to see some sort of litmus test for groups that clearly aren't purely a hate group.

A specific christian identity group (randomly made up here) that is hateful, no problem with removing them. All Christian groups, no.

> for groups that clearly aren't purely a hate group.

As an atheist, I do find them a hate group. Are you going to declare militant atheism intolerant, or religion?

I'm not at all sure why simply being an atheist would be a hate group.

I don't know what "militant atheism" is though.

Why not? Nearly every interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah is anti gay (I personally interpret the story as about not raping, but that's off topic).

Why wouldn't it be OK to ban a belief system that specifically discriminates against an innate feature?

I don't think that any system that has something you can find objectionable about it would mean you should ban a group.

There is a difference between groups with some questionable beliefs about others, and those whose groups are entirely about hating other people.

That's a reasonable answer, but note that's it's a different answer from the OP - you're not proposing to ban intolerance per se, but rather any group whose purpose is solely intolerance.

100% is fine.

That's the thing with neonazis. They are 100% in agreement about ethnic violence. It isn't a side effect of their belief system. It is the core of their belief system that undesirable people should be murdered.

Which neo nazi groups are currently a problem in the US?

What left wing groups would you consider banning?

Why is religion different from other views?

It kind of is a legal requirement in Germany already, so there is this.

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