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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

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Can we agree that there is a difference between an on screen nipple or saying fuck on TV and the POTUS actively undermining democracy?

The general talk of free speech and censoring is not really useful here without specifics. Just like someone can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater, there are other things we are finding that may be similar in nature. I think a more useful discussion could be around the specifics. Should the POTUS be able to communicate anything they want? Should platforms be forced to carry it?

So you think Trump is the first POTUS to make objectively false statements and have those amplified over mass media?

I think he’s the first to do so on the scale of thousands of such statements.

First? No. Most prolific? I think so. He's also one of the first to make heavy use of direct social media, which is different than mass media of old.

Notice also I didn't say Trump, but POTUS in general. What do we want to do here going forward? Should the POTUS be treated differently than a private citizen?

What this current period reminds me of historically is McCarthyism, except we have the POTUS lobbing baseless claims instead of a senator. I don't think McCarthyism impacted the general public as much as claims undermining the election does though.

The problem is not all the claims you might consider baseless actually are and neither you nor I have any way of really knowing.

Which one hasn't, might be a better question.

>the POTUS actively undermining democracy?

I think the "POTUS actively undermining democracy" is a gaslighting / pearl clutching for what is a crass person but otherwise business as usual in the White House...

Apparently Patriot Act, mass surveillance, Guantanamo, the "WMD", Echelon, trillion dollar bailouts, false congress testimonies, etc weren't "undermining democracy", but an old guy tweeting some braggadocio/BS is.

And those that designed, established, and voted those things (e.g. Clinton, Bush, and Obama) are all love for each other, and all stand "united" against the "big threat" that is this guy...

Talk about a circus...

We're downvoting you, but there is a valid point: many of those things are also bad. The false narrative that started the Iraq war had bi-partisan support and was popular with the public.

Treating everything as if there were only two sides is part of the problem. But I see dissent within the democrat party over these issues - and not within the republican party, who have supported everything that Trump has said and done.

I think this reveals that the conservative sudden claim for free speech is exactly this kind of hypocrisy?

You can be against censorship and also be against the type of racist, xenophobic, sexist etc content you find unchecked on places like Parler, Gab, 4chan.

Kind of like how you can be against crime and also against prisons.

The fact is that every decision is a balance of consequences.

It's not that simple. Xenophobic content, for example, is "unchecked" on any U.S. owned platform, so is some racism, but not racism against black people specifically. At the same time in most other countries in the world racism, and especially racism against black people, isn't even a thing, but xenophobia is. So it's very unlikely for someone to truly sincerely be both against racist content and xenophobic content at the same time and even more unlikely to also sincerely be against censorship, then it's getting into very dystopian views territory, you can't hold such views without being exposed to massive amounts of propaganda.

I think this comment gets at part of the issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25100584

Reply on news.ycombinator.com