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Comment by Planktonne | Hacker News Reader

> The voices also included white supremacists and neo-fascists. The only people who struggled to be heard, Dr. Friedman said, were “social justice warriors.” They were considered a threat to one of the core beliefs driving the discussion: free speech.

This is an age-old refrain and I am honestly surprised that people keep viewing it as a reasonable position. It's exactly the same line that Parler tried to peddle, along with every online community that eventually - shock horror - turns out to be a platform for hate rather than 'rational' thought.

Free speech is important, and should be defended. When your version of 'free speech' is only extended to alt-right ideals, you're not arguing in good faith for free speech.

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I think there's a misunderstanding here -- the social justice folks were/are still a core part of Scott's audience. Without them, you're right, the conversation would be pretty one sided. Or at least, incomplete.

The difference is that the usual tactics that would earn some social justice advocates the title "warrior" were not tolerated. E.g. empty accusations of someone being racist, sexist, etc.

And the above did not only apply to social justice folks, it applied as well to others. Scott handed out permanent and temporary bans to those all across the political spectrum based (at least in my view) mainly on how mean they were being.

Where's the best place now for this kind of discussion?

SSC rebooted as https://astralcodexten.substack.com/ sooo probably there. I wasn't a part of the Discord for SSC before, and I'm only barely lurking there now, but I presume that's still the place.

IMO we keep using phrase "free speech is important" when what we mean is "free discussion is important". SSC was a place for free discussion, which is why that all would have worked.

AFAIK we do this because "free speech" has particular historical and legal meaning, even if the explanations as to why it's a good thing are mostly about free discussion.

Free speech is important, but the current threat to free speech largely comes from the social justice sector, which loves to mock it as Freeze Peach. To use their very own rationalizations against them, they are quite well-represented elsewhere and therefore do not "need" to be heard there.

It is both practical and -- one might dare hope -- instructive for the left to have to struggle for a little free speech, as the empathy upon which they pride themselves is quite selective; finally, they might understand what it is like to have their voices systematically erased.

> Freeze Peach

Learn something new every day.

See the MetaFilter (MeFi) discussion on this same article:

https://www.metafilter.com/190454/The-New-York-Times-vs-Slat...

Wow, I keep being surprised that MeFi is still a thing.

> When your version of 'free speech' is only extended to alt-right ideals, you're not arguing in good faith for free speech.

Parler was open to left-wing as well. And the fact that SJWs have trouble to be heard when they want to restrict what other people say makes perfect sense. Join the conversation, but don't try to shut it down.

Its funny how there seems to be this tug-o-war in definitions of "free speech and "racist".

"Free speech" seems to be this kind of good that everyone wants to not oppose.

"Racist" seems to be this kind of evil that everyone wants to avoid being called.

Didn't Parler ban dissenters?

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/parler-banning-leftist/

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-pr...

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