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Comment by scarygliders | Hacker News Reader

Which is a direct result of a platform which allows free speech - including speech which neither you nor I may not like.

But to me, free speech means anyone can speak their mind, no matter how ghastly others find it.

And on Gab, I have encountered some pretty unsavoury speech - however, copious use of the Block feature on those I find especially distasteful means that I encounter less of those I find as such.

I'd rather have a platform based on free speech and be able to filter 'undesirables' out myself, than have the platform itself choose the speech it prefers me to see/hear/read.

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> But to me, free speech means anyone can speak their mind, no matter how ghastly others find it.

> And on Gab, I have encountered some pretty unsavoury speech - however, copious use of the Block feature on those I find especially distasteful means that I encounter less of those I find as such.

As I understand, being on Gab is pretty much seeking out "ghastly" and "unsavoury" speech. For instance, this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26145412) described it as:

> I signed up for a Gab account purely out of curiosity. There was literally nothing but misogynistic, homophobic, racist, antisemitic trash content on the entire timeline.

So I guess the question is: what content do you see after your "copious use of the Block feature."?

> I signed up for a Gab account purely out of curiosity. There was literally nothing but misogynistic, homophobic, racist, antisemitic trash content on the entire timeline.

That's interesting. Gab.com's timeline is public and is visible to everyone (there is no need to create an account). I just took a peek at it right now and I don't see anything misogynistic, etc. As you quote this particular as a supporting reference, would you be able to share some of Gab's specific timeline content that made that comment writer think that?

> As you quote this particular as a supporting reference, would you be able to share some of Gab's specific timeline content that made that comment writer think that?

You might want to ask them.

> I signed up for a Gab account purely out of curiosity. There was literally nothing but misogynistic, homophobic, racist, antisemitic trash content on the entire timeline.

This is clearly not true and easily shown to be so.

There's either free speech, which will include a lot of unsavory, horrible or downright evil content, or there is censorship. It's one or the other. And while censorship might be considered a reasonable trade-off, it immediately turns the platform into a mouthpiece for the politics of the people who run it. And once someone has that kind of power, its abuse is inevitable.

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