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Comment by offby37years | Hacker News Reader

"With regard to freedom of speech there are basically two positions: you defend it vigorously for views you hate, or you reject it and prefer Stalinist/fascist standards. It is unfortunate that it remains necessary to stress these simple truths." — Chomsky

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Neither Parler (nor Gab) defended the views they hated. If you've seen the front page of either you can't argue in good faith that they did. In fact, they banned dissenters.

By this standard Chomsky would argue Parler "prefers Stalinist standards." Do you believe they do?

Yes. Gab is a Christian safe-space. Parler a right-wing safe-space. Twitter a left-wing safe-space.

Centralised communication platforms all eventually trend towards echo chambers.

Decentralisation is the key to restoring unfettered free speech.

I'd like to see an Internet rfc for how social media companies could share content (RSS may be sufficient) and then have the Feds refuse to have accounts on sites that do not "tear down their walls" and allow for easy, 1st order, content sharing

    Gab is a Christian safe-space

Christ was a Jew, and his followers' safe-space is anti-semitic?

If you think _Christianity_ is an inoculation against anti-Semitism, well, you might want to have a look at Jewish history in Europe.

I don't, which is why I didn't say I did.

I don't believe a site focused on anti-Semitism is a "Christian" site or full of people practicing the teachings of Jesus.

I'm surprised that this revelation comes as a surprise to you.

The core problem is that anybody can call themself a Christian. Anybody can say that they're following Christ's teaching, living a Christian life, etc - regardless of how closely it tracks with the things that Christ did or said.

(By "can", here, I mean can in a practical sense. I mean that these things occur. I do not mean that any of these things are approved of by any particular natural or supernatural being(s).)

By extension, anybody can hang up a shingle and call themselves a Christian church. As a result, you have thousands of Christian sects. These sects exist within a spectrum ranging from somewhat pro-semitic to rabidly anti-semitic.

Even within sects - especially the largest - you will find that adherents are scattered over a pretty broad range of that spectrum.

So, yes - there are a fair number of anti-semitic Christians. Their existence should not come as a surprise to anyone.

And that's before we consider eschatology...

Therefore Parler, which would often ban leftist content, and for that matter any platform that rejects doxxing, threats of violence, off topic or illegal content, is run by Stalinists.

That seems like a perfectly reasonable conclusion and not a thought-terminating cliche at all. I guess we can all just pack it in and go home, no point in even debating this issue anymore. Everyone is a Stalinist.

The "tolerating intolerance" paradox rears its hideous head once again. As someone who grew up during the Internet's early "fuck censorship" days, the cognitive dissonance causes me daily pain.

Every site on the early internet that dealt with user-submitted content practiced censorship. Even USENET allowed censorship. There were no "fuck censorship" days on the early internet, even the edgiest of edgelord sites drew a line somewhere.

There was a casual distinction between removing spam/trolling and actual censorship, and since "platforms" weren't as much of a thing anyone could go set up their own mailing list or web site or IRC server and still be part of the action. The word "censorship" back then implied that (and it seems juvenile now) the gubbermint was comin' ta get all us freethinkers. The belief was that the Free Flow of Information would allow the truth to win out, and that as more people came online they would cast aside their illusions and embrace whatever vaguely anarcho-whatever utopian vision permeated the Internet back then.

At least, me and my fellow kids had that naive belief. Maybe the older folks online already knew better.

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