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Comment by cmeacham98 | Hacker News Reader

Parler is basically a direct clone of twitter's basic features. They use different names but have features similar to that of Twitter's tweet/like/retweet.

Gab's current iteration is a mastodon fork (although iirc they don't participate in the fediverse via activitypub). Gab is similar to Twitter like Parler but is less of a direct clone, offering other features Twitter doesn't have.

Gab has been along for longer and seems to be more popular. Both market to the (mostly American) far right, with their shtick being basically "you can say anything that is not directly illegal in the US without fear of being banned or other moderation". Gab seems to have been more competent in coming back up after bans from their hosting provider and other partners.

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> "you can say anything that is not directly illegal in the US without fear of being banned or other moderation".

That's not right at all. They both ban adult content and Gab will ban blasphemy. They also frequently remove drug content.

They're stricter on banning speech than Twitter and the sites they fled from.

> you can say anything that is not directly illegal in the US [or frowned upon by what we* believe God would frown upon] without fear of being banned or other moderation

it's not censorship when you like it!

*) we = right leaning americans

this is almost correct.

probably correct that they censor based on conservative opinions. not correct that right leaning americans are conservative. all conservatives are right leaning tho. not the other way around.

I'm not even sure what right leaning or conservative means these days.

The "right" was merely copied from an ancestor post.

Conservative means what it has always meant. The political belief that the law should bind outsiders but not protect them and that it should protect insiders but not bind them.

That's not what conservative means in my country, and frankly without a prefix it's indecipherable. If someone at the pub here says "I'm a conservative", you can actually infer nothing from that statement.

In most cases, you'd probably be correct in thinking that the person would be more inclined to preserve the status quo than changing it too quickly, for fear of unforeseen consequences.

Also, a simple Google search and 30-second skim of Wikipedia throws a wrench in your assertion.

> In most cases, you'd probably be correct in thinking that the person would be more inclined to preserve the status quo than changing it too quickly, for fear of unforeseen consequences.

This does not encompass reactionary conservatives that have become incredibly prominent as a political group in the United States, to the point of completely taking over one of the two political parties.

Also there are laws against said content:

https://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/state-dept-offi...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_obscenity_law

Gab's censorship of adult content is considerably stricter than obscenity law.

They're not a free speech network, they're just a network where racism is permitted speech and anything they don't like is banned.

The main reason they banned "adult content" was simply that porn posters will fill any available online free forum. Reasonably enough, as a forum aimed at free speech, Gab wasn't eager to pay the hideous storage and networking costs of becoming another site like Tumblr, where that content had simply taken over...

Not if handled in the current social media "standard" way: Twitter, Reddit (and ex-Tumblr) keep nsfw content from sight of non-nsfw interested users by special handling - semi-hiding the category, won't show up on searches etc but can be linked to if you have nfsw opt-in.

> Reasonably enough, as a forum aimed at free speech, Gab wasn't eager to pay the hideous storage and networking costs

...of allowing certain speech.

Because that's, obviously, what “free speech” means.

Can you give a citation for Gab banning blasphemy? After a few quick searches I was unable to find any reference to that anywhere else.

I have not seen Gab ban blasphemy. Andrew Torba has been pretty clear that any speech that is legal under the US Constitution (with a few exceptions for directly/personally violent threats, doxxing, etc.) is permitted on Gab. A small number of people who have abused the rules have been banned, but in every one of those cases that I'm aware of, it was for generally antisocial and abusive behavior, not the content of their speech.

Banning adult and drug content is understandable though. Most social media sites do that because it's a liability.

Blasphemy is different but I haven't seen corroborating evidence of that.

Even if they did ban blasphemy, it would still be less strict on banning speech than Twitter where entire heads of state have been banned for saying words people don't like (or for being from Iran)

"you can say anything that is not directly illegal in the US without fear of being banned or other mode“

For a non-American, could you explain how this is far right? Sounds pretty liberal.

Adverse selection. If your differenciating feature is "you can say what you want without getting banned", your userbase is going to tend towards people who get banned on other platforms. In todays climate, that is mostly the far right.

Compounding this is PR and network effects. Once they become known as the place for the far right, then more far righters go there, and more distant people avoid it.

It’s mostly normal people freely associating with other normal people, without fascist establishment elite government control, like Twitter, Facebook, elite media, and most other social media.

Did you ever wonder why you are calling others far right or far left? Why are you referring to other American citizens with those terms? Who is pushing those terms that divide the vast majority of normal Americans? Who stands to gain?

The fascist establishment elite are getting richer by the second, while the lower classes are calling each other insulting names and fighting amongst themselves.

There’s an old movie called They Live. When you watch it now, you can call it time shifted documentary.

For those unaware, the premise of They Live is that the elites and one-percenters are actually inter-dimensionally traveling space aliens.

It's a great movie, but a metaphor not a "time-shifted documentary", unless I missed the latest Qdrop.

Wait, you object to describing "american citizens" with political labels and then in the very next paragraph use a political label on a specific group of american citizens.

Interesting position.

Alternative viewpoint: platforms without censorship tend to be right wing because that is what succeeds in a free marketplace of ideas. Left wing ideas require censorship to thrive.

Mainstream ideas require censorship to survive. In the 60-70s it was the left that was obsessed with free speech because their views were less mainstream, something many people on the side of censorship seem to ignore.

As glen greenwald says, censorship eventually is always about those in power staying in power. Unless you are in power it’s sad to see so much pro censorship these days.

Read up on Ira Glasser at the ACLU or watch the documentary. Why did he as a Jew defend neo nazis?

Counterpoint: Parler and Gab have plenty of censorship, so those don't fit your 'platforms without censorship' description.

How many left wing dictators have there been?

Stalin and Pol Pot are good examples.

Again, this only applies if we blindly use the cold war association that communism is a left wing ideal, without actually looking at the policy of the people.

The reality is that communism as a movement spans a wide political range, and both Stalin and Pol Pot had diverged significantly from any form of leftist Marxism in their hunt for power.

Even stalinist supporters decry Pol Pot https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/khmerrouge.html

Looking at simple party names is a red herring at best. It's best to look at the policy choices of the dictators in question.

Hundreds. Stalin. Hitler. Mao. The list of genocides is longer than my arm.

This is a very interesting world view you have where Hitler is left wing. I think that alone scuppers any substance to your argument.

Stalin and Mao would only be left wing if you prescribe to the thought that communism by nature must only be left wing. I assume your train of thought on Hitler is similar because you're likely equating the socialist word in the Nazi party to left wing socialism.

At best this is dishonest and ignoring actual policy.

Isn't the flipside of that coin that leftism is more or less just plain good and ceases to be leftism the moment it deviates from what we think of as good, ie. basically a No True Scotsman?

One reason the Marxist kind of thought pattern is dangerous is because of something like that. The ideas in and of themselves can sound good and appealing - who wants poor people to live in squalor and so on? But if we look at what natural and sexual selection ingrains in biological life - it is by necessity kin-preferring, competitive and in non-eusocial social creatures, status seeking, for example. Things that prefer non-kin and don't compete just die out.

In that light, a sound philosophy would understand that those things can't be eradicated by human will, take the impulses and hone something constructive out of them. But Marxist thought is rationalist in the sense that it thinks doctrine and reason can mold human nature to whatever shape, and then achieve their utopistic ends. That, of course, cannot happen because we're built from competitive, kin-preferring, status-seeking genes, not utopistic ones. Marxism is incompatible with biological life, and to get biological life to comply for any length of time, it must be forced constantly, or the utopian society degrade into tyranny, which has thus far happened every single time these things have been tried. But it's never done properly, so we should try again.

I'm hardly invoking any sort of no true Scotsman fallacy.

I'm asking for people to delve into the so called left wing policy of the people they're claiming are left wing dictators.

So far people have only been listing people by their party names. Which would mean that North Korea is a bastion of democracy. I'm asking for substance to back up their assertions.

As a german, I can definitly tell you that Hitler was not left wing. There is no overlap in the political views at all. (Something I can not say about germany's far right.)

In that case, as a German expert here, can you correct leereeves' comment, please? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26313411

There you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26314601

I have to add that "no overlap at all", may not be correct, as those points were shared by different political spectrums in the history. The point is: The core idea, is completly different.

Vast majority of them, especially if you compare by the body count.

Can you list them and their body counts + Policies that caused those deaths?

Fortunately someone has already done so. It's far from a complete list, but it's enough to prove the point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_...

Where exactly is the list by numbers across the board? Unless you believe only community regimes kill.

Plenty? Have you ever heard about the XX century? Bolsheviks? Fidel Castro?

I'm not saying there are none. I'm raising the point that there's been quite a lot more right wing dictatorships than left wing through history.

Wow. This comment section is a mess. Did y'all miss the other countries in the world that seem to be left wing without censorship. Or just history in general. Typically it tends to be a bit cyclic cycling between "left" ideas being popular at certain times and places, and right wing ideas being popular at certain times and places.

Conservativism largely fails over time in the free marketplace of ideas as evidence by human progress and societal change. Conservativism is fundamentally about suppressing change in favour of familiarity and established norms, which could certainly be seen as censorship. An obvious example of this is the conservative/Puritan influence in American culture, which has lead to excessive censorship of sexual content and cursing in American media.

Censorship is a product of political extremism though, it has no basis in one political ideology, only in how aggressively it is applied to society.

Counterexample - Islamic culture is conservative and thriving in the world (20% of all humans are Muslim), with roughly the same beliefs and culture as it's had for the past 1000 years.

I'm not sure thriving is the correct term. When it comes to HDI, human rights record, freedom of press/expression/etc. i can't think of a single Muslim-majority country ( which isn't the same as Islamic, and i chose the former because they fare better by definition on various freedoms)

On the HDI, the first majority Muslim country is the UAE, at 31, and that's probably highly skewed by its limited population, extreme natural wealth, and slavery. And considering it's involved in a human rights catastrophe in Yemen, it fails any human rights record-based index directly.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

On the contrary, I'd say that Islam is stuck in the past, which doesn't help Muslim nations thrive and develop, and those that do, do it based on "luck" ( natural resources).

> with roughly the same beliefs and culture as it's had for the past 1000 years.

I'm not sure this demonstrates a deep understanding of the shifting patterns within Islamic culture.

Who cares? Gradual changes in a philosophy of a culture that has become the great game-board of all adjunct powers, over and over again, is not relevant. At some point all that remains, is the fact, that getting pushed around on the school-yard of the world, is a bad idea. Nobody cares for the history of getting pushed around. Just for the now full of mud, blood and laughter.

It'd be hard to make a monolith out of the beliefs, practices and behaviour of over a billion people even if you could boil some of it down into one book (and you can't even do that as even the Sunni majority uses at least 7).

> Conservativism largely fails over time in the free marketplace of ideas as evidence by human progress and societal change.

This is obviously just selection bias. Everything that changes is a loss for "conservatism"; ignore everything that stays the same, which is the majority of everything.

Here are some "conservative" (i.e. longstanding existing) policies: Due process, separation of powers, warrant requirements, freedom of speech. They are currently under attack. But the attackers are the ones on the wrong side of history -- even if they succeed, they lose, because then the monsters these policies were established to vanquish return and the polices get reinstated once the current generation has had a taste of what happens without them. But that route is a lot harder and bloodier than learning from history.

All the "conservative" policies you listed are currently being championed for by the left however.

Who is responsible for cancel culture? Tech censorship? "Believe All Women"? Who is calling for a new War on Terror targeting the domestic population?

> Who is responsible for cancel culture?

This depends on is being cancelled. It's not the left that cancelled Kapaernick or the artists formerly known as the Dixie Chicks or howled with rage that the Supreme Court - with the exception of three conservative justices - ruled their longstanding practice of cancelling gay people unconstitutional.

"Whatabout Kaepernick" is not a denial that the left is doing this, or even that they're not the primary offenders.

No, but the juxtaposition of "footballers' antiracist gestures must be silenced" with "We must intervene to prevent Big Tech from declining to broadcast racism" in the rhetoric of prominent mainstream US conservatives is a pretty good indication that the longstanding tradition they are actually defending isn't "free speech"...

That only works if your frame for literally everything is racism.

Kaepernick kneeling during the pledge of allegiance can only parse as an antiracist gesture if the thing being disrespected (flag/country) is presumed to be intrinsically racist, i.e. it's accusing the whole country of racism. There are a lot of non-racist patriots who would take offense to that. The answer still shouldn't be censorship, but calling any opposition racism is accepting the very premise that the people opposed to the gesture are opposing it over.

Moreover, the implication that everyone who has been canceled was a racist is contrary to evidence unless you're making some heavy tribalist assumptions about anything vaguely conservative automatically implying racism.

And you're still not addressing the original point, which was that the left going around canceling people over speech is inconsistent with freedom of speech. Nothing anyone on the right does can make that untrue.

Cancel culture is just a right wing word to deflect from accountability

"Censorship is just another word for accountability," says person claiming not to be in favor of censorship.

> Who is responsible for cancel culture?

Libertarians making money.

Show me a case of "cancel culture" and I will show you a case where the "cancelled" person benefitted in popularity on the right wing side. The people that really do get cancelled, you don't hear from them. The examples you know of are all people who benefitted hugely from the "cancelling". Unless you count the #metoo people. But you probably believe all these men are innocent. I don't really get how due process and opposition to trial by media is usually not important with right wing people when someone is suspected of robbery, but when someone is suspected of sexual misconduct it is suddenly a problem. This feels like the protection of elites (because elites will never be part of a robbery, but can be hurt by a metoo-scandal). And I am seriously curious who is calling for a new war in terror. Tell me, who is doing this?

Ok, I'll bite. First three examples of cancel culture I can think of: dongle gate, rosetta mission guy, and more recent J. K. Rowling. How exactly they benefited?

CNN anchors and John Brennan.

Because the people there are far right. When you go to a website and the first thing you see is calls to murder jewish people and the n-word repeated ad nauseam, all but the far right decide to just leave. The end result is that gab/parler/etc don't become places where all speech exists but instead places where extreme racism, homophobia, and sexism suck the oxygen away from everything else.

Neither of the things you claim are tolerated on either platform. I suspect you've never looked for yourself.

Gab looks like a version of Facebook that's mostly populated by Christian conservatives. Parler looks like a version of twitter that's mostly populated (or was, before) by Christian conservatives with a small side of some conspiracy theories.

Christian conservatives don't subscribe to the beliefs you think they do.

And ironically enough, Parler, the bastion of "free speech" was happily banning people who were critical of right wingers or did not participate in the right-wing group think on their network.

After rallying against liberals being "snowflakes" and needing "safe-spaces", Parler ironically enough ended up being just that for the extreme right.

Much the same as /r/conservative on Reddit.

Lol, yup, I was just thinking that after I posted. /r/conservative is hilarious in that they rail against censorship and free speech issues and yet basically self censor so strongly that only "flaired" (someone vetted to be part of the group-think) users are allowed to post in pretty much all discussions. And even flaired users who dare to oppose the group-think are quickly banned. The cognitive dissonance on that subreddit is quite amazing.

I don’t think they have much of a choice. When I’ve gone there after large news events and they have unflaired people able to post it turns in to /r/politics 2.0.

I have seen discussions there from people on both sides of the political spectrum where neither side was downvoted to oblivion, which is more than you can say for most of Reddit.

This is irrelevant: you're just making the exact argument that they are ridiculing and claiming to not need about "safe spaces".

That's the point: they complain about everyone else except when it happens to them, and then suddenly it's totally just and necessary. As though the reason women, gays, lesbians, transgender, black, mexican etc. communities don't have their own spaces for the exact reason that otherwise they would be brigaded by no end of people who felt just overly necessary to drop in and talk about how they think none of their problems are valid.

/r/conservative isn't ridiculed because it's moderated aggressively, it's ridiculed because it's moderated aggressively by people who continuously argue that moderation anywhere else is an assault on free speech and wholly unnecessary.

It doesn't help that seemingly half the content posted there is made up. Whenever they open the floodgates their narratives get torn to pieces by people that actually know what they're talking about.

Truth isn't welcomed there. For instance, you will be banned for simply stating that Trump lost the election

Except /r/conservative never claimed to be unbiased. After people started brigading and posting threats (examples are occasionally shown by moderators) they had to tighten up their moderation.

In contrast, /r/politics claims to be about general politics but most content to the right of AOC/Bernie gets downvoted or deleted.

> most content to the right of AOC/Bernie gets downvoted or deleted

As Reddit has a user base that comes from the US less than 50%, this might have to do with the fact that the Overton window shifted so far to the right there that the opinions of AOC or Bernie would count as center-right pretty much everywhere else in the western world, with the Republicans being off the charts lunatic extremist right.

I don't know of any European country that would consider AOC or Bernie center right and not populist (class clown) left.

AOC/Bernie economic policy may count as centrist by European standards simply because the US is as a baseline much more right-leaning/libertarian and the big econ-left project is to establish a welfare state, which already exists in Europe. (There are rightwing arguments for a welfare state type of solution, but those are contignent on other things being true first, ie. something more ethnostate-y)

But that's not the only relevant dimension of policy:

Culture matters, and they are not remotely rightwing on culture.

The direction they want to move the country in matters, and they definitely don't want to move the country rightward either.

Pretty much anything to the left of AOC/Bernie gets downvoted or deleted from /r/politics too. It's basically a sub for the Democratic party.

I lean right and genuinely enjoy reading stupidpol.

Right leaning content is downvoted because the US population leans left.

The centrist view, the average American, would be considered a leftist by conservatives. This is why they think they're getting brigaded everywhere. They are. Their beliefs are unpopular.

The only reason the US Republican party is viable while being so far right is structural voting advantages. That's why they've lost the popular vote almost every time for 30+ years. That's why 50% of senators are Republican when only ~43% of the populations votes R.

On the internet where these artificial advantages aren't present it's much more obvious that Republican policy is broadly unpopular, and conservative opinion is the minority. Or more accurately, the moderate left is actually the center, and the average Republican is substantially far right.

Your comment would make sense if Reddit and r/politics is an accurate description of the US population.

But I'll have to disagree, since the comment above me suggests that there are a significant number of non-American Reddit users who lean more left than the average American, skewing the upvoting patterns. I'd argue that there are a different set of "artificial advantages" on the internet, such as that.

And when I browsed r/politics during the 2016 and 2020 election seasons, it was clear that Bernie Sanders was the favored candidate by Redditors. However, more moderate politicians like Clinton and Biden actually won the nominations.

And the popular vote count is a reflection of the Electoral College process...if elections were actually decided on the popular vote, campaign strategies would be focused more on cities than rural areas shifting the results.

Redditors lean farther left than the average american. The average internet user is also left of the average american because they trend younger.

But it's also undeniable that the average American leans left. That's why Republicans lose the popular vote in both chambers of congress and the presidency nearly every election. Their positions are unpopular, that's why they get down voted on "mainstream" sites where the user base is large enough to revert to the mean.

And campaign focus outside of urban cores would mean that the average American is even farther left than they appear to be.

Biden is farther right than the average Democrat because he needed to be to win. The structural advantages to Conservatives means the Democratic party needs to run centrist candidates.

In comparison, the same advantages mean the Republican party can still win with extreme right wing candidates. For example, Trump was the first president that never hit 50% approval rating but it was still high enough for him to win and do okay during his second campaign.

This explanation ignores the cabal of moderators which controls all political subreddits, as well as the fact that /r/politics and /r/worldnews are regularly ridiculed in the rest of reddit for being Bernie-Central, to the poinnt that posting about other candidates on the left gets you called a traitor. Anyway that's why I get my politics on /r/anime_titties.

I'm saying internet wide. There's almost 20% more democrats than republicans nationwide. And since young people use internet more, it could be much higher ratio on the net.

If 2/3 of US internet users are left of conservatives, that's why they get downvoted to hell anywhere outside their safe spaces. IMO the crazy moderators on reddit are a result of the left lean, not the cause.

No, websites have different cultures, so each one isn't a proportionate sample of all internet users.

Reddit leaned a lot more right/libertarian before nearly all coservative subreddits were systematically banned under spez and Pao. Spez also enacted more subtle censorship like algorithmic tweaks to keep t_d out off the front page and eventually the creation of /r/popular to keep similarly "undesirable" subreddits from the front page.

Show me a single mainstream website where conservatives don't REEEE about censorship. You won't find one. Because any website large enough to capture a few percent of worldwide web traffic leans left. Because the English speaking world leans left and the republican party is a hard right structure.

The truth means nothing to those that wont listen. The Republican party is a far right monstrosity. The democrats in US are a right leaning party for all practical purposes. Hell, Biden said he would be fine running with a Republican VP.

Your American concept of "left" is still right of centre compared to other countries in the Anglosphere.

By curiosity I've looked on Gab and I don't see any content you mention. Yes, there is something about protests against banning guns, some celebrities teaming up to support Trump, etc., which is considered to be "far right" but I haven't seen anything you mention.

I might have missed that obviously during my five minutes of browsing there, as a result, if they really call for murdering Jews, could you provide a link to such resource - calling to murder someone is a crime in the US, so such link would be a good evidence for prosecution.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ParlerWatch/ is a community that tries to collect and highlight the fringes of communities like Parler, that's a good place to start.

Even if most posts are definitely fine, a quick look at the comments will show you what's wrong.

Unfortunately you have to sign up to see comments, I wonder why...

This is a false depiction. I haven’t used Parler much but checked it out a few times and did not encounter a single piece of content advocating violence, talking about Jewish people, using the n word, or partaking in any kind of racism. Your claim that these are repeated ad nauseum suggests you never actually visited any of these sites and are just criticizing them without basis.

I spent time on these apps and I disagree with you. A large subset of what I saw were conspiracy theories and racist hate speech.

https://i.redd.it/om90nwadqca61.png is a Parler post with a racial slur and 25k upvotes.

The court documents (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29095511/parler-llc-v-a...) from their case against Amazon contain other examples of hate speech.

"Hate Speech" as you call it, no matter how distasteful you may find it, is protected speech under the US Constitution, and thus (if also not a threat of violence, doxxing, or similar) is permitted on Gab.

I have no problem with platforms allowing any and all speech, since it actually just allows stupid speakers to beclown themselves.

Free speech is the most liberal idea there is - as Voltaire famously said, "I may disagree with everything you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Voltaire never said that.

Gab's policies are their business; my goal was to provide examples of such content on Parler.

I would agree that this was not really the case on Parler though one could find a couple accounts like that. Gab has been a little more extreme but the worst by far was Voat.

Because the only defense they constantly employ for saying atrocious things is that it's not literally illegal to say them. It's not literally illegal to be racist, it's not literally illegal to be xenophobic, it's not literally illegal to be transphobic. So they think they should be all those things, although they don't call themselves those names.

Things should be said based on the inherent merit of what they say, not be said just because it's not literally illegal to say them. If the only reason you can find for justifying what you say is that nobody has made a law yet to stop you (and we do have laws to stop some things from being said), then perhaps you need to find a better thing to say.

I agree with you, but Twitter is rife with leftists being almost as horrible as Gab's extremists and not getting banned because Twitter execs lean left. So let's not act like Gab users are the only ones being awful.

Good luck with that position. Too many people fail to recognise the Ying and Yang that is Twitter and Gab. Both of them are dominated by extreme ideologies, but only one has all celebrities, politicians, governments and business leaders.

Complete nonsense false equivalence. Gab is _dominated_ by far-right racist content and conspiracy theories. My mum uses Twitter and doesn't see a single far-left opinion, 99% of the content on Twitter is that way.

You're comparing an entire polluted pool that is unfit to swim in with a single floating turd in the ocean.

Really? It literally isn't possible to look at the "trending" panel in Twitter without seeing far-left talking points.

For example, today's trending topics include the "cancellation" of Dr Seuss (with many tweets giving examples of why he should be cancelled in the author's opinion) and the use of the words "latinx" and "womxn" to avoid offending people by using gendered language.

Stuff trends on Twitter without it appearing in my timeline all the time though, so it is quite true you can use Twitter and never deal with left wing politics even if the rest of Twitter is ranting about bean dad or whatever that was.

Hell kpop shows up on the trending as often as leftist stuff but I don’t claim kpop controls Twitter.

> It literally isn't possible to look at the "trending" panel in Twitter without seeing far-left talking points.

You've gone from complaining that twitter is consumed by the left to complaining that the left is allowed on twitter at all.

> For example, today's trending topics include the "cancellation" of Dr Seuss (with many tweets giving examples of why he should be cancelled in the author's opinion) and the use of the words "latinx" and "womxn" to avoid offending people by using gendered language.

Right-wingers post about that stuff 10:1 compared to anyone on the left. You're posting about it now.

> You've gone from complaining that twitter is consumed by the left to complaining that the left is allowed on twitter at all.

I'm not complaining about anything though - are you confusing posts from different HN users? I really don't care who uses Twitter or for what purpose. I'm pointing out that it's unlikely someone could use Twitter and be unaware of left-wing posts on the platform given that Twitter themselves amplify such content daily.

I just looked and nothing about seizing the means of production from our capitalist overlords, or that money is a construct that needs to be abolished is trending on Twitter today.

You are attempting humour of course, but leftists in the West have long since abandoned those goals - I wouldn't expect anything of that sort to trend on Twitter.

The far left is still advocating these things. That's what makes them the far left. If you just lop off the extreme wing of the spectrum so you can call the mainstream left "far left", where does that leave the people advocating for democratic control over the means of production?

Ah yes, false equivalences. However, the current state of affairs is more like

   far left                         far right
   <---------------------------------------->
                             [Overton Window]
                         perceived      perceived
                         far left       far right

Why is "both sides" or "they started it" or "what about" the only other retort that always comes up?

I'd say it's more like this:

    far left          center            far right
    <-------------------|-------------------->
               [Western O.W.]
                      [US Overton W.]
                             [  Gab users*   ]
     [        Twitter users*       ]

*: 90% of users, because there will always be outliers.

Nah, Twitter just seems full of leftists to you because you use the "both sides" or "what about" argument, a common conservative talking point. You think arguments like hey, let's use a word like "latinx" to be a far left talking point. It's silly, but the position is nowhere nearly as radical as "let's get rid of all governments, by force if necessary". The extreme left views to you seem to be to get rid of Dr Seuss. You can't even think of even more extreme left views as viable discourse, such as getting rid of all world rulers.

There aren't nearly enough leftist talking points on Twitter as it appears to your rightist brain, and there's plenty of homophobia, "feminism has gone too far", "it's okay to be white", worldwide anti-immigration sentiments, and (still!) Trump supporters. Maybe they're bots or whatever, but the talking points are there.

> If the only reason you can find for justifying what you say is that nobody has made a law yet to stop you (and we do have laws to stop some things from being said), then perhaps you need to find a better thing to say.

If a person thinks that perhaps, maybe, there's 2 genders and not 700+, they should be prevented from civic discourse? That maybe we should not be providing chemical treatments to toddlers for gender reassignment, that's hate? If they believe that math isn't actually racist, but is an objective way of making sense of reality, are they racist? How about people who criticize Islam and argue that it is a fundamentally violent ideology? That lockdowns and "scientific" COVID-19 recommendations were harmful because Florida had fewer deaths per capita than NY or CA

Today, merely speaking any of these positions gets a person called a "transphobe" or a racist or a science denier. In addition to not convincing anyone and unfairly slandering the speakers, it destroys our ability to think as a society.

Socially "acceptable" speech has never needed legal protection (in any society, liberal or authoritarian). It's the offensive things that need protection from the book burners.

It's also possible that their defenses sound like that to the people making the "not literally illegal to say them" crowd. As a stereotypical example, grab a random Christian, they say they believe gay marriage is wrong on Biblical grounds, this gets interpreted as "I want to hate gay people".

If we look at racist hate speech, people literally lecture that people who happen to look like me are "born into not being human", say the lives of people like me don't matter. We are told we should not speak and yet that our silence is violence. Trainings for "diversity" across a wide range of institutions have started segregating along racial lines, and the list goes on. During the Grievance Studies hoax, for example, one of their papers was sent back because it was too sympathetic and not sociopathic enough. Said paper advocated making white students sit on the floor and putting them in chains as a learning experience.

Yet open racism is fine, because the target ethnic group and sexual orientation are acceptable to the activist class.

Likewise, people who get kicked out for "transphobia" will often not be people who hate transpeople in any proper sense, but have policy disagreements where there are no win-win solutions. Yet anything but being completely on board with the activist class's 100% no limits pro-trans policy agenda is "phobia". The claim holds up as well as wet paper.

How about gender affirming treatment for kids who cannot physically know what sexuality properly is because they haven't been through puberty? Someone's a bit off their gender role? Tomboy, nah, they're a boy, time to stuff them full of hormones. Concerns that this just might be insane are again, labeled hate.

Said cultists insist on mantras of trans(wo-)men are (wo-)men in an explicit denial of biology that the best of our medicine can't alter: We just craft a facade that eases dysphoria to care for our fellow human beings. As Buck Angel put it: "I use testosterone to masculinize myself so I feel more like me." He's routinely called a transphobe.

This is basically the biology equivalent of flat eartherism or young earth creationism, but not subscribing to the creed is stamped hate speech. The mantra wouldn't even be necessary if its claim was actually true. Hell, it's arguably even worse than flat eartherism, since a human can't at a glance confirm that the Earth is indeed round, but TWAW/TMAM asks us to baldly deny the input of our eyes in everyday life.

It's not one side that has gone insane: Good chunks of both are open lunatics. Q at least is thankfully fringe, but even they've managed to get representatives elected.

I was gonna skip replying to this but

> How about gender affirming treatment for kids who cannot physically know what sexuality properly is because they haven't been through puberty? Someone's a bit off their gender role? Tomboy, nah, they're a boy, time to stuff them full of hormones. Concerns that this just might be insane are again, labeled hate.

Trans girls have horrible anxiety about going through puberty. It's not them being "a little off their gender role". It's a fundamental dread about being given an irreversible treatment of hormones that will change their voice and secondary sexual characteristics.

Puberty is far more irreversible than HRT. The percentage of people who detransition is tiny; far more people who transition are much happier for doing so. It is also incredibly difficult to actually get HRT. The therapy is beyond the reach of most children. It's a total boogieman that this is happening left and right and all of the children are getting stuffed full of synthetic hormones.

Please educate yourself more.

Anti-trans positions are up there with "gay people are going to sexually assault my children" or "being gay is disgusting 'cause I don't like thinking about anal sex". Complete and utter bullshit based on unfounded fears.

And a religious person would say that we should follow ten commandments. Should we make it illegal not to follow them? Should we move toward punishing the sinners by law? I am against immoral behavior but it does not mean I am for banning speach and art, quite the opposite. The Christian culture is crumbling and is being slowly replaced by a more repressive one. And it is worrisome to say the least.

The problem is that it isn't true, you can say things that they agree with without being banned, but say anything even slightly leftish and it's insta-ban.

It is liberal, in the sense that absolute liberty is anarchy is chaos is degeneracy is suffering.

Non-degenerates know that long lasting liberty comes with responsibility, and that responsibility is moderation and correction.

The far right operates in degeneracy. They may fly the banner of freedom but they fly it alongside nazi flags so what do symbols and ideals even mean for them.

> how this is far right

Generally the argumentation presented is a dogwhistle for fringe elements (nazis, other unpleasant people, etc). Sadly they are currently dominated by far-right ideologies (and ofc the inevitable sexual predators).

I mean, it's a lie, to start with. They are happy to censor anything they don't like, far more than most platforms.

Indeed, liberals are now commonly being mis-labeled as "far-right" in America. The left has become intolerant of conservative views, and labels anything conservative as "far-right". Liberals tend to entertain views across the spectrum, and thus are labeled as "far-right" by many people in the left.

Are conservative views -- low taxes, low regulation, strong military, opposition to abortion, opposition to gay marriage -- banned on Twitter? Let's be honest, we're talking about racism and anti-democracy, and if that's not far-right, what is?

No, you missed the part where this isn't about conservative values — it's about even liberals being banned and called far-right and racist and anti-democracy when they are nothing of the sort.

Liberals are being called racists and anti-democracy as a way of attacking and deplatforming anyone who disagrees with the leftist tribe. This isn't about values, it's about tribal allegiance.

If you actually believe that these people are far-right racists then there is a strong chance that you are being fooled by tribal manipulation.

You're being far too abstract, so it's easy to think you're making this up. Who did Twitter ban for disagreeing with the leftist tribe about, say, higher taxes, unions, civil equality -- all these cornerstones of the left?

https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174...

The big social media platforms tend to find themselves in hot water when something approaching "hate speech" trends on them. So they have a tendency to regulate that content away.

The center and left in the US are normally not in favor of hate speech, while the right is more supportive of it.

What happens then is people who want to discuss hateful topics and post hateful speech can't easily do it on the current popular social media platforms, so they need alternatives. That's the market for Gab and Parler mostly.

At this moment, it happens that the far-right in the US has a very "hateful adjacent" messaging. They generally support and promote populist, nativist, collectivist authoritarian, and conspiracy-minded ideas. Those often overlap with hate of immigrants and non-white Christians, as well as hate of liberals and social democrats due to believing in their participation in demonic conspiracies. They also tend to suggest violent and authoritarian methods to get what they want, like killing their opposition or storming the capitol, and other forms of violent insurection. Thus they fall in the market category of Parler and Gab pretty strongly.

It's mostly the far-right aka radical right, the regular right in the US does not all prescribe to these and don't all have "hateful adjacents" messaging.

Also some more extremist current left movements also have "hateful adjacent" messaging, though maybe less so, when they do it's often targeted specifically at the far-right, most likely as a reactionary measure.

Also, there are reports of such left-leaning accounts being banned and censored on Parler and Gab, hard to say how true this is, but even if a rumor, it keeps the less radical right from trusting them. And so they are often considered to falsy upheld free speech.

> The big social media platforms tend to find themselves in hot water when something approaching "hate speech" trends on them. So they have a tendency to regulate that content away. > The center and left in the US are normally not in favor of hate speech, while the right is more supportive of it.

The left is very supportive of hate speech, it just has to have the right target. There's abject, open racism against whites all day. Black people attacking Asian people is white supremacy nowadays.

I think I mentioned that the extreme left side of things also had hateful adjacent messaging. But I personally haven't observed as much of it, and it also doesn't seem there is a big enough market on that side for a startup to capitalize on. Maybe I just never heard of them though?

I'm personally more centrist overall, but I've tried as much as I could to give an unbiased summary, though being unbiased in those cases is hard. I'm trying not to judge the behavior, just observe it.

One thing I have observed is that the current moderate left in the US does seem to align more with Canada/UK/France style of free speech, with a broader definition of what is considered hate speech and stronger enforcements against it. Where as the right seem more aligned with the traditional American view on it, where hate speech is limited only if it can be shown to have directly and immediately caused lawless action.

This seems to be the crux of the issue as well. With the big social media platforms available today, it has enabled hateful speech to have more reach at a wider scale than ever before. It also enabled not only Americans to reach others, but even non-Americans can promote and propagate hateful messaging in a targeted and strategic way. The question is what if anything should be done about this, could it lead to instability and divide and throw the country in turmoil, or maybe it's actually a good thing and will allow more voices to be heard and considered.

It's the age old trade off of free speech and restricted free speech. Where do you draw the line? What risks are there on either side of it?

And my observation has been the right leaning Americans seem to still consider that there should be no regulations on this, and everyone everywhere, even non Americans, should be allowed to freely share, promote, upvote, and target any message they want, even hateful, no matter the intent behind it, because upholding the right to speak up and against the government is more important and so we should stay as far as possible from threading water or any slippery slope.

And my observation is the left leaning Americans seem more cautious, and think some regulations might be needed, to make sure that no bad actor takes advantage of this, or that discourse doesn't rely purely on emotions and hate targeted reasonings. And that not doing so would actually bring more instability and chaos, and the risk of threading the line between restricted but still free speech and non free speech is worth it, or maybe an exagerated concern, where they don't think in practice it would be difficult to distinguish dissenting views from hateful ones or those with bad actors behind them.

TLDR: You can be super racist, describe how you're going to kill everyone you don't like, spread crazy fake stories without any consequence.

It's liberal in the same way it would be liberal to have a party where you walk around naked and smear feces on each other.

Definitely a liberal party, but not one that most people want to participate in. Most people would rather have moderation where you're not allow to scream the N word at blacks. Which concentrates N word screamers and similar onto these free speech forums

It is liberal. It’s just that the far right hides it’s entirely illiberal hate under the umbrella of “free speech”.

Gab and Parler basically just attracted extremist views which is why you see them being portrayed like that. Anything less than that is typically accepted or debated by more left leaning circles. Democrats cover a wide spectrum of society, from the far left to folks considered what republicans used to be 20 years ago in terms of the policies supported.

> "you can say anything that is not directly illegal in the US without fear of being banned or other moderation"

Parler was happily banning leftist viewpoints.

It's raison d'etre was not so much 'you can say anything that's not directly illegal', and more 'you can say anything that the far right approves of' (Some of which, most notably the death threats cited by AWS, also happens to be directly ilelgal.)

> Both market to the (mostly American) far right, with their shtick being basically "you can say anything that is not directly illegal in the US without fear of being banned or other moderation".

It’s incredible that supporting free speech is considered to be only important enough to the “far right” now to be worth marketing to.

Free speech used to be something all Americans supported and defended.

Just because Gab and Parler claim to support free speech absolutism--and use that for marketing purposes--doesn't make it true.

I signed up on Gab recently to see what people were talking about on there, and the discussion is far less diverse than Twitter (there's just no comparison). Twitter has X, Y, and Z Twitter, whereas Gab basically seems to be just Q Twitter these days.

And on Gab, you'll get shouted down within milliseconds if you post something that doesn't fit the general vibe, and you'll probably be called a f#g for your trouble. (I've seen the same thing on so-called "patriot" live streams that also claim free speech absolutism but then ban you for saying anything they don't want to hear, even good-faith efforts to explain the motivations of the "other side.")

Therefore, I can confidently claim that Twitter, just as an example, cares more about and does far more to promote free speech than Gab ever could or will, even though they don't use "free speech" as a marketing cudgel.

> I signed up on Gab recently to see what people were talking about on there, and the discussion is far less diverse than Twitter (there's just no comparison). Twitter has X, Y, and Z Twitter, whereas Gab basically seems to be just Q Twitter these days.

Gab being Q twitter is probably related to this: https://twitter.com/beeeeeers/status/1358141547057848320

That said, mostly any platform that allows some kind of speech banned on mainstream platforms will initially turn into a hive of said banned content for completely obvious reasons.

> I've seen the same thing on so-called "patriot" live streams that also claim free speech absolutism but then ban you for saying anything they don't want to hear, even good-faith efforts to explain the motivations of the "other side."

This does sound sad. I've found a few places online where there are people of all manner of creeds and they're some of the best places. They usually don't contain wokelets or rabid Q people, which probably explains why they remain nice and interesting.

> It’s incredible that supporting free speech is considered to be only important enough to the “far right” now to be worth marketing to.

> Free speech used to be something all Americans supported and defended.

It's not that most Americans don't care about free speech. It's that most Americans understand that constitutional free speech means the government can't infringe on your speech, except in limited circumstances (like extortion, inciting violence, inciting panic, divulging classified material, etc).

The reason companies like Gab and Parler market 'free speech' to the far right, is because the far right often engages in trolling, harassment, incitement to violence, disinformation, and bigotry in social media. As such, they run into the moderation policies of those platforms and at some point start running into bans. Not to say other parts of the political spectrum don't run into moderation and bans too, but it's a bigger problem right now for the far right.

There's a debate to be had about the power social media giants have over public discourse and whether internet service providers should be able to blacklist companies like they did to Parler. But that still doesn't fall under the umbrella of constitutional free speech. Businesses usually have wide latitude to refuse service to customers, particularly for toxic behavior.

Before taking "constitutional" free speech for a concept, we have to understand that free speech is a prescriptive social norm.

It happens to have a constitutional instantiation. That instantiation happens to be expressed as a restriction on the government's chartered power; this is an artifact of the process by which it was drafted, i.e. as part of a collection of proposed restraints on the powers federal government.

No reasonable person should confuse the very limited constitutional guarantee given to free speech with the norm itself.

Is it really a social norm though? Before social media were people angry that publications chose to selectively print letters to the editor? Or that a business could kick you out for being verbally abusive? Or that if you wrote a nasty gram to your superiors that you could be fired?

It's only now that social media has come along and has democratized publication of text, images, and video that free speech as it relates to private businesses is becoming an issue. Maybe in the future a majority of people will decide that social media is the proverbial public square and change the law to reflect that. But the prevailing paradigm to this point has been that a company has a right (and some responsibilities) to make rules about what people post on their platform.

There are at least three fairly distinct ideas being conflated, I think:

- Was the "free speech" norm ever widely followed? This is the one I think you're objecting to, and indeed society as a whole has never exactly been accepting of all speech. On the other hand, there are plenty of social norms that people generally believe in but frequently don't quite live up to, like presumption of innocence, or "honour your father and your mother". I don't really think this criterion invalidates conduct prescriptions as social norms.

- Was the "free speech" ideal ever widely accepted? This one seems kind of tricky if you just look at the current state of affairs, but then if you look just a few years back at the way people danced around the "hate speech dilemma" even up through 2016, I think it's pretty clear that people generally did, or at least expected others to, accept free speech as an ideal.

- What kind of social obligation is the "free speech" rule conceived as? And this is one I wanted to make a point on, specifically that the constitutional instantiation of it is not primary.

It is not the understanding that, given that the constitutional guarantee exists, there is only a restriction on Congress and e.g. everything is all peachy with a president instructing the IRS to engage in punitive auditing against Vietnam War dissidents.

It is dangerously disingenuous to frame the constitutional protection on freedom of speech as the full extent of Americans' understanding of free speech.

Free speech as a "prescriptive social norm" has never been unlimited or free of consequences though.

Discourse within the "acceptable" range has been true free speech certainly, but step outside those boundaries and throughout US history there have been serious repercussions. Common law courts have long recognized that if you walk up to someone on the street and scream obscenities at them you have no recourse when you get punched in the face - the concept of "fighting words". Even today no one bats an eye when a restaurant doesn't allow a patron to dine there when they don't meet the restaurant's arbitrary dress code or if the patron has an "offensive" t-shirt slogan. Various forms of ostracism have been used against people speaking out against what is acceptable since human society has existed.

State Governments have punished speech they don't as well. For example in the South pre-Civil War many southern states made it illegal to publish anti-slavery books, newspaper articles, and speeches. You could literally be arrested for speaking against slavery in any form.

I think the actual social norm you're talking about is acceptance of conservative political discourse and opinion. Certain kinds of political discourse have been verboten in the US (eg people were fired and blacklisted for communism) so that's not new as a concept, but this is the first time in US history there is strong pushback against conservatism.

To some degree I see this social pressure as being weaponized because so much of the US is gerrymandered and tiled in the favor of conservatives*. Despite being a minority party Republicans control a majority of state legislatures. CA gets two senators. A group of 11 rural conservative states representing the same population gets 22 senators. When a rump party that represents a strict minority of the population gets to continuously impose its will, change voting rules, pack the Supreme Court, and so forth are you truly surprised when a lot of people get angry? When some people are no longer willing to be polite about politics?

When the normal relief valve - elections having consequences - gets subverted for decades that pressure must find relief somewhere.

The pressure is even more intense now that the major conservative party in the US is openly embracing nationalism and at least some are openly advocating for ending democracy: whether you agree with it or not the Republican party has declared war on the majority of the US population. Some people are going to see that as an existential threat and respond accordingly.

* I know the pedants will want to divert discussion to how the US is arranged into separate states deliberately, federalism, etc. I am well aware of those arguments, there is no need to re-hash them. Much like calling universal healthcare and worker protections "socialism", or trying to fine/punish people and take down their video clips due to "copyright claims" all you are doing is teaching the upcoming generations that socialism is better at solving problems, copyright should be abolished, and federalism sucks. Proceed at your own peril.

"Free speech" has never, ever meant "say whatever you want without any consequences whatsoever." That's what conservatives seem to be demanding these days. And when they don't get it, they whine about "cancel culture."

why do so many people confusedly assume free speech means forcing printers to print neo-nazi propaganda. Whatever happened to freedom of association? Some businesses and people don’t want to associate with neonazis and don’t want to be known as the company that helps neonazis.

Why do people who espouse free speech want to take away freedom to choose who one associates with?

freedom of association isn't really a thing anymore; if one were to promote that maxim, a large portion of the civil rights laws, anti-discrimination laws, etc. just become unenforceable.

see stuff akin to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

The idea of public accommodation is ultimately based on the notion that commercial appeals (such as a store window and an open door) constitute an 'invitation to treat' (do business) and that these should not be withheld from anyone on the basis of their unalterable personal characteristics.

> these should not be withheld from anyone on the basis of their unalterable personal characteristics

Where does this boundary lie?

Is political party unalterable? Ideology? Religion?

That depends who you ask. I don't think religion is unalterable, for example, but in the USA it holds a privileged legal position for historical reasons - although courts have concluded that merely claiming religious status is insufficient, eg https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/opinions/18/18-1141.pdf

In general the Us recognizes race/ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation (to some degree) and religion as 'suspect classes' deserving of protection. But it's a thorny subject and understanding all the different perspectives is going to require a lot of reading.

Hmm... so in your opinion, back in the days of the Hollywood blacklist, when Louis B. Mayer decided that he wasn't going to buy any more screenplays from communists (or anyone who even had friends who were communists), that was perfectly okay? "Freedom of association", right?

The truly bizarre thing about the "woke" movement is that they seem to have absolutely no conception that the stuff they're doing to others can just as easily be done to them.

It's confusing how you criticize leftists for not realizing that they could theoretically be the target of these attacks while citing an extremely well-known example of leftists being the target of these attacks.

Leftists are generally aware of this risk, because today there is no shortage of similar social pressure against leftist ideas, and do not think it's a concern. The problem is not that it's never occurred to them.

One reason why it's not a concern is that there's no reason to believe that a principled stand against this tactic by the left will have any influence on the right. Conservatives in Hollywood in the middle of the last century did not blacklist communists in response to any similar activity by communists; they did so spontaneously. So there's no reason to fear an increased risk of use of this tactic. Nobody is getting ideas they didn't already have.

This makes absolutely no sense, and to me proves just how ignorant the left are of what could happen to them.

Censorship always becomes about those in power staying in power. Look no further than wall street bets. That had nothing to do with left right but about control and power.

Of course no one in the mainstream media is willing to consider this, because apparently wsb is financial trumpism.

Wake up. This is what the aclu warned about 50 years ago.

First, it's not "criticism" to ask a clarifying question. I understand that not having a good answer makes you uncomfortable, but that's not "criticism".

Second, you do understand that it's possible to believe that both are bad, right?

I'm not uncomfortable, and I don't know why you think I am. I merely think you're factually incorrect in your assertion that the point you mention has not occurred to leftists.

I do understand that it's possible to believe both are bad. I am informing you that leftists do not. (There's probably a more general phenomenon where centrists say that tools that can be used towards bad ends are bad, and people of a particular partisan tendency say that bad ends are bad and not to be blamed on the tool. For instance, liberals are generally not in favor of expanded gun rights, because they understand that guns can be used towards bad ends. Leftists are generally in favor of expanded gun rights, because they understand that, and also understand that guns can be used towards good ends.)

Having had those things done to them, "the woke movement" isn't fooled by the argument "if you don't do these things to us, we won't do them to you."

Touched a nerve, didn't it?

You might be surprised at how fast this kind of thing can turn around.

Weird how people keep trying to warn the left of some slippery slope argument that is if a company deplatforms literal neonazis today then lgbt, progressives or what have you can easily be tomorrow!

Like another comment mentioned, it’s mind boggling that those making these arguments think those on the left aren’t aware of censorship, legal and societal, given how recently one could be persecuted for being too left and labeled a communist or arrested, ostracized and more for being lgtb.

I don’t believe those making the arguments actually believe the surface facade of pointing out “unconsidered information”, so there must be some alternative purpose to the argument. It almost be like trying to constantly remind someone who was shot and also lost someone of how dangerous guns are and that’s why even violent felons needs gun.

It’s also arguing victims should be glad they are continuing to be victimized and that they should help and defend their attackers.

Recommended reading:

https://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Movements-Pere...

Edit: more recommended reading:

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/conformism.html

I’m not sure how you’re interpreting these, but if you are against businesses deplatforming those who express neonazi, and white nationalist propaganda I don’t think Paul Graham’s message supports you.

I doubt Paul graham equates neonazi propaganda with his examples of past situations where you could believe something that was later thought of as very wrong: “ how can you be sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s”

Are you saying that in 30 years that society will collectively think neonazi beliefs are correct and thus we were crazy to ostracize them? And you are saying that is why we should stop censoring them? Because in a future state we might live in a dystopia we should stop censoring the people trying to create the dystopia? And also that censoring neonazis is akin to those example like being anti slavery in the antebellum south? Is this your take away? Those arguments sound rather farcical and Paul himself actually explains why that is.

Paul says this: “Of course, we're not just looking for things we can't say. We're looking for things we can't say that are true, or at least have enough chance of being true that the question should remain open.“

There is no doubt about neonazi propaganda. Whether or not it is true is not an open question. White supremacist propaganda maybe being right is not an open question.

'Free speech' means nothing at all in the private sector - but 'supporting free speech' most definitely does. If a company opts to not support free speech (which is an ideal that I believe most Americans would say should be supported) by enacting censorship rules beyond what is illegal, they shouldn't be surprised when people that believe in that ideal look on them less favorably.

Any internet platform that didnt moderate would be overwhelmed with spam, porn, scams, hate, etc. Censorship and moderation are the same, a set of rules you must follow to participate. Gab is has huge problems with porn spam because of free speech policies.

Imagine if email providers were not allowed to filter. Your email would be totally unusable.

Enacting no filters beyond what's illegal would make most of the internet unusable. Like imagine if HN had no moderation? It would lose its original purpose.

So what do you mean support free speech exactly? Allow people to freely post porn, scams, lies, death threats?

By supporting free speech I support the right for us to say what we will without fear of retribution from the government. By supporting freedom of association I support that company’s can ban you for saying things they don’t agree with. Aren’t Gab and Parker right wing libertarian free market success stories? People found Twitter didn’t agree with their views so they founded a competitor.

> By supporting freedom of association I support that company’s can ban you for saying things they don’t agree with

The US already limit companies "Right of Association" by virtue of things like Providers of Last Resort (that's the extent of my knowledge on this topic in the context of America) so it's not an alien concept.

Do you feel that the electricity company should be able to cut off your power supply because you made a blog post they don't agree with? How about your mobile phone provider? And if not, why are online services treated any differently?

I presented an example along those lines, but more apt. I noticed you didn’t explain why you thought it was less applicable. And yes, the internet service provider should not be able to monitor your communication and selectively block it.

But why do should people be forced to associate with neonazis against their will? Expressing neonazi and white nationalist propaganda does not make one a a protected class so businesses are free to refuse to provide them service. Does McDonald’s have the right to refuse service to cater a klan rally?

> I noticed you didn’t explain why you thought it was less applicable.

I'm not actually sure where I stand on the issue in it's totality, I try to prevent myself from giving a knee-jerk response simply because the example being used is emotionally inflammatory. I do feel it's more a gradient than a binary issue though.

Edit: Upon re-reading, I misinterpreted this question sorry. The example you supplied might be as apt, but it's just one end of the spectrum. I also can't help but feel that it's like comparing my local Cafe (Switch Cafe in New Brighton, if you're interested) to McDonalds and calling it a free-market success story.

> But why do should people be forced to associate with neonazis against their will?

Why should a company - which is not a person, and something I think is being overlooked in this discussion - be forced to associate with anyone against their will? As I previously mentioned, there are several industries that can't refuse their service and there are several classes to which no industry may refuse their service. If we are looking for justification, I suggest we use the same logic applied in those cases.

> Does McDonald’s have the right to refuse service to cater a klan rally?

Obviously. I'm not sure where this is leading though, so I'll wait before commenting further.

Not an argument I want to have but I feel compelled to express.

While the ideology is terrible, hateful, close minded, harmful, etc, we tolerate their right to speech because no one knows when you might be the next “Neo Nazi”. A flick of the switch politically, and TPTB might find that LGBT speech is hateful. Perhaps people new to the tech industry don’t remember a time when being a computer nerd was anti-social, and clashed with the norms of society. Sure there are consequences to this ideology. People can get hurt and people’s lives can be impacted. But that is the price to live in a free society. Speaking to your last question, I think McDonalds should absolutely have the right to refuse service to a Klan member. But if I was in charge of McDonalds I would serve them. Because IMHO the outcome of a society where speech is no longer free, either by corporate cancel culture or government regulation, is not a society I want to live in.

Slippery slopes for everyone one. And a ceo that thinks catering klan rallies makes good business would soon find it their only business. Oh wait that’s what gab and Parler is doing!

And that “perhaps people new to...etc” is a nice backhanded appeal to authority and it falls flat.

Edit: hacker news has rigorously enforced comment guidelines, why is that okay? Why is it not bad per what you say: > “ Because IMHO the outcome of a society where speech is no longer free, either by corporate cancel culture or government regulation, is not a society I want to live in.”

I don’t disagree with comment guidelines. Their platform, their rules. But my point is if it was my platform, I wouldn’t moderate it any more than the law requires: Imminent threats of violence, illegal pornography, libel, etc. I guess I would probably go beyond and ask people not to Dox others, and ask others not to bully or disparage one another. I find it no different from two people discussing communism in a private bar or restaurant, provided they are not harassing other customers

Ultimately, as a business owner, it’s not my (our?) job to direct culture. In fact it is kind of disturbing someone with enough money could change society to their whims. I’m here to create value for myself and the people around me. Political crusades are best left outside the professional/corporate environment.

Value isn't just a one dimensional thing where some business endeavours create less value or more value. There are different kinds of value that have different utility in different contexts.

Once you have that epiphany you can see that creating value for yourself and the people around you is a form of directing culture and vice-versa.

What if other people exploit your platform in order to direct culture, though? If you run a bar and after a year or two you realize that all of your patrons are nazis, presumably because their passionate discussions drove away anyone who overheard them, then any action you take to promote your bar is effectively promoting that ideology and directing culture in a rather unsavory direction. What do you do then?

You don't need to actually own a platform to leverage it for your side in a culture war, you only need to know how to exploit it. If you want your platform to be neutral, you need to monitor and moderate it carefully: if you don't choose what culture permeates your platform, others will be glad to choose for you, and I think it's foolish to think it'll be any better.

> If you run a bar and after a year or two you realize that all of your patrons are nazis

It could also mean that nazis like your bar.

I've seen this argument get politicized too much to the point of it being emotional. Like your nazi reference.

Social platforms should be moderated according to law. Whatever users legally & lawfully discuss in your platforms should not restricted. And this kind of applying pressure towards platforms worries me. They are merely tools. Let the law deal with this issue and leave free speech alone.

The problem is that big tech and social media companies don’t have competition. They are either monopolistic/oligopolistic or are shielded from new competition due to network effects protecting incumbents. They’re also immense in power and scope and influence. They’re pseudo governments in that their actions (like censorship) are for all practical purposes, as impactful as an actual government. They’re necessary to our lives and are also utilities in that sense. And so they should be regulated and required to support everyone who doesn’t explicitly break the law, like a public agency.

If you're planning on a violent assault on others, all those protections disappear. Free speech has well established limitations that are pretty easy to understand.

I don't believe anything I've said contradicts that position.

You keep trying to associate Parler and Gab as supporters of free speech. Parler was shut down because it refused to moderate content that incited violence. Gab's browser extension Dissenter was removed from Google and Firefox for the same reason: unmoderated content that often featured calls to violence.

These platforms are being used by white nationalists and other extremists to normalize their hateful ideology and encourage violence against anyone with different gender orientations, nationality, ethnicity, or religious beliefs.

Gab and Parler have zero interest in free speech as a human right. They want unlimited free speech for acceptable groups (mostly white straight Christians) and no rights for anyone else.

Users on those platforms have posted their intent to hurt and kill others, that content was never moderated, and those users carried out acts of violence. Companies who don't want to be associated with that have disconnected their services ahead of the inevitable legal action to shut the services down.

Literally no one in the US has had their electricity or phone cut off because of a "disagreeable blog post." It's a ridiculous example to bring up in the sea of information about what's going on in those forums.

People have felt so unheard they've taken to the streets in violence. We've seen riots all through the last year up to and including the incident on Jan 6. When people feel unheard it reliably leads to violence. That is why, when it comes to my eyes and dollars, I support platforms that support free speech. In different times I might lean towards freedom of association.

The argument I've heard from friends on the left opposed to free speech is that barely-moderated forums inevitably turn into "white supremacist" sites.

"friends on the left opposed to free speech" is your willful misunderstanding of the issue

It seems like there's plenty of "willful misunderstanding" from folk on both sides of the political spectrum. It seems like two sides of the same coin to me, and it doesn't really matter too much because ultimately the carnival game is rigged to eat the coin regardless. Whether you're a neo-nazi or a marxist-commie, we're all slightly awkward but reasonable nerds here right? I think most sane people can agree that data breaches are bad, and that black hat hackers are bad guys and white hat hackers are good guys?

Speaking of finding common ground, I thought the recent GME schenanigans were notable in that folk on both extremes of the political spectrum seemed to agree that it was fun "sticking it to the man". Was anyone here not cheering the "irrational" retail traders on?

Genuinely, I want to find common ground with people who don't say anyone who isn't a neo-nazi is ALL THE WAY LEFT AND A DANGEROUS PERSON

Maybe you could start by realizing the vast majority of people on the right aren’t neo-nazis.

"I won't acknowledge that neo-nazis are a problem"

Sorry, did I misunderstand you?

Not all people on the far right are Neo-Nazis, but all Neo-Nazis are on the far right.

You aren't coming across as genuine, though. Textual communication loses a lot of subtlety, but you figuratively started screaming mid-sentence. Is it fair to assume that people in the past have treated you like a dangerous person? Were you screaming at them? Were you trying to shame them into condemning something, thus forcing them to either submit themselves to you, or seemingly be implicated as the terrible thing you're calling them to condemn?

If you really intended to be genuine in your desire to find common ground with folk of differing political views from your own, I once again invite you to share your personal beliefs on the topic of societal damage caused by data breaches, or your thoughts on the recent GME stock market manipulation.

Hey, I'm willing to have that discussion, sure. I am accepting the challenge to accept the rules of engagement you dictated.

Are you willing to accept the challenge of accepting the rules of engagement I put forth - Acknowledge that neo-nazis are a problem, briefly state why?

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I think the GME stuff is a bit nuts, personally. I found the whole thing entertaining, but I find it hard to believe that most participants won't be hurt in some way in the long run. I'm not sure how much small time investors understand that. Optimistically, maybe this is a collective learning experience that does minimal harm to a large number of people, and we all come away from the experience with a better idea of how the stock market works. Maybe then we can make better informed electoral decisions? Feels a bit too optimistic, but hey.

Better than meme stocks vs hedge funds, imo, would be to have a working system for accountability and enforcement at the SEC- been lacking for decades, from what I understand.

-------

Societal damage caused by data breaches. Idk, it's a bit large as a topic. Do I like that a bunch of personal data just got dumped? Not the biggest fan, no. I wouldn't want it to happen to me, certainly.

I do think it's useful to have the data there to show how much the platform is for hate and organizing around hate. It seems like there should be a better way to expose this kind of thing.

----

I'd be surprised if you also engage in a genuine discussion on your own terms.

I love surprises, but I've been on the internet long enough not to expect them.

> I do think it's useful to have the data there to show how much the platform is for hate and organizing around hate.

I think for a proper useful evaluation, we equally need to see a similar full dump from other platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc. who are the standard when it comes to social media.

I am personally not too convinced the content is that different, but rather some platforms just have more diverse political allegiances.

Well no not at the outset, but we know fb, to follow this example, pays a small army of moderators. I suspect that has some kind of measurable effect.

I honestly think we do at the outset and especially before we evaluate.

The full history would also tell us if these ideas were more common when they're smaller network but when they grow they aren't etc.

The other thing we need to evaluate is if these platforms are just made of people banned from primary platforms and if that's the case, are these platforms really responsible for the surge of these types of people and perhaps what is a way to fix these societal issues as they continue to exist rather than disappear?

Gab and Parler have moderators too too, but the content they moderate is a lot more refined. I suspect proportionally, they're actually more to a per user ratio than FB or Twitter.

It seems initial looks at platforms like Facebook aren't too promising, https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/03/03/facebook-extre...

I invited you to share your opinions one way or another on two topics that I believe largely have common ground, and I appreciate your responses on both topics. I don't think it's comparable for you to challenge me with a "loaded question" that inherently puts me on the defensive, based on assumptions and false premises that I can't challenge without escalating the conversation into an argument. Do you see the difference there?

An equivalent prompt for discussion on the topic of neo-naziism would perhaps be, "I believe that neo-naziism is a problem. Do you agree with me? Why or why not?" I'll happily respond to that.

I think neo-naziism is one of the many appalling and terrible extremist ideologies that exist in the world, and people that willingly engage in it are bad people. In the general sense, it's certainly a problem; the world would be a better place if neo-nazis didn't exist. Within the context of politics in the United States, it's hard to say that it's a genuine problem. I'm an American, and I don't know of anyone within any degree of separation that would be fairly considered a neo-nazi, or is afflicted by neo-naziism. I live on the coast, though, and so may be in a bubble that's out of touch with other parts of the country. From my point of view, I think the problem is more that neo-naziism is a label that has been weaponized by the political left to rally their base against the political right. It seems comparable to the political right labeling their opponents as similarly nasty things to rally their base against the political left. I think it's about as likely that neo-naziism is a widespread concern within the political right as much as it is likely that the political left has a problem with child eating demon worshippers. It all seems like nonsense that doesn't match reality.

I agree with you on GME that it's unfortunate if anyone created a financial hardship for themselves by investing when they didn't understand the situation. I also agree that government oversight that actually functions effectively within its purpose would be way better than what we have now. I'm curious what your thoughts are on cryptocurrencies like bitcoin? I personally hate them, mainly for the environmental waste that proof-of-work algorithms create, but also for the blatant disregard for the majority of the world population's traditionally accumulated wealth.

I am thankful that you took the time to enumerate that you don't share neo-nazi ideology. I think that right now, it makes a bigger difference than it has in the past to state it out loud.

For reference: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

The FBI disagrees with you quite a bit on whether neo-nazis & co are a problem.

This is why I insist so much. This is why so many on the left insist so much on this particular test. Pretending the problem isn't a problem is a thing that is actively causing harm to the country.

These friends overtly say that free speech should be limited, in those exact terms. Not some speech, "free speech". Please let me know how you perceive me to be misunderstanding them willfully.

I think you might want to listen to them more closely, I can't answer on their behalf.

If, by chance, they're anything like me, then I agree that there's giant categories of prohibited speech that should remain so. Lying about medicine, slander, libel, incitement to violence to name a few.

They want the first amendment repealed as they say it protects racists, homophobes and transphobes. They say that liberal free speech laws led to Trump and free speech should be curtailed for that reason. They openly say that they are opposed to free speech. I am trying to present their views as neutrally as I can, but this is what they say and support.

Maybe it’s a bit “one true Scotsmanny” but there are many who identify left or right who fall in the bottom 10% of well thought out perspectives. Being on the left does not make your friends immune and they may fall into that tier if their argument is portrayed accurately. They get the general gist of things right, I.e. neonazi propaganda is harmful, but go about things in a hamfisted manner.

Yeah I can't say I agree with your friends if that's indeed what they meant. The first amendment is incredibly important. So is the jurisprudence around what it means.

I have a suspicion that there might be a communication barrier somewhere between you and your friends. I'm a bit out on a limb here, so forgive my presumptions if they're off base. I mean no offense.

It's possible that your friends have learned that, when talking to you, 'free speech' is only worth defending when it's offensive, neo-nazi style speech. Then, without making explicit the change in vocabulary usage, they run with it -- ending up in a bad spot where they're saying get rid of 1st Amendment. There's no winners in this story, just unfortunate misunderstandings.

Again, disregard if this is nonsense. I've been witness to similar disagreements in the past, so I'm offering my 2c since I think you're making the good faith effort to represent, even while exasperated, the views of your friends.

So free speech should include incitement of violence? Slander and libel?

As a South African all of this is fascinating. Especially the shift of where the "center" is.

It seemed every American not on the left is called "far right" from where I am sitting.

Half a dozen of my friends have moved to the States and a few have scolded me for my understanding saying that plenty of centrists are labeled far right.

I'm beginning to glaze over the label now. It doesn't hold any sway for me because it is used so flippantly.

Because the American mainstream left became bananas. The Democratic and Republican parties would still be right-wing/conservative all across the world except in America, but the woke/sjw/faang crowd is socially hard-left also all across the world (not in economics or international politics, they are very conservative there,even hawkish). So, for example, me, a very leftist third world person has now more in common with your average mid-westerner republican than with a coastal google employee.

Your average Republican is going to be more authoritarian-leaning and hawkish than the not-actually-left FAANG caricature you're describing.

Republicans are pretty unlikely to support such leftist notions as democratizing the means of production, whereas your average FAANG employee just might.

> It seemed every American not on the left is called "far right" from where I am sitting.

From my perspective as a German, you have the centrist democrats that swing quite a bit in both directions, and the republicans who swing from center right to "makes our local right wing extremist party drool"-right.

I can confirm that. The whole political landscape in the US is skewed to the right and has always been. So are their political positions, e.g. the word "social democracy" plays almost no role and "liberal" either means "extreme left" or, even worse and more incorrect, is used as a synonym to libertarianism by white supremacists and neo-Nazis who disguise themselves as "libertarians."

I guess it's the result of having a two-party system.

> As a South African all of this is fascinating. Especially the shift of where the "center" is.

> It seemed every American not on the left is called "far right" from where I am sitting.

What you are seeing is polarization. At the current moment, a lot of the Republican party has moved away from more moderate Republicanism and more towards Trumpism, which is a far right movement.

Fact is that more Republican Congress members voted to punish a moderate Republican like Liz Cheney for voting to impeach Trump, than voted to remove Marjorie Greene from committee assignments for claiming school shootings and 9/11,were a hoax and that California wildfires were caused by a Jewish space laser.

It's not that anyone who isn't left is now considered far right. It's that a lot of people who were more moderate Republicans in the past, have moved much farther to the right. There are more people on the left side of the political spectrum that moved father out too, but not enough to even nominate one of the far left candidates for president.

Left has the reins of power, so they don't need to pretend they care about tolerance, freedom, or the rule of law anymore.

And you say that after 4 years of a right-wing presidency and after at least 8 of right-wing legislative overstepping.

We all know Merrick Garland should be on the SCOTUS. He isn't because a right-wing senate didn't allow a black president to nominate him.

It's not. It happens to be an effective marketing vehicle for this particular audience, so you see it presented first and foremost, in an almost hyperbolic way. They conflate free speech infringements with basic service policies.

Doesn't mean that other Americans no longer consider free speech important.

"Break into Congress and kill the swamp creatures". This is a quote from Parler, and this is known as incitement, which is often illegal. The first amendment does not apply to child porn for obvious reasons, but it also doesn't apply to threats of violence, which isn't so obvious to everyone.

To make this obvious, this is not a free speech issue.

Americans always seem to conflate what is legal in usa with what is free speech.

All censorship of any speech is a free speech issue. My take is that it is sometimes justified to give consequences to speech that cause harm, but i don't think we should pretend its not a free speech issue.

I can cherry-pick several thousand twitter messages (probably more) that make this quote seem like a soft, fluffy teddy bear. But no one here accuses twitter of being a terrorist platform.

Your last line is absolutely correct: To make this obvious, this is not a free speech issue.

> I can cherry-pick several thousand twitter messages

I've heard this claim asserted before. I am unconvinced. Can you show me some examples?

https://terfisaslur.com/

an entire website with people saying things about terfs but not a single sentence explaining wtf a terf is, i'm too old for twitter feuds

You could Google it. I was just responding to the request for examples of hate groups running unchecked on Twitter.

Trans-exclusionary radical feminist. So basically feminists that believe the femininity is endangered by the mere existence of male-to-female transgender people.

So basically transphobes that also larp as feminists.

How many of these posts are still up? The problem with "pictures of tweets" is that we can't check whether or not these were moderated. The controversy is not over whether garbage get posted, it's over what happens afterward.

trans women are women. period.

Some people disagree with that attempt to redefine words. This whole thread is about the right to have that disagreement in a civil fashion, or whether to shut down the thought process with phrases like “period”.

This is highly debatable. In 100 years if an anthropologist was looking at the skeleton of a trans person they would beg to differ. If a doctor was looking at the DNA they would beg to differ.

What does that have to do with anything? The link above is a collection of screenshots of incitement of violence happening on twitter.

a) Against whom or for what reason that incitement is happening if irrelevant.

b) Equating defending a persons right not to receive death threats to supporting their ideology is beyond dangerous.

> What does that have to do with anything?

It's a reminder, more to the point, is it a slur though?

If you are fine with denying someone's existence I am sure you can take whatever is coming to you from very people fighting against you.

> ...incitement of violence

I would disagree with the 'incitement of violence', but to be fair, I don't blame them either, I would have said the same as well.

> If you are fine with denying someone's existence I am sure you can take whatever is coming to you from very people fighting against you.

Calling for people to be killed is never OK. Defending people who call for others to be killed is not OK.

Who said this was 'OK'?

Maybe don't deny the existence of people and perhaps you won't get those responses?

> Who said this was 'OK'?

You're constantly implying that they deserve it with sentences like "Maybe don't deny the existence of people and perhaps you won't get those responses?".

I'm telling you that's being a huge dick because nobody deserves to be told that they should be killed, even if they are massive assholes themselves. And now you're trying to weasel-word your way out of it without admitting that those tweets are wrong, which sure doesn't make it seem like you disagree with them.

Well tweets don't really kill you though do they? They are not directed at anyone, at most it is vented frustration from the oppressed that is trans people.

> tweets don't really kill you

You can say that in response to any hateful tweet. Racism? "tweets don't kill you". Openly advocating for genocide? "tweets don't kill you". Claiming pineapple is a perfectly valid pizza topping? "tweets don't kill you".

Please do not support transphobia.

For the record, I support mainstream trans rights.

I fail to see how evidence of hate and violence coming from trans extremists is transphobic.

Just because twitter has illegal content doesn't make what parler was doing any less illegal. Just because someone else breaks the law doesn't give you a free pass.

This is not a free speech issue on any social media.

Amazon had every right to stop illegal activity on their platform.

I believe the "law" should be applied equally. "Illegal activity" ignored on one platform or given a wink and nod and scanned under a microscope on the other platform is strange.

The selective application of policy while pretending to be fair and unbiased tends to make folks cynical.

You could make the same argument for inane twitter posts calling out to "kill all white men" or defund the police.

In the end, the lines we draw are often in the sand, and the legitimacy of these threats have to be weighed with the consequence of real world actions.

People storming the Capitol Hill building shouting these things posed a legitimate threat, but so do feminists shouting these things in rallies in real life, or the people burning police departments during the George Floyd protests. What we choose to condemn however, seems to be completely arbitrary to passers by.

The number of messages on Parler that had content like that was probably very limited. You’re cherry picking one message on a platform with double digit millions of users to paint a certain picture. But let’s not forget about all the violence in BLM riots over the last year, much of which was organized and popularized on social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook, who all get a pass.

And yes it is a free speech issue when several companies that have left leaning cultures and leaders take concurrent actions to block a right leaning platform that mostly carries fully legal speech.

> The number of messages on Parler that had content like that was probably very limited.

Why are you saying "probably"? A lot of it was backed up. You can go check for yourself, it was very markedly not limited.

Feel free to share your hard evidence, with comparisons to total number of users and total message volume. Until then, you're making an unproven claim.

r/ParlerWatch has been surfacing violent threats for months, long before the Capitol riot.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ParlerWatch/

>not forget about all the violence in BLM riots over the last year, much of which was organized and popularized on social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook, who all get a pass.

Elaborating on that:

There was a mass shooting in New Zealand that was live streamed on Facebook. Now, imagine for a moment, what the public response would be if that had been on parler.

Just about all Americans support and defend doing moral things, but the "Moral Majority" was partisan. Just about all Americans have values that they care about, but the "Values Voter Summit" is partisan. Just about no Americans advocate for being irresponsible with government money, but "fiscal responsibility" is a specific partisan interpretation of what sorts of uses of government money are reasonable.

That only a subset of the population wants to be marketed to under the banner of "free speech" doesn't mean that people don't care about free speech itself.

(Neither Gab nor Parler have any objection to FOSTA/SESTA's unconstitutional limitations on free speech and neither of them have any interest in standing up for the free speech rights of sex workers, let alone their ability to participate in the free market.)

When free speech turns to hate speech, filled with lies and distortions, can it still be called free speech?

Is free speech absolute?

If tomorrow, fox news falsely says your family is defrauding the IRS, qould you be ok with that because thwy have the right to free speech?

The intent of free speech is to have tge freedom to criticise those in power. Not to spread hate and divisions in the society.

Yes, it can be called free speech, although there can be repercussions when that speech falls into slander / libel / defamation. Outside of that, why would you ever want the government deciding what you can and cannot say? Right now you may be aligned with the government, but that can change very easily in the future

Well, suppose there's a group of people saying that another group of people (which happens to include you) should be killed as soon as possible. In an ideal world, they probably wouldn't do that because they'd recognize that collective aggression against others could rebound on them, but in the imperfect world we actually occupy it happens all the time. Of course, you could just figure they'll limit their social opportunities and eventually grow out of it or develop some higher wisdom, but just how long should you have to put up with threats from random strangers and anxieties about your personal safety while you are waiting for your antagonists to become enlightened?

>Well, suppose there's a group of people saying that another group of people (which happens to include you) should be killed as soon as possible.

But that is not protected free speech under the first amendment.

Some people think it is. In many legal jurisdictions, prosecutors and cops rely on the idea of a 'true threat' which has to be specific and imminent. So a generalized expression of hate like 'all _____ should die' wouldn't count. Here's a relevant example, about a woman in Michigan who eventually resorted to shaming her neighbor int he media because she had no confidence in reporting to police:

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2021/0...

The problem with a very mechanistic/binary approach to legal questions is that it leaves a lot of room for antagonistic or outright threatening behavior that nevertheless remains within the bounds of legality. Experience suggests that's likely better than vague or arbitrary standards, but it's not a simple issue.

That happens. My favourite is that people like me are "born into not being human", which I'm supposed to be ok with.

"I don't care whether the government allows someone to lie to me about the contents of my medicine"

Remember we are not talking about what the government says is acceptable, but what Twitter's terms of service say.

I was commenting on the hypocrisy of some, who love to bang the free speech drum, but expect the government to protect them from private individuals actions. Be it citizens or corporations.

If one wants the govt to ensure free speech, then it is implied it must also ensure a private individuals right to pursue legal actions, such as denial or service or lawsuits.

I will defend to the death someone’s right to hold and speak any beliefs, ideas, or opinions no matter how controversial or unorthodox.

What I will not defend is someone who knowingly speaks untruths or uses language as a weapon with the intent to hurt others. Just because it uses mouth sounds doesn’t make something speech.

If you think homosexuals are an abomination and an affront to god then you’re free to believe that and tell everyone you know. But that doesn’t mean you should be allowed to shout f*g at a gay person on the street. Only the former is speech, the latter is hate.

"Free speech" in these instances means bigotry and calls to violence. Also, we're talking about private businesses here, you can't be that naive.

Private businesses used to occasionally support free speech as a concept.

If someone comes into your business to promote racist and bigoted causes, and promote violence, do you have the right to kick them out?

When private businesses support free speech everyone sues the hell out of them for "interfering in elections" when it really was netizens swaying voter opinions using free speech.

> It’s incredible that supporting free speech is considered to be only important enough to the “far right” now to be worth marketing to.

It's because private companies don't want to host their extreme views. Private companies free to regulate their own platforms is a very Republican position.

Hobby Lobby and Chic Fil A are perfect examples of right leaning companies imposing their own political views of what is acceptable on their employees and customers.

It would be liberal to regulate what private companies allow or block on their platforms, which is why Republicans complain about being cancelled but don't take action. Forcing companies to allow free speech using regulations is a liberal proposition.

Right leaning people are free to create their own platforms that cater to far right conspiracies, racism, homophobia, death threats, and white supremacists. And that's what they did

The reason they're seen as a separate demographic for marketing purposes is because the "far right" has a very specific view of free speech that is largely divorced from:

A) the actual full scope of the problem of censorship in the real world,

B) the actual rights that other people have to freely associate or filter content they find objectionable, and

C) the actual practical ways to increase free speech access.

Ignoring for a second the ideologies these people espouse, purely speaking as a free speech advocate far right people make my job harder, both because they only seem to show up to advocate for free speech in very selective situations, and because most of their ideas on how to preserve free speech are, frankly, really bad.

Most of the far right crowd isn't going to show up to bat for concepts like Net Neutrality, they're not going to be out campaigning against LGBTQ+ or sex censorship. These are the people I see in my timelines cheering on government intervention into public university curriculums. They push dangerous concepts like Section 230 repeals or nationalizing media companies, and some of their more experimental proposals are just blatantly unconstitutional. It's wild to hear proposals from people who claim that they're free speech advocates that would not hold up under almost any Supreme Court ruling. These people also don't have sophisticated ideas on how to handle spam, pornography, or copyright other than to shrug their shoulders and say that the 1st Amendment shouldn't apply to those things. And their big solution to Twitter censorship is to make new centralized platforms that (for now) cater to specifically them; there's nothing realistic or interesting or permanent about what they're proposing. It's a demographic that likes to say that they're pro-free-speech, but in my opinion a lot of that is just thoughtless rhetoric around the fact that they're mad that different people than them now have power to form their own communities and organize their own social campaigns.

So I would not call Gab or Parler bastions of free speech, and it irritates me that those sites steal headlines and place themselves at the center of these debates. Both sites are far right echo chambers filled with a lot of people who's primary experience with censorship begins and ends with the idea that nobody should be allowed to block them on Twitter. And neither site is afraid to engage in its own censorship -- the sites bill themselves as 1st Amendment advocates purely based around who they censor, not because they have compelling or innovative ideas about how to run a community in general.

I'm being a little uncharitable here, but I'm not being very uncharitable. I have almost completely given up trying to engage with far right ideas on free speech, because a significant portion of that demographic is only interested in free speech in ways that personally benefit them, and trying to assemble their views into an internally consistent philosophy has frankly been kind of a giant waste of my time. If you're worried about tech censorship, go donate to Mastodon or Matrix -- projects that are filled with people who are actually thinking about free speech in deep, thoughtful, and practical ways.

From experience I would recommend meeting and getting to know people politically from different ends of the spectrum. Not every conservative is anti-LGBTQ, nor do they agree with nationalizing the media, nor agree with intervention in public education, etc.. Net Neutrality is an issue I’m not a fan of but my opinion is not because the current system isn’t broken, but because I’m not sure government intervention would make it less broken.

The right has nuance to it the same way the progressive left has nuance that separates them from the establishment left. I think Gab and Parler give a voice to some questionable characters. Parler, in particular, has some investors I’m not exactly a fan of. However the ecology of diverse platforms does fit in with traditionally enlightenment ideas around speech that I subscribe to. So I support them. Perhaps we disagree what it means to be thoughtful. I think that’s a fair debate.

Speaking to your point about echo chambers, I agree this is probably the biggest societal and technological problem facing us today. How do we get people to see we aren’t all that different and want to debate complex issues? Far right” and “Radical Left” are not terms that inspire debate and critical thinking. It’s almost as if society wants to dumb us down and lower the human consciousness.

I do know Conservatives who I would consider to be pro-free-speech. They're just not the people on Gab. My criticism here is that in many cases, literally the same people that I see talking about how Net Neutrality might be problematic are advocating for concepts like reintroducing a Fairness Doctrine, for imposing massive regulations on what Facebook can and can't censor. At some point it's OK to acknowledge those contradictory positions aren't born out of some kind of nuance, they're born out of either thoughtlessness or bad faith.

I'm willing to engage with Conservatives who are genuinely grappling with free speech and aren't falling into those contradictions, but I'm also not going to pretend that Gab has ever been a good faith actor in that conversation. Being upfront about the obviously hypocritical sections of both the far right and many mainstream GOP senators is a necessary part of that engagement. It means acknowledging that Conservatives are diverse, but also being blunt about the overall direction (in the context of the legislation, surveys, platforms like CPAC, and general official party statements coming out) that the party is going is not in a pro-free-speech direction. Because if I'm not upfront about those things, then the conversation just devolves into reexplaining freedom of association for the 20th time. And that devolution of discussion also crowds out the Conservatives who actually do care about free speech who might have something interesting to say.

Part of this is that I actually do care about free speech, so I have a vested interest in making progress during conversations, in moving past basic ideas that the free speech community has already hashed out, and instead engaging with more complicated ideas that are more important right now. I don't want to waste time rehashing the same debates over and over again just because people like Ted Cruz, Andrew Torba, and Donald Trump don't understand the free market. Not only because I don't really want to engage with those people in general, but also because the actual free speech debate matters, and those people are holding it back.

My frustration here was a response to a comment arguing that criticism of Gab as a platform was a sign that Americans overall no longer care about free speech. I'm happy to engage with Conservatives that have more nuanced views, but again, in my experience those are usually not the people who are trying to sell Gab as a free speech utopia. And to the original comment's question of why "free speech" platforms like Gab often tend to market primarily to a very specific segment of the alt right, it's important to understand that it's not because everyone else hates the 1st Amendment, it's because the alt right uses the "free speech" debate disingenuously as a cloak to hide more nefarious goals.

> I'm also not going to pretend that Gab has ever been a good faith actor in that conversation.

It really hasn't, and in my opinion, neither has any other social media platform.

> My frustration here was a response to a comment arguing that criticism of Gab as a platform was a sign that Americans overall no longer care about free speech.

Polarising the issues and gaslighting is the norm today.

It’s incredible that supporting free speech is considered to be only important enough to the “far right” now to be worth marketing to.

It is indeed incredible, though perhaps not in the sense that you meant.

I think the right (no pun intended) word here is "disheartening".

These are bottom feeders who want to cash in on social media without the overhead of moderation. To MBAs that's a cost center that has to go. The "free speech" spiel is just their cover story to fend off government intrusion while the user base festers.

It’s incredible that supporting free speech is considered to be only important enough to the “far right” now to be worth marketing to. Free speech used to be something all Americans supported and defended.

America once had a very finite number of publishers who were the primary gate keepers for what published. America suppressed the works of Wilhelm Reich and Henry Miller. America once arrested members of the IWW for engaging in street corner soapbox speak-outs [1]. America engaged in anti-socialist repression on a fairly large scale.[2] It's common to reference an imaginary free speech fundamentalist era somewhere in the US past but, sorry, it's not there.

And, of course, the extreme right only pretend to be true free speech fundamentalists - Note how the dropped Milo Yiannopoulos when his speech offended them.

[1] https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/industrial-workers... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids

Everyone supports free speech. Everyone also supports moderation. All liberty comes with moderation else we have chaos.

Imagine someone talking loudly outside your window all night. You’d have laws made about public disturbances. Would you then be a freedom hating communist? I don’t know about that.

Now if you also have a forum where you’d like to have more family friendly conversations. Would you welcome the Nazi hatemongerer? I would think you’d moderate them out.

Imagine you have a church, and an atheist disturbs your mass by shrieking god doesn’t exist. Would you escort them out?

This is so basic to me that I can’t believe people have a hard time grasping something so obvious. I can’t help but think they are being disingenuous.

If you were a photographer creating erotic gay art or a writer hosting a Communist poetry night, I would advise you not to bank on the right wing defending your freedom of expression.

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