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Comment by gtirloni | Hacker News Reader

What do you propose instead?

Allow it. Let the racists be racist. Let them expose themselves so we all know who to ridicule and ignore. Not only has this wacky notion of free speech worked well for a long time, society has grown far less racist despite no official policing of speech.

The insidiousness that comes from controlling speech is far greater than the insidiousness of a small group of assholes who say mean things. The short-sightedness of many continues to astonish me.

What do you do when that leads directly to murder?

Say it's a great tragedy and if only people had more firearms at hand thins would be different?

Investigate and find the murderers so they can be punished?

I struggle to understand how that could happen. Why would you choose to murder or not murder someone based on Twitter’s moderation policies?

reminds me of the parable of the man on the roof in a flood waiting for god to save him saying no to the people who pass by offering a lift.

what if this is a part of the "ridiculing and ignoring of racists"?

"Let them expose themselves so we all know who to charge and prosecute with criminal behavior". Fixed that for you. There are laws regarding this, so either use them or might as well eliminate them if they have no teeth.

Ignoring them does not work, and only emboldens them. Ridiculing them online seems to act mostly like feeding a troll.

First of all, you have no idea whether that's true anymore than I do.

Second, so freakin what?? So 0.01% of the population says mean and ugly things - so what? It's very, very easy to avoid and ignore it. Meanwhile, policing speech is not only going to obviously open Pandora's box in general, but it will probably cause more people to be racist.

>First of all, you have no idea whether that's true anymore than I do.

I don't know what is true?

That is not true. They were ignored for the longest time and their numbers were dwindling. They just got more support when people started policing hobbies, books, comedy. That will obviously lead to further opposition, which aren't racists but are declared as such.

As if racists in power wouldn’t do their utmost to curtail free speech.

Regulation, ideally coming from an elected legislative branch of democratic governments. Like was done with mass media, e.g. radio and TV. Definitely not outsourcing that kind of stuff to companies having quasi monopolies on their services.

Laws against racism already exist.

That people ignore speech they don't like.

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