As someone who dislikes probably almost every single thing said o Parler, I'm glad it exists. Preventing people from talking is not the way to fix our problems
But I'm glad it exists as a place people can safely be wrong on the internet.
Have you considered that written words that remain uncontested (or unpunished if against the law) can lead to actions outside of the Internet where people are killed?
Free speech just for the sake of it is not good for societies. I don’t know Gettr but Telegram is also a place where people can be safely wrong on the Internet. And it leads to calls for politicians to be murdered. Groups radicalize themselves in their thought bubbles, take the protest (in their eyes justified) to the streets, and even murder people (in their eyes justified) all because they can be safely wrong on the Internet.
People shouldn't confuse an ideological stance with an operational strategy.
I see this not particularly clever argument against the "free speech absolutist" strawman frequently enough that it's getting stale. Can people really not distinguish between the free speech issues involved in suppressing legal but controversial speech (e.g. "We support $DEPLORABLE_CANDIDATE and their $BAD_POLICY.") versus the entirely separate issues of suppressing illegal or unwanted speech (e.g. threats, spam)? This simplistic binary "all or nothing" thinking cannot capture the nuances involved in the complex philosophical and legal quagmire that is the principle of freedom of speech.
Beyond that, it's particularly ironic to attempt to use HN as the example given that the HN moderation team has tried very hard to be evenhanded on controversial threads while enforcing the rules to the extent that they routinely get accused of favoritism by all sides.
So you think platforms should allow for radicalisation?
Radicalization like the civil rights movement or the LGBTQ rights movement, both considered extremist back in their day? Everyone should; allowing radicalization is very, very important. Platforms that aim to prevent radicalization sustain the status quo which is exactly what a conservative would want.
To quote Doug Gwyn "UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things." and perhaps something similar could be said about the principle of freedom of speech.
No. Try that act on someone else.
Frame it however you want. If you frame free speech as the potential for radicalization than I'm 100% fine with the potential for radicalization. That's part of what living in a free society entails, the right for people to believe in things that you find radical.