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Comment by literallyWTF | Hacker News Reader

Modern version of book burners? Do you want to pretend to be a victim any harder?

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've been doing it a lot, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Isn’t the goal - blocking access to certain content - the same?

That’s not playing the victim. It’s the plain truth.

A more apt analogy would be efforts to restrict cigarette advertising. Book burning was about eradicating a cultural heritage, and was accompanied by a literal genocide in the case of Nazi Germany.

Although in this case, the action to remove the proverbial cigarette ads was taken voluntarily by the private media (magazine/etc., in the case of the analogy), and not done as a result of government coersion.

The analogy is really disingenuous at best, and pretty stupid at worst.

Book burnings were hardly exclusive to the Nazis. They just showed us how it can be part of the progress to something much bigger and uglier than ever imagined. And I have to disagree on your cigarette analogy. This is so much bigger than regulation of advertising. This is about using the platforms to enforce censorship of anybody you deem offensive. This is not the same thing at all.

It's actually less severe than restriction on advertising, since it's the voluntary decision of a private media entity, not a government enforced restriction on published content. (Under pressure from another content provider, Neil Young)

It is much smaller than restriction on advertising.

When cigarette ads are removed, people can still get cigarettes.

Censorship is censorship regardless if you agree with the censors.

Freedom of association is freedom of association no matter how desperate you are for an audience.

Censorship and book burning are not identical. Regulation and censorship are not identical. Requiring a surgeon general's warning on cigarette advertisements is not censorship, for example. The government preventing a newpaper from from publishing an op-ed in favor of smoking, or consuming large amounts of alcohol while pregnant, etc. would be censorship, true. Would it be as morally reprehensible as the book burnings of history? Probably not. Would it be wrong? Maybe, I don't know.

@dang @mods

This user needs to be called out for consistently being needlessly inflammatory and adding little to nothing to the conversation.

Please don't do this type of stuff. We are adults capable of having discussions without needing to tug on Dan's skirt especially considering the increasingly heavy handed moderation here. You're actively eroding the culture of maturity here.

Follows it up with sexism, good one dickhead.

If you see something you feel goes against the community guidelines simply flag it rather than adding oil to the fire and publicly reporting it.

Now I understand how Joe Rogan feels.

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