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Comment by shockeychap | Hacker News Reader

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.

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