Regardless of whether you agree or not "cancelling" is more about large scale boycott of a person and the media or services associated with them. It's not "Just" about blocking someone on social media, and it often has significant impacts on the business or the individuals who are being cancelled.
If you are spouting heresies in a respectful good-faith debate, the worst that generally happens is you get yelled at/laughed at, and usually by community members and not the mods.
This old Tweet [1] always comes to mind whenever someone feels they are being unjustly picked on for their views.
1: https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174...
My takeaway isn't necessarily hypocrisy (although a few of them are certainly full of that), it's that moderation is hard because of the never-ending wave of people trying to clog up public discourse for a variety of crappy reasons.
Jeff Atwood (one of the founders of Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange, developer of Discourse) has some pretty insightful things to say about community management.
This is not about private or public companies and what they legally can or can not do. Its not that they can not write in their ToS that you aren't allowed to say X and then if you say X they ban you. That would be the expected way how thing go.
But in reality the say you aren't allowed to say "hate-speech". And then you say X and the people who didn't define hate-speech define X as hate-speech and ban you. This is a problem because it give endless opportunity to abuse
The people who make the rules also interpret the rules and enforce the rules. So anything is hate-speech if they hate it. That's not a proof that hate-speech (objectively defined) actually exists, its a proof that it subjectively enforced and that is a problem. Another example. Lets say a platform forbids the use of the n-word. People can disagree with this but still use the platform and follow that rule and they should be fine. But to actually be fine they need to know the way this rules is interpreted. for example is "n*****" against the rules because its just a substitute? And if so what about "n-word" also against the rules? What about "******" or a single "N"? what about context? can I write the full word if I quote an album/movie title? etc. etc. The problem isn't whether the rule is "good" or if someone agree or not with the rule. The problem is can people who want to follow the rules be booted of the platform anyway by simply declaring something they did as against the rules.
The answer is yes. If "hate-speech" is in the rules with no definition then p much anyone can be booted for basically anything they say. And yes the law allows this because by law they do not even need a reason, there is always something in the ToS that says that the "service" can be terminated at any time. So the argument that something is "constitutional" is pointless. There is a real problem that somehow need to be fixed. The problem doesn't go away if we just all repeat over and over that no law was broken.
That's like saying large companies avoid paying fair taxes but they do it in a legal way so its not a real problem its "constitutional" they have to do this or their shareholder could sue if they voluntarily pay more taxes. But the problem isn't that a law was broken so clamming no law was broken is a fooling argument.
Also the president was not removed from platforms due to hate-speech. Your example actually somewhat represents a case where they didn't even bother to twist or interpret their ToS/guidelines somehow to justify banning the president but instead they just did it. And again they LEGALLY can do that. By law they do not even need a reason. That doesn't mean its not a problem.
Breaking the ToS is also not the problem here the problem here is that ToS are written unspecific, specifically when they put things like "hate speech" in it because no one know what will fall under it and what not. The whole point of rules should be that people should be able to understand and comply with them easily. Instead they are used as a general propose banning reason for anything the owner may not like.
>Twitter banning someone for inciting violence is no different than a mod banning someone on a web forum for disagreeing that ATI video cards are not the best. You can't call people the n-word on facebook. If you don't believe that is real I'm not sure I have the energy to expand on it for you (perhaps someone else can).
It its not about the rules, who or why someone put them up or that they have the right to do that. Its about mutual agreement as to how the rules are interpreted else they make no sense. "Hate speech" rules make no sense because no one know how they are interpreted.
Lets say I open a forum and say in the rules "no hate speech" and then when someone says "I hate dogs" I ban them for "hate speech". Clearly I can do that since its my forum and I can do whatever I want. But that doesn't make "I hate dogs" actual "hate speech" nor does it proof that "hate speech" is a real thing. All this does it give me backdoor to remove almost anyone I want for a "pseudo reason" which I didn't need in the first place but it makes it look like I just enforce the rules and remove the bad guys.
And that is exactly what these platform do. If people would get banned for no reason given then people would question it so they put up reasons like "violated community guidelines" and similar stuff and then people assume it was the users fault. But is it the guys fault who wrote "I hate dogs"? Is that hate speech? And if so did he knowingly broke the rule? He could only know if "hate speech" is defined somehow but it isn't. Everything the platform owner hates is or can be defined as hate speech at any given time.
Hence my original post that there is no such thing as "hate speech" its a made up term to include whatever someone wants it to include.
Hate speech for sure is a real thing. Is calling someone the N-word hate speech? Not always. Context matters - there are some corner cases where it is clearly not.
But mostly, calling someone the N-word or other racial slut is a hateful act.
This word has such a long and nasty history that it is extremely clear its meaning. There are very few corner cases e.g. Hate Speech exists.
Your complaint is less that it doesn't exist, and more that mods are seemingly expanding the meaning by making judgment calls on the intent of speech.
Using another example to try and explain it, if someone said, "Why are the Inuit so lazy! They just don't want to work." (Something I cannot imagine anyone saying, btw) Well. That is a negative and purjorative generalization of a racial/social group, and whatever -ist label you want to put on it, that too is hate speech. If you walk it back a bit and get a little more wordy with the language, where it may not be as explicit making that generalization, a mod may or may not decide to ding you for it. It then depends on their reading of your intent.
Some mods get it right (I would say most), but some get it wrong, and there are a few who use TOS to enforce their own biases. That hardly negates the existence of Hate Speech.
Forum moderation is hard, as I said in a previous post. You will not always agree with the mods. And indeed the mods do not always get it right, and sometimes there are bad mods. The key is to try to first understand the TOS and second mind the social norms of that forum (just like you would at work or at church).
Above all, the same basic rule applies in online forums as it does in work or church: Just try not to be a dick.
> In the digital age, we are nearing the point where an idea banished by Twitter, Facebook and Google all but vanishes from public discourse entirely, and that is only going to become more true as those companies grow even further. Whatever else is true, the implications of having those companies make lists of permitted and prohibited ideas are far more significant than when ordinary private companies do the same thing. [1]
[1] hhttps://web.archive.org/web/20161012220046/https://theinterc...
Blocking people's speech on social networks is a very different thing.