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Comment by TameAntelope | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad he's putting a voice to something I feel has gone under-discussed during this whole "free speech" debate: it's rarely the mere topic that gets someone into trouble, but how the topic is presented.

If you want to say (almost) literally anything, you can find a way to do it that won't get you in trouble anywhere. It's the tone, the timing, and the specific phrasing that causes the problem, not the idea itself.

You can say some truly abhorrent things on Twitter and they won't ban you, if you say it the "right" way, and I feel like a depressingly small number of people realize that.

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Agree, and to add further to this, the medium of Twitter does itself no favors in the 'how the topic is presented' dept.

Twitter's context-less, short-form, hot-take, free for all design is really great at priming people to react rather than consider. So many aspects of the product reinforce this, which is a result of the top line metric being engagement. It's a dumping ground for emotions and generally a shitty medium for anything mildly controversial.

When I see discussions like this, I'm disappointed people miss just how influential the product & medium is on these problems. Product is not 100% of the problem (everyone has content moderation problems) but it's definitely a big contributor to the problem as the medium makes it hard to have good faith discussions.

There are a lot of product improvements Twitter could make to improve discussion quality, and I've mocked up several [1]. While individuals there are very motivated to solve these problems, I'm not sure there's the same will to solve them at the top.

[1] https://twitter.com/nickpunt/status/1513429343833563139

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message

Eh...you won't find a nicer guy than Charles Murray, or less of a Stormfront nazi than Curtis Yarvin, but both are basically unmentionable. In both cases no one objects to their presentation, but to their (alleged) material.

I'm sorry, I just don't buy it.

Yes, the whole thread reads something like “we need to suppress our ideological enemies because they are dangerous” while being highly vague about who and what he means exactly.

Notice he begins the thread by specifically naming his ideological enemies who deserved ruthless suppression (Christians against degenerate media) but implies it was ok because it was 25 years ago.

Also he never really defines how “shitstorms” hurt platforms exactly.

>If you want to say (almost) literally anything, you can find a way to do it that won't get you in trouble anywhere.

No. If nothing else, the scold always has the "dog whistle" weapon.

I’ve found people who don’t know how to express themselves well tend to also be the people who live frustrated and confused lives.

I assume that’s a result of being mostly ignored. Censored, if you can apply that to people not taking you seriously (and I’m sure they do).

But yes, continue to make poor arguments and then get upset when people tune you out (or ban you). The indignation probably feels pleasurable, at least!

You shouldn't have to hide your message. It's not free speech if you can only talk about controversial things exactly the way some corporation wants you to.

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