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Comment by headsoup | Hacker News Reader

I think this thread is missing the main point, which is people are being cancelled for the content of their speech, not their behaviour.

That is the key difference between free speech and censorship. You can support free speech and still remove people for horrible behaviour, but as soon as you start removing people because of the content of their speech, you move to tyranny.

That is cancelling and why people self censor (you're full of it if you say that's not happening), because their content is considered dangerous, not their behaviour.

Just watch, if Musk buys Twitter the mass of woke narcissists will immediately move to demand social media be regulated, after feverishly admonishing Trump for desiring the same thing...

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How is speech not a behavior?

Self-censoring is crudely how civilisation works. We accept some restraints on our biological urges for the safety and order collective society provides.

You could say everything we do is behavior, but it's still useful to make a distinction between one thing and another. Maybe you'd like a different term, but I really think everybody understands what is meant by distinguishing word from action, or message from tone, etc. We're not talking zoology here.

I was going to question whether you agreed in "free speech" because our U.S. counterparts are always up in arms about that, but then I see you're from Stockholm so no worries!

> Self-censoring is crudely how civilisation works. We accept some restraints on our biological urges for the safety and order collective society provides.

Are you saying our civilization is no longer working?

Speech is a behavior, it could be unpleasant, it could hurt, and it is also dangerous.

The reason free speech being cherished is because limiting it brings upon cons much out weight the pros. In particular you block the escape hatch of a death spiral. I'm not super familiar with history but even I remember it's repeated many times in many places, just that this time it's global.

That's not what I said. I said it's the content of the speech that is the distinction, not the behaviour around how it is presented.

People are self-censoring because of the fear of an out of proportion response to their speech's content, which is rife currently.

The saying goes 'Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.'

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