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Comment by thegrimmest | Hacker News Reader

> outgroups end up having to tolerate a lot of unpleasantness, so long as that unpleasantness is couched civilly enough and could possibly be interpreted as well meaning

Yes but isn't that a good thing for a public forum/town square, given the alternatives (censorship, politicization, etc.)? Shouldn't it be exactly the sort of place that people feel unafraid to discuss controversial subjects?

If the choice is between some outgroups feeling uncomfortable with civilly-expressed criticism of themselves and their worldview, and draconian, politicized, highly subjective, moderation foisted on everyone, I know where I stand.

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Well, I posit that down that path lies HN's dreadful gender ratio. I'm not OK with de facto exclusion through tolerating low-grade harassment at scale, even if the intent was benign. I think that's a much more serious consequence of "assume good faith" than gets acknowledged.

And private fora are not town squares. The rules for actual town squares have to be lenient because government suppression of speech is problematic. The relevant freedom for private fora is not freedom of speech, but freedom of association.

> I'm not OK with de facto exclusion through tolerating low-grade harassment at scale

Why not? At what point is it OK to let people exclude each other? We don't all have to be friends and play together, do we? We're discriminatory, hierarchical, social animals. Some people will always be excluded. Using authority to try to solve this problem is futile and draconian.

> And private fora are not town squares

I agree, but the question here is whether it's worthwhile for this particular private forum to operate under the same principles of free speech. Certainly some people seem to think so.

Well, the big issue is that completely unmoderated free speech in an environment like Twitter only stays free for the loudest, biggest two (or so) groups. The others are just shouted down and may as well go home.

> the sort of place that people feel unafraid to discuss controversial subjects?

> If the choice is between some outgroups feeling uncomfortable with civilly-expressed criticism of themselves

So this is the key tension. Outgroups get criticism of themselves every-bloody-where. As you noted, "We're discriminatory, hierarchical, social animals". One more place doesn't make the difference. What good moderation does is provide an opening for an outgroup to issue its own civilly-expressed criticism, with a chance of being listened to instead of reflexively ridiculed and dismissed.

> The others are just shouted down and may as well go home

I'm not sure that's true at all, lots of fringe views gain traction on Twitter. I'd imagine more of them still are moderated out of existence.

> So this is the key tension. Outgroups get criticism of themselves every-bloody-where

Yes, and by being a digital town square, Twitter, or any similar platform, would become part of everywhere, with the same consequences for outgroups.

> provide an opening for an outgroup to issue its own civilly-expressed criticism

I agree that outgroups should have this opportunity, but it must be applied to all the outgroups, including those who have a mutual loathing for each other, and those whom we loathe ourselves. Fairness dictates we shouldn't play favourites, in the same vein that the ACLU defended the a Nazi group's right to march through Skokie.

If an outgroup wants a private, safe space to express themselves, that place cannot also purport to be a public square of free expression. It's one or the other.

> If an outgroup wants a private, safe space to express themselves

That's not particularly close to what I said. I am talking about the outgroup being able to participate in the "public square of free expression", in a way that is actually free for them to speak to the ingroup.

Well, if the rules are the same as an actual public square, then outgroups can participate in exactly the same way as they do in actual public spaces, governed by laws enshrining freedom of expression. That is to say they may be insulted and ridiculed by members of the public because we as a society have decided that we don't trust any authority to moderate public discourse.

These conditions do in fact represent "actual" freedom. Basically if you support people insulting and ridiculing Nazis (which I do), you should support them insulting and ridiculing anyone else on the same principle.

Sorry, I'm confused now, are we talking about a place where people exchange

> civilly-expressed criticism of themselves and their worldview [0]

or where they should expect to be ridiculed and insulted? And why would anyone sane want to regularly participate in the latter?

[0]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31167326

Yes? If you're going to a place where freedom of expression is a primary value, then you should not be surprised by any kind of expression, from cheerful agreement to hateful bile. I agree being rude is well... rude, but people should be free to choose for themselves what rudeness (and directed at whom) they approve of, don't you think?

As to why people would want to participate, I suspect it's for the usual reasons: to accomplish a goal, or to gain influence and social status.

Edit: Surely you agree that sometimes rudeness is warranted, and that people in fact are rude on Twitter?

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