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Comment by Flankk | Hacker News Reader

Freedom of speech is not just some law for the government, it is a principle. The left wants to obey the letter of the law but not the spirit. Freedom of speech is recognized in international human rights law and by the United Nations. Nobody is saying racism and bigotry are good. But anyone saying censorship is the ideal solution should be met with a great degree of skepticism. I think this problem can be solved as simply as having an extra setting to toggle platform moderation. That way everyone gets what they want.

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> Freedom of speech is not just some law for the government, it is a principle.

The thing is that there are actually multiple different, and in some cases fundamentally opposed, principles that people use that name for.

One is the principle of robust competition of ideas in the marketplace without government fingers on the scales, with ideas succeeding or failing in large part on their ability to convince people to expend effort and resources relaying them, which happens to be very closely aligned with the shape of the legal concept of free speech in the US.

Another seems to be the idea that there should neither be public nor private consequences, including in other private parties decisions whether or not to relay your speech, to speech, even to the extent that enforcing this warrants active government action against recalcitrant private parties.

This distinction only really comes up in the case of large idea distribution platforms like Twitter, where to have a marketplace of ideas you need an actual place for them to compete.

This isn't a new debate or problem of course, just our generations version of it. For most of written history censorship was a giant fight over who got to have printing presses. The "free press" is an important concept that came out of this era, and is respected even in countries that don't have a First Amendment.

With respect to lacking consequences for speech, what people actually want is a lack of consequences for exploring and taking part in the marketplace of ideas. That in turn only really comes up when one side or another decides that competing over ideas is too much like hard work, and it's easier to just punish people for not agreeing. The consequences aren't connected to actually losing any debate but simply taking part in the first place. That's a social issue that is only resolved ultimately through debates like these.

> The left wants to obey the letter of the law but not the spirit.

Not really - if that were so, they would have no complaints about Musk's purchase of Twitter.

Actually, most of the world would agree wholeheartedly with censoring racism and bigotry, because most of the world suffered dire consequences from letting hate speech propagate unchecked, and learned the lesson that such speech never exists in a vacuum, its purpose is always to influence behavior and direct action. It's only in the US that people unironically say "but what about the Nazis?"

What are your thoughts about following people around who trigger you and downvoting their comments? If you want to go on a date just let me know, sweetheart.

Sorry to undermine the paranoid complex you seem to have developed, but if someone is downvoting you, it isn't me. I had to look back into my history to even remember who you were. I promise I literally couldn't care less about you. Ta.

Hacker News Down Voting Crew is very particular. I think they changed the system, so that the Crew cannot go far back in history to downvote everything, because of one humorous non-PC message.

The problem is that the definition of "hate speech" and "racism" have drifted wildly according to some (mainly on the left). I have seen people on the left accuse 100% of Trump voters of being racist. I have seen people accused of racism for opposing co-governance reforms in New Zealand. I have seen people accused of racism for criticising Will Smith when he physically assaulted a comedian.

So yeah, I oppose censorship of "racism" and "hate speech" because I don't trust the powers that be to maintain reasonable definitions of these terms.

But you haven't been describing policies implemented by the powers that be, you've been describing people's opinions. Of course people differ on definitions of a term with political implications. I've seen plenty of people on the right accuse 100% of "the left" of being racist. Every side has its extremists.

Do you believe Twitter has been that inconsistent with their policies?

Yes I do.

Germany had laws against hate speech and it did not help to stop the most racist regime in the 20th century. Especially online it is a good idea to let people vent and many arguing for more freedom don't do it because they want to utter racist statements. That is a strawman and a bad excuse to curb freedom of speech.

Furthermore the definition of racism has become quite soft and not because of real racists at all but they will profit from that.

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