Comment by randrews | Hacker News Reader

Comment by randrews | Hacker News Reader

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We do not live in a pure democracy, we live in a constitutional republic. Our lawmakers aren't able to create certain laws because of limits on their power in the constitution; one of those limits is that no law can be passed abridging the freedom of speech. No matter how many people vote for it, without amending the constitution to remove that protection first, it will not happen. And the process for passing that amendment is intentionally cumbersome, for that reason.

> 4Chan, Parlor, Truth, or any other "free speech" platform. It ends up being toxic and noisy to the point that the vast majority of people will not use it.

4Chan and Parler seem to exist just fine. 8Chan doesn't, or was killed and then revived, or something, I'm not sure, but it wasn't due to lack of users; their host canceled them. Never heard of Truth before now, it seems to be Trump's Twitter clone that contains just Trump?

Anyway, my point is not that these free-speech-platforms are more successful than curated ones. My point is that that's the wrong metric to judge whether free speech is a good value to have in a society. I don't care if there are costs to it any more than I care whether the post office is profitable: I don't want to live in a society without freedom of speech, no matter how efficient it is, any more than I'd want to live in one without a post office or a fire department. I am willing to pay for the externalities because the alternative is much, much worse.

From your other reply: if I'm letting my bias in, then how am I misinterpreting what you say? I genuinely want to understand your position.

Letting your biases shine through affects more than your interpretation of what I say, it permeates from all of your speech. Most people do not want what you want, but you characterize that as being at the other extreme, and therefore must be disastrous, while your solution is the savior of all. Step back to see that your "solution" is unworkable, that it does not reflect what the vast majority want.

Again, you have a problem in that you only appear to think at the extremes. What concessions to your vision would you be willing to make?

I genuinely want you to understand your position

Looking back at what I've said in this thread, it's "free speech is a societal value like honestly and politeness, not just a constitutional right," "I would be in favor of lifting bans on cigarette ads," "people don't like watching ads but we shouldn't ban them anyway," "I don't think we should be banning any speech," and "the point of a free country is to have a good standard of living for its citizens more than to make money."

There's only one thing in there that I think any reasonable person could think is extreme, and that's having no bans on speech. I'm overall happy making the concessions to this that America already makes.

As for the rest of it: if that sounds extreme to you then I really don't think I'm the one with biases, and I really don't think there's going to be much common ground between us. It's cliche at this point but do you talk about this stuff to a lot of people who aren't on the internet? Because outside the bubble of social media and this website, nothing I've said here would be controversial at all.

I also notice that you think I'm misinterpreting what you said, but still won't say how... Which makes me think that I'm not misinterpreting it at all, you just don't like having a corollary of your beliefs pointed out to you.

Anyway this has been fun but I'm finished now, the anti-flame-war filter is making it take forever to post replies.

dude, you really need to step back and read the words you are writing...

Have a look at the patterns and trends in your comment history, or better yet, have a trusted friend do this if they will give you an honest opinion. Thing is, the internet is more likely to tell you what you need to hear

I don't have any reason to explain myself to you more than I have, not worth the time with your attitude

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