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Comment by hbrundage | Hacker News Reader

It’s a fundamental issue though — there’s no “figuring it out” that a government can do that won’t either censor or facilitate. 25 years has been long enough to find tactical policy changes that make it easier, but there aren’t any, which is why nothing has happened. The choice we have to make is either de-shrine free speech above all else or entrench hatred, and it’s bogus that we haven’t picked the thing that doesn’t kill people yet.

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> de-shrine free speech above all else or entrench hatred

False dichotomy. We have always punished some speech (e.g. fraud) while sanctifying others (political speech).

Practical dichotomy — that’s why this thread exists. You either platform it or you don’t, and you’re either legislated to do so or not. What middle ground do you see that allows this degree of free speech without platforming hate?

The middle ground that already exists - the right of free speech doesn't guarantee an audience, and the right to assembly doesn't guarantee a platform. Censorship is permitted within the marketplace of ideas as an inevitable consequence of the fact that coerced speech cannot be considered free, but the government is far more limited.

If Kiwifarms wants to continue "this degree of free speech" it's up to them to find someone willing to tolerate their bullshit, and then to not step over the line, as they apparently just did with Cloudflare.

> it's up to them to find someone willing to tolerate their bullshit

Or host themselves. ISPs are common carriers. Their freedom of assembly is abridged in a way others' is not.

> either platform it or you don’t, and you’re either legislated to do so or not. What middle ground do you see that allows this degree of free speech without platforming hate?

Nobody has been legislated to do anything here. Cloudflare is dumping Kiwifarms. There are other hosts. That's one middle ground: a diversity of opinions on what constitutes unacceptable speech. Here's another: the government has no right shutting down Kiwifarms in the absence of a true threat [1], but Cloudflare is free to.

If you look at the history of communication technologies, particularly public ones (e.g. the printing press and television), this pattern recapitulates. An idealistic explosion of creativity. Weaponisation. Scrambling alongside states over-reacting. Then a middle ground.

We don't have anything close to consensus on the Internet, save perhaps for X-rated content. So private actors are figuring things out. We'll probably see a government response carving out protections for both speech and platforms, though hopefully nothing as onerous as what was done with TV [2]. And then over decades an equilibrium will arise. An equilibrium between "de-shrining free speech" and "entrench[ing]hatred."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_threat

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_State...

> The choice we have to make is either de-shrine free speech above all else or entrench hatred, and it’s bogus that we haven’t picked the thing that doesn’t kill people yet.

Most of us never enshrined free speech above all else. It was never controversial that free speech had limits, that sites had the right to moderate content and ban accounts, or that businesses could refuse service to anyone. Prior to 2016, something like this would not have even been newsworthy.

Government censorship doesn’t kill people?

Painting this issue as black and white is just wrong. Both sides have immense ramifications for the world. Accountability for censoring bodies and people on these platforms is not easily solved.

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