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Comment by theprincess | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty simple really. Saying you don't like transgender people or some specific race makes you a jerk but shouldn't be illegal. It's just an opinion. Saying that transgender people are sacrificing children to Lucifer and someone should put a stop to it is clearly intended to move someone who feels they have nothing to lose to murder some random transgender people to "save the children from Lucifer." That should be investigated because it can and will result in real world harm.

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That's only simple because you picked two made-up examples to illustrate the point. What if someone says transgender kids shouldn't have access to puberty blockers? What if they say they shouldn't have access without their parents' permission? What if they say most children desist? What if they say that because most children desist, adult transgender people are not legitimate?

When you really think about the middle ground, the examples get very murky. They are not simple.

The poster actually understands your point or they would have used examples that fall more into the grey area.

They used extreme examples precisely because they wanted to avoid the challenge that will necessarily come otherwise.

I didn't use those cases as examples because they are not incitements. They could be construed as attempts at good faith debates. If someone says that most trans kids desist for instance, I'd point them at a study [1] that shows otherwise and we can go from there. The cases I'm talking about are quite different.

For example spreading false rumors that children's hospitals are giving sex changes to young children and saying that "somebody needs to put a stop to these evil monsters mutilating children" [2][3] is definitely incitement. Calling teachers that mention the fact that they are in a gay marriage "groomers" which implies that they are child molesters is also incitement. That's not good faith debate. It's smearing people in the hopes that someone will harm them.

1. https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/2/e20210...

> We found that an average of 5 years after their initial social transition, 7.3% of youth had retransitioned at least once. At the end of this period, most youth identified as binary transgender youth (94%), including 1.3% who retransitioned to another identity before returning to their binary transgender identity. A total of 2.5% of youth identified as cisgender and 3.5% as nonbinary. Later cisgender identities were more common among youth whose initial social transition occurred before age 6 years; their retransitions often occurred before age 10 years.

2. https://tennesseestar.com/2022/10/03/matt-walsh-announces-ra...

3. https://www.losangelesblade.com/2022/03/28/gubernatorial-say...

That's really the point, though. To help us understand what you're arguing for, you need to give real examples of things you disagree with and that make you uncomfortable (e.g. desisting) that are nevertheless acceptable speech, and things which cross the line and aren't acceptable.

You didn't give us examples from either side of the line to show us where the line is, you gave one example that's totally fine ("X is a jerk" isn't going to get anyone arrested in the US) and one that's a direct incitement to violence. The examples are miles apart and the line could be anywhere between them.

The Matt Walsh example doesn't really help either. If I said "someone needs to put a stop to these evil monsters pumping carbon into the atmosphere" in the context of protesting a new coal mine, pretty much everyone would understand there was an implied "...by turning up to my legal protest next Tuesday and waving some placards around" on the end. Saying the owners needed to be lined up and shot may or may not be incitement, but again that's a pretty extreme example, and it still doesn't look simple.

So if someone says 'transgenders are sacrificing children' should be illegal, does that mean 'police are arbitrarily killing unarmed blacks' - should that be illegal? Because I think the material reality could be demonstrated that the later is false as well.

I think your argument demonstrates a slippery slope.

I think probably claims should have to be more specific and inciteful to be considered illegal.

Also - I think proportionality matters as well. Saying 'the kids who died at Sandy Hook were not real people but actors' - on a personal level should be legal. But if you have an audience of 400M people and scream that nonsense, I think this might be a problem. Right now it's handled in civic courts, but we could think a bit about what that means.

It's very hard, and there are a lot of slippery slopes. Risky.

I suppose we should also consider whether the proposed response is to bomb a hospital or reduce somebody's budget.

Police have indeed been ambushed and killed as a result of such claims.

The proposed response is not uniform in either case.

Wouldn’t some think that it would be e.g. justified to set fire to a police station or something? I mean, seeing as riots include things like other places being set aflame.

It doesn't help to address claims nobody is making specifically dressed up to serve as fallacy. The normal claim is that police are killing black individuals unnecessarily. The claim you have offered is just that claim dressed in dramatic clothing.

Meanwhile transgender sacrificing children would be a falsehood wholly invented to smear a group that already frequently suffers violence and harassment and with the blatant intention of promoting and justifying further violence and harassment. The statement is in effect part of the process of harassing, harming, and ultimately killing people. It ought to be illegal in the same way that breaking into a home to commit rape is also illegal and liable to be punished more harshly itself than if the burglary was part of mere trespass.

I also take issue with drawing a line between a harmful lie like Sandy Hook and mass promotion of same in the fashion you have. Both should be illegal in the same way that starting a house on fire isn't any more legal than setting a fire that burns down whole housing development. The punishment may be harsher but its ultimately the same crime. It's also not a slippery slope AT ALL.

Passing on a falsehood that the individual knew or should have reasonable known was false is not at all like parsing the difference between police arbitrarily or unnecessarily killing black people. We can forgive trespasses where the truth is a matter of opinion, phrasing, or debate while trivially punishing people who blatantly lie or spread harmful nonsense.

If you don't know that dead children aren't crisis actors or forest fires aren't caused by jewish space lasers and you can't be educated you should probably be fined or imprisoned into silence so that the rest of society can move on.

"The normal claim is that police are killing black individuals unnecessarily. The claim you have offered is just that claim dressed in dramatic clothing."

This is plainly false.

Claims that police arbitrarily kill people, or are 'killers' etc. are all over the web..

That you would blind yourself to the radical populism in some corners because maybe you don't want it to exist is not helpful.

Here's a completely random example:

"cops are serial killers. paid, protected serial killers who believe their jobs entitle them to take human life. over and over. they lie. they kill. they lie again. repeat. "

This is one of literally millions of such Tweets.

How could you possibly suggest that such language does not exist when it's rampant?

If that example isn't specific enough for you, then just Google a bit and you'll have your examples.

"a harmful lie like Sandy Hook and mass promotion of same in the fashion you have. Both should be illegal in the same way that starting a house on fire isn't any more legal "

Again, utterly false.

So plainly wrong, that I'm sure you can't have actually thought it through.

Do realize this Orwellian implications of governing speech to the point wherein saying something that is 'non factual' is tantamount to a crime?

It's not even a 'slippery slope' it's already ultra authoritarian.

Again: hop on to Twitter, right now, by your logic, millions of people would be charged with crimes, daily.

"If you don't know that dead children aren't crisis actors or forest fires aren't caused by jewish space lasers and you can't be educated you should probably be fined or imprisoned into silence so that the rest of society can move on."

You seem to have a wilful lack of understanding of what is happening in pop culture and in the commons, and yet want to enact vicious authoritarian violence on people for arbitrary words?

I wonder if you realize that you're a fascist authoritarian?

You are exactly what we are afraid of.

People can believe what they want to believe and say what they want to say, unless it really starts to damage others, and that's a high bar.

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/sheerohero666/status/127598615903...

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