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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

(a) Stuff like this is supremely unhelpful and corrosive to the thread.

(b) It's obviously not the case that Jones is getting a sympathetic hearing from this thread; instead, you're noticing mostly the randos posting pro-Jones stuff that lives briefly before being flagged to the bottom of the site.

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I think the poster has misidentified most people defending Jones in this thread as fans when they are more likely free speech absolutists who believe any government sanctioned consequence for speech is immoral.

They’d likely defend anyone who received a punishment for this type of behavior, Alex Jones just happens to be the man of the hour

I am yet to see a "free speech absolutist" defend anyone on the left (where's the outrage about Republican school districts banning books?). It just seems to be a convenient excuse for being friendly with fascists.

You’ve got a fair point although I will play devils advocate at you can find them occasionally in deep corners of the internet like /r/libertarianUncensored, and even there they aren’t the majority

I haven't heard of that - could you describe the books being removed from schools? Are they still teaching books like 1984, Brave New World and Animal Farm?

Book bans are on the rise across the US[1], in blue and red states. In blue states it tends to be books like to “kill a mockingbird”, “huckleberry Finn”, or other books with racially charged language. In red states they say they are removing “CRT”, and “pornographic” or “sexual content”, but their definition of sexual and porn includes any mention of homosexualities existence and their definition of CRT includes any mention of minorities having been oppressed at any point in time.

It’s kind of a shit show all over

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/30/books/book-ban-us-schools...

Individuals being allowed to say / write what they want versus school boards prohibiting certain texts from being taught or distributed as part of their curriculum... maybe they just understand what "free speech" means?

In this thread there are many non-new accounts taking positions such as:

  - This infringes on the first amendment
  - He shouldn't be punished solely for his speech
  - What about this or that person who did X
  - The punishment is too much
  - Anyway, he'll never pay so it doesn't really matter

All these strike me as being sympathetic to Jones. Why even post such things if not to elicit sympathy or muddy waters? Meanwhile you and others are up and down the thread playing whack-a-mole with these people.

So calling a spade a spade, I'm surprised how many on this site are sympathetic to Jones. If you find that corrosive and unhelpful so be it.

P.S. I'm only replying because your a respected member of this community who has called me out.

My perception is that the comments and the voting on this thread overwhelmingly disfavors Jones. But, anyways, just as a general rule, characterizing the tone of an entire thread or of HN in general is just something we're not supposed to be doing here. That's all!

Being sympathetic is not the same as a fan. I think you are misrepresenting the views held by those making the statements.

These are all valid points that you may strongly disagree with, but at least recognize that they don't require being sympathetic to Jones. E.g. the first two are just a very extreme position on the general freedom-of-speech scale, which some people hold for purely ideological reasons. Similarly, the third and the fourth are also a matter of justice and fairness in the abstract - that the punishment ought to be the same for the same crime. And so on.

Indeed, I would say that most commenters on this story that take one or more of those positions explicitly state that they're doing so as a matter of principle. Which, given the prevailing attitudes hereabouts on topics such as freedom of speech, is quite believable - so why are you assuming some other sinister motivation?

Some people are capable of disagreeing with actions towards those that they disprove of instead of always blindly jacking off to "justice" porn.

The poster is wholly correct in observing that Alex Jones has a disproportionate number of defenders here. Usually a busy thread might collect 2 or 3 flag-dead comments, this one has 23.

The point is that they're all flagged dead, not that this story didn't attract a bunch of new randos to post flagged comments. Anybody can make an account here to post nonsense with practically no effort at all; it's an open-access site.

The original point was that it was amazing to see so many randos, given the relatively narrow popularity of HN.

Sure, but flagging comments (and not just downvoting) because one disagrees? I keep on the ability to see such posts precisely because more and more frequently the flagged / dead posts are the most interesting and informative ones. This mass flagging approach isn't exactly countering the argument that silencing opposition and censorship is the aim of stuff like this ruling.

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