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The government should simply have no hand in determining what information is presented or not presented to anyone, except within the bounds of explicit legal mandate to do so.

That this sort of under-the-table cooperation between three letter agencies and information companies has been allowed to exist and develop is completely outrageous. It should not be put into perspective, but stopped, right here, right now.

Once that is done, a discussion can be had about where it makes sense to create legislation to curtail various behaviors and content that are disturbing to social order. The current list of offenses is fairly comprehensive and includes things such as violent threats, child porn and terrorism recruitment, and any addition has to be well-motivated.

But as long as the cooperation with three-letter agencies happens outside a legal framework, the only proper response, as far as I can see, is pure outrage.

>In short, the collective well-being of humanity should always be a top priority, and this includes moderating harmful or extremist content on the internet.

Who defines what is harmful or extremist in the government? Sounds like you either get in the good graces of the "intelligence community" or you are now harmful, as shown pretty clearly with the hordes of "intelligence community" people calling the biden laptop(whatever it had, its content is irrelevant) russian propaganda[0], while even the DOJ and FBI says it isn't[1]. And of course those officials making the stink are contracted by the news agencies to talk about it where journalists will just blindly accept whatever they're given.

The "intelligence community" isn't your friend(neither are the proper agencies but I digress), it never was if you're not an us citizen and it probably stopped being if you are after the patriot act.

[0]:https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-...

[1]: https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-doj-fbi-confirm-hunt...

> Who defines what is harmful or extremist in the government?

An additional related question: Are they even capable of undertaking this task? Our current government officials and bureaucrats don't understand enough about how the Internet works to effectively police it. And more fundamentally, can a government act quickly enough to outwit how quickly the Internet adapts to roadblocks? Governments need to have policies, procedures, go through chains of command, etc. A lot of Internet culture, on the other hand, is driven by random people doing random things. If a topic is forbidden, instead of policing that topic, the government then has to police the 50 ways to get around the block as well as guess which one will take root.

It's similar to trying to win a war against guerrilla insurgents. The high level of organization of a government to some degree works against them.

> However, it is important to recognize that the collective good and well-being of society should always be a priority, and that includes protecting against harmful or extremist ideas that could cause harm to others.

As an American, I disagree. We are a sovereign country, and people from other countries don't have any say in how we conduct ourselves. It doesn't whether it's online or offline.

American Nazis and Tankies have the first amendment right to spread their dumb ideas. If they want to make their own websites, that's fine with me. The government should mind its own business unless there are actual crimes taking place.

The rest of the world doesn't have to like it. It's just the way it's going to be.

I believe your comment represents speech that puts the well-being of society at serious risk, is harmful, and possibly even extremist.

If I manage to convince 50.1% of the population of the same, should we be permitted to censor your speech, and enforce prior restraint on your future speech under penalty of law?

I'll go one further... if even 1 single person (the person who owns HN), decides that they don't like the content of that comment, then they should be free to delete/censor the comment on HN and ban the person in perpetuity from HN.

Your argument doesn't really make any sense because everybody here is talking about speech in the context of a walled garden owned by a company/person. That is a completely different situation than what you are alluding to. I can just as easily prevent the reverse question: I have a blog with a comment section, and somebody I don't know posts a horrific, rude and distasteful comment that I don't want associated with my blog post. Can the government force me to not delete that due to free speech, or do I have the power to moderate my blog however I want?

>Your argument doesn't really make any sense because everybody here is talking about speech in the context of a walled garden owned by a company/person.

Did you read GP? If they were talking about comapnies and not governments, it certainly was not made clear:

>However, with the proliferation of the internet and social media, it has become easier for governments to monitor and regulate online content, and this has led to increased scrutiny and debate about the role of government in moderating online speech.

>[...]In short, the collective well-being of humanity should always be a top priority, and this includes moderating harmful or extremist content on the internet.

Where was GP talking about companies?

> Where was GP talking about companies?

The initial comment says government has always used their influence through "newspapers", "television" and "social media", all of which have historically been non-government entities who take the government's input and decide if they want to follow it or not. There are obviously major historical cases in which private companies have defied what the government wanted them to do (NYT v Sullivan, NYT vs US, etc), but I'm sure there are countless examples throughout Twitter's history of the government asking for something and then not getting it, but I assume that isn't something those instances are not being highlighted that much as they don't fit the narrative.

That's perhaps a fair reading of the initial comment, although reading "regulate" in "it has become easier for governments to monitor and regulate online content" and "moderating" in "the collective well-being of humanity should always be a top priority, and this includes moderating harmful or extremist content on the internet" to both mean simply "government input" is somewhat questionable. See also your own use of the word "moderate" ("Can the government force me to not delete that due to free speech, or do I have the power to moderate my blog however I want?"). Also your point that historically non-government entities can decide whether to follow government input or not needs to be qualified considerably. Contempt of court was not considered free speech until relatively recently. for example see Los Angeles Times contempt of court 1938. Then there is of course the Sedition Act of 1918. In any case this is very far from your claim that "everybody here is talking about speech in the context of a walled garden owned by a company/person." We are most certainly talking about government here. Whether or not the initial comment was refering to government simply "giving input" or outright censoring, we are still talking about government, so your claim is in my view inaccurate even under your own explaination of the comment, which is itself somewhat questionable.

why is it distorted?