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Comment by ARandomerDude | Hacker News Reader

Say the word "trans" in a sentence and put an "x" on an otherwise common adjective and no other effort is required.

I expect the above will get flagged but it's correctly pointing out that we've effectively brute forced some loopholes that allow normal protections on speech and thought to be bypassed. The fact that you "can't" say certain things ends up shifting the game to claiming your opponent has said one of those certain things.

Edit: to wit, the parent post claim in ridiculous action: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34811787

Edit 2: and just to clarify my point, once these loopholes get found, people jump on them and aggressively exploit them. Look around this thread for the kinds of rhetoric people that oppose free speech are using. What would they have subbed in 15 or 50 years ago?

> The fact that you "can't" say certain things

what fact is that? who enforces the "can't" ?

exactly. the poster you are responding to is pretending that the boundaries of polite conversation have always been the same as the boundaries of legal speech when that's obviously not the case and has never been.

According to the Twitter files, Silicon Valley enforces it at the behest of the federal government.

Not clear why you're getting downvoted, but this is the exact right answer. The Twitter files was proof that the Federal government put pressure on Twitter to censor specific viewpoints.

What was the pressure?

There was often no (but sometimes) pressure, Twitter was aligned enough with most of the requests it seemed.

Regardless, does that remove the offense?

The offense being requests to remove revenge porn?

Somehow, I don't think that the material covered by the so-called "Twitter files", or the material not covered by them (e.g. Trump asking directly for deletion), is what the GP was referring to.

I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com