Hacker News Reader

Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

> I think we should be able to talk about it now while we still can.

What does that even mean? Are you saying the debate about free speech itself is somehow silenced?

He probably does mean that. An environment of censorship very quickly demands meta-censorship -- censoring discussion about the existence of censorship, otherwise you could circumvent the censorship of the particular topic by discussing the fact that it's being censored.

We saw this clearly demonstrated during covid -- discussion about covid censorship was also censored.

> censoring discussion about the existence of censorship, otherwise you could circumvent the censorship of the particular topic by discussing the fact that it's being censored.

Can you elaborate what that would consist of here?`

> discussion about covid censorship was also censored.

Any examples?

Examples of censorship around Covid? Are you serious? Pick the topic. Either about the existence of Covid in countries like China, or about the questioning that a vaccinated person still being able to transmit the virus.

This is very thoroughly documented.

Those are on the topic itself. We were arguing whether the discussion of the existence of censorship was being silenced or not.

Basically: did someone who said "I can't talk about X or I'll be silenced! there is censorship!" also get THAT opinion muted?

While it was off the topic of the original argument: was there censorship of the opinion that Covid existed in China in any countries with supposedly free speech?

I think it's great that we don't have Chinese-style censorship of the internet but disagree that "there really isn't much to talk about (yet)". I think there is good reason to believe that many governments around the world are interested in making laws to control the dissemination of various kinds of speech, and whether or not we have the full information on individual cases this shouldn't stop us from commenting on our overall rights around speech and what we believe these should be. Personally, I don't wish to self-censor over this, as I think it's important.

I live in a country with even worse speech laws than those in the US and I wish people stood up for the kinds of speech that should be protected instead of waiting until our lawmakers pass draconian laws and then complaining.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com