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Comment by sam0x17 | Hacker News Reader

I used to believe this, but the sad reality of modern society is that the current "meta" is suppressing viewpoints that damage society from your point of view, and if you decide not to play the meta by, say, opting for carte blanche free speech, others who have damaging views that actively harm your position will embrace this "meta" instead and YOUR views will eventually be suppressed (see Karens flooding local school boards to get basic LGBT literature banned, who have no problem being hypocritical about the fact that they just want to censor things they disagree with but will leave literal Nazi literature alone). It's an arms race of who can control the dialogue and get their views in front of the most eyeballs, unfortunately, and if you fail to see it that way, you will lose.

In the face of fascism, restraint in the name of principles make you weaker than the fascist.

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>The sad reality of modern society is that the current "meta" is suppressing viewpoints that damage society from your point of view,

My viewpoint is freedom of speech regardless of my opinion of it, or yours.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ― George Orwell

> If you decide not to play the meta by, say, opting for carte blanche free speech, others who have damaging views that actively harm your position will embrace this "meta"

My viewpoint is freedom of speech regardless of my opinion of it, or yours. If people express viewpoints I do not agree with I will fight for their right to say it. That is what freedom of speech means.

Which is why ACLU defended a Nazi group´s right to protest.

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” ― S.G. Tallentyre, The Friends of Voltaire

I dont care who is doing the burning, nor why they are doing it. People burning or banning books is the antithesis of freedom of speech. Something I clearly reject.

>. It's an arms race of who can control the dialogue and get their views in front of the most eyeballs, unfortunately, and if you fail to see it that way, you will lose. In the face of fascism, restraint in the name of principles make you weaker than the fascist.

You appear to advocate that your opinion of the world must be the true opinion, and thus, needs to be enforced and dissent silenced lest our nation becomes "facist"¹

This means that you become the arbiter of what is truth and what is not. What is harmfull or not. Or yu delegate this ot the state, or to private corporations or all of the above. That is the definition of an autocracy in my opinion.

You would probably be more comfortable in Saudi Arabia where dissent is dealt with in a proactive manner.

“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.” -- Oscar Wilde

¹ https://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc

The position you have about this topic serves the status quo of corporations and advertisers deciding on what speech is acceptable. That is the status quo today with the major tech platforms. Personally I find it detestable. And you'd find your viewpoints a bit extreme in countries around the world. Nazi speech in Germany is banned for a good reason and is popular with the populace.

And sharing quotes by long dead authors is hardly relevant to the systems we've built today which reward inflammatory speech for the sake of monetizing eyeballs. Personally I find that more dystopian than setting some rules for engagement about how you discuss sensitive topics, like we have here on HN. But that's expensive to do so these platforms just deplatform such content no matter how inflammatory or neutrally it is presented.

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