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Comment by mcsniff | Hacker News Reader

The Ministry of Truth.

A bit hyperbolic, but the West really has fallen.

Freedom of speech works as a mechanism to maintain decentralized power. If there are multiple sources of power interested in preserving their own shares of power, they end up agreeing on fair mechanisms of resolving conflicts. Like arguing your case in a court vs. sending an assassin, or discussing different viewpoints in a civilized manner rather than waiting than the party-chosen one goes into the extreme, and evokes an equally extreme counteraction.

Power in the West has been centralizing for decades now. Information society and low interest rates have been catalyzing this even more. It is inevitable than hard-fought-for freedoms will fall, followed by an economic collapse, splintering, and a slow crystallization of new sources of power over the courses of centuries. Empires fall. History repeats. Humans are humans...

Absolute freedom of speech is solely an American tradition. Speech regulation has always been the norm in the west.

That's what Russian Government says all the time. According to them, speech is free in Russia, they just have some reasonable limitations.

Canada in fact has quite deep restrictions on speech:

https://ccla.org/our-work/fundamental-freedoms/freedom-of-ex...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_expression_in_Canad...

It's one thing I think we do particularly poorly compared to our friends down South. The Americans' absolute freedom of speech is... quite freeing.

> an American tradition

So also is silencing speech it doesn't like. Easy examples like the book banning taking place in states like florida and the ag-gag laws.

Just curious because I've heard the 'book banning in Florida' ad nauseum. I've got a Miami server I can proxy through. Can you send me an Amazon link of a book I can buy in Texas but cannot buy in Florida? I'd like to test this out.

"Book Banning" is always to be taken with a grain of salt. What typically happens is that a school library is not permitted to have copies of books considered inappropriate for children of a certain age.

Ok, try going to this florida school library and check out an encyclopedia or Anne Frank's diary. You can't because they were banned by a government law.

You may counter with, this isn't a book ban because you can still buy it on amazon and that the government is supposed to moderate content in schools. But when 'moderation' becomes this absurdly broad, its a ban.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/11/florida-scho...

Looking at the press release it appears to me that this is a form of 'Malicious Compliance' it only makes sense in that context. If you are an administrator or librarian and disagree with the law, you would want to 'ban' the most absurd list of books. You do this for two reasons: 1. So they can print the headline in the article you linked 2. So that when the case challenging this law inevitably goes to trial the lawyers can cite the absurd examples on your 'banned book' list.

It often times helps to think critically about who benefits from an action when you see something as blatantly ridiculous as a dictionary being 'banned'.

Ironically I think this is the point. The government deliberately made the law very general so they could cast a broad net and remove all of the bad-think books through the magic of selected enforcement. The malicious compliance was used to highlight this and the difference between 'protecting the children' and the policing of thoughts and ideas (always the root of censorship).

Trust, I don't think limiting books available to people is a good thing. However, I understand the intent of the law even if it was written terribly. I don't think government should dictate sexuality to children. However, in this instance the law is terrible.

I'm at the middle school library you mentioned, and it's even worse than you made it sound. They aren't letting me check out ANY books at all; something about "not being a student here"? They said I could try the public library, which is open to everyone and not controlled by the school district.

Freedom of speech is not the norm in most countries and not the norm historically. It does strongly correlates with democracies in contrast with feudal or monarchic societies where the elites needed to suppress diverging voices.

I am not from the US, but the US is just plainly more advanced here. Maybe it is even a reason why it is the most successful nation.

Nobody should be proud about the intention to curb freedom of speech because of "hate speech" or comments on the internet. It is just majorly short sighted.

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