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Comment by afarviral | Hacker News Reader

So words and representation are simply unimportant in your view or just a little less important? If so that's essentially what I thought being "woke" was, simply being "awake" (aware of) psycho-socio and socio-econonomical (structuralist) factors that affect us all. Waking up from simple prejudices against people. The narrative that it's all gone too far may have some truth to it, but it's also a convenient narrative to discredit, scapegoat and undermine the movement.

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> So words and representation are simply unimportant in your view or just a little less important?

Being able to speak and express yourself, whatever you views, is the most important thing for a functional and enduring society. How you are judged beyond that, is secondary to that basic right.

Cruelty of words is a concept suffered by the bourgeois and upper classes, who have little knowledge of starvation and brutality; real suffering, real violence and powerlessness. The beauty of speech, is that you can speak back. Ideas combat each other, instead of stacking bodies.

Right now, the idea is that speech needs to be limited, is winning. I don't agree and that's the beauty of it.

I resonate with the idea of "free speech" in terms of avoiding government oppression, it is a really important and foundational idea. As a catch-all, however, I don't think it works quite so well in the age of social media. Ideas are spreading like wildfire which have no rhyme or reason to them, that cater to psychological maws and not facts, and a bulwark of free speech arms liars with the power to reach millions with a few keystrokes. The power of reason has consistently lost to more blunt instruments. So I think it's, at best, neutral for social media platforms to drop people that aren't woke. As for legal constructs aiming to protect minorities, they don't plausibly set up a slippery slope to dictatorship in my view. I'm of the view that literal absolute free speech that allows any speech no matter how directly harmful or immediately dangerous is itself detrimental to a well-functioning society and public safety.

I often notice transphobic people trying argue that "free speech" is being eroded around bills impacting trans and find this unpersuasive, even childish.

If you can be punished by these overbearing social media platforms - or even by the judicial system - merely for referring to a man as a man, then how is that not an erosion of free speech? It gives others far too much power over what you're allowed to say.

I'm not saying that free speech need be chucked away, but that we should strive to maintain a balance which protects societies from bad actors. Merely misgendering someone isn't necessarily abusive, but a pattern of consistent harassment is. If a privately owned company want to allow the former and not the latter, then I'm okay with it.

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