Comment by Asooka | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Asooka | Hacker News Reader

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The problem is that policing hate speech creates a police state worse than allowing hate speech to exist. The system you need to create to police the hate speech will result in more violence against people than letting the hate speech exist. To me, your very statement "freedom of speech ends where threats of violence appear" is a form of hate speech. You are hating on my principle of free speech. It actually makes me physically sick to read those words, because I know where they lead.

Generally on the Internet you would make use of existing tools to prevent people from talking to you if you find them hurtful. For example, I could just block you and not deal with you any more. Sometimes people get around those to harass others. That is definitely bad and we already have laws against harassment and ways for law enforcement to find those individuals without creating a full police state on the Internet. Posting your opinion once is not harassment, no matter how much it makes me want to puke. Or as we used to say in a more civilised time, I abhor your speech, but I will fight to the death for your right to speak it.

I don't know where you got your conclusion from - I am European and I don't mind violent speech. In fact I think we generally need a lot more freedom since many countries give their citizens barely more freedom than serfs had. School shootings have been a perennial favourite for your type to parade around so you can rule over a disarmed population, but e.g. Czechia lets you have a gun at home as easily as the USA and they do not have that problem. USA's problem is mostly societal.

Your opinion sounds like it was formed in the ivory tower of university with no connection with reality. Please get more varied life experience and reconsider your position.

> To me, your very statement "freedom of speech ends where threats of violence appear" is a form of hate speech

How on earth did you conclude that? Where is the emotional charge you are implying? What about the other party feelings (of being intimidated)?

> To me, your very statement "freedom of speech ends where threats of violence appear" is a form of hate speech. You are hating on my principle of free speech. It actually makes me physically sick to read those words, because I know where they lead.

Hmm. Well, it's the US that has liberal freedom of speech and freedom of violence. It also has a "free speech absolutist" as a first buddy and that's going great too. To me that is a picture of where this kind of "absolute free speech" leads to, and I'm frankly happy with going in the opposite direction.

> Your opinion sounds like it was formed in the ivory tower of university with no connection with reality. Please get more varied life experience and reconsider your position.

You have literally no idea. I could easily say the same to you - except this is highly impolite. But suit yourself.

The US is full of bans of free speech, from pornography to piracy, from banning books to banning talk about kidnapping Donald Trump.

Its just that Americans think that that is the default level of free speech, any extra restrictions are an affront, and any lesser restrictions are irrelevant

> You are hating on my principle of free speech.

Do you really think you are contributing to the conversation when you say things like this?

that is a genuine contribution to the conversation, it points out the opposing argument doesn't make any sense and that the rules are just applied arbitrarily

instead of applying them arbitrarily (which you won't like when your political party isn't in power), just apply them fairly across the board regardless of whose in charge so we can coexist in a civilized manner without the kind of extreme psychological aggression that takes place in the heart of censorship

> that is a genuine contribution to the conversation, it points out the opposing argument doesn't make any sense and that the rules are just applied arbitrarily

That post only works if you use an absolutely ridiculous definition of hate speech.

It does not show a flaw in the opposing argument. It's not an example of a rule being applied arbitrarily. It's an example of falsely claiming a rule applies when it objectively does not apply. If that's a weakness, it's a weakness in basically every law. It's not a disqualifier.

They could have tried to show an unfairness or a contradiction that actually relates to sloppy definitions of hate speech, but they didn't. They went outside the definition.

> instead of applying them arbitrarily (which you won't like when your political party isn't in power), just apply them fairly across the board regardless of whose in charge

I think you mixed something up here. Applying a law fairly doesn't prevent a different political party from interpreting it differently and ending the fairness. I'm pretty sure your argument is supposed to be that these laws should not exist in the first place, because they're too dangerous in the wrong hands. Not "just apply them fairly".

Nope, it makes sense and you're the only one here whose lacking an example. Any definition of hate speech is ridiculous because grown adults who try to control the speech of others are all ridiculous.

> Any definition of hate speech is ridiculous because grown adults who try to control the speech of others are all ridiculous.

That's a very different argument from the one I was critiquing.

> you're the only one here whose lacking an example.

It's not about whether I can come up with an example myself, it's that the specific example used by Asooka was a troll argument.

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