I am, in fact, pro free speech. But this is a bad look. I'm not even saying this is a problem with subreply. It is some other kind of problem. A problem with a subset of people who like free speech or something? I don't get it.
Such trolling hurts new businesses a lot more than old ones.
I posted a prototype of a real-time social network on HN many years ago and within minutes there were multiple posts exactly like that.
I have admined what I consider free speech friendly communities in the past (think forums), people always join and ruin it for everyone else.
For what it's worth, right now at least, most thoughts and opinions people have in the English speaking world can be expressed just fine without it getting moderated out, despite what some would claim. And so those who seek out platforms where they won't get moderated will primarily be folks who would get otherwise moderated out elsewhere. One can also refer to cryptocurrencies and Tor for a parallel.
You can be pro free speech and still not condone hate speech, or libel, or doxxing, or a myriad of other problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
Free speech doesn’t mean you can say literally anything in literally any context. Not, not even in the “land of the free”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...
Additionally, XKCD reminds:
> A problem with a subset of people who like free speech or something? I don't get it.
I don’t think those people particularly care about free speech, they just want to be able to say whatever they want with no repercussions. The more of a “free speech absolutist” they claim to be, usually the worse they are. It’s a common pattern to see those same individuals clamour for free speech in one post and then in another call for banning books or try to silence someone else.
Rather, they want to be able to say anything to annoy people as much as possible, for the kicks.
Verily, it's important to be able to say annoying things: try speaking about atheism or a different religion in a devout crowd (capitalism among the "left", climate change among the "right", etc). But the intention is important. The intention of trolls is to enjoy other people's discomfort, not to voice an important idea.
Unfortunately, this is very hard to formalize.
But that's you, too:
> Free speech doesn’t mean you can say literally anything in literally any context.
It is of course different because they want to be free to say the bad thing and prevent others from saying the good thing, instead of the other way round like the true free speech advocates.
But anyway, you admit that your idea of free speech has restrictions, and their idea of free speech also has restrictions, but the difference is that yours are the necessary ones, by your values. Their restrictions are the necessary ones by their values, but their values are bad and wrong. I'm only being slightly po-faced here, I think this description of the situation is probably literally true, barring mistakes and room for improvement in the good value system and the outside possibility of adherents of the bad value system being occasionally onto something insightful.
That is exactly why you should read the links. It’s not my idea of free speech. You have no idea what my idea is, because what I showed you is the definition. I didn’t make those up, I linked to sources.
What you are doing is conflating someone who understands what free speech is—and that its definition and application everywhere includes restrictions—and someone who hypocritically claims to be a free speech “absolutist” (i.e. literally anything goes) but then tries to silence the speech of others.
There probably is a very general consistent rule to your/your source's idea of free speech, like "everybody's liberties should be curtailed only where they endanger the liberties of others". But implementing this leaves enormous scope for arbitrary and creative judgments. We can assume that your opponents, being wrong, have less internally consistent ideas, but even so the presence of exceptions in itself is nothing to be critical about if your own conception of free speech is nuanced. They may be following some logic too.
What bananas sophistry is this? All this person is saying is that contemporarily free speech absolutists tend to be hypocrites. Surely you aren't arguing that those supporting any limit on speech can't call out hypocrisy amongst free speech absolutists. Wouldn't this also be you limiting their speech? Are we incepting deeper and deeper into some kind of ironic morass of hypocrisy?
We should treat social media the same way. There should be a way to filter what you don't want to see, that's your choice. But we shouldn't try to stamp out people saying what they want, or decide what other people should filter for themselves.
Most people who say things like you quoted, aren't killers, i'd guess that most of them aren't even racist. A good fraction of them are just immature, or social outcasts, that are desperate to get a rise out of people. If we could all turn down our reactivity, there'd be less of a draw, for those troublemakers to spew their nonsense.
What we should be the most on guard against, are the unintended consequences of trying to censor this stuff. People shouldn't have their political and social voices limited, just because a relatively few people are disruptive like this.
The point of choosing abusive usernames and posting abusive things is to hurt people who don’t want to see that stuff. The two cannot coexist in the same space. There’s no reason to legitimise this kind of thing while they are looking for ways to hurt people.