Hacker News Reader

> Generally speaking, we deem various kinds of speech that harms people as NOT protected under the first amendment, and that kind of speech would not be protected here.

That is not a general principle. Consider the following: it is now illegal to say the word “election” because it would harm the President.

View on HN

Yeah, we don't ban harmful speech, and we shouldn't. Harming people can be a legitimate and valuable consequence of speech.

We ban a subset of harmful speech with a direct link to clear harms, usually criminal.

Is that really what you think I said? It’s probably more productive to read with the goal to understand rather than the goal to misunderstand.

Yes, that’s how I read your comment. There are narrow circumstances but no general principle. To generalize from narrow circumstances is simply misguided, so I commented.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com