Comment by qerghnui | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qerghnui | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

>Twitter is unarguably far less censored than it was before (though censorship is still present). And Meta took note and also turned down its censorship significantly in response.

A publisher making editorial decisions is not censorship. You have no right to demand Twitter publish your speech. If you don't like their editorial policies, you are free to go elsewhere. You are not prevented from speaking or even prevented from reaching an audience. None of these platforms is a monopoly.

For my money, I would prefer to hang out somewhere where people don't openly celebrate the murder of my family. Would you deny me that right? If so, you are not on the side of freedom. I don't object to the existence of forums like /pol/ or today's Twitter; if you object to the existence of moderated forums like Twitter in its prime then you are the one restricting speech.

Today, we see flagrant examples of the literal government literally prohibiting people from speaking their minds. Literal masked thugs with literal guns are literally grabbing people off the streets. This is censorship like the Soviets did it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu3q1eYyR1A

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/19/us/politics/trump-cnn-msn...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fcc-disney-abc-early-license-re...

https://www.aclum.org/cases/ozturk-v-trump/

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/07/31/p...

https://www.propublica.org/article/caught-in-crackdown-ice-c...

Twitter has certainly relaxed its policies on racism and violence in recent years, and perhaps you think that's a good thing. But point out that they're paying Nazis to post about their hatred of Jews (an undisputed fact even if you object to the framing) and they'll file SLAPP suits to try to bankrupt you. They very much go in for censorship (the real kind, backed up by guys with guns) when it benefits them.

https://www.fire.org/news/fire-statement-x-corps-lawsuit-and...

> A publisher making editorial decisions is not censorship. You have no right to compel other people to publish your speech. If you don't like Twitter's editorial policies, you are free to go elsewhere

When a social media deletes users posts because they cross a political line, it may not be government censorship, but it's very obviously still censorship.

It's very hard to take opinions like yours seriously because I know exactly how you'd react if all your HN posts were deleted because you're calling people "Nazis"

I exclusively use websites that "censor" their users. Millions upon millions of people are with me on this. Would you deny us our right to organize as we please?

>It's very hard to take opinions like yours seriously because I know exactly how you'd react if all your HN posts were deleted because you're calling people "Nazis"

If you deny that there are literal and unabashed Nazis on Twitter these days, you are wrong. I am not using the term as a pejorative; I am using it as a straightforward descriptor for people who post pictures of swastikas and SS officers, start their posts with "Hitler was right", have "1488" in their bios, and write my name (((like this))) every damn time. These sorts of people would not be offended by being called Nazis and are not shy about their desire to see me gassed to death. Twitter paid them to say these things and then tried to censor people who criticized them for it, and that's a fact.

Hell, I didn't even call this guy a Nazi:

https://tinyurl.com/5n94mk74

> Would you deny us our right to organize as we please?

So you must really hate laws like the Online Safety Act and the Digital Services Act, that force platforms to censor vaguely-defined hate-speech, without a court order, or face ruinous fines. Literal government censorship, men with guns forcing private companies to silence citizens, denying you the right to organize as you please.

I mean, I assume you hate them. Based on your complaints about government interfering with individuals organizing as they please, you should hate them, but then you speak as if those laws don't exist, and you praise as exemplars of free speech and free association the very services those laws forces to censor. Maybe you just didn't know about them? And now that you do, you're going to protest these laws as fervently as you're protesting the other violations of free speech you mentioned in your posts?

> A publisher making editorial decisions is not censorship.

Are you really going to conflate publishing with operating a social media platform? Regardless, if those editorial decisions are meant to suppress a viewpoint, it is censorship - government censorship is only one kind.

> You have no right to demand Twitter publish your speech.

Nobody argued that what social media do is illegal, only that it counts as censorship.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com