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Tech companies declare war on hate speech and conservatives are worried (arstechnica.com)
80 points by myrandomcomment on Sept 2, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 81 comments



I say yes. Because you probably disagree with what most people will call hate speech. Criticism of religion, criticism of some historical events, is considered by some as hate speech.

Ex-muslims routinely complain that youtube censors their videos criticizing islam. Videos of brutality (that often contains legal proofs of crimes) are removed if they are used by some hate groups, even if the intent of the recorder was to denounce violence.

In France, hate speech laws are now extended to jail terrorism apologists. OK, why not, I don't have a lot more love for them than I have for nazis. But we are also at war with ISIS, that is labeled a terrorist group. So taking its defense potentially leads to jail and censorship (it has already, actually)

And this is a worrying situation for a democracy: we are at war but we can't have a debate on the justification of that war, because such a debate would require making arguments in favor of ISIS, which is illegal.

Remember, fascism is an ideology that comes from many sides. It is not because there is a racist buffoon in the white house that we must not watch the other fronts it could come from.


This is what the "left/alt-left/whatever you want to call them" don't understand.

You may initially benefit from censorship because you are the initiators and the one's with the pull, but sooner or later, everyone else will start organizing.

When mormons/christian groups/conservatives/etc organize and start flagging atheist/lgbt youtubers/content and getting them taken down, are you going to celebrate censorship?

The beauty of free speech is that as long as everyone has it, you have it too. The problem with censorship is if you can censor, then so can others.

Fine. You don't like hateful racist speech. Ban it. But others don't like hateful atheist/lgbt/etc speech either.

I'd rather live in a free speech world with "hate" than a censored world without "hate".


> When mormons/christian groups/conservatives/etc organize and start flagging atheist/lgbt youtubers/content and getting them taken down, are you going to celebrate censorship?

Given that this has happened repeatedly before, I think the response will continue to be the same when it next happens: mostly challenging the choice to censor those materials, not the choice to censor anything. In the case of, for example, Facebook or Twitter this is already apparently the case (in Twitter's case mostly using their more subtle moderation mechanisms), so yes, the stance of queer leftists who support harsher treatment of racism and such online tends to be based in a belief that being queer can in fact be treated differently in online spaces than, for example, advocating murdering black people. After all, if the status quo of online moderation is already harsher against us, that's clear evidence that it's possible for it to be differently harsh between us and neo-Nazis.

[Edited to correct a typo of "mechanism" in place of "mechanisms".]


It's interesting to see these censorship trends come up after trigger events:

-war on fake news

-war on hate speech


Problem/Reaction/Solution


"Now you have two problems."


Incorrect argument.

You can easily debate whether France should be taking military action against ISIS without claiming that ISIS is right.

This is like saying that because France has laws against gender discrimination, so you could not advocate oppressing women as a show of support for Saudi Arabia, it is now impossible to argue against going to war with the Saudis.

What the law does do is make it harder to instigate more terror attacks within France.


"Ex-Christians _routinely_ complain that youtube censors their videos criticizing Christianity." Has that not happened, too? Just reversing roles for the sake of argument. Curiously wondering...


It is harder to present criticism of christianism as racists. Youtube is not anti-exmuslims, simply when you have a guy named "The Masked Arab" who has a dozen of videos explaining why islam is a violent and backward religion, that a hundred people have tagged "arab haters" it is hard for youtube to see through it.


[flagged]


Other than having their holidays enshrined federally, their words in official documents and anthems, and holding widespread majority not only in the general populace, but particularly among presidents and legislators?

Could you imagine the backlash if a country singer invoked Allah instead of Jesus? And yet, the reverse happens frequently without anyone blinking.


>Other than having their holidays enshrined federally, their words in official documents and anthems, and holding widespread majority not only in the general populace, but particularly among presidents and legislators?

You have a point, but I don't think those were the "social" protections the GP was referring to. The left in the US has scorned and ridiculed and actively sought to inflict pain on Christians and Christianity for decades. (Google "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" and "Memories Pizza" for examples.) The left would never engage in similar actions against Islam or Muslims.

Edit - hey downvoters, if you find my logic flawed, how about a few words as to why?


I sympathize (and upvoted).

Currently, "punching up" is seen as more acceptable than "punching down". Whether that's fair is probably a debate worth having, eventually. But there is that significant difference to consider.

Worth noting, of course, that (minority?) Christians also regularly scorn: examples include athiests, evolutionists, women getting abortions, and birth control, and there's a closely related Venn diagram of correlated subjects like climate change, morality-based laws, tradition-based racism, and the like.

This behaviour is not exclusive to the left.


It's definitely not exclusive to the left, but it seems to me that the left is "punching down" at Christians, and I think that's one point of hypocrisy among the left (every group has their hypocrisy). While Christians are perhaps more numerous, the liberals doing the punching include university faculty, media elites, celebrities, business executives. It seems like if liberals could separate themselves from the situation, they might see a group of wealthy elites "oppressing" a religious minority.


You keep equating "left" to non-Christian, which is what GGGP was talking about. ;-)

Trump/Hilary voting was split 50/50, but that doesn't explain the 76% of Americans.

This misunderstanding probably goes a long way to explaining this perceived "oppression".


I don't know what you mean that I "keep equating...". This is my first post mentioning the left in this thread. I also don't know how that fits into GGGGP's comment, which you posted in response to me before anyone had invoked "the left" in this thread. I definitely don't understand your remark about the Trump Hilary split, which would never tell us anything about liberals, Christians, or Muslims, and I certainly never made claim that it did.

At any rate, I'm not referring to the left as non-Christian anyway. By "left", I mean "left", plus or minus liberal Christians.

I put "oppression" in quotes to indicate that the left would use the word to describe their relationship with Christians (because their threshold for invoking the word is quite a lot lower than most) if they were able to view the conflict with an outsider's perspective. I used "minority" to refer to Christians because they have quite a lot less power than the liberals who are punching down at them, not because they are few in number, in case that caused some confusion.


Whoops: I didn't realize that I replied to ~rhapsodic earlier instead of you. My apologies...


No worries! I'm just glad we cleared up the confusion. :)


One of the things that bothers me about recent censorship on hate speech is how selective, and how inconsistently it's applied, if it is to be applied at all.

My grandfather escaped the Soviet Union. Stalin's regime killed all of his siblings. All of them.

But yet when I check YouTube, Twitter, and so on I see lots of videos professing communisms values. Hell I've seen a pro-communist march in a city I recently moved from.

Neo-nazis are awful, and Nazis have done unspeakable terrible things in this world.

But to me the Neo-nazis are being actively forbidden from expressing support for another ideology that has been responsible for tens of millions of deaths, while the communists are allowed to do the same thing.

I hate nazis and I hate communists. But to pick and choose which people are allowed to express support for these regimes is inconsistent at best, and tacticitly implying a preference at absolute worst.

This needs to change.


My both grandfathers have fought Nazis during WWII, one was wounded and drove them out all the way back to Berlin. I've heard stories from a teacher about their childhood friend being raped and dismembered by German soldiers and other horrors. I find it disappointing when everyone today slaps "Nazi" label around an anything they disagree with. They are people alive who have concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms and they are probably shaking their heads listening to a bunch of spoiled brats, sipping their $5 Starbucks lattes and tweeting on their latest iPhone 7s how they live in a fascist country and nazis are literally around every corner.


Hold on. I'm not a fan of Communism, but there's a pretty clear difference. The Soviet Union was a particular implementation of Communism which chose killing. Killing is not an inherent requirement to the ideology. Contemporary proponents of Communism or Socialism usually aren't claiming that the Soviet Union's implementation was good. In Neo-Nazism the ideology itself has the elimination of other races as its goal. The ideology itself is violence. Talk about false equivalence.


Neo-Nazism is not Nazism. That's also a false equivalence. Racial / tribal superiority has been with humanity in one form or another since before we were even human. Neo-Nazism is just a modern interpretation / flavor of that idea. Actual Nazism was far, far more destructive than a bunch of people clamoring about whatever they were clamoring about.

When Neo-Nazis are violent, the actual violence shouldn't be tolerated, but to ban thoughts is something completely different.

FWIW, I never understood why US citizens would carry a Nazi flag, when they know damn well people in their family were directly affected by it in one way or another.


Killing is indeed an inherent requirement of communism. That's the only way to gain and hold such authoritarian power and to subjugate the masses as communism does. There has never been a communist regime that did not kill large numbers of people and that's because this is an inherent quality of communism without which it cannot come to or hold power.


It's an inherent quality of government. Since WWII, the US has killed somewhere around 20 million people during their various adventures around the globe. The Soviet Union killed an equivalent amount, perhaps up to three times as much, but both are staggering, horrifying numbers.


>The Soviet Union was a particular implementation of Communism which chose killing. Killing is not an inherent requirement to the ideology.

How could communism be implemented without killing people who refused to give up their property, or refused to stop trading with each other?


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communis...

The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.


Most communist countries kill those that disagree with them, for the common good they say. If you fully embrace communist values then you need to rid yourselves of those that don't agree otherwise you are not going to be able to create a perfect society.


And in a society adopting capitalism the Bourgeoisie must violently suppress the proletariat otherwise you're not going to be able to create that perfect society.


In the United States most people did not come here already rich and they had to trade among each other to survive. Everywhere communism touches has problems. In Britain check peoples teeth they are a nice color yellow, in Canada you can wait for months for medical care, in Russia you need to bribe the doctor to get medical care, in Venezuela you need to travel to a neighboring country to get food, in Cuba you earn $25 a month, in Mexico no one can own guns except for the drug gangs that rule cities....

All so that people can be equal... equally screwed that is.


Your information about Russia might be a bit outdated, there are commercial dental clinics and in public hospitals you can pay for priority reception.


It was Ukraine I was thinking of, you are right.


Why is it then, then when you see an outspoken communist on the Internet they freely use Soviet symbolism like hammer and sickle. I take that as an affirmation of the fact that these people don't really think that Soviet Union was a bad implementation of communism. Like, there exist far-righters who avoid using swastika because they don't want to be associated with Nazi Germany. Why do most communists want to be associated with Soviet Union specifically by adopting its symbolism?


Because the USSR isn't just Stalin killing people with his bare hands.


> The Soviet Union was a particular implementation of Communism which chose killing.

It was an implementation of (what it called, though there is debate in socialist circles about the validity of the claim) socialism. Communism is the end-state they claimed to wish to achieve, not the thing they implemented, even in theory.


Ah yes. The ol' "Communism has never been implemented right" argument... Oh please.


[flagged]


Argentina doesn't ring a bell ?


Nope. Should it?


Right, and capitalism is completely bloodless and clean /s


Here's the comprehensive list of capitalist countries that wiped out 50 million of their own citizens in a couple decades:

Glad we cleared that up.


Ahistorical. Revisit 20th century Central and South America. This is a silly thread and one I'm not eager to perpetuate, but I can't not take this bait.


No bait here. The ideological death toll of capitalism is far, far lower than communism, full stop.


That's not the argument you just made.


It's exactly the argument I made, even if my rhetoric was silly or not quite precise. Nitpicking is boring.


Sure. A Guatemala here, a Rwanda there, who's really counting?


I mean, none of that is related to capitalism, but why not make believe?


Both were directly related both to anticommunism and to extractive, commercial colonialism, so, no, I don't think that's a solid rebuttal.


You're saying that if it takes time for the effects of a capitalist mode of production, which does not cater for those at the bottom of society, which creates wars for profit and plunder then therefore these countries are not guilty? Are you aware of how capitalism came about, through the forceful and violent enclosure of the commons in Western Europe, and the invasions and famines caused by the redirection of supplies and food for where it would be profitable elsewhere (Bengal famine), rents enforced by landlords (Irish Potato famine), etc.? If you are unaware of how capitalism came about, Marx does a good job explaining it through the laws in the country in which he lived, England[0].

[0] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm and https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm


No, those are not the claims I'm making. In particular, there's nothing particular about capitalism that predisposed itself to wars, even for-profit wars relative to other economic systems (such wars predate history in many places).

But even if everything you say is true and capitalism is a sort of slow killer, I would still prefer it to communism, which is efficient only in murdering those it governs.


One peculiar irony is that the American left is sort of going through their own red scare, wherein half of the US is paranoid that everyone around them is a Nazi.


Are you seriously comparing communism and nazism because both happenned to occur under dictatorships ? Then capitalism is all the same, and people got killed for being politically opposed to their capitalist dictatorship, just saying.

Seriously, since when do people who march for a more equal society are to be compared with people marching for genocide ?

Similarly, do people who spread buddhist ideas in the US advocate for/support the genocide of muslims in Birmania (or whatever it's called in English) ?


I think Stalin did that not because he was a communist but because he was a dictator who didn't trust people and thought they were going to betray him.

And if I remember correctly labour laws are there because of communists, before people worked for 12 hours a day for a very small salary.


That is a very dangerous road to travel, no pun intended: the famous German motorways were built by the nazi regime. The 'Volkswagen' - people's car - was built on request from the nazi regime.

Stalin was both a communist as well as a dictator who didn't trust people. So was Lenin, although he was more manipulative than Stalin and as such did not get the reputation for being paranoid like Stalin. Communism and national socialism and fascism (which is not the same as national socialism) are not all that different once you look past the ideological veneer. All strive for a totalitarian state, all make the individual subservient to that state, all claim to create a better world for those who are being made subservient. All have been tested in practice, none of them have delivered the promised benefits. In all cases the result was a state run by an overclass which was relatively well off compared to the subjugated masses. None of them could handle dissent.

For all three of these totalitatian ideologies - communism, national socialism and fascism - you could argue that those states which claimed to implement them never 'really' followed the doctrine to the logical and supposedly beneficial conclusion but that is a fallacy. It is the ideologies themselves which are at fault as they all try to do away with the individual 'for the good of the state' while people do see themselves as individuals first - especially in situations where the survival of the individual is at stake.


Yes, things get very complicated when we as a society decide to ban thoughts and ideas. I would say it eventually gets so complicated that we would end up banning way more things than we should, out of a sense of fairness.


This is always going to be a challenge with managing the content of any platform. It's not easy to be a moderator of different views.

Arguably, Nazism tends to ring more obvious to moderators. There is more than one form of communism that has been implemented, and it's likely these videos alll aren't professing a support of Stalin's bloody reign. Communism also (usually) lacks a racial/nationalist superiority component that calls for the decimation of all others. But that doesn't mean people should be free to use Marx's good intentions to let terrible communist regimes off the hook.

It's probably not a bad idea for people with your experiences to attempt to organize with the goal to inform users and moderators about propaganda videos on their platforms.


> Arguably, Nazism tends to ring more obvious to moderators.

Unfortunately, white nationalist (neo-nazi) groups learned a long time ago that PR matters. The average person starts to notice anything that actually looks similar to stereotypical Nazism. The Southern Strategy with Lee Atwater's use of dog whistle terms like "forced busing" and "state's rights" as indirect codes for racism demonstrated not only is public perception very important, but also how easy it is to make fascist beliefs palatable to the average citizen by wrapping it with carefully chosen euphemisms and coded language.

I highly encourage everyone to watch this[1] very well made overview of the current language and other propaganda techniques used by fascists. Unless you have been spending a lot of time over the last few years involved with "alt-right"/etc groups, it can be had to follow because confusion about facts is the goal.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx4BVGPkdzk


Here's the full interview that you are referring to with Lee Atwater. Since it's becoming referenced more and more, it really deserves a full listen. I believe it is mostly misinterpreted, and I was guilty of that myself.

https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-inf...

Atwater was referring to the GOP Southern Strategy and how it evolved from 1954 to 1968. He wasn't referring to his strategies during the Reagan election in 1980. I believe he's gotten a bad rap for that. He graduated college in 1973 after that period.

Atwater: But Reagan did not have to do a southern strategy for two reasons. Number one, race was not a dominant issue. And number two, the mainstream issues in this campaign had been, quote, southern issues since way back in the sixties. So Reagan goes out and campaigns on the issues of economics and of national defense. The whole campaign was devoid of any kind of racism, any kind of reference. And I'll tell you another thing you all need to think about, that even surprised me, is the lack of interest, really, the lack of knowledge right now in the South among white voters about the Voting Rights Act.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater

The South voted primary Democrat (southern democrat, there were northern democrats that were a different flavor) for 100 years, since 1860 because Lincoln was a Republican and Lincoln burned the South. I mean the South constantly voted majority Democrat up until about the civil rights era in the 1960s when they turned majority Republican. I'm sure you are aware, the South almost always votes majority Republican (in 2008 Obama won 3 southern states though). This shift was due to the Southern Strategy that Atwater was referring to, but did not implement himself. It's absolutely fascinating how much slavery and it's affects are part of this nation. I consider it our "original sin."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy


From the video, some of the subtle strategies fascists use to code their ideas:

1) They deny being a fascist.

2) Euphemism (e.g. I'm a X, not a fascist or talking about purging criminals, rapists and terrorists which is actually code for purging non-white people.)

3) Pedantry. They bog you down and waste your time in a "petty terminological dispute" as they specifically detail why they are not a fascist.

I can't even go on, I feel like I listening to a guide on how to spot a witch.


It's all good, just reinforces that they never were free platforms to begin with. Free speech has always been an illusion, society always ostracises those who go against the status quo anyway.

Seriously though, you can use neo-Nazis to justify censorship, but then what about the less extreme alt-right? How about the slightly less extreme religious right? How about economically right-wing libertarians? Neo-conservatives? Where do you draw the line? At what point do you decide to move the line slightly one way or the other? This is the problem. You'll always need to draw the line, and wherever you draw it, you're essentially imposing your worldview since your worldview governs where you think that line should be.

And for the record, I don't think tech companies are akin to utilities, they can do what they want within the law, but just drop the charade that their platforms were ever totally free...


Seriously though, you can use neo-Nazis to justify censorship, but then what about the less extreme alt-right? How about the slightly less extreme religious right? How about economically right-wing libertarians? Neo-conservatives? Where do you draw the line?

As I mentioned a few days ago on a related article, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15122311 , the extremists are good "canaries" for indicating the gradual erosion of freedom of speech. When the edges collapse, the line moves just a slightly bit closer to the mainstream, and a new set of views are considered extremist. Repeat until everyone is brainwashed into a monoculture. That's the scariest part.


Several places in Europe have so far failed to empirically verify your hypothesis after passing laws to ban certain types of extremist (i.e., Nazi) speech and symbols.


Really because I see people in Britain, France, and Germany being arrested for anti Islamic sentiment expressed on social Media. It isn't just nazi speech that's criminalised, more and more speech is added to the list of what cannot be said. Soon it will be any speech critical of the government, aka living in a totalitarian regeim.


Wasn't there some guy in the U.K. Who was investigated by the police for tweeting something vaguely homophobic?


Yes.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297128/matthew-doyle-ar...

"A man in the UK has been arrested on charges of inciting racial hatred on social media, after he tweeted about asking a Muslim woman to "explain" the terror attacks in Brussels. As The Guardian reports, London's Metropolitan Police on Wednesday arrested a 46-year-old man believed to be Matthew Doyle, a partner at a London PR agency."


Sources, please on Germany, or any of those countries where somebody has been arrested simply for being against Islam.


The war on "hate speech", just like the war on "terror" is just a cover to take away and restrict rights.

Why did the media collectively declare war on "hate speech" the past few years - culminating in the absurd hit piece on pewdiepie?

Isn't it strange that all the establishment news organizations WSJ, NYTimes, WaPo, etc all went on a industry-wide campaign?

It had nothing to do with "hate speech". Neo-nazis, kkk, etc have always existed. It's about corralling social media and pressuring them to consolidate "news" around the established media.

It's easier to justify taking away your rights/free speech if you can say it is part of the war on "hate speech". Just like it is easier to get people to accept intrusive TSA if you tell them it's part of the war on "terror".

Just like war on "reds/communism/etc" allowed for rights of many to be abrogated by mccarthy. Or the war on drugs allowed for wholesale incarceration of minorities and the toppling of latin american governments.


Thanks, well said.

More and more sites remove comment functionality or hide comments they don't like, forced real-name policy for accounts, etc. Many sites lost any credibility these days.


Another poster hit the nail on the head in a related thread earlier today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15152412


This is the paradox of tolerance, Karl Popper put it this way:

"Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."


Free speech is the wrong framework for thinking about this. Tech companies are not government actors, so this is not a free speech issue. The better way to think about it is to analogize to gun sales. Gun sellers are within their rights to refuse to sell guns to people with nazi affiliations, etc. But they wisely choose not to go down that road, because if they did (1) they’d be enlisted into screening all sorts of other people (hate groups, abusive spouses, mentally ill people, etc.) and (2) when one of those people inevitably did buy a gun, there would be increased pressure to hold the gun seller/maker liable for failure to use their discretion to prevent to the tragedy.


This is very silly. FFLs are already prohibited from selling to abusive spouses (if there is any sort of domestic violence conviction or restraining order) and the mentally ill. They also reserve full rights to decline any sale, which they do regularly with people who seem unbalanced or give indication they're intending on misusing the weapon. Seriously, try to buy a rifle with a swastika sharpie'd on your forehead and see how many gun shops you get ejected from.


I was directed to a good talk on the idea of "legal talismans" or legal terms like free speech that can end up being out of place, such as in terms of service: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2016/10/Albert (transcript) http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/beyond-legal-talismans... (Also accessible as a podcast)

This isn't to mean they should avoid supporting "freedom of expression" but that these terms come with history and obligations that aren't always obvious.

If a company mentions 1st amendment rights, it isn't realistic to assume it will also have the capacity to correctly and quickly adjudicate all cases of expression that will occur within its service boundaries. People forget how parts of constitutional law itself are specializations with a lot of legal history and precedents.

The summary takeaway seems to be that service providers should avoid using these shorthand legal terms in their terms of service. Providers should try to spell out ToS specifically avoiding as much legalese as possible. Avoid using shorthand legal terms to give the illusion of a neutral position in an attempt to avoid liability.


I don't see this in terms of whether tech co's should "ban hate speech". I see it in terms of whether they should decide to turn themselves and their employees into political targets, especially in the context of escalating political violence and willingness by political actors to go after oppositional infrastructure (cf, hostility towards left wing journalists).

Con Ed doesn't have this problem and manages to make tons of money, despite providing power to I assume some number of literal nazis.


This is closely related to the "paradox of tolerance" by Karl Popper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

(whose TL;DR is "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance." )

Of course, it raises the question of who's to say what/who should be "not-tolerated".


https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...

> [Tolerance] is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact.


It's absolutely a threat to free speech, but I don't think the article goes far enough. Consider the following from Randall Munroe: https://xkcd.com/1357/

On the surface, he's right. You don't have to listen to what you don't want to. On the other hand, I have seen his comic frequently cited as justification for not ignoring, but actively hunting down and quashing dissent. In many oppressive regimes, it's not the government enforcing speech restrictions, but rather the party and its independent zealots.


Ok, private entities can refuse you business--or can they? The court system told us that we actually do have to bake that cake. In other words, we can't selectively serve customers based on our disagreements with their personal lives or politics.

But if you're a libertarian congressman, and Google doesn't like your videos, apparently that is not the case anymore.

If you dont think these infringements on free speech will be used to serve the 1%, empower authoritarianism, and be selectively applied: you are already wrong.


That's a bit of a false equivalence. Hate speech and harassment are not equal to being openly gay.

I agree with your last point, care to explain more?


>hate speech != speech professing homosexuality

I have never come across anything Congressman Paul has said that is remotely close to qualifying ads hate speech. He is actually all about granting individuals rights and freedoms. Can you explain?

But anyways, is it really a false equivalence, or is the false equivalence based on newly-invented terms? In other words, even if we both agree we dont like what currently qualifies as hate speech; if we start the process of compartmentalizing speech into acceptable and unacceptable baskets, what is going to stop it? After they finish with Ron Paul and libertarians, who is next up to be silenced?

Now you may think, 'they're just crushing a the alt right and moving on towards libertarians.' "I won't protest because I find the alt right repulsive, and I am not a libertarian."

So tell me, when is the time to protest? When "there's no one left to speak for me?"

To me, we need to protect free speech, not to protect hate speech, but to protect the right to say things unacceptable to say, even if your government, or Google, or anyone, doesn't want you to say it. If you care about the 90%, this fundamental right will always be one of the strongest safe-guards possible against authoritarianism.


Uh huh. And what exactly is "hate speech"? Black lives matter? White lives matter? The NRA? Abortionists?


> And what exactly is "hate speech"?

Generally, it's public speech intended offend, harass, or threaten a group of people that is defined by an inherent trait (e.g. skin color, sex/gender, sexual orientation), in addition to legally defined protected classes (e.g. religion, disability).

The SCOTUS has generally ruled that hate speech is protected by the first amendment, with only very narrow exceptions (e.g. credible, imminent threats).

> Black lives matter?

Obviously not hate speech. Asking for the rights of black people to be respected isn't a threat or harassment.

> White lives matter?

Assuming you are referring to groups such as those protesting recently in Charlottesville, then this might be hate speech. A lot of speech wouldn't qualify, but the chants that specifically targeted protected groups probably do count as hate speech. Details matter a lot, but it's probably reasonably safe to assume the protest became hate speech when the chant "You will not replace us!" became "Jews will not replace us!"

> Black lives matter?

Obviously not hate speech. Political opinions are never a protected class.


I'm doing a bit to improve Sarahah - (that Anonymous feedback app) by making it's Open source alternative with Text Sentiment analysis, so people anonymously can't submit abusive and hateful feedback


Yet another left-leaning article working to demonize freedom of expression.

Note there is no condemnation of antifa or BLM-- two organizations prone to violence, intimidation and destruction.

The left must stop their downward spiral and restore a decent balance to politics. Help right the ship, please.




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