I understand and broadly sympathise with the sort of ~absolute freedom of speech outlined in the US constitution, but I am completely baffled by this recent push seen here on Hacker News and elsewhere that this freedom should be extended to in effect compel others to publish your speech. This is not in the US constitution, and is in fact completely unconstitutional (1st amendment protects against compelled speech). This almost seems like a push for speech without consequences, that no matter what you say everyone should be forced to provide you with services and support. This would be both unprecedented and also extremely unhealthy for society. It wouldn't even be conservative ideology, as at no point in US history has anything like this been the law, legalising compelled speech would be truly radical and unconservative politics.
OK, most charitably, some of the people protesting unwittingly supported and took part in a fascist coup. Sucks for them I suppose, it's of course an easy mistake to make.
People have sat by and watched for 4 years and did nothing whilst Trump worked to erode institutions, culminating in the American people democratically voting in a free and fair election to oust President Trump. The reaction to that was an attempted fascist coup. Clearly doing nothing has failed catastrophically. Perhaps there are more optimal solutions to this attack on democracy, but the posters here clutching their pearls over what is a relatively light response to an attempted coup should spare the rest of us the faux outrage.
I don't agree with this at all and I am tired of seeing "sensible" people here explain how it's important to reach out to fascists and make them feel loved. You're only advocating further normalisation of fascism, and depriving them of the consequences of their actions—consequences that have always been a part of civil society. What's more, that you seem to be more preoccupied with not upsetting these fascists rather than that just a few days ago these very same fascists either attempted a coup or supported a coup does indeed speak of your self-professed naivety (at best). These fascists are a cancer on the body politic and the solution is not to listen to many of the posters here who think that somehow magically the best course of action is simply to do nothing at all, lest we upset the poor lickle fascists.
If you can't ban a fascist for instigating violence and a coup attempt then your ToS are worthless and all moderation on every website must be made illegal.
The simple truth is that these knuckle-draggers plotting for Mike Pence to be executed by firing squad would have at every point in the past never been able to reach a "public forum" of any kind. For all the complaints that we need to engage positively with such wonderfully civil discourse, it's only by virtue of the internet that they're being heard at all. Society previously was very good at ignoring these people, and society was healthier for it.
But that person is right. Most of the arguments against private companies banning companies/individuals violating their ToS boil down to something along the lines of "this is a slippery slope, we're on our way to tyranny". But all European countries have limits on free speech and the vast majority are free countries, so all of these arguments are demonstrably false. We don't even have to look to other countries for examples, there has been censorship of various kinds at various times in the US since its founding, and yet there was no inevitable slide to Orwellian tyranny after each instance. The problem is that Americans are far too paranoid—every little thing is perceived an existential threat to you people.
I don't even have a pitchfork, I was just genuinely surprised by the prospect of someone having no opinion on Donald Trump. That has literally nothing to do with technology whatsoever, if we were cavemen and Donald Trump was a caveman and you said you had no opinion of him, I would still be baffled.
I don't think there's any remotely plausible prospect of America becoming a Marxist state. Your paranoia is noted, however, and it is typical of Americans, and probably in part why your society is so often so unwell (at least, that's my pet theory).
> I think people from at least some countries of the world would disagree with you about communism being dead
Possibly, but to me in the West I don't feel like there's any remotely plausible threat of communists coming to power in my country or any Western country that I know of.
> On the other hand, almost every western country has a socialist party in their respective parliament
I know I'm probably talking to an American here so I guess there's a reasonable chance that everything that isn't libertarian hyper-capitalism is literally Juche communism, but in reality, these mainstream so-called "socialist parties" in the West are overwhelmingly liberal in character. There are exceptions, such as Die Linke in Germany, and yeah I find them pretty vile, but they're mostly irrelevant. For example, I am British and our mainstream opposition party is nominally "socialist" but in actual fact fundamentally liberal and not at all about the overthrow of capitalism.
> As liberal doesn't it bother you that ideas which were the cause of so much misery in the world when implemented in communist countries are still being recycled over and over in parliaments of western countries
For the aforementioned reasons, where European "socialist" parties are more about making capitalism a little bit less American/cutthroat/fuck-you-I-got-mine, rather than literal democratic ownership of the means of production, no, not really. Europe is fundamentally capitalist and liberal.
Well China isn't really communist any more, it sort of began to abandon that with Deng Xiaoping, but regardless, my point is there's truly minimal risk of communists coming to power in any Western country that I know of. I perceive the thread of fascists gaining power in the West as far greater. I should have been clearer, my mistake.
It is specifically baffling to have no opinion on Donald Trump, yes, and that is precisely orthogonal to one's opinions on the internet, Twitter, "tribes", technology, or anything that you mentioned in your comment, for that matter.
Ummm maybe I'm mistaken but censorship was widespread throughout Europe during the enlightenment and yet the enlightenment still happened. The paranoid American style where anything but free speech in the most absolute and extreme terms is guaranteed to result in tyranny and the destruction of civilisation itself isn't really born out by any of the facts.
It's not the responsibility of normal people to indulge the crazy satanic paedophile conspiracy theories of total lunatics so that said lunatics won't behave like total animals. They stormed the capitol because they believed complete horse shit about how the election was stolen, when it wasn't, and they were incited to do so by the current president.
The trespassing and sacking of the capitol is precisely a sign of backsliding on traditionally liberal ideas from the enlightenment, much more so than Twitter banning the number one inciter of the aforementioned insurrection.
>I am loving people who don't understand that they are literally supporting billionaires while claiming to be anti-corporate resistance.
The billionaire in question is Trump, isn't it?
>Definition of Liberal used to be: "Willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas. Relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise."
Well this just comes back to the paradox of tolerance. I consider myself a liberal (in the British or non-American sense) and in my opinion fascism should not be tolerated.
Utterly baffling and genuinely inconceivable. My imagination is running wild trying to imagine what sort of person you might be, assuming you are being honest here.
>I described specifically what the difference is. The difference between them is that one is more effective than the other. Do you at all recognize how different methods of censorship can be more or less effective than others?
Of course some censorship is more effective than others, but the idea that banning a subreddit is morally wrong because it's somehow "more effective" (by some metric) than banning a user (which apparently is OK?) makes absolutely no sense to me at all.
>For example, would you seriously argue that every single grocery store in the world, banning all people who want to raise their taxes, is the same thing as a random person kicking a friend out of their house?
Reddit doesn't have a global monopoly on internet forums though. Websites like the Daily Stormer still exist. Your analogy is not really applicable to this case. And even if Daily Stormer didn't exist, private individuals have never been legally obliged to signal boost and publish hate speech at any point since the US was founded that I am aware of. That would, ironically, violate the 1st amendment.
No, the government banning something is meaningful because they have the monopoly on violence. Reddit admins banning a sub and reddit mods banning a user is the exact same thing, it's just moderation of a private forum. Forcing private companies to publish pro-genocide speech, for example, is anti-freedom, not pro. If we're going to force reddit to publish pro-holocaust speech then all moderation everywhere must be banned as well, including on this very forum, to be consistent. I for one think this forum benefits greatly from active moderation, however.
Do you honestly believe that, for example, the Economist is just as partial as RT, Sputnik, Telesur, or Xinhua? If not, then what point are you actually making? Your comment is purely surface level and relies heavily on cherry picking the data. Not least because there are numerous UK/US sources which are deemed unreliable, and numerous non-US/UK sources which are deemed reliable.