> That's a slippery slope argument that I personally don't believe.
It's not a matter of belief. It's happened time and time again. One prominent example is hitler and nazi germany. When they gained power, they used the same powers the previous governments/institutions/etc used against them to ban and silence everyone else.
> Neo-nazis are such a different class of evil
Evil is evil. There aren't "special" evil. What does that even mean?
> that it's hard for me to see the same practices being used against someone who is not them.
Are you serious? All over the world the same things are done. Ever hear of the red scare? The persecution of the jews in the US and europe? The persecution of blacks, civil rights activist, etc? Critics of royalty in thailand are being locked up. Silly tourists giving nazi salutes are being locked up and fined.
That's the point of precedence. If you set it, then anyone else can do it too. Are people just this unaware of history and current events?
It was our defense of free speech rights in the US that protected atheist, gays, civil rights activist, etc to speak. As hard as it is to believe, there was once a time when atheists, gays, civil rights activists and many others were considered just as vile as neo-nazis. There was a time when being gay would mean you couldn't get a job or you could even be forced to suicide ( ever hear of alan turing )?
Society always shifts. Free speech rights are there to protect us from the whims of societal/government/cultural change.
> This is an extremely frightening statement to me.
It truly is to me as well. It's something you expect nazis to say.
Imagine if the comment was
"The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by israel and other jewish sympathizing groups."
It's a form of intimidation to silence groups one disagrees with. I can't believe his comment is the most upvoted on HN of all places.
All the pro-censorship people here are behaving no differently than the neo-nazis they claim to hate. Not only that, both groups share the hatred of free speech and the principles which kept the US from being a nazi germany.
Everyone here is forgetting that Nazi Germany happened because germans supported censorship. Censorship allowed a minority group like the nazis to take over the government and silence everyone else. If the germans had an appreciation for free speech back then nazi germany would have been impossible since most germans opposed hitler and the nazi party. Nazi germany happened because of censorship laws which allowed hitler to ban all political parties and all speech he disagreed with.
But nobody learns history or philosophy anymore it seems.
> Whatever happened to "sticks and stones"? Do kids not learn that mantra anymore?
It seems like kids are taking gender studies instead of philosophy and that is frightening. All the arguments are based on emotion rather than reason.
How is this any different than germans throwing chinese tourists in jail for making nazi salutes? Or saudis throwing atheists in jail because they offended their faith. Or russians throwing lgbt people in jail for being "offensive". Or the chinese throwing pro-democracy groups in jail because they find them offensive. Or Larry Flint in jail for distributing offensive pornography.
Anything can be viewed as offensive by anyone. That's why we have free speech rights. To protect ourselves from the offended.
It's sad that the internet ( what I grew up believing was going to be the defender of free speech ) is slowly turning into a tool for censorship. And it's sad that the population of "netizens" who were extremely pro-free speech in the 90s and 00s are turning in favor of censorship as less educated people brainwashed by the pro-censorship media join the internet.
> Hint: Neo Nazis wish to return to the good old days of 1939 or so where Jews and people of color are either dead, outcast, deported, enslaved or stuck in camps while white men rule the land as is their god given right.
Hint: In other words, neo-nazis have no shot right? So let the neo-nazis have their say.
People like you are so shortsighted that it is bizarre.
We have free speech so that neo-nazis CAN'T win. You start limiting free speech and that's why you have nazi germany.
As my jewish philosophy professor said, nazi germany happened because of censorship. That's why she adamantly supported neo-nazis, kkk, etc having marches and even giving speeches in colleges/forums/etc. And as she said, as long as the most offensive forms of speech are protected, then she knows everyone, including her free speech, is protected.
> The concerted effort to equate Neo Nazis to pornographers, atheists and lgbt people is rather worrying as well.
It's worrying if you don't understand what free speech is about.
The reason why I support free speech for neo-nazis isn't because I agree with them. It's because I don't agree with them.
It's not a matter of just censoring neo-nazis. It's a matter of setting precedence. Okay? If you say it's okay to censor one ideology or one form of speech, then you make a mockery of free speech and nobody has free speech.
If people who disagree with neo-nazis are in power and they censor neo-nazis, then how do we protect ourselves when people who hate porn or gays or atheists are in power? Hmmm? Have you thought about this or are you just going by "emotions"?
The reason why nazi germany happened is because germany had censorship laws. So when hitler won a small minority of votes and he took over the government, he could ban political parties and political speech. If germany had free speech and you couldn't silence the 80% of non-nazis voters, nazi germany could never have happened.
"Saying I support censorship because I find X offensive" is justification for saudis censoring atheists, chinese censoring pro-democracy groups and thais censoring anti-royalty speech.
Okay? So please take a course in philosophy and try to learn what is really at stake. Because if people like you were in charge in the 1950s, 1960s, etc, we never would have had lgbt movement or atheist movement or the civil rights movement. Because they all would have been censored because they were offensive.
Believe it or not, there was a time in america when lgbt, atheist and civil rights speech was deemed more offensive than nazi speech. Thank god people like you weren't in charge and thank god we had free speech rights so that lgbt, atheists and civil rights groups could speak and express their ideas.
And oddly enough, the pro-censorship people like you are more like nazis since the nazis loved censorship. If you truly are disgusted by nazis, then you should be disgusted by censorship.
Germany arrested chinese tourists for making nazi salute. Should we do something about germany too?
Do chinese and germans deserve free speech too or just thais?
Edit: @0xfeba
> That argument is convincing only on the shallowest level.
Only if you are pro-censorship and have no appreciation for principles.
> Germany arrested, fined, and released those tourists.
Are you saying it's good or bad?
> Thailand has given dissidents lengthy prison sentences.
But that's the law.
> How about we worry about Germany's speech laws after we free people who are stuck in retched prisons for 10 years?
How about we worry about both? How about we worry about free speech and principles.
Talk about shallowness. The german law allows for imprisonment for 3 years for nazi salutes. If the chinese got 3 years and the thai got 3 years, would you think both are equally wrong?
You don't seem to have an argument so you are just nitpicking. I don't remember you being outraged that the chinese tourists were arrested. I remember you celebrating german law.
We are going to have to have regulation to reign in these companies.
FB, GOOG, MSFT, etc all serve billions of people. FB's network has a 1 people more than china.
The pro-censorship crowd wants to distract with "government vs private company" argument but that really doesn't fly when these companies are larger, wealthier and more powerful than a handful of countries.
FB censorship would affect more people than the communist chinese censoring content in china. That is extremely dangerous.
Everything you wrote is why we have freedom of speech protection.
> But more abstractly and insidiously, the value has mutated to give license to liars and manipulators of all kinds.
It never mutated. The point of free speech is to give liars and truthtellers and everyone in between the right to speech. Otherwise, we only have speech from liars.
Free speech exists so that the liars don't get the monopoly on speech. That's everyone can have their say.
It's one of the reasons why we have progress. Imagine if we didn't have free speech. Then abolitionists or civil rights activist or LGBT activist or women's suffragists would never had a right to speak. The people in power would have denied them the right to speak.
As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I can't believe this is what social media and the tech industry has become. And I can't believe there are people actually supporting this kind of censorship.
What ever happened to principles? Do people not realize that they are sowing seeds of their own destruction by supporting this kind of arbitrary censorship from large social media companies, CDNs, ISPs, etc.
> That said, I think crossing this content line for an infrastructure company is a big deal, and I hope it's not repeated.
It's an incredibly terrible move. Such an arbitrary and biased move.
What has happened in the past few years where everyone defended free speech to everyone deciding arbitrary and whimsical censorship is something to be lauded? It feels like someone just flipped a switch and people became pro-censorship.
The tech industry is doing the same the chinese or russians are doing. Justifying censorship for "good/morals/etc".
Hate the nazis all you want but we are hurting ourselves by allow censorship on this level. These peole aren't going away. But now there is terrible precedent where social media/tech/etc can censor whatever they want. It's incredible.
It is insane that we are allowing GoDaddy, Google and tech companies to be arbiters of free speech.
As a kid, I used to associate google, yahoo and the whole of internet as a bastion of freedom.
It is shocking to me that liberals ( a group I used to identify with until fairly recently ) are the proponents of censorship on the internet and in america. It is shocking to me that google, godaddy and the internet is now synonymous with censorship and propaganda.
Not only is censorship giving daily stormer and neo-nazis more sympathy/credibility, companies like google, godaddy and the liberal movement is making a mockery of liberal principles.
My first philosophy course in college was with a jewish professor. We were discussing free speech and the rights of neo-nazis/kkk/hate groups to free speech. I clearly remember her saying that protecting the rights of neo-nazis/kkk to free speech is the only way to ensure the rights of speech speech for everyone. Free speech rights exist to protect "offensive" speech - whether it be pornography, atheism or hate speech.
What has happened to the tech industry? What has happened to the liberal movement? How did the tech community and the liberal movement get hijacked by anti-free speech and oppressive extremists?
If conservatives are pro-censorship and now liberals are pro-censorship, what future is there for individual rights, free speech and the liberal world order?
Isn't a ycombinator blog dedicated solely for women sexist. Isn't "Ask a Female Engineer" sexist? If ycombinator only had "Ask a Male Engineer" wouldn't they be attacked for it?
Stop making things up. What ideological battle? Why aren't you banning the pro-censorship side?
> That's not what this site is for, it destroys what it is for, and we ban accounts that abuse the site this way.
There are far more pro-censorship comments? Why aren't those ideologies banned?