Why is banning a string of characters terrifying, but not a string of bits?

In my opinion aphextron was being overly reductionist in describing the manifesto as just a string of characters.

The manifesto was a presentation of a political viewpoint (and perhaps a call to action - I don't know, I haven't read it). The manifesto qualifies as speech.

The video was a record of a criminal act of great violence. I wouldn't classify the video as speech. (In contrast, a fictional portrayal of the same acts but made with actors and no-one dying would be speech).

New Zealand, and many other parts of the world, do not share the U.S.'s "free speech" concept. Speech is not protected and yet the country is high on the freedom of press index.

https://freespeechfreepress.wordpress.com/new-zealand/

>Speech is not protected and yet the country is high on the freedom of press index.

For now.

The lessons learned and recorded through 2000 years of Western history, starting with the Greeks and culminating in the American revolution, was that such things can never be relied upon unless guaranteed by law.

I'm not from the USA and I didn't make any reference to the US in my comment. I've already dealt with this false argument elsewhere in the thread. [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19473330

I've seen purported extracts of the manifesto, they were mostly trolling