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Re:Facebook to ban white nationalist content by fixermark on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @02:02PM (#19503918)
... and yet, child pornography possession and distribution is illegal. Do we think Chomsky would find this unacceptable?
Re:Facebook to ban white nationalist content by gpm on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @02:50PM (#19504535)
I suspect that Chomsky would consider child porn - or at least the part of it that is illegal - not speech in this sense.

Speech is the process of communication ideas. Porn is the process of sexually arousing someone remotely. Criminalizing the latter is not criminalizing the former.

Re:Facebook to ban white nationalist content by AnaniasAnanas on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @03:58PM (#19505319)
You do end up criminalizing numbers though.
Re:Facebook to ban white nationalist content by sneakernets on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @05:07PM (#19506033)
There has to be a point where "criminalizing a number" doesn't really work.

A HD-DVD master key is one thing, a huge binary file is another. HD-DVD master key requires specific "numberness" to work, while a binary file can still convey similar information yet be a completely different set of numbers. if I take two pictures in rapid succession of a still life, the two pictures' jpeg data and checksum hashes aren't going to be even close to matching.

Re:Facebook to ban white nationalist content by lukifer on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @02:37PM (#19504399)
Chomsky’s position is that the burden of proof is on state violence to justify itself, and I think he would agree it’s clearly justified in that case.

However, that’s a very narrowly scoped restriction (and it’s also not clear that such distribution is a type of “speech”). A more appropriate question would be: would Chomsky support free speech for an advocacy group such as NAMBLA, or for creating mangas that depict drawings similar to CP? Those are exactly the type of speech/expression that are clearly vile, yet should still be protected from interference by state violence, from the civil-libertarian perspective.