This is deeply dishonest by you. We are not talking about removing peoples right to use a platform because they are out of the mainstream and we disagree with them. That is NOT the reason. There is plenty of non-mainstream opinion around. There is plenty of things that a vast majority find disagreeable that no one is talking about removing.

There's a definition problem here. We could use "no one is talking about removing the content" as a rubric to determine whether content is truly outside of mainstream thought for example.

Pointing out that there's diversity among mainstream thought is not at all the same as tolerating dissent.

What's prohibited is targeting people with speech who do not wish to participate (or who cannot, statutorily). Plenty of adults freely choose to engage in abusive relationships with one another and of course they are free to do so provided the other party is a willing participant.

The same is true of non-abusive language. Consider a simple romantic overture.

The lines are drawn around consent. Not content.

In the past if there was one person more capable of organizing hatred they'd have a smaller impact. Before newspapers it was just in a town. Then you had newspapers (like those in the south accusing blacks of rape and pushing lynching). Then later it was radio and Father Coughlin. Then TV and now the internet.

Still the challenge remains how does anyone decide what's beyond the acceptable. I'm terrified that after Trump there will be a series of more successful destructive manipulators. I don't see why that wouldn't happen.

The reason why this matters even more is the us system where a single vote in a state pushes all those electoral votes together, making it much much more powerful to focus energy on the small misleading stuff. The US has a structural electoral system that makes it matter so much more. Otherwise it would be for a smaller election. I think with time the majority of people will build up 'intellectual armor' against accepting lies. But it's impactful enough now that it's the potential end of america.

NO U.

That aught to be enough for the argument to be closed, but since we like to pretend we're better than that: how can you tell that someone holds bad faith views? I do not have a machine to peer into the soul of man, neither do you. People can believe horrible things and think themselves good people, just wait 30 years and you will be one of them. That your views happen to be ascendant doesn't mean we should ban everyone who isn't.

How many people have you ever met, or even heard of directly, that claim the Holocaust never happened? I can honestly say I couldn't name a single one, not even in places like the USA where they'd be able to make such speech under the First Amendment (not on Facebook). I've only ever heard about such people indirectly, via what censors claim about them.

Now how many people do you see who throw around the term "Nazi" like it's a schoolyard insult? That happens every day. I see people being compared to Nazis all the time, right here on HN which claims to have strong moderation.

The likelihood of this sort of censorship being applied to people who literally deny the Holocaust is tiny. Facebook have spent 2020 routinely censoring scientists who don't agree with the WHO, even though the WHO changes its mind every five minutes. Many of the people in high places in these companies seem to believe any disagreement with authority is worthy of censorship. They are not free speech absolutists who make an exception for truly dire cases.

So when are we banning everyone who says only 6 million people died in the holocaust?

<<< Jews are described as "the ugliest, most evil-minded people" who resemble "maggots when they overpopulate a decaying cheese." >>>

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypes_of_Jews_in_literat...

Edit: point of this is to get to the reality of what's said. If you think this is too unpleasant, 5 downvotes and I'll delete it.

> <<< Jews are described as "the ugliest, most evil-minded people" who resemble "maggots when they overpopulate a decaying cheese." >>>

> Edit: point of this is to get to the reality of what's said. If you think this is too unpleasant, 5 downvotes and I'll delete it.

That may depend on whether you are asking whether it is okay to say, literally, "$GROUP is described as $X", or if you are actually asking if it is permitted to say "$GROUP is $X".

It singles out an individual to the group as being full or hate and bile, censoring would not disappear the person, it would only force them to be more convincing and manipulative.

It would trigger a backlash in which would be a convincing and Thorough retort of the viewpoint, giving good immunity to lurkers in their lives after that should they come across this viewpoint again.

It would ensure that a constant evaluation of what is true within society. Without this we really don't know what is true.

open discourse has its problems, but its literally our only vehicle from bad ideas to good ideas.

Also, I asked a very clear question and requested a clear yes/no. What is your answer?

Promoting these views as truths should be treated as the hate speech it is. Which should not be covered by free speech, IMHO.

Upthread the guy said "Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree". He's arguing for no restrictions AFAICT. Hence my post, to which no answer was forthcoming from him.

I think that "disagree" isn't exactly the correct description of someone's stance vis-a-vis hate speech, particularly that which is targeted at them.

It has been noted that "The Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact". For what it's worth, tolerance isn't a suicide pact either: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Personally, I draw the line where other people's freedoms are limited and other people are actively discriminated against. Basically at hate speech.

Facebook is a virality engine. How do you get content that's appealing to the widest variety of people shoved into their faces?

The popularity of a President almost always goes up by starting a war, because the American public loves war. It's how Bush Jr. got the popular vote after losing it so miserably the first time.

People love hate, so an engine aiming to do nothing but push content with the possibility of going viral, viral, will endlessly promote the most inflammatory content. It drives engagement! The speech doesn't matter at all; it could be anything. On their other popular platform, a platform with a younger population, the most popular post is literally a picture of an egg. It's more a video game than a "marketplace of ideas."

Of course, the obvious solution would just be for Facebook to stop suggesting this content algorithmically rather than removing it outright, but hey, I'm not Facebook. It's not an attack on speech for a company that makes money off of suggesting content to other people to stop suggesting some variant of content, though, because again: the content never mattered.

This is a very good way to put it. I haven't figured what the best stance would be yet, but it's clear that the old concerns about censorship are quite outdated. Almost no one can make information disappear, and instead, what modern platforms can do (as you've so well put it) is restrict or encourage virality.

What is the role of old free speech absolutists when ideas still remain accessible, but the fight is simply over how how mainstream, and how viral those ideas are? I'm not really sure, however I don't worry about things being censored on facebook. Cloudflare's power, although perhaps less impactful in practical terms, seems scarier: the withholding of DDoS protections from individual websites who hold controversial views. (and to be clear, 8kun's loss is probably a net benefit for society, I'm just thinking about the modern equivalent to a free speech principle)

I don't extend that to private platforms. Facebook should be free to host or not host whatever it likes, arbitrarily. What's becoming problematic is that the algorithms of tech giants now dominate content discovery. If Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Reddit decide something is bad, that something will probably have trouble gaining traction.

Most of us, me included probably think attempts to color the perception of historical events to serve racist ends are bad, and do not want them to gain traction. That does not, however mean that I want Facebook to have the power to decide what ideas get traction. I'd like to see online content discovery grow more decentralized again, and I think using algorithms optimized for something other than maximizing engagement will probably tend to reduce extremist content without much active intervention, but I don't know how to get there from here.

I know this is part of the point you're making, but that ship has sailed long ago.

I'd rather see something more decentralized become popular organically, but I rarely get what I want.

Couldn't someone have said the same thing of the printing press in the year 1440?

Yes, and they did. Society went through a period of disruption and experimentation and came out on the other side with new institutions and cultural norms.

The same is happening here. That suggests what's considered acceptable for pamphleteers and public speakers may not be acceptable on an auto-curating micro-targeting real-time nonlocal platform like Facebook.

There was a balance between free speech and the common interest and it's been disrupted. Holding as absolute policies and norms from mass broadcasting in the era of social media is delusional.

You have to get rid of those kinds of barriers before you can get anything like what we are seeing today, where some crazy idea with no evidence to support it can quickly spread far and wide.

As a strong-form First Amendment supporter and free speech advocate, this sort of fundamentalism is the greatest threat to free speech across the world.

Nobody is arresting the groups fomenting outright violence against their fellow Americans. We aren’t even saying they can’t use the banking system to collect resources or our public spaces to share their ideas. We’re literally saying they’re limited from using a mob-inducing micro targeting tool.

When that gets lumped in with vilifying speech, it gets easy to curtail both.

But even that pales in comparison with peer pressure and fears about missing something, the main driver of virality on platforms like facebook. Restriction on free speech can be subtle. You just don't speak about it or are compelled to say something specific or face retaliation.

That there is some retaliation if there is someone openly denying the holocaust is a dishonest argument.

Do you honestly believe that if the neonazis were in charge that I'd be given speech rights?

Holocaust deniers turning out to commit hate crimes, encourage violence, and going on to aim for violence towards minorities is well-documented to be a significant proportion of that group.

> The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant.

I personally think the thesis of the Paradox of Tolerance has merit, but far too often I see it used as a blunt object to bludgeon dissenting opinions, with people telling themselves they are doing good and are protecting society.

(And no, I dn NOT deny the Holocaust, and yes, I do think Holocaust denial is a big problem which got only bigger recently and needs addressing)

Or the slippery slope fallacy, as it is known in less ideological circles. The "paradox" simply asserts that a tolerant society will be usurped by intolerant actors. It is in all respects a slippery slope argument.

Outside the context of rigorous mathematical proofs, many fallacies are legitimate, helpful tools.

See for instance "post hoc ergo propter hoc": https://xkcd.com/552/

True, but it kind of crosses the line when something denies well documented fact and tries to discredit reality itself. This "gamification" of alternative realities is insanely toxic to democracy and society.

It's almost like the Amendment was built as a practical tool to constrain government from actions which history showed led to people rising up and overthrowing a government, not as a holy shrine of virtues that were self-evidently virtuous.

Many religions have falsifiable ideas in them. Some of their "core tenets" may not be falsifiable but, again, you can't pick and choose through these books to get the pieces parts to fit your conclusion after the fact.

That isn't how proofs work.

So what did I mean? As part of a broader concept I’d say that there is a lot we don’t know about the world, that there are problems to solve that are beyond our current abilities to do so, and at a certain point there will always be a need to simply believe, because we don’t have the luxury of not making choices. My concept of religion in this sense then is by definition a system of thought pertaining to the things that we don’t get to know the answers to, but we still have to make choices on because that’s life.

I’ll add that I don’t think the big name brand religions get to dictate what counts as a religion, any more than people in the past have had the right to have a monopoly on what counts as legitimate science. Everyone has a brain and therefore has a right to pursue truth, both for things that are falsifiable and not.

I’ll add that this isn’t static either and hopefully, with time, progress will be made and things will transition from unknowable to knowable. When those things happen I hope that people will continue to update their beliefs (ie religions), and I don’t think that’s too controversial.

With regards to the name brand religions, yeah they definitely have obviously false aspects to them, and I don’t know if people believe them as fact, even though they may say that or even think it. I do however think that they all have aspects to them that are applicable in the religious sense I defined above. For example the concept of a god, etc...

My last thought is I think all of the concepts that are being discussed in this thread are very hard problems. The definitions themselves are hard, what we consider good and bad outcomes are hard, and in a way it’s hard to be compassionate when it feels like people are saying things that are dangerous. That’s basically it, I think it’s important to just remind ourselves that these problems are hard, because I know I have a tendency, or a mental limitation if you will, to get mad or impatient when I forget that. I don’t mean to imply you are btw, but as I was writing I could literally feel a sense of empathy and understanding in the more general sense by reminding myself that this stuff is hard.

Sorry, wrote this on my phone, so sentences, spelling, grammar, structure, etc might suck lol.

But I digress. It doesn't matter until the likes of Facebook are turned into public spaces and regarded as havens for free speech or they are not. That's really the question that has to be answered.

Yeah, I agree completely. The fact that there is a material difference between one kind of institution and another gives legitimacy to complaining about religion, IMO.

> To apply it to our legal system, tax system and to cherry pick bits from it for our military conflicts seem less than fruitful and more than a little hypocritical in a modern age

I totally agree and it saddens me to see this happen. I think one crucial detail though is that instead of religion, I would call this dirty politics (or maybe even just rhetoric?). Dirty politics itself isn't new, but what has changed has become the scale at which it is now employed.

> It doesn't matter until the likes of Facebook are turned into public spaces and regarded as havens for free speech or they are not. That's really the question that has to be answered.

I don't really know myself, but I lean towards yes, if the likes of Facebook had a policy of safe harbor, then they should be regards as havens for free speech. I don't know enough about FB to say if they are no longer protected by safe harbor, but they're probably not in that category.

When we consider though the systematic exploitation of human psychology deployed at scale, it's honestly terrifying, but to me instead of treating it as a free speech question (which is hard), it should be treated as a privacy question and the kinds of businesses you should be able to make. All of these terrifying capabilities and their free speech implications are predicated on companies harvesting our data at scale. The answer should be that there are limitations on what you can do, and business should probably just make money by charging people for stuff.

I get that, early on, it may have felt necessary because we didn't know better, and there wasn't a cultural infrastructure for consumers paying for digital goods. However, a lot has changed since then, and the internet has now become basically the equivalent of a welfare state, where our digital existences within it have been sponsored by all powerful benefactors, e.g. Facebook, Google. To me the solution is simply, pay for stuff, and make it hard to have businesses where your users don't pay for stuff. That could be have liabilities around data that you collect, or outright making it illegal.

Can't promise I have answers to all of the details, but this I feel good about the overall premise of my hypothesis.

I think a very good first step, especially since schools have been forced online, is to see internet access become a public utility before we ever worry about the likes of Facebook. A public space to voice one's concerns can be made at a .gov space or hosted at one's own website once internet access is a utility. The only barrier to entry then is learning to set up your own server (I always thought it was fun when I was younger). Though security certificates are a harder hurdle to clear, these days.

As for data collection, well, I trust neither corporations nor government. They've both proven to be dishonest when it comes to that particular topic, laws be damned =[

So you are saying they will remove the Earth is Flat, The God had created world in 7 days and other similar things?

That the Earth is not flat is easily and conclusively provable.

Is it technically possible to explain away all the evidence with sufficient effort? I suppose. But occams razor tells us that yes, the holocaust happened, and no, three days did not pass before the sun was created.

My point is that we generally don't expect mathematics-like incontrovertible proof to establish historical fact, and it's unfair to demand it to disprove religion. More broadly, Facebook now has to figure out what the standard of proof is for their platform.

Are you suggesting that news organizations should no longer broadcast false statements made by word leaders, such as Trump, who continuously and repeatedly denies well documented facts? Or are you suggesting that these restrictions on free speech should only apply on regular people, whose lowly opinions should be censored while blatant lies by the rich and famous should be broadcast?

That would be helpful or, if they need to, to point where exactly the so-called leader is incorrect.

In fact, abusing elected office to provide materially false and misleading information should be an impeachable offense and a crime similar to perjury.

The problem with platforms like FB and Twitter is that anyone can say anything, and that can get amplified organically, or by state actors, or by trolls who are just saying offensive things to get attention. It's obvious that they need some form of moderation -- in most societies, you can't legally threaten to kill people for any reason, etc.

I think the main problem is trolling and foreign interference because it is basically free. Trying to establish a fringe idea required a lot of effort when making pamphlets or sending out biased newspapers were the main ways of doing it.

In the current digital age, people who are easily influenced are being blasted with controversial ideas by algorithms that are not trying to spread good information, but get more clicks. Foreign psyops efforts and the trolls who would not publicly support an idea, but will do so anonymously, falsely inflate its value. This is a new problem. It may need a twist on an old solution, like allowing people to choose between moderated or unmoderated news feeds, with the default being moderated.

Our democracy (and dozens of others) have survived for hundreds of years with limits to free speech. In my opinion, it's reasonable and rational to trust that the generations before us were at least partially right, and save ourselves the pain of reinventing that wheel.

I recall a thread on cancel culture a few months ago where virtually everyone on the pro-cancel-culture position were arguing that free speech ideals were meaningless because threats and harassment are also free speech ergo you can't oppose cancel culture without also opposing free speech--of course, threats and harassment aren't free speech, and this is precisely why free-speech proponents oppose cancel culture.

It seems like this is one area where more debate can be genuinely enlightening.

I have news for you: people can have different ideas about what should be within the limits of free speech and what should not. In fact, different countries have entirely different laws regarding what is protected as free speech and what is not.

Let's consider the harassment example that you brought up: in principle I agree with you that people should not be allowed to harass each other. However, when you can quell unwanted speech by labeling it "harassment", you create an incentive for people to label more and more speech as harassment. We see this issue in practice all the time. In many places, stating facts such as "men and women have biological differences" is now considered harassment and can lead to losing your job.

If they are doing this, then they are contradicting themselves, but in all of the debates to which I've been a party, the free speech position has always held that coercive behavior (threats and harassment including quid pro quo harassment) are out of bounds of free speech. Once in a while you'll have a few people indulging in a little schadenfreude when a cancel-culture proponent is themselves canceled, and sometimes this stretches so far as to legitimize their canceling--rationalizing the canceling certainly goes too far and conflicts with free-speech ideals and schadenfreude while understandable is probably still not helpful.

Not sure I follow anymore. Who is contradicting themselves, and how?

Once again: where is the contradiction? For example, I might say "Christianity is causing a lot of suffering and death". I think that statements like that are "free speech" and not "harassment", but a fundamental Christian person who hears this statement may think that expressing this opinion constitutes harassment. So you have a statement, and two people disagree whether it is free speech. You think there's a contradiction somewhere in there. Well, where is it?

> You think there's a contradiction somewhere in there.

You asserted the contradiction, not me. I merely confirmed your observation that a free-speech proponent who alleged that harassment was free speech would be contradicting himself because by definition harassment is not free speech.

Again, this is merely your opinion, and it does not reflect the opinion of everyone else. Another person will see that statement and believe it is harassment and not free speech.

> You asserted the contradiction, not me. I merely confirmed your observation that a free-speech proponent who alleged that harassment was free speech would be contradicting himself because by definition harassment is not free speech.

No, this is false. You asserted the contradiction and you still have not demonstrated that it exists. If you look up this chain of comments to find the first mention of "contradiction", that mention was made by you (not me!) as a response to my comment where I said:

""The kind of speech which is often labelled "harassment" by its opponents is often labelled as "free speech" by its proponents.""

...to this comment you responded:

""If they are doing this, then they are contradicting themselves""

Notice that I never said "free-speech proponent alleges harassment is free speech". The example I gave was very clear that the label "harassment" is not given by the speaker - it is given by an observer. You seem to hold on to this strawman that you constructed where the speaker labels their own speech as harassment and free speech simultaneously. This does not really occur in practice. What occurs in practice is that the speaker does not label their own speech as harassment, the label is given by other people who are offended and want to silence the speaker . In some instances we might agree with speaker, in other instances we might disagree with them. But in any case, the speaker's internal position is not contradictory; they don't believe that their speech constitutes harassment.

You are mistaken. Criticism is never harassment and it’s always free speech by definition. Someone might have their feelings hurt by criticism and they might even believe it to be harassment, but they’d be mistaken. The president would prefer the media not to criticize him so much and I’m sure he believes they harass him, but never the less, he is mistaken.

> No, this is false. You asserted the contradiction and you still have not demonstrated that it exists.

I interpreted (evidently “misinterpreted) your comment as a contradiction; I wasn’t claiming a contradiction. It seems like your point is instead “some people consider harassment to be free speech” which is fine, but incorrect at least per the widely accepted definition of free speech. You can have your own definition of “2” for example which means “3”, but you don’t get to call others wrong when they say “2+2=4”—they are simply using the conventional definition of “2” and not your personal definition.

It's not correct, it's just "standard" in the context that I'm using it. But whether or not it's "standard" is largely irrelevant--the question is whether the concept that I'm labeling "free speech" is consistent in my framework with the other concepts (which I've labeled, "harassment" and "criticism"--which are also labeled according to standard definitions, for convenience). Let's stay away from semantic arguments--they're tedious, pointless, and boring.

> What makes your answer correct and the other 100 answers incorrect? You refer to "widely accepted definition", as if a dictionary definition could somehow be applied to real world situations to judge whether an expression is harassment or not. Maybe it can be in _extreme_ cases, like if someone said "gays should be killed" we could easily judge that as harassment

That's not harassment. It's an abhorrent idea, but "abhorrence" is different from "harassment". If you're shouting your abhorrent idea while burning a cross in someone's yard, that's harassment. If you're following someone around shouting your abhorrent idea, that's also harassment. Abhorrent ideas tend to be accompanied by harassment (and if you think about it, we consider these ideas abhorrent because they're very likely to lead to harassment and violence); however, they aren't equivalent to harassment. This is true even for a very broad definition of "harassment" like what you would find in a dictionary and even more so for very precise definitions such as a legal definition or probably all philosophical definitions.

> But there's a huge gray area where expressions can be interpreted either way and it's up to each individual to assess whether they feel like an expression is harassment or not.

I think we can reasonably define harassment as "an action based on an intent to intimidate or pressure someone". I think that definition is very precise and there isn't much gray area; however, litigating the intent to determine whether any given action is harassment is difficult. We can devise increasingly better tests for assessing intent (e.g., "we assume intent is to intimidate if a significant majority of people would feel intimidated under similar circumstances"), but difficulty of assessing intent is different than the precision of the definition.

That's, again, not harassment and threats, it's your employer using freedom of association to deny guilt by proxy for spreading someone else's lies, threats, and harassments.

Possibly, but there is another possibility which also occurs with alarming frequency:

The employer, feeling bullied and afraid of bad press, demonstrations, etc, makes a calculated risk vs reward decision: Is keeping this employee worth the (possibly existential) risk to my business?

That is, the employer may personally have zero problem with what you said, but fire you anyway because "it's just not worth it." The decision to fire is the result of both cowardice by the employer and coercion by the petitioners, even if that coercion is not an explicit threat.

I mean, we can keep digging, but at the end of the day the story keeps resolving to "Someone said something people didn't like and there are consequences." Technology has made it easier, by dint of lowering the cost of investigation of a person, to apply those consequences; it hasn't changed the rules under which society has operated in general. We block those consequences in terms of government intervention; we've never back-stopped them in terms of private intervention outside of some very, very specific class constraints.

If we want to discuss whether holocaust denial should be a protected class constraint, that would fit the existing (US) mold for constraint of reaction to speech by private citizens, but good luck finding popular support for holocaust denial protection.

As the comic says, defending a position by citing free speech says that the most compelling virtue of your words is that they're not literally illegal to say.

> I mean, we can keep digging, but at the end of the day the story keeps resolving to "Someone said something people didn't like and there are consequences."

I see your argument here, in theory. Two things make me uneasy with it: lack of perfect information; and the power of disinformation.

That is, "unpopular" and "someone said something people didn't like" can't be taken for granted. A small vocal minority, especially one skilled with social media, can make something appear more unpopular than it actually is. And few people are equipped to gauge what the reality is (accurate polling, eg, can be problematic even for those with large resources, let alone a small business owner).

It is easy, then, to force the employer to make a decision about a risk they cannot gauge accurately, and which is made to appear much larger than they would view it if they knew the true average opinions of their customers. Couple this with most people's natural risk aversion, and you have a genuine problem that you can't write off as "well, employers are just finally being forced to respond to the will of the people."

I mean, let's be honest: getting someone blackballed from gainful employment sure seems like harassment for any reasonable definition of the term. You just seem to believe that there are sometimes good reasons for that to occur.

Which of these are things an employer would reasonably fire an employee over? I don't think any reasonable person would believe that these people would have been fired if it weren't for the concerted canceling. Otherwise why would people bother petitioning the employer if the employer would have fired them anyway?

Moreover, do cancel-culture proponents really want to cement the precedent that employment is just an ordinary association, and that anyone's employment (and thus livelihood and health insurance) can be terminated on the whims of their employer? Would they feel comfortable allowing a Trump-voting employer to casually part ways with an employee upon finding out they support Biden? Bear in mind that you and I and those we know are probably much more likely to be in high-demand tech positions than the median American.

If we're talking about the US, that's already extremely firmly cemented outside of specific union protections (I haven't heard about unions going to bat for employees getting called out; I'd be interested to see if it's happening).

It's a major issue with the way American employment works, but is somewhat orthogonal to the question of calling out people for bad behavior. People can lose their health insurance if their employer doesn't like their haircut also; the root issue is that health insurance ought not be tied to employment.

> Would they feel comfortable allowing a Trump-voting employer to casually part ways with an employee upon finding out they support Biden?

That happens all the time. So does employers supporting employees' support of a political candidate.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/18/miles-taylor-former-trump-st...

Politicization of labor isn't new. My relatives who are union are required to spend off-job time working a phone bank for a few hours every election cycle in support of the candidate the union is backing; it's part of their union agreement.

It's not firmly cemented, it's a common law, but it's well within the realm of possibility that Congress would pass a bill that strengthens employment protections. This is something the US has gone back and forth on for a long time; why do you assume it's fixed (i.e. "cemented") now? And if it's not cemented, why would you want to lean into that precedent?

> but is somewhat orthogonal to the question of calling out people for bad behavior.

How can you make the argument that it's "just employers' exercising their freedom-of-association rights" and then argue that freedom of association is orthogonal? Anyway, we're not talking about them exercising their freedom of association rights, we're talking about coercing employers into terminating employees who fail to toe the party line.

> That happens all the time. So does employers supporting employees' support of a political candidate.

Right, but I'm guessing you would argue that this is immoral and harmful behavior--if so, why would you advocate for those who would emulate it (note that canceling is even worse, because it's not just an employer parting ways with a heretical employee, but a mob pressuring an employer to part ways with said heretical employee)?

> Politicization of labor isn't new. My relatives who are union are required to spend off-job time working a phone bank for a few hours every election cycle in support of the candidate the union is backing; it's part of their union agreement.

Why would they do this if the status quo was already "extremely firmly cemented"?

I do not. I argue that the public putting pressure on individuals who spread bad ideas to stop doing that---up to and including looping their employer in, up to and including the employer terminating that employment relationship---is part of the healthy public immune system to bad ideas and antisocial behavior. "We live in a society" and all that. The government is constrained from doing it because the machinery of government can be co-opted by tyrants, so people need the right to call tyrants what they are. Not because it's the obligation of every individual to feed those who seek their destruction.

In US history, unpopular politicians used to have their houses torn down brick by brick by an angry mob and tossed in a river. We've come quite a long way in expressing disagreement in a civilized way, but there's no expectation that someone should keep paying you money (or, in the concrete case of Facebook and what content they host, giving you an open "billboard along the highway" of their community communication service) so you can spend it on denying their history or their right to exist (or the history and right to exist of their customers).

The whole point is that there's not a good way to determine what ideas are "bad ideas" apart from ongoing public debate.

> up to and including the employer terminating that employment relationship---is part of the healthy public immune system to bad ideas and antisocial behavior

The obvious problem is that "employers can terminate any employee at will" is that it does at least as much harm to "good ideas" as to "bad ideas". It optimizes for "popular ideas" and your ideas might not be popular, especially if you believe (as many cancel culture proponents do) that we live in an abhorrent white supremacist, rape culture. If these ideas are indeed popular, then a mechanism that allows employers to terminate employees for any reason coupled with an incentive system that encourages employers to terminate employees with unpopular ideas will naturally result in the propagation of those popular ideals.

If that's the case, then one is assuming that the public is incapable of discerning good ideas from bad ideas.

Calling that into question calls all of American democracy into question. At that point, why even leave leadership up to the voters? A dictatorship, oligarchy, or plutocracy would be wiser if the public really can't determine for themselves what will secure or endanger their freedom.

One of the cornerstones of American government is self-governance: the ability of the people to discern, in aggregate, good from bad. If we accept the public's ability to vote, we ought to also accept their right to inform a company of someone they perceive to be a bad actor in their midst and boycott said company based on their perception.

The public isn't always right. We assume, as a matter of American self-governance, that they often are.

(We probably shouldn't fork the conversation on the topic of white supremacist rape culture, because I'm guessing from your statement that you don't believe that describes America ;) ).

I'm assuming that the mob can't, and that even a democracy struggles; however, given enough debate good ideas will rise to the top more often than not. The viability of this kind of debate depends on free-speech ideals, however--our debate is presently very toxic in no small part to the fear that cancel culture inspires.

https://today.yougov.com/topics/entertainment/articles-repor...

But that doesn't imply it's the mob's fault; it's up to the person who said the things to not say things their employer would fire them for.

Within the constraint of the rule of law, a group of people can organize to petition an employer to remove an employee for behavior A, and the employer can evaluate A and decide whether the group's claims are untrue, A should be removed for the behavior, or it's not worth the time to decide and A should be removed to quiet the group.

Good employers won't do 3, and we should probably shame the employers who do, but I think it opens a Pandora's box to constrain their choices with further law on this topic.

"Rule of law" refers to "judgment in a court on the basis of a codified law" as opposed to "mob rule" where the mob takes it upon itself to determine who is guilty. My point is that I hope we can agree that the mob is bad at determining who is guilty and what an appropriate sentence ought to be, and this is why we have rule of law.

> a group of people can organize to petition an employer to remove an employee for behavior A, and the employer can evaluate A and decide whether the group's claims are untrue, A should be removed for the behavior, or it's not worth the time to decide and A should be removed to quiet the group. Good employers won't do 3...

The problem, of course, is that employers have a fiduciary responsibility that reliably overrides their moral responsibility in practice. And naturally, cancel culture depends on this basic fact, or else it would be ineffective. If employers were able to resist the mob, then the mob wouldn't get its way. If the mob and the employer were really righteous then the employer would terminate the errant employee without pressure from a mob (there would be no point).

Personally I think we should make it harder for employers to terminate their employees for their private free speech, such that mobs can "protest" employee behavior but they can't even implicitly threaten the employee's livelihood and access to health care. If you remove the mob's ability to control one's employment, then they can shout into the Twitter void to their heart's content with my full blessing.

I'm personally nervous about a law enacting that creating a situation where a black employer can't fire an employee for organizing a Klan rally.

First of all, to clarify, if the employee is using any racist speech at work at all, there's no question that s/he's creating a hostile workplace and that warrants termination. I'm very wary of allowing any private speech to constitute a hostile workplace due to the slippery slope and ease of abuse, but I certainly empathize with the impulse.

If the "Klan rally" is burning crosses or otherwise threatening or harassing people, then the law should handle this. Basically we should have stronger protections against mobs--make it easier for the law to prosecute participants. This also would have lots of additional social benefits (including protecting victims of BLM riots).

If the hypothetical Klan rally is truly peaceful (however abhorrent their ideals), then all they can really do is result to the same cancel culture tactics we're debating--if we can render those tactics impotent, then the Klan rally is impotent. Moreover, it becomes an opportunity to hold a counter-rally where we talk about why Klan ideas are abhorrent (because ideas about racial superiority/guilt are abhorrent, etc).

Note that while this isn't as satisfying as firing someone over their private speech, it provides much more protection against abuse, and it's more holistic--it not only covers your hypothetical black employer / racist employee scenario, but the much more common scenario involving racist employees offending their coworkers.

That's not what is happening. What is happening is that you and that person disagree on what a threat is.

I have two friends, each faculty members at top schools, who have been personally attacked on Fox News and called enemies of America. This has led to hundreds of people sending them death threats via email and constant calls to their department chairs demanding their firing. Not a peep from organizations like FIRE.

And why is sending an email to somebody's boss saying that they are an asshole and should be fired fundamentally worse than posting on social media about how so-and-so is a secret jew who works for the new world order and literally sacrifices babies to satan?

FIRE focuses on the exercise of free speech in education, so if your friends weren't fired or reprimanded for exercising their rights, FIRE probably won't weigh in. Doubly so if no one writes to FIRE on their behalf asking them to cover the case. Ultimately, FIRE can't cover every case (they're a nonprofit), so it might also just be bad luck that your friends' case wasn't selected. Hard to say. It certainly could be that FIRE is discriminating against your friends' for the content of their speech, but FIRE and Fox News are rarely aligned (indeed, FIRE got its start defending academia against conservative illiberalism).

> And why is sending an email to somebody's boss saying that they are an asshole and should be fired fundamentally worse than posting on social media about how so-and-so is a secret jew who works for the new world order and literally sacrifices babies to satan?

No one is making this argument.

It’s never been easy and current social pressures make it even harder to do.

Based on context, I think you are using free speech to mean "speech that is protected by the doctrine of free speech" in the vocabulary I described above. Though that's ambiguous, because to be able to talk concretely about whether speech is protected or not you would need to say what it is covered under. So do you mean speech that is protected under the 1st Amendment, or some other law?

Presuming you mean the 1st amendment, it isn't necessarily true that threats and harassment are not protected, depending on the specifics.

To distinguish between this definition and the first-amendment definition, I usually refer to this as "free speech ideals".

I have a couple of follow-ups. You reject using Cancel Culture to silence those expressing abhorrent ideas. But what if someone isn't expressing a political view or ideology, but is instead performing bad actions? Like using racial slurs and insulting minorities, or shouting sexual harassment at women walking down the street? As you mentioned, threats and harassment aren't protected under the banner of free speech ideals. And, depending on the circumstances, those actions may be protected under the 1st Amendment, so are not illegal. Do you object to using Cancel Culture against those who are performing threats and harassment? If not, do you have an alternative recommendation? Because I'm not sure how Refutation Culture would apply in such a situation, there's no idea being put forward to argue against. As a follow up, what about abhorrent views being put into practice, such as the CEO of a company instituting racial segregation in their stores?

Secondly, where do you draw the line between Cancel Culture and general acts of protest? If someone in a position of power publicly expresses abhorrent views, and under Refutation Culture we should voice an alternative viewpoint, can that take the form of a protest? If we march around that person's office holding picket signs refuting their viewpoint, would that be considered coercive?

Right, "free-speech" is a subset of "speech", and it aspires to optimize for the volume of free speech, which is to say that as long as people are free to threaten and harass, others will feel uncomfortable expressing their views. Of course, if those in power agree with you, the intolerant person will say "all is well", but the problems are that (1) sometimes we are wrong and (2) sometimes the person in power isn't going to agree with us and we find ourselves on the wrong end of our own speech-restricting precedents. Those of use who have lived in liberal democracies most of our lives may find it hard to believe that an illiberalism with which we disagree could ever come to rule, and so we take free speech for granted.

> You reject using Cancel Culture to silence those expressing abhorrent ideas. But what if someone isn't expressing a political view or ideology, but is instead performing bad actions? Like using racial slurs and insulting minorities, or shouting sexual harassment at women walking down the street?

As previously mentioned, harassment (sexual or targeted racial slurs) are already harassment. Note that "I think $race is inferior" isn't an abhorrent idea that falls within the realm of free speech, but "Get out of our neighborhood, you $slur" is harassment.

> As you mentioned, threats and harassment aren't protected under the banner of free speech ideals. And, depending on the circumstances, those actions may be protected under the 1st Amendment, so are not illegal. Do you object to using Cancel Culture against those who are performing threats and harassment?

Yes, I object. We should criticize the cancel culture movement; fighting cancel culture with cancel culture is self defeating. In general, I would advocate for legal protections that would neuter cancel culture (and provide a host of additional social benefits), such as decoupling health insurance from employment and strengthening employment protections. In many cases, harassment is already illegal, but proving harassment is difficult and this difficulty is exactly what cancel culture thrives on, so we need better tools--if an employer has to pay an expensive severance, they'll be less willing to cede to a mob. We could also prohibit them from terminating employees on the basis of their free speech altogether (provided of course that the "speech" in question isn't the employee representing the company in an official capacity). I'm not sure exactly which of these policies would be the most effective, but I'm confident that there's a lot of opportunity.

> As a follow up, what about abhorrent views being put into practice, such as the CEO of a company instituting racial segregation in their stores?

This is already illegal, and free speech ideals are perfectly consistent with the laws that condemn this behavior (instituting racial segregation isn't speech of any kind).

> If someone in a position of power publicly expresses abhorrent views, and under Refutation Culture we should voice an alternative viewpoint, can that take the form of a protest? If we march around that person's office holding picket signs refuting their viewpoint, would that be considered coercive?

I'm not sure what "Refutation Culture" is, but if you're talking about free speech ideals, then yes, it's perfectly fine to protest as long as your protest isn't harassing or threatening. There's nothing inherently coercive about expressing one's perspective; it's when there's a threat (either explicit or implicit) or when it's outright harassment (you're petitioning a politician in their workplace--this is healthy democratic behavior as long as the protests and messaging are peaceful in nature; petitioning someone's home or shouting death/rape threats constitute harassment IMO).

I think there is an often unspoken assumption by free speech advocates that if enough daylight is shined on something that the truth will win out. Thus, better to limit speech as little as possible because (a) those limitations have so easily and frequently been abused by those clinging to power and (b) at the end of the day the truth will win out anyway, so better to just let crazy stuff be said.

Over the past decade though, as people have seen the real, critical danger of unlimited free speech, and especially how the internet and social media has allowed free speech with few consequences to the original speaker (which did NOT exist when the ideals of free speech were first envisioned), I'm not sure these original hypotheses hold out anymore. I highly recommend The Social Dilemma - instead of showing truth to power, powerful entities have used powerful tools to "hack" human psychology to get people to believe things that are factually false.

Remember Reddit back in the late 00s? It had such a strong free speech ethos it allowed things like jailbait. I don't even hear many free speech defenders supporting stuff like that anymore. And look at the mobs in Myanmar that were enabled to commit violence against the Rohingya by false Facebook posts.

I still believe in the ideas of free speech, by I also now more strongly believe that unlimited free speech will lead us to a world where autocrats win and plain, 100% verifiable facts are dismissed (I mean, from the article, nearly a quarter of 18-39 year olds believe the Holocaust is a myth, exaggerated or aren't sure??!! I'm in my 40s and I have friends whose parents showed me their serial tattoos from being in concentration camps), and stuff is, for lack of a better term, "not good". So yes, I've changed my position, and I'm firmly on the side of being intolerant against speech that is demonstrably false.

Why?

Even though FB cannot literally muzzle me, it is explicitly trying to be the singular point of online social interaction in an increasingly digital world.

To the extent that it is successful, its decisions on what content is and is not acceptable affect us all, far more strongly than any government censor, regardless of how right or wrong are its determinations.

What did you think I was saying? Clearly I need to communicate better.

I can't tolerate (neo) Nazis because they want to harm queer people, Jews, disabled people etc. The people they want to harm can't do anything to stop being targeted by (neo) Nazis.

Nazis can stop being Nazis and then I'll start tolerating them.

It doesn't matter if a Jew stops practising Judaism they will be targeted. It doesn't matter if a gay person is in the closet, they will be targeted. If a Nazi stops spreading Nazi rhetoric and performing Nazi actions they will be tolerated.

See the difference?

To be fair, I understand that your idea is mainly that there is a hierarchy in the level of intolerance. But there was some losses in explaining your idea in a quick and dirty way.

So, it's OK to harass e.g. gay people? After all they can stop having sex with men and marry a woman. How about Christians? Muslims? Democrats? All of them can stop being what they are, so it's ok to harass them?

Looks like a half-thought argument.

Also, there's a qualitative difference between harassing someone (purposeful infliction of harm on an individual) and mere dislike of their non-harmful consensual activity with others.

It's not.

Using a third party service to publish posts is not equivalent to speech. It's more akin to press, but it's not quite like that either: it's equivalent to asking a publisher to put a communication of yours in their printed text.

Facebook is not preventing someone from physically going to any street corner or other real public place and talking about holocaust denial. Facebook or anyone else would have every right to prevent this on their property if they wish.

People who would otherwise post on Facebook about Holocaust denial can go out on the streets and talk about it to their friends or others. But, they can expect a punch in the face if they do. I think that is what is happening here. People are spewing nonsense, and a non-governmental entity (Facebook) is punching them in the face (not letting them say it on their platform).

Like the grandparent post said, this is intolerant. But it's following the paradox to allow more tolerance in society.

Free speech doesn't protect my right to blare Nazi propaganda 24/7 into your living room using focused sound technology. Nor should it.

In the US, it doesn't even grant a person the "right" to blare Nazi propaganda 24/7 using a licensed FM radio station.

Many people seem to take as granted that free speech is a virtue that an entity like Facebook should support, but their statements assume without evidence that free speech protection is a virtue in that context.

This is a common argument but it is simply not true. Someone cannot tape your mouth shut because they aren't the government. The government (at least the US government) is saddled with the responsibility to protect your rights, even from other entities. I cannot search your house just because I'm not a cop. What good is a government if it only protects your rights from being infringed by itself?

With regard to the particular topic being discussed, that is, a private entity moderating speech on its own property, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama is very directly applicable, and more specific to the situation itself. The only sticking point to be hashed out might be "terms of service" which might constitute a private agreement and this precedent may not directly apply. Of course we shall see, because I'm willing to bet these cases will be brought to court within the next 5 years.

We shouldn't tolerate things that are objectively and provably false. Denying the holocaust is one of those things, and therefore we shouldn't tolerate it.

You can disagree with opinions, but not facts. Facts are... facts. That the Holocaust happened is a fact. Denying that fact should indeed not be tolerated.

What is caught in the "Holocaust denier" net does not consist solely of people who outright deny it occurred - there are many shades of grey, opinions in this realm are highly dimensional.

This isn't to say that censorship in this case isn't justified or fairly optimal (in achieving gross human happiness), but if a cause is just and righteous, it shouldn't present a highly distorted representation of objective reality, or refuse to vigorously defend it's assertions. If your case is correct, "in fact", it should be defensible in the context of a non-simplified representation of reality.

If proponents of an ideology (censorship, in this case) are not willing or able to do that, then I would find it more palatable if everyone was just honest and acknowledge that a very rough approximation is being done, for reasons X,Y,Z - I think a fine argument could be made, and this way no fibs are being told.

The problem is that it is much easier to spread lies and misinformation than to contest and correct them. Mark Twain once said that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can even put on its shoes. This is especially true in this day and age where all it takes for something to reach massive audiences is a button click.

It is a rather sad and concerning state of affairs that there is such a widespread aversion to honesty on a site as normally clear-thinking as HN. As well, there seems to also be a very strong aversion to discussing this phenomenon (that people regularly misrepresent reality here) in the abstract. I am infinitely curious about this behavior, that is observable in large quantities.

-------------------------------------------------

EDIT: FYI, I am only allowed a few posts per day here (overton window maintenance?), so I will have to put my answer to your child comment here as an edit...

> Sorry, what exactly am I misrepresenting?

This:

>> You can disagree with opinions, but not facts. Facts are... facts. That the Holocaust happened is a fact. Denying that fact should indeed not be tolerated.

The ~dispute regarding the holocaust does not consist of a simple binary of whether the event occurred, or not. There is all sorts of complexity and uncertainty (as is typically the case in reality, our recorded history of it, and alterations to that recorded history of historic events as time progresses)...and in turn, our individual perceptions of events (which we mistake for reality, as is always the case in every conversation of this type on HN, and elsewhere) are highly inconsistent with each other, as well as with that which physically occurred.

So my question is: why describe it as if it is a simple binary? What is the motive for this misrepresentation? Might it be perhaps, with conscious intent or not, to persuade others to adopt your style of thinking and opinions? Just speculating of course - I am very interested in knowing the actual underlying reason of why there is such a strong aversion here on HN to discussing reality in its true, high dimensional nature.

I speculate that: because we do not do this, it has real world effects similar to that which would be experienced if one wrote software on top of a specification that leaves out 3/4 of the actual complexity of the problem space. And so, I beat this same dead horse, day after day, hoping that some day one individual will be able to acknowledge that indeed, there is actually a horse in the room.

That's an easy one. Tolerance is putting up with things other people do, except when those other people are being intolerant. You can make a comfortable place for intolerant groups, or for the people they target, but not both. Better to remove the intolerance.

Removing holocaust denial is an easy win here. It will be more interesting to see if Facebook chooses to remove less obviously bad content.

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1357/

A private dinner party is not publicly accessible. There is a distinction there.

I also don’t need a Facebook account in order to post content and consume it?

You are missing the point about Marsh v Alabama: unrestricted public accessibility vs the private club with authentication and exclusion built into its very core.

Rockefeller center, though a “public” space closes and excludes the public for around 5 minutes annually to prove that it is not a truly public space and so they can kick anyone out at any time for any reason. Facebook’s registration and authentication does the same. You publish at their pleasure.

In marsh, the equivalent would be a velvet rope around the sidewalk where only approved and registered people could enter, view and express their opinions. Facebook is emphatically not the public sphere, as much as y’all want it to be: it is allowed exclusion of anyone according to its own choosing. That it can ban someone and delete their account makes Facebook not a public sphere.

Same as my blog: your comment stays up if I want it to, no implication on the right to free speech.

If one steps back and observes this conversation from a disinterested 3rd party perspective, one might notice that these same arguments, based on falsehoods from both sides, reoccur every single time the topic comes up. And if one exercises this practice over time, across many conversations, one may notice that this same pattern is present always and everywhere.

Might a reason that we never seem to move the ball forward on these conversations (or representations in physical reality) be that everyone thinks they're talking about "objective reality", but in fact, each person is actually talking about their individual snapshot (perspective, worldview) of reality? If this is what was actually happening, what might the conversations look like? Might they bear an uncanny resemblance to the conversations we see before our very eyes, year after year after year, on topic after topic after topic?

Even funnier about the situation is that typically, at least here on HN, most everyone probably has enough depth in psychology to decently realize the degree to which each individual has a "unique" (to put it mildly) perspective on reality. However, if one is to then consider this, and then observe the nature of the conversations, it appears as if this knowledge is not possessed by people who are arguing over a particular, object level topic (politics, racism, sexism, sexuality, etc). But while people can realize that individual bias exists in the abstract, they seem curiously (and passionately) unwilling/unable to realize (and acknowledge) that it actually comes into play in real world conversations, like this one.

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."

- Pericles

I think "politics" in the above sentence could be replaced with "reality" and it would fully retain it's truth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins

Freedom of speech and expression has a long history that predates modern international human rights instruments. It is thought that the ancient Athenian democratic principle of free speech may have emerged in the late 6th or early 5th century BC. The values of the Roman Republic included freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Concepts of freedom of speech can be found in early human rights documents. England's Bill of Rights 1689 legally established the constitutional right of freedom of speech in Parliament which is still in effect.

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

The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which regulate an establishment of religion, or that would prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_century

The 5th century is the time period from 401 to 500 Anno Domini (AD) or Common Era (CE) in the Julian calendar. The 5th century is noted for being a period of migration and political instability throughout Eurasia.

Would you kick nazis out of your dinner party? Yes or No?

That’s the fundamental question that is being asked.

If your answer is no, you would not kick nazis out of your dinner party, on account of “free speech”, well, that is your free speech. Mine is kicking the nazis out.

If you would not permit me to alter my behavior to stop my resources and forum to be utilized by nazis, meaning I must support and publish nazi material, your position is very extreme, severely limits my autonomy and in many ways forces me to “speak” on behalf of others.

“Free speech” that does not allow for others to express the consequences of that speech is not, in fact a support of free speech.

If you say “I hate nazis, but you must allow them to publish on your website” you are effectively prioritizing one type of speech over another. You are saying I must allow nazis at my dinner party. (Note: the government, with its force of law, is very, very different)

Downvotes work well too, as does rate limiting accounts that do not stay within the boundaries of the community overton window.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-censorship

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

Am I though, in fact? Is this idea expressly conveyed in the text above? Not that I can see, and it certainly wasn't intended, because I do not hold that belief. So this raises an interesting question: where did that idea come from? This may look like a rhetorical question, but it isn't - it is literal, and I ask it for a very specific and important reason. Are you able to answer the question? After all, it's your idea, isn't it?

> Would you kick nazis out of your dinner party? Yes or No? That’s the fundamental question that is being asked.

Fine - then discuss it in those terms, not in objectively false terms like removing them from the dinner party does not diminish their freedom of speech. The actual actions (and subsequent changes in the state of reality), and the justifications for those actions, are two different things. Acknowledge this distinction, please.

> If you would not permit me to alter my behavior to stop my resources and forum to be utilized by nazis, meaning I must support and publish nazi material, your position is very extreme, severely limits my autonomy and in many ways forces me to “speak” on behalf of others.

It is not I who am forcibly restricting anything, so please refrain from making such accusations. I am merely discussing ideas.

> “Free speech” that does not allow for others to express the consequences of that speech is not, in fact a support of free speech.

Agreed. I am not doing that. Others may, but I am not.

> If you say “I hate nazis, but you must allow them to publish on your website” you are effectively prioritizing one type of speech over another. You are saying I must allow nazis at my dinner party. (Note: the government, with its force of law, is very, very different)

If I was saying that, you would have a fine point. But I'm not saying that. What I am saying, is what I have said above - supplementing what I have said with one's own interpretations and predictions, and then accusing me of holding those interpreted beliefs, seems like a sub-optimal way to solve problems - if we were to do it in our day jobs, we'd write shitty software, and that's why this type of behavior gets called out. So why is it not just acceptable, but enthusiastically preferred, to behave in this manner in "the real world" (including here on HN, home of the intellectually gifted)? Is this not a very odd state of affairs? I mean, if one drops all priors and playfully observes (a certain subset of) the conversations we have here all day every day, is the whole thing not beautifully (but also tragically) absurd? Why do we do this, and why do we refuse to acknowledge it (and why do we downvote people who dare to point these things out - don't shoot the messenger, as they say)?

These seem like good questions to be asking in the 21st century - it's odd not only that no one asks them, but also that there's such unanimous and passionate aversion to the ideas contained within such questions. This aversion can be observed, if one has the fortitude to look.

There can be no stable and 100% tolerant society, because by definition that means that nothing will be done to stop intolerance from taking over. Given that 99% tolerant (with an exception for “no nazis”) is about as tolerant as it’s possible to be, most people use “99% tolerant (with an exception for no nazis)” and “tolerant” synonymously.

It’s not perfect, and yes it would be clearer if every single use of the word “tolerant” was replaced with “99% tolerant” and came with an explanation of the paradox of tolerance in the footnotes, but I think most people already understand what is meant here.

IMO it’s more nonsensical (and dangerous) to go the other way, using "1% intolerant” and “intolerant” synonymously - as then people start getting the impression that “banning holocaust denial content” (1% intolerant) and “gassing the Jews” (100% intolerant) are equally bad acts.

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

People are always going to have ideas which conflict with the mainstream, ideas that incite outrage and seem totally absurd. If history has anything to say about the matter it's that some of these absurd ideas have proven themselves correct despite mainstream acceptance, even outrage, to the contrary. If these ideas were silenced because they clashed with the mainstream then societies would seldom have progressed beyond dogmatic belief. What immediately comes to mind is viral FB content proclaiming masks as a panacea for Coronavirus and the government will abduct your children if you test positive. God forbid Facebook won't be removing that content though, because it doesn't clash with the mainstream zeitgeist that our reaction to the outbreak hasn't caused more long term harm than good at this point.

Good grief, I never thought I'd find myself defending the existence of Holocaust denial content on the internet, but it blows my mind how in the age of the internet we STILL don't understand how to deal with trolls.

I've been targeted by hateful speech before and I'm perfectly fine.