Re:Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service ...
by Pyramus on Friday April 01, 2022 @07:58AM
(#30877275)
I 100% agree with you. There is strong indication we are heading towards a more volatile world, and we need to collectively discuss these questions.
I'd like to add that most posters here on HN are arguing conditional on living in a Western democracy. And most Western democracies have set different restrictions - but all do have some restrictions. E.g. it's illegal to deny the holocaust in Germany.
There are huge numbers of interesting questions around how we treat freedom of speech in a civilised society. What restrictions can we collectively accept? How do we ensure that individual rights to speech are protected? How do we protect people from harassment or abuse, and how does this balance against the fundamental right to be offensive? Discussion about these is way more interesting than hot takes about how we're all going to prison for being mean on Twitter. And worst of all it detracts from the serious conversation to be had about how grossly inappropriate the reaction in this specific case is.