A free speech platform should allow a wide range of topics, but it's not expected to stand for all manner of trolling and bad faith argumentation. I think that conflating the two is tripping a lot of people up in the debate about the topic.

This and other examples are ruled under law in many developed countries.

See I have a problem with the word "never". How about "rarely" or at least "once". A terrible idea should be given an audience once. Let it it be quickly refuted, then go back to better conversations. If someone brings it up again, point them back to the earlier discussion. That way it is established why it is a bad idea.

I read that what really brought down the KKK was a massive amount of lawsuits

"Free speech" is a cool buzzword people think they can qualify for (or wish to), without the ramifications of true free speech (hurt feelings, bad ideologies being discussed in a positive light).

> Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, hate speech, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, dignity, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury.

The fact that most people on the internet (which seem to include you) are using it wrong is another thing. Free speech only applies in the relationship between citizens and the state. It has no meaning in the relationship between individuals and the platforms they're using for communication.

I don't care about an arbitrary definition of two strung-together words, whose definitions individually, are absolute. When combined, their definition is just as absolute. The speech must be free. Free is simply defined as free. Not "free, but ..." in which case it is no longer just "free speech."

This feels like a deeper debate than I'm capable of having, but all language is a string of strung-together words with meanings. These meanings have reached a high enough degree of consensus to exist in a dictionary or semiotic treatise. I think that clinging to your own meaning of absolute free speech when faced with not an arbitrary definition, but one which was reached through a social and cultural consensus, is naive or willfully contrarian.

That is a pretty silly definition.

Imagine if a corporate owned mafia was going around murdering everyone who supports increasing taxes.

Surely, you would recognize that this has a chilling effect on speech, and could be said to control people's free speech rights, even though it is not the government doing it.

Fighting corporate-enacted censorship with government intervention is fighting fire with fire.

Personally I can think of a meaningful debate that can be had from talking about "genocide" but I'm pretty sure that people that would hold this opinion in truth are a little beyond what would be considered a "good faith" discussion.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...

Not every platform needs to have _all_ the users. I know that it's a bit of an anathema on a discussion board built by venture capitalists to say that the goal of a social platform should not be to maximize the amount of users and engagement, but here we are. I think optimizing your service for "everyone" is a bad strategy in competing with existing social networks, especially coming from an "indie" background. Not that Parler is exactly indie.

[1] I'm saying this as someone that is working towards a discussion platform that targets smallish to medium communities formed around a common interest. In this world if moms wanting to share their latest knitting project are excluded from a service that targets free speech people, that's fine, there can be a knitting community out there also for them. Having these two communities intermingle by using something like ActivityPub is a way to keep "the network effect" but keep them separate enough.

This does not actually...happen. At least not over the medium and long term. What actually happens, and you can see this in practice, is that decent people are not particularly interested, over long periods of time, in arguing that no, there is no globalist (read: Jewish) conspiracy to take over the world. They lose interest almost immediately, while the frothers intellectually crossbreed and turn from one particular flavor of bigot into all the flavors of bigot.

The problem isn't, as you are characterizing, that a platform must have "all the users". The problem is that this strategy hyperconcentrates relatively anodyne conservatives into literal-not-figurative fascists, and has been doing so for quite a while. The active creation of intellectual cul-de-sacs, of epistemic closures for hateful beliefs, is a major factor in why we're where we are right now.

One example that I can think of the top of my head is Scott Alexander's blog, where I saw opinions put forward (most of the times in a respectful manner) that ranged from extremely egalitarian to extremely libertarian. I am entirely sure that some of the people posting there have views that veer into "one flavour of bigot" or another, but because the community as a whole would rise against the most objectionable types of ideas that one could put forward, they never do it. To me that is a healthy community and I hope it can be achieved in other places without needing an "alpha-personality" at the center for people to gather around.

Sure I'm using offense terms but that's not as bad as claiming they control the world.

Or if I thought slavery should be brought back but I don't use the n word. Is that really the issue?

Making you feel like a martyr because you are being "censored" is worse in my opinion than allowing you to express your points of view and hopefully be receptive to counter arguments.

https://www.wired.com/story/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-ga...

I'm not qualified to speak with any authority about this issue, but my opinion is that people that are willing to shoot other people most likely have other incentives than reading a singular's dude online hate ramblings. The problem lies with the fact that they gets ostracized and _all_ they are able to read are the hateful things. If you go through the thread above, you'll see that my stance is the complete opposite of that: let's allow people say the "bad" things and balance them out with other peoples' "good" things.

This theoretically would ensure that this person is not exposed to only hate and negativity, and will hopefully make a better decision than ending others' life and their own.

Forcing this unbalanced individual to retreat into a corner of the internet where his opinion on other people goes unchallenged is unquestionably A BAD THING, and I doubt I'll change my mind on this fact any time soon.

"and I doubt I'll change my mind on this fact any time soon"

You have high hopes of people changing their mind when presented with new information, except for yourself apparently

More importantly I don't think most people over a certain age change.

On another note I'd go as far as to say that prohibiting it will make them even more radical and entrenched in their beliefs, germany has extremely strict anti-nazi laws and yet never stopped having neo-nazis, much to the contrary[0]. The people who are going to go as far as real life actions will find the daily stormer or whatever other website and now he will feel like a martyr and justified of some conspiracy or whatever.

[0]:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/06/german-police-...

I don't know that when the rubber hits the road people are meaningfully trying to make a constructive free speech platform. The nihilism is the point.

I would like to see a platform where moderation exists, but it's "opt-in" only. Meaning, the mods / bots can tag / categorize user posts, and other users can control the visibility of tagged material. This way everything -- the most vile, twisted, hateful and disturbing things are still permitted a place to exist, but they're effectively shadowbanned by individual choice. Start with some sane defaults, and allow people to peel back the lid on the box of horrors if they want to.

This could work with age-restrictions (users below a certain age cannot see certain tags) as well as satisfy advertisers that their ads are shown next to the most innoffensive, oatmeal-bland content (they choose tags next to which their ads are never shown).