Memes meant something before the internet, and rapid distribution on so called social media means well engineered strains will spread fast and far on small budgets; mostly others' energy.

There is nothing good about this. There are no upsides to some free speech being able to drown out other free speech. I wish people would read a tiny bit of literature on the subject and stop spreading that incorrect and harmful meme.

Either people have rights or they don't. We don't need the government to pick and choose how individuals express themselves in order to protect others, not because it doesn't make sense, but because there is no way to do it without a Ministry of Truth, which is arguably even worse.

Remember, freedom of speech is freedom from governmental oppression first and foremost, the kind that arises when authoritarians get to tell people what and how to think.

In functioning democracies, the government represents the people and thus anything it enforces is by order of its people. Only in crypto dictatorships does your argument hold. My solution then is to either evacuate or improve the quality of your representation.

I'm not forced to eat shit. Neither are you. If you disagree please reference the shit I'm being forced to eat, or products I'm being forced to buy. I'll then point out whether or not your statements have any standing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2018_United_States_m...

I haven’t really defined my opinion on this topic one way or the other. But in general I look at seatbelts in cars - they are required by law because if not, many people would save the $500 to buy a new car without seatbelts. We need some regulation for the good of the people. What that looks like for politics and the internet, I don’t know.

What would your reaction to this be? Would you maybe be a bit concerned about how easy it might be to claim that some speech you see as important in some way leads to violence, and must therefore be censored?

But "extremist" and "extremism" aren't really neutral terms anymore. They're now also euphemisms coded to mean conservative/right-wing extremists.

I might be in a bubble but I very, very rarely learn about left wing attacks, while right wing ones pop up here and there.

Edit: Also, about that link GP posted above about the Congressional baseball shooting: The perpetrator attacked Republican lawmakers, who have the most power to implement right-wing policies. In contrast, the attacks mentioned in my link mostly affected random people who probably did not have much political power, and were just members of groups that are often disliked by right wing extremists.

so when is /r/politics going to be banned? There seems to be a strong bias as to which echo chambers are "dangerous".

Fascists are very good at subverting this process so I wouldn’t count on it. I do believe visibility is good though re: the Streisand effect, and, of course, making them more visible to anti-fascists is good praxis ;)

"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."

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

The problem was, instead of just leaving our service after posting their disagreements, they stayed, because they were actually making money from their business with us. But they were so bitter about fee changes, they couldn't let it go. They came to dominate the forum discussion, not because they had anything useful to contribute other than their original disagreements, but because they had a lot of energy to post the same thing over and over.

It devolved into death threats against us, believe it or not, on a forum that we were publishing. How would you handle that in a censor-free environment?

How should Elon Musk deal with irrate Tesla customers on twitter? If necessary, by blocking them, but not by banning them from twitter.

(Death threats of course are an extreme case, in which even banning someone from a platform can be justified.)

I have differing political/social/economic opinions than other people, but I have no desire to force my opinion on other people are make them see things from my point of view, because it's stupid and pointless.

Just point and laugh at the tin-foil-hatter and move on. By seeing them as a legitimate problem, you give them value and authority. But just forgetting it, whatever they say loses all power and value.

The kind of sentiment you're expressing often comes from people who are either ignorant of fascism / authoritarianism and how it affects societies, or are apathetic towards those outcomes.

You must understand that there are people out there primarily driven by fear and hatred, that, once given positions of power, will use that power to denigrate or otherwise erode the humanity of people they simply don't like.

It's not enough to just not be racist, you must be anti-racist. It's not enough to just not be fascist, you must be anti-fascist.

Simply throwing out “logical fallacy!” when you think it occurs doesn't really drive the conversation forward.

Sounds like both current-day US political parties, so we're not doing a very good job at preventing this.

Climate change: the GOP more or less does not acknowledge this reality; former POTUS removed US from the Paris Climate Accords.

Abortion / healthcare: attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act have almost all come from GOP affiliates; abortion is not allowed even in cases of rape and incest for many GOP-led states. Attempts to reign in pharmaceutical costs have been countered by GOP representatives.

LGBTQ+ rights: again we have GOP-led states that are not only banning gender-affirming care for transgender kids, but proposing statewide registries for these children. Additional efforts and talking points about overturning Obergefell v Hodges, as well as Loving v Virginia have already surfaced.

Immigration: GOP representatives and appointees authored a policy of intentionally separating children from families in a disgusting attempt to deter lawful migration and asylum seekers. Earlier this year, GOP officials lied to legal immigrants and transported them across the country for a political stunt.

Drug policy: no evidence supports the notion that increasing incarceration decreases drug use or recidivism. Democratic-led states were the first to make moves toward medicinal and recreational use of cannabis, massively offsetting the amount of people being unnecessarily jailed (which costs society in two ways: taxpayer money, and, if the charge is a felony offense, the individual can no longer vote).

The "but BOTH SIDES..." arguments may work on reddit or 4chan, but this is HN! We're better than that!

Hope this helps.

This is nonsense. Just because people have the right to believe what they want doesn't mean that lies have the same value as truths.

Do you think such a person would be more or less likely to believe in the Holocaust if they found out that all Holocaust deniers had been systematically silenced by the forces that be?

The continual application of it to the online censorship debate makes little sense in light of its original rhetorical context. It is also constantly cited in policy prescription proposals of which I would be shocked if Popper agreed with.

The one thing a tolerant society can NOT tolerate is intolerance itself. If allowed to set root, intolerance will take over and destroy the tolerant society. The intolerant will be loud and aggressive, working to silence everyone else. Eventually, it's over.

Just like the fact that people who want to live self-determining lives in a self-governing democracy must be always better armed and prepared than the bullies and autocrats who want to freely plunder and run other lives & societies. If they are not better armed & prepared (either personally or by proxy of police, military, etc.), then the bullies & autocrats will inevitably take over by force at any opportune time.

(See also in economics: The bad money drives out the good, every time.)

So, you just give up?

With any good faith effort, intolerance is pretty easy to define.

But, if you are talking in bad faith, there's 1000 arguments.

All authority is not authoritarian. That is why democracy was invented. In order to provide a self-correcting system. But yes, Churchill was right when he said that "Democracy is the worst of all forms of government, except for all others that have been tried."

Total free-for-all has repeatedly been shown to rapidly devolve in every case. Can you show a single un-moderated forum that survives over time, or a single unregulated "free" society without authority that does not fail?

So, can you show one of these no-authority forums or societies, or do you have a better suggestion than to just give up?

He has made a clear distinction that the limits of free speech should be governed by law as opposed to by opaque private interests.