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Comment by Shanea93 | Hacker News Reader

But why should we not fight for them? I am just as angry about the thought of us being censored as I am of the thought of them being censored.

It doesn't matter whether what they say disgusts me or not, I don't have the right to not be offended. People often use Reddit to find news, I believe that Reddit should have a duty to provide that service in an unbiased way without inflicting their own views on the people who use their service. All they should care about it is "is this illegal?"

Yes, I understand that they're a company and not a government agency, it's of course just my opinion that they have such a duty.

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> All they should care about it is "is this illegal?"

In many countries, the UK included, many of the posts on the fascist subreddits are illegal.

> But why should we not fight for them?

Because the value of life should be held to higher value than the 'destruction of free speech' (Except Reddit isn't doing anything to their free speech, they're denying them a platform. Which is objectively different). These people quite literally stand for genocide.

> I don't have the right to not be offended

Yes, yes you do. That's part of free speech, isn't it?

I live in the UK and wholly agree, the Public Order Act 1986 makes it very clear where it stands on hate speech, and yet I disagree with it, the same as I feel about the Snoopers Charter and other such laws. Freedom of speech should be granted regardless of who is offended by your speech, you should have the right to say exactly what you want, I have the right to think you're a dick head for saying it, but you should still be able to say it.

I'm not condoning threatening behaviour or violence, I'm just saying that I believe that if someone wants to call be a ginger bellend, they should have the right to do that.

Freedom of speech should be defined as such: Free speech and the right to freedom of expression applies to ideas of all kinds including those that may be deeply offensive.

The trick behind it is that your speech here may be offensive to the far-right, does that mean that you would be okay if they passed a law saying it was illegal?

> The trick behind it is that your speech here may be offensive to the far-right, does that mean that you would be okay if they passed a law saying it was illegal?

The fundamental difference is that I am not calling for the extermination or genocide of a group of people.

Speech like that isn't simply 'offensive', in the same way that one person wanting to kill someone else isn't a simple 'disagreement'.

Death threats are illegal in the UK, for the simple reason that it causes severe trauma to receive a large amount of them. Calling for the death of a group of people is just as bad. I honestly suspect you would live differently knowing that a large vocal group wants to exterminate people with a trait you carry.

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