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Comment by frabbit | Hacker News Reader

Wait what? San Francisco has introduced legislation outlawing the discussion of ideas? Or did someone just post something nasty about the author when he posted something they found nasty?

Nothing to see here except someone having the vapors over being told their ideas are shit.

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according to the original article it wasn't even people telling Sam he's an idiot/asshole. He was just in Beijing being fawned over and thought it would be nice if he was in SF too.

People keep confusing extreme disapproval of ideas with censorship. If you say "the Holocaust didn't happen!" and people decide that they don't want to be your friend anymore and private organizations like corporations and universities decide to no-platform you, that's not censorship. That's just people exercising their free choice en masse.

There are some ideas that are justifiably extremely unpopular: racism, extreme religious bigotry, advocacy of genocide or apology for such, etc.

Exactly. But to be clear, I actually am completely against e.g. Hate Speech laws and while I might support students deciding that they do not want a holocaust denier on their campus I am against handing that decision over to the university corporation.

How would students remove the denier? Lynch mob?

I don't think your idea of "let individual groups of people angry enough to act handle it instead of authorities acting on calmly predetermined rules" scales particularly well or elegantly.

That's my position as well. People and private organizations are free to ignore or exclude speech but it should never be criminalized.

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