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Comment by bduerst | Hacker News Reader

No, they specifically censor content like child pornography, torrent links (AFAIK), and some other material. There are situations where the expression of certain speech, like the generation and propagation of child pornography, harms others and should not be allowed. Even the original FS philosophers mostly agreed on this type of censorship.

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They do not at all censor torrent links. In fact, the /t/ board is dedicated to sharing torrent and magnet links of all kinds of content, almost all of it to copyright-protected content. Child pornography is censored and will earn you an immediate perma-ban as soon as your post is found by a mod.

Generation of CP harms others yes, but propagation does not. Always did regard the criminalization of possession and propagation of CP as a censorious overreach.

I'd argue spreading it harms others as the people in it didn't consent to it being created or shared and is associated with trauma for them. Knowing that it was perfectly legal for people to share footage of them getting raped as children probably wouldn't be good for their mental health

The argument is that propagation (and consumption) encourages those who generate such things to keep on going since they see there is a market for them. I guess kind of similar to banning sales of ivory to kill the market, and in turn, reduce or wipeout the incentive for the hunters.

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