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Comment by djakaitis | Hacker News Reader

I think you are missing the point of my question. I’m pointing out that not all opinions should be protected equally. Opinions of hate or violence are bad for society. I don’t understand why the suppression of those things is considered totalitarian? Especially when it comes from private enterprise.

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Because if you block 'bad' opinions, you'll need to arbiter them to distinguish bad ones from good. This process is corruptible and eventually you'll find that opposing a current government is 'bad' (this happened in my country in a short span of 15 years). So it turns out that allowing all speech, even 'bad' is less harmful for society in the long run than trying to suppress some speech.

Canada has restrictions on free speech that prevent things like saying hateful stuff. And so far Canada looks pretty democratic and fair to me.

Have a read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_expression_in_Can...

Actually it's fraught with issues. "Hate speech" was used to stop the republishing of the cartoons that got the Danish guy murdered.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/why-im-withdra...

Nothing's perfect, my point us that it didn't lead to a totalitarian state.

Some provinces there literally have curfews and police patrolling the street to arrest anyone breaching curfew. Just because it's justified as an attempt to slow the spread ot covid, doesn't make it any less totalitarian.

Temporary emergency measures don't make a totalitarian government. For that matter, similar measures were temporarily taken and then rescinded in the past; proof of non-totalitarianism. Further proof is minority governments and recent changes in governing parties. Totalitarian governments don't have these.

I think further burden of proof on wether Canada is a totalitarian state reasonably falls on those who believe it is. It seems reasonable to accept that Canada isn't totalitarian as a premise, when I say that some restrictions on freedom of speech don't inevitably lead to totalitarianism.

So what?

The thing is, even if someone recognizes:

>… you'll need to arbiter them to distinguish bad ones from good. This process is corruptible…

By the time this may matter the most, it is already too late… rubicon has already been crossed. Thus, the one who recognizes this must position themselves to expect any of the downsides that will most assuredly come and to expect society to be of no help at all to achieve such ends.

No.

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

This is a third time today I see this hypocritical nonsense. The definition of tolerance is willingness to accept behaviour and beliefs that are different from your own, although you might not agree with or approve of them.

If you carve yourself an exemption to not accept some behaviour or beliefs, you are no longer tolerant. And you still think that you are, it's just a hypocrisy.

Being tolerant of those who believe differently absolutely does not preclude pushing back against those who are not tolerant of those who believe differently from them.

There's no hypocrisy there.

Acting against intolerance is supporting tolerance.

> Opinions of hate or violence are bad for society

The issue is making this distinction. You’re out of your mind if you want corporations to make that for you.

The problem here, and I am not disagreeing with you or blaming you for this, is the Republican Party spent four decades telling us ceding control of things to the marketplace and private industry was going to make the world better. That they are now hoist by their own petard is something for a better person than me to not laugh at.

And on the flip side, the Democrats have been clutching pearls about the monopoly of big tech, but once big tech starts silencing their political opponents they come rushing to big tech's defense and talk about how much they believe in free markets.

It's entertaining as hell.

If that does happen, if they were to abandon oversight of Big Tech over this, that would be soulless and wrong. I just don’t see how you know this will happen.

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