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Comment by chopin24 | Hacker News Reader

>The belief that free speech must have limits is necessarily equivalent with the belief that a large part of the people are stupid and they must be protected by the smart people by preventing them to hear anything that might influence their feeble minds and make them act in a wrong way.

You're leaving out some very well-established restrictions on free speech, including slander, libel, copyright infringement, obscenity, privacy violation... in short, absolutism hasn't been a prevailing philosophy for centuries. This sudden resurgence of it feels like a refusal to engage with the very real, very difficult debate on what speech deserves censorship.

It doesn't have anything at all to do with intelligence, but the observed consequences of certain kinds of speech. Lies, for example, that manipulate peoples' emotions. This is not unique to "stupid people."

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Some other poster already mentioned that what you list are actions that are punishable by various laws, at least in most countries.

There is a huge difference between punishing someone for something already done, e.g. slander or libel, and denying him access to publication media because you believe that in the future that person might say something that might have who knows what effect on other people, who might do some crimes.

I completely agree that whoever abuses the free speech right to do something punishable by law must be judged and punished if found guilty.

On the other hand, I do not agree with any of these "deplatforming" actions based on vague beliefs about the future actions of some people.

If Trump or anyone else is expected to do a speech crime, then watch him and, as soon as he does that, fine him or arrest him.

If he already did such a crime, then also fine him or arrest him.

Otherwise, "deplatforming" him has no basis in facts.

> denying him access to publication media because you believe that in the future that person might say something that might have who knows what effect on other people, who might do some crimes.

Is this the case here?

The statements in question are already made. Typically, the deplatforming happens after a violation has already been made. Which seems to be the case here, unless I am misunderstanding.

In the case of banishing someone like Trump from Twitter, where that is justified by many previous misleading messages, I agree that this is right.

However, this discussion thread started about the actions done against Parler.

I had not previously heard about Parler, but I understand that the efforts to stop its activity are based on claims that it does not perform adequate censorship of the content published there, unlike Facebook or Twitter.

If there are people that have published there things that are punishable by law, they should be punished. If Parler itself has done something illegal, then they should be punished.

However, if some private companies sabotage Parler based on the fact that Parler does not have the same censorship rules as themselves, then that is clearly wrong.

From what I have heard here, it might be good if Parler disappears, but I cannot accept that the end justifies the means.

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