Comment by i0null | Hacker News Reader

Comment by i0null | Hacker News Reader

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As a proponent of free speech, I strongly believe that people should be able to express their opinions without fear of censorship or retribution. However, I also think it's important to recognise that there are limits to free speech, and that moderation is necessary in order to protect the rights and safety of others.

For example, it's one thing to express a controversial or unpopular opinion, but it's quite another to engage in hate speech, incite violence, post SPAM, excessive use of straw-man arguments, countering scientific consensus with harmful conspiracy theories, et al. In these cases, allowing such speech to go unchecked can have harmful consequences, and it's important for society to have mechanisms in place to address these issues.

Free speech is important to balance a strong democracy but its not an absolute right. Moderation in free speech is necessary in order to balance the rights of individuals to express themselves with the need to protect the rights and safety of others. Without moderation, the right to free speech can become a license to cause harm and to silence the voices of others.

>In these cases, allowing such speech to go unchecked can have harmful consequences

I don't think anybody disputes that. The question was never "do these things harm us?". They clearly do.

The question is - is the medicine as bad or worse than disease?

Imagine a vile political leader whom you thoroughly loathe. Now imagine the powers of speech suppression you advocate for will probably wind up in their hands. How much do you still want it?

Ironic it's a straw-man itself to suggest the comment was advocating suppression. It wasn't. The point is moderation, and yes that means moderation that can be moderated as necessary. i.e A non-partisan framework that is acceptable regardless of if it is an adversary or it is an ally enforcing it.

Easier said then done, but perhaps this just means a type of Overton window. It's not legally enforced, people just come to learn that being reactionary is faux pas.

Clearly it's not plausible to provide an absolutist definition because things change, setting rules could undermine their original objectives. But for the points raised in my original comment; laissez-faire free speech is also widely open to abuse.

>countering scientific consensus with harmful conspiracy theories

You mean "harmful conspiracy theories" such as previous suggestions that COVID might have accidentally come from a lab accident? or that the vaccines didn't work as wonderfully as first advertised, or that they may just cause harm to some people? How about others that also later proved to have some truth to them. All of these things would have been perfect candidates for using your supposedly moderate "harm reducing" stance on free speech to snuff out worthy debate even if some of it is colored with tones of irrational conspiracy thinking.

And that is exactly why free speech moderation is so dangerously stupid. It allows reasonable sounding people to crush attacks on reasonable sounding ideas, right up until both these reasonable ideas and the people supporting them become unreasonably authoritarian, and attack even wider ranges of open expression.

This seems to have taken one sentence from my comment out of context in order to widely exaggerate and attack it.

All, if not most conspiracy theories have some element of truth to them. That's what makes them so compelling - In a similar fashion to fiction writing. Philosophers like Nietzsche would say “there are no facts, only interpretations”.

Rather than debate semantics. What I was referring to in context was the festering of dangerous conspiracy theories such as 1930's anti-semitism, and yes, hoaxes about inoculation.

Being wrong is acceptable. Purposely seeking to undermine scientific evidence on the bases of small instances which are not sufficient to draw conclusions about the wider point is intentional.

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