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Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

People aren't systematically deplatforming conservatives. People are systematically deplatforming hate. That that happens to affect one political party more than others is a condemnation of that party, not of the practice of deplatforming hate.

Post all the conservative political opinions you want. As long as you stay away from posting hate, personal attacks, and similar, you're not going to lose your Twitter account

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Is this a satirical comment? One of the big issues is how incredibly loosely defined 'hate' has come to be by a significant number of people. This is not without precedent in other areas, look at the differences in what is considered obscene in say, Sweden, vs the US to see how loosely defined such concepts can be and how dangerous it is to say things like 'as long as you stay away from [loosely defined and extremely political topic] you'll be fine'.

I wonder how the upvote ratio would look on HN if someone posted about wanting to decrease taxes on entrepreneurs?

That;s a pretty standard Conservative position that I think would be well received here.

It's weird how people will sea lion about how "conservative views are being deplatformed" while refusing to admit that the "conservative views" that are in question are their beliefs that entire groups of human beings shouldn't exist.

Exactly. Conservative opinions like "unions aren't an unmitigated good" or "people should have more of their money to spend as they see fit rather than paying it in taxes" or "governmental options are less efficient than private alternatives" are perfectly reasonable things to argue about and evaluate. I genuinely think it's a shame that positions like those that would make for interesting discussions and considerations are being drowned out by people whose identity revolves around attacking others.

The trick is that "hate" can be defined to be whatever opinions one desires to censor.

Replace 'hate' with "things I don't like" and you'll see why your comment provides no insight. Hate is subjective and political.

Some things are objectively hateful. "This class of people should not have rights" is objectively hateful. "This class of people is subhuman and we'd be better off if they died" is objectively hateful. "This event that killed dozens of people was good, actually" is objectively hateful. If we can't agree on things like those then we have no common ground. If we can agree on those then it's just a question of where the line is, rather than whether a line exists.

Just because it isn't a perfectly bright dividing line doesn't mean it's entirely subjective. It is also to the benefit of a side regularly spewing hate to also argue that it's subjective.

(And to be clear, none of those things short of imminent threats should ever be considered punishable by a government; that has far more negative outcomes than positive ones. But they absolutely should have consequences by individuals and groups who choose not to associate with such things.)

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