Comment by account42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by account42 | Hacker News Reader

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> Should I be able to make wild claims about my product to trick you into buying it? False claims about my buisness performance to pump the stock?

If you also abolish the notion of intellectual property as well as trade secrets, both of which are severe limitations on free speech, then sure. Otherwise it's just another case of wanting free speech when it suits the company but wanting to restrict it when it doesn't.

> Lies about your character? Your kids? made up stuff that whips up entire segments of your city to commit violence or vandalism against you?

Sure, as long as the actual violence and vandalism is harshly punished to discourage people from acting on falsehoods. The speech was never the real problem here.

Problem is the damage is already done. You lost your job. Your kid committed suicide. The mod has murdered.

You can’t undo that, not to mention it not illegal to fire someone because if you read some false facts in the paper

Punishing someone for "bad" speech is also not going to prevent that.

Both approaches rely on punishment disincentivizing others from behaving in the same way. Except that "hate speech" laws are a bludgeon that a) can be easily circumvented by clever speech that is still going to encourage violence and b) is guaranteed to be used sooner or later as a pretense to silence dissidents whose speech would not result in violence. They are really only one tiny step removed from trying to combat thought crimes. Better to disincentivize the behavior that is actually a problem for society (i.e. violence) rather than something as vague and subjective as "hate speech" that may or may not lead to it.

> Not to mention it not illegal to fire someone because if you read some false facts in the paper

Some countries have strong worker protections that actually make it quite hard to fire someone without a good reason.

“Punishing someone for theft or murder isn’t going to prevent that”

Is basically the argument you’re making here. So I guess we shouldn’t have any punishment for any behaviour then eh?

You might try reading the rest of the comment.

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