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Comment by grandsham | Hacker News Reader

Even worse, it's "deplatforming attempts". If someone complains about a speaker, even if the institution doesn't agree, it seemingly goes on the list. In that context it feels even more ridiculous.

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Yeah, it appears that several recent incidents that they highlight proceeded anyway. I would expect students to protest a Turning Point event at a university; that doesn't make it "deplatforming," especially if the university allows the event to proceed as planned.

Would you expect government officials to join deplatforming attempts, using their position to demand that universities listen? Because increasingly that’s happening as well, as reported in the second half of the article.

> Would you expect government officials to join deplatforming attempts...

Absolutely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Bad_Neighbors

Government officials applying pressure on cultural outlets is nothing new, but it’s been a long time since we’ve had them leaning on universities to reject certain on-campus speakers.

I believe it is also per-speaker-at-event, not simply per-event. So if there is a panel of ten people, that counts as ten deplatformings.

So something like this from their recent list:

> Turning Point USA scheduled a “Freedom Built to Last: Honoring Charlie Kirk” memorial at Utah Valley University, featuring a number of prominent conservative speakers. Students for a Democratic Society at UVU opposed the event honoring Kirk and his political legacy. The university declined to cancel the event, and it proceeded on Sept. 10.

Even worse than that. They multiply by the number of speakers. One even can be five deplatforming attempts if there are five speakers.

Oh good catch. Ok, so nationally, if each campus held only one event per week, we're saying 0.07% of all meetings had someone speak up against it. Less than a tenth of one percent.

I couldn't roll my eyes any harder. This certainly is a national crisis.

Math: 200/(50*6000)

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