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Comment by AshleyGrant | Hacker News Reader

No. "They" cheered when it was used to deplatform hate speech.

Deplatforming people organizing a peaceful protest is very different. If you cannot understand how that is different, then I worry about your critical thinking skills.

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was peaceful dissent about certain policies of 2020-2022 also "hate speech"? because, if I recall correctly, it was being suppressed with unprecedented zeal on every single platform. again, with applause.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Medical disinformation during a pandemic?

These conversations often end up in some weird motte and bailey where you argue that you care about free speech, but it turns out that you actually just thought COVID was not real/not significant/not dangerous/not an emergency. So your issue ends up not being that they made a decision on it (free speech concern), but that you feel it was the wrong decision (content-specific concern).

So before we go back and forth on the intricacies of content moderation, can you briefly describe your beliefs on COVID?

I agree 100% with scientific consensus on covid but I also don’t support deplatforming based on viewpoint (vs content).

What’s the distinction you’re drawing between viewpoint and content…?

and so the goalpost moves from "it's hate speech" to "it's whatever we unilaterally decide to be verbotten to speak about".

Well I wasn’t the one who said “it’s hate speech.” There are a number of things that get content-moderated.

Hate speech, porn, bullying, doxxing, disinformation, Islamist propaganda, violent imagery, revenge porn, animal abuse imagery, incitements to violence, criminal planning, drug dealing, arms dealing, gambling, fraud, etc

As a free speech maximalist, are you willing to defend all of those with the same vigor as the COVID case? Or do you too actually draw a content-based line somewhere (while pretending you don’t?)

what the platforms do is put "no porn" in the ToS, then turn a blind eye to the porn they like but apply talibanic definition of "porn" to things they dislike.

Do you actually read the comments you're replying to, or are you just picking a keyword that appears in the text and rattling off whatever comes to mind as a result?

I've long since learned to identify demagogues and ignore them when they play dumb ;)

Ooo ooo, do they use words like "talibanic" to try to draw some undefined-but-definitely-negative associations between dissimilar things?

oh, so you aren't just pretending. I'm sorry, I'll spell it out: that comment was not to be taken literally. I just chose porn to make my point, which was that I do not object to platforms having rules, I object to their practice of selective enforcement of those rules.

bless your heart, and thank you for your time.

Good luck defining a content moderation rule that doesn’t require discretion and judgment in how it’s applied lmao

Classic HN to take a problem like this and just assert it’s easily solvable while proposing no such solutions. Even SCOTUS couldn’t define porn and you’re expecting content platforms to define (without discretion!) a far broader set of far squishier concepts at far higher scale.

Truly classic HN.

Both groups of people seem to harbor a lot of hatred, and they seem to want to express it a lot, so your distinction between what is and is not hate speech kind of seems to be based on whether you agree with it or not.

If you find this interpretation to be uncharitable, would you care to clarify what truths this interpretation overlooks?

They aren't trying to think critically, they're trying to ragebait and "own the libs."

Left wing speech is hate speech. Prove me wrong.

Who decides if it is a peaceful protest?

Ultimately the platform, and yes there are huge grey areas. I don’t think this instance lands in one of them and that’s why Facebook isn’t even claiming it does.

It seems like you’re trying to avoid dealing with the substance of the issue for some reason.

Usually local police if they are on the scene. If they start seeing violence, they start telling people to disperse, followed by tear gas and then rubber bullets.

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