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> racism, pornography, pseudoscience Ignoring the issue with pornography -- why should it be forbidden if it's done by and for consenting adults? -- you talk a

> racism, pornography, pseudoscience Ignoring the issue with pornography -- why should it be forbidden if it's done by and for consenting adults? -- you talk as if these things can be objectively defined. As if free-thinking artists have not been classified as pornographers and uncomfortable truths as pseudoscience by oppressive regimes and tyrants. As if there is any reason to think that this cannot happen again. I still find it astounding that, after the recent dramatic changes in government in the US[+], people have not understood that any power they allow the government over their free-agency will eventually be yielded by someone that will use it in a very different spirit than the one in which it was granted. It seems that we are condemned to learn the same hard lessons over and over again. [+] Independently of your political leanings, you should be able to infer that the ideological bent of government can change dramatically from one moment to the next, so it is healthy to be suspicious of granting the government more power over you life, except when it is really necessary.

fatbird 10y ago
I'm not saying that we should ban those things. I'm saying that protecting those extremes comes at a cost of limiting other free expression. If our goal is to maximize freedom of expression, we might be doing it wrong. Effectively, this idea plays out every day on the internet in the moderation policies of discussion spaces. Reddit was fine with child pornography under the stewardship of Violentacrez, until suddenly he and his subreddits were an existential threat. HN has consciously adopted human moderation with what's basically a 'no abuse' policy because algorithmic moderation via votes was failing to prevent HN from becoming a monoculture of aggressive nerds driving out everyone else; the effect has at HN has been to increase the amount of freedom of expression because the community is larger and more diverse, even though users here are less free in terms of manners of communication.

fatbird 10y ago

I'm not saying that we should ban those things. I'm saying that protecting those extremes comes at a cost of limiting other free expression. If our goal is to maximize freedom of expression, we might be doing it wrong. Effectively, this idea plays out every day on the internet in the moderation policies of discussion spaces. Reddit was fine with child pornography under the stewardship of Violentacrez, until suddenly he and his subreddits were an existential threat. HN has consciously adopted human moderation with what's basically a 'no abuse' policy because algorithmic moderation via votes was failing to prevent HN from becoming a monoculture of aggressive nerds driving out everyone else; the effect has at HN has been to increase the amount of freedom of expression because the community is larger and more diverse, even though users here are less free in terms of manners of communication.