4 ms·
> How do you stop both hate speech and censorship? You don't. You instead crank up the censorship and -- more importantly -- the social stigma against bigotry.
by beefhash 8y ago
> How do you stop both hate speech and censorship?
You don't. You instead crank up the censorship and -- more importantly -- the social stigma against bigotry. Change does not happen naturally and people don't get better, but if they get enough backlash from family and friends, people will eventually pretend to accept whatever it is you're trying to promote by censorship. This pretense will turn into genuine acceptance in future generations because they will grow up with not being able to be bigoted without clear and univocal backlash.
- Sir_Substance 8y ago>You instead crank up the censorship and -- more importantly -- the social stigma against bigotry. I remember when we used to crank up the social stigma against censorship. The plan you've outlined will work, but it can be used to promote bigotry as much as suppress it, and bigotry can be wrangled to political power. It's better not to create tools with such potential for abuse.
- Wintamute 8y agoWho gets to define the bigotry? Because they have ultimate social power in your brave new world. Granted, the first wave of people to wield this power would generally do so out of compassion. The next waves that come to power would wield it ever more brutally in order to engineer ever more ideologically extreme visions of society. It is precisely this sort of extremism that caused 100 million+ deaths in the 20th century in the soviet union and china. You don't realise it, but you have just expressed an opinion equally extreme and dangerous as fascism. The only sane way to run a society is through the free exchange of ideas, good and bad, and the unfettered right to discuss and criticise those ideas.