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Everyone should censor and shun white supremacists. They have no place in modern society. When they shed their noxious views, we can all welcome them back wit
by Frondo 8y ago
Everyone should censor and shun white supremacists. They have no place in modern society. When they shed their noxious views, we can all welcome them back with open arms.
- mamon 8y agoOk, so you've decided that being white supremacist is bad. I can agree with you on that, but still the question remains: who get's do decide what has a place in modern society? Who decides what "modern society" even is? Today Google might decide to censor white supremacists, tomorrow it can be human rights advocates. I think that allowing any type of censorship, even for such a noble cause as fighing racism is a slippery slope. Especially when done by a private company that is outside of our control (and governments are only marginally better).
- Frondo 8y agoYou're trying to generalize a useful rule ("shun white supremacists") but it doesn't work in this case. I don't think we need to, either. We're not robots. We can shun white supremacists and leave everyone else alone. This isn't a slippery slope, it's just good sense (no more white supremacists, hey!). Humankind will get along just fine if we tack on that one extra rule and all follow it.
- sincerely 8y agoGood thing the definition of white supremacist is commonly agreed upon and noncontroversial and absolutely isnt subject to definition creep :)
- Frondo 8y agoWhat isn't subject to definition creep? Murder now, for some, includes abortion. Censorship now includes, for some, private companies removing bad actors from their private systems. Come on, that's lazy to dismiss it that way when society literally changes all the time.
- mamon 8y agoOfftopic, but regarding abortion: Whether or not abortion is a murder is not about definition of "murder" it is about definition of "human being". There's no doubt that abortion involves killing a living creature, the whole pro-choice vs pro-life debate is basically about one simple question: "is fetus a human being?". If you answer that with "yes", then every abortion becomes a murder, plain and simple. This also explains why there will never be a compromise between two crowds: it is logically impossible to compromise on yes/no questions.
- tomatocracy 8y agoIsn’t the compromise position essentially ‘after X weeks’, where the value of X is highly contested? (And on the binary yes/no question there’s nuances too which get debated eg if continuing the pregnancy would be a significant threat to the mother’s life)
- Frondo 8y agoA fetus isn't a living thing. It has the potential to become a living thing, but so do a lot of things that aren't living.
- krapp 8y ago> Good thing the definition of white supremacist is commonly agreed upon and noncontroversial and absolutely isnt subject to definition creep :) The definition is commonly agreed upon, and what "white supremacist" means is not at all controversial to most people. It certainly isn't so arbitrary as to be meaningless. Now, the term may be misapplied at times, as may any term, but for it to be misapplied, it has to have an accepted application to begin with. A term without a definition can't be subject to definition creep, and the possible creep of a term like "white supremacist" is that wide to begin with.
- gjs278 8y agoas long as you censor the black supremacists and females that say "all men are trash", sure
- Frondo 8y agoHacker news is awesome today. "Shun white supremacists" getting downvoted, nice.
- teddyh 8y agoHacker news people are usually against censorship, yes.
- Frondo 8y agohell yeah, defend white supremacists! gooooo hacker news!!
- malvosenior 8y agoJust like the ACLU. Free speech is very important. If someone has something objectionable to say, let them expose themselves. Censorship solves nothing.
- Frondo 8y agoJust look at how state-backed censorship laws have turned Germany and Canada into totalitarian hellholes. Yeah, right. HN stans for white supremacy because it's mostly white and extremely online and never gets out to see the results of "give everyone a soapbox" on the streets where the proud boys are out there beating the shit out of people. You people are cowards, and nothing more. There's no bravery here, no principled stand, just a bunch of fucking cowards.
- ls612 8y agoSays the brave man yelling at people on the internet from his chair.
- malvosenior 8y agoI think you're doing a great job demonstrating why allowing people to expose their horrible ideas does more to dissuade other people than censorship. I'm glad your replies are on display even if I strongly disagree with them.