I've already told you the general rule and you've already heard me. If a minority calls for violence, promotes crimes, or blatantly disregards the basic rules of civil discourse, then the general duty to protect minorities need no longer apply to this minority.
I'm not even talking about morals here, this is a fact that holds in every society. There are social norms, including norms that govern discussions. Break the norms and you'll be sanctioned for it.
>> there is no need to be tolerant towards the intolerant.
> Can you explain how that's not obviously contradictory? You must have two different meanings for the word tolerant. What are they?
No, it's one meaning and there is no contradiction. The phrase was coined by Sir Karl Popper.
Tolerance is not an absolute moral principle, it is a normative concept that is only reserved for those people who are tolerant themselves. In that sense, it's quite similar to respect, which also is not deserved unconditionally but needs to be earned first.
If someone wants to beat you up, you do not have to be tolerant towards this person. If someone calls for the destruction of your society (as e.g. Steve Bannon has done) or calls for violence or crimes, then you do not have to be tolerant towards this person. In fact, you should not be tolerant towards such a person. You should be tolerant towards Muslims, because they are 1.8 billion people and vast majority of them is peaceful, but you should not be tolerant towards Muslim terrorists. You should be tolerant towards Christians, but you should not be tolerant towards Christians who are intolerant towards atheists or who call for killing doctors who help with abortions. And so on and so forth. You should get it by now. It's not really complicated and there is certainly no contradiction involved.
> Somebody saying "I like Stalin" isn't inciting any crime or violating any rules of civil discourse, yet you'll want them banned just for their belief.
No, maybe I wasn't clear enough. I mentioned these groups as examples of groups that (usually) call for violence, the destruction of our society, or crimes. I do not want to ban such persons in general. Posters should be banned if they violate the basic laws of civil discourse (be kind, don't troll, don't be a racist, don't call for violence, etc.) or intentionally instigate violence or promote crimes.
What I also said, however, is that the decision of what to ban or not to ban should be left to the forum owners. If I have a forum and don't want Nazis to use it as a platform, I have the right to ban them, just as I have a right to ban motorcycle enthusiasts from my rose gardening forum. Users of private forums aren't entitled to anything.
> Here you've admitted that your real intention is what I suspected. To control the thoughts of other people.
Not at all. As I've stated very clearly, everybody has a certain desire to muffle voices of people who they think are obviously wrong and it would be incoherent not to have this desire. You have that desire, too. However, I've stated clearly that this is not the motivation of companies and private forum owners, and it certainly is not my motivation. As I've said before, I'm fine with kill files. I was trying to lay out the actual reasons to you why companies and forum owners ban forums and remove posts, not laying out some ominous personal motives. See below about my personal attitude.
Your reasons of why forum owners, especially companies, ban forums or remove posts are imaginary and based on your own prejudices. You have presented 0 evidence for this interpretation, which is fairly implausible and obviously coloured by your biases. As I've said, companies like Reddit are primarily concerned with the legal situation and with the practicalities of keeping their forums attractive. They are companies who want to attract the largest number of mainstream users, not some fringe wackos and extremists.
> You want everyone to conform to your personal political beliefs.
False. One of my colleagues is a Social Darwinist and Nazi, and I have no problem discussing with him, because he adheres to the basic rules of civil discourse. He does not insult other people, at least not directly, does not call for violence, and is at least clever enough to not overtly call for genocide, etc. Ironically, another colleague of mine is an ardent and 100% convinced communist and has personally defended Stalin in conversations. Again, no problem on my side. They are both extreme idiots who persistently get every conceivable fact wrong, and they both have unpleasant personalities (which I've always considered a coincidence). They are annoying, but that's about it.
I don't care about other people's political beliefs, as long as they do not endorse violence or threaten it, keep it reasonably polite - I don't care the occasional insult either - and as long as they do not actively work on destroying other people's lives. If they threaten violence or actively work on destroying democracy, or are just intentionally trolling or insulting people, then they should be banned. Their political beliefs are completely irrelevant to this decision. I'd just as readily ban a trolling rose gardener who calls for trampling other people's roses as I'd ban a Stalinist preparing death lists of political opponents.
As I've tried to explain to you (but you refuse to listen), the reasons why someone ought to be banned are not political, the primary goal of such measures is to keep civil discourse possible. If the number of toxic users is too high, this is no longer possible, and these tend to bunch up in questionable forums. This has been proven again and again on every conceivable forum I've been on since the mid 90s. It's not possible run a public pseudonymous forum in a sustainable way without heavy moderation. Apparently, too many trolls and extremists have too much time at hand, possibly because many of them are unemployed.
> Anyway, my main point is that I think big social media companies have so much power over so many people that they should be required to give greater freedoms to their users than small forums are.
You're focusing on the responsibility of companies towards their users and I agree with that, the hurdles for banning should be higher for these than for small forum owners, because they have a greater responsibility. However, companies also have a responsibility to their own staff and to society as a whole. The sad fact is that once pseudonymity is in place, many people forget the rules of basic civil discourse and decency, and at the same time social control mechanisms from face-to-face communication are no longer in place. These need to be replaced by moderation and, if necessary, by banning, or else the quality of the conversations deteriorates drastically and quickly.
I know people who measure the quality of online arguments and it turns out to be far worse than anything you encounter in face-to-face communication. The evidence is damning and quite shocking. Most people do not even argue online, they mostly just voice their opinions and insult others. Take that into account, too. Companies have a responsibility to improve the quality of discourse. (This also means fighting clickbait, viral ad campaigns, fake news etc.)
> ISIS sympathizers, Nazis, Stalinists, or pedophiles do not have a right to be protected
> If a minority calls for violence, [or ...], then the general duty to protect minorities need no longer apply to this minority.
That's quite different. You should have just said that in the first place. Banning people for calling for violence/etc is completely different from banning them for their beliefs or sexuality which is what your first statement said. I still don't agree with it though.
> No, it's one meaning and there is no contradiction. The phrase was coined by Sir Karl Popper.
I'm sure you know my confusion, but I'll say it more clearly. If you're intolerant of the intolerant, then you are intolerant yourself, so according to the rule, nobody else needs to be tolerant to you. From your examples, it looks like you do have two meanings of the word "intolerant", contrary to your claim. There's intolerance of tolerant people and there's intolerance of intolerant people. The first is not allowed and the second is. So perhaps you should have said "There is no need to be tolerant towards the intolerant of the tolerant.".
> Posters should be banned if they violate the basic laws of civil discourse (be kind, don't troll, don't be a racist, don't call for violence, etc.) or intentionally instigate violence or promote crimes.
This is OK for a rule to maintain a stable society, but it's a society which can't change if it's applied everywhere. For example, if the society didn't already have gay rights then it wouldn't gain them because nobody would be able to talk positively about it. That would be promoting crimes. That's how it is in Saudi Arabia - you're not allowed to promote homosexuality and your rule would entrench that cultural norm. Another problem is the definitions of racism, trolling and kindness are subjective so they would end up simply being whatever arbitrary cultural norms the society already had. Your idea seems to be simply "if it's my forum, I can do what I want", but that misses my entire point about the scale of the influence that Facebook/Twitter/etc have on the world. I don't think Mark Zuckerburg should just be allowed to delete all criticism of the Republican party from Facebook, for instance. You think he should because his forum, his rules.
> If someone calls for the destruction of your society
That's incredibly subjective. I don't know what example you're thinking of with Steve Bannon, but where do all these examples fit? It sounds like you want to ban calls for all of them!
"Build a motorway through that suburb"
"Texas should succeed from the US"
"Alcohol should be allowed" (would destroy an alcohol free devout Islamic society)
"Open borders" (would destroy a society by reducing the shared cultural values)
"No immigrants" (would destroy society adapted to ongoing immigration)
"Invade Iraq and remove the government" (destroyed a society)
"Wipe out ISIS" (destroyed the society of ISIS)
"Imprison people for possessing cannabis" (destroyed black society in America)
"Ban people who call for destruction of your society" (would destroy their online society)
Nearly any grand social change would destroy a society in some way. How do you judge what's allowed and what's not? That's too big a question to just make a blanket global rule for on all the big social media sites.
I think there's important value in public, anonymous, social-norm breaking discussion. It allows the status quo to be challenged without the person being subject to personal real world retaliation. Trolls of the type that say knowingly false things to anger people and then laugh at them have value because knowledge of their existence helps people to stay reasonable and not succumb to expressing blind anger at opinions they don't like. Instead, you're encouraged to respond intelligently and honestly knowing that at any point the troll might say "Haha, just kidding, I don't really believe that but now you've shown that you can't defend your belief and are irrational yourself!" I've learnt quite a lot of things by arguing intelligently with trolls. Not things they told me, but things I researched myself in an attempt to convince them. A clear example of this type of troll is a flat Earther. Do you intolerantly dismiss him as a troll or improve yourself by convincing yourself the Earth isn't flat by some means other than appeal to authority or popularity? I think those are the reasons most people believe the Earth isn't flat and are the same reasons most people used to believe God created the Earth. So they're not very good justifications for a belief.
> If I have a forum and don't want Nazis to use it as a platform, I have the right to ban them, just as I have a right to ban motorcycle enthusiasts from my rose gardening forum. Users of private forums aren't entitled to anything.
I agree but I've already explained that "I think big social media companies have so much power over so many people that they should be required to give greater freedoms to their users than small forums are."
Your rose gardening forum is a "small forum".