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Honest question. For those of you happy that these censorship policies are being implemented by companies in reaction to pressure, do you believe that the ideal

• buhhh 6y ago
  Private company. I don't care. Jumping from Microsoft doing a thing about this to a law being passed restricting speech is quite the stretch and would be against the 1st.
• tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  This isn’t censorship.
  • otterley 6y ago
    Not Government censorship, anyway.
  • ta17711771 6y ago
    It...is. It's just not illegal.
  • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    I think it's hard to seriously argue that blanket prohibitions on using a particular symbol aren't censorship. Maybe there are reasonable arguments for censoring the confederate flag, but it's unhelpful to pretend that's not what's happening here.
  • Hamuko 6y ago
    If the word censorship can only apply to censorship by the government, then the word "self-censorship" doesn't really exist.
  • daenz 6y ago
    That wasn't the question.
• amyjess 6y ago
  That is exactly what I want.
• katbyte 6y ago
  Yes - we have them here in Canada and I’m a huge fan. Say whatever you want but you should be held responsible for you words.
  • ta17711771 6y ago
    By the government!?
    • happytoexplain 6y ago
      By the people, via the government, as all government action is theoretically supposed to be.
      • kube-system 6y ago
        Government only remains "by the people" if the people maintain the ability to exercise effective oversight over it. Speech is an effective means of exercising government oversight, which is why marginally increasing government power to suppress it is so contentious.
  • geodel 6y ago
    As Idi Amin would have said "I guarantee freedom of speech but not freedom after speech"
    • Darmody 6y ago
      I've heard a lot of young people in my country saying "you have freedom of speech, you can say what you want, but then you will face the consequences". Which makes me think they don't really know what freedom of speech is.
      • kube-system 6y ago
        I don't follow. It sounds like they know exactly what it is. In some places, you can be prevented from saying something that others do not want you to say.
• whatshisface 6y ago
  Given the immense resistance of the US system to hate speech laws (first amendment, the fact that Republicans exist and sometimes get elected), and also given the immense desire of corporate elites to get rid of hate speech, what we will probably see is a corporate extra-legal "pragmatic law" against it, but no real law. The mechanism of "pragmatic law" is coordination between power centers mediated through shared cultural norms. In the 1950s this kept black people off TV, despite the lack of any law against it, for instance. Presently we have a rapidly strenghtening cultural norm against the tolerance of hate speech, so we are likely to see the same mechanisms kick in again. Corporations coordinating to enforce elite norms has a terrible history, but so does the enforcement of democratically approved majority norms, so it is not entirely clear whether the fact that this can happen is good or bad.
• PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  No. It’s apples and oranges. Companies should be free to regulate hate speech on their platforms. The government should not regulate speech in the public domain. The actions of private companies on private property (virtual or otherwise) are an entirely different domain than government intervention. Even if you remove the censorship angle, it can be argued that moderating hate speech is simply good business sense. People buying Forza and paying for it don’t want to see this. If it becomes an issue, they lose customers.
  • daenz 6y ago
    >Companies should be free to regulate hate speech on their platforms. The government should not regulate speech in the public domain. While I agree, please direct me to where I can speak "in the public domain" online.
    • gruez 6y ago
      tor, ipfs
    • JoshTko 6y ago
      You can create your own website and and host it yourself.
      • s9w 6y ago
        We have all seen how instantly hosters, domain registrars and payment processors don't care for laws.
      • maxk42 6y ago
        And yet we've seen hosts, domain registrars, and other service providers restrict certain ideas on their platforms. How practical is it in reality to be your own ISP, domain registrar, certificate authority, hosting service, web dev agency, and community moderator all in one?
        • gamblor956 6y ago
• UncleMeat 6y ago
  To me, that'd be a good outcome for the confederate flag. It is a hate symbol and exists almost exclusively to project hatred towards black people.
  • ta17711771 6y ago
    > To me, that'd be a good outcome for the confederate flag. Where does it end?
    • mikepurvis 6y ago
      At a point which is beyond the confederate flag. There may well be a slippery slope somewhere along this road, but it's not here. Gun advocates resist common sense reforms with the same logic, but lots of military weapons (minigun, flamethrower, rocket launcher, etc) are already either banned or highly regulated and have been for years without anyone's rights having been trampled.
      • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        What do you think of the counterargument about statues? A few years ago, the idea that removing Confederate statues might lead to removing statues of founding fathers was considered an absurd slippery slope argument; a few days ago, the New York Times published an opinion piece arguing that statues of George Washington should be torn down. How can we be confident that this isn't a step down that same slope?
        • vimy 6y ago
          Statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and even Lincoln have already been attacked by the mob. Mount Rushmore is now a symbol of white supremacy. The Emancipation Memorial, paid for by former slaves, is also considered racist now. Boston is going to remove it. The slippery slope has turned into a slide with no end in sight. https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/boston-art-commission-votes-8-0-remove-emancipation-memorial-park-square/OZTMVYPMVJA6RJWRDUAM6P2DOU/ https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/boston-art-commissio...
• root_axis 6y ago
  I think the status quo is the ideal. Companies can react to pressure from customers as they see fit with respect to their business needs. There is a market opportunity for a company willing to allow racist user-content in their games based on customer demand.
• chc 6y ago
  We've already been there a long time in terms to "What you can do on Xbox Live." You'd be insane to put a German swastika on your Forza car and expect not to get banned.
• moksly 6y ago
  I wouldn’t want people to celebrate slavery in my garden, so I can understand why Microsoft wouldn’t want people to do it in theirs.
  • RestlessMind 6y ago
    But there is a big difference between you and Microsoft. Microsoft is a business serving public, and hence subject to different regulations. For example, Microsoft cannot refuse to serve to women or brown people. You can choose to forbid entry to them in your private garden.
    • openasocket 6y ago
      Sex and race are protected classes, using a particular image is not a protected class. I'd be quite surprised if there is any country in the world where you can't discriminate against someone using the confederate flag or some other iconography. And honestly I don't think there should be.
      • RestlessMind 6y ago
        In this specific comment, I am not discussing what are the dimensions along which discrimination is permitted vs the ones where it is not. I am simply pointing out to moksly (GP) that what individual people are allowed to do in their gardens is very different than what private businesses are allowed to do in the US.
        • moksly 6y ago
          But your example is a strawman, there is no difference between Microsoft and me as far as preventing people from putting a slavery celebration picture on their virtual cars. Companies have been filtering which words you’re allowed to use as your username, in chats, as your e-mail address. Filtering what kind of pictures you’re allowed to put on your cars is no different than that.
• iameli 6y ago
  Doing so would probably require amending the First Amendment, which I think would do more harm than good. But Germany seems to have implemented such a system without becoming a dystopian hellscape. Seems a pretty nice place to live.
  • Cu3PO42 6y ago
    I may be biased, having lived here all my life, but I would agree, it is a pretty nice place to live. To be frank, there's few countries that I would even consider moving to.
  • s9w 6y ago
    Try publicly criticizing government politics (especially the 2015 kind) and watch your life be "cancelled" in Germany. Dystopian hellscape comes pretty close.
  • tgv 6y ago
    TBH, there are a lot of other factors that make Germany a decent place. A less polarized society is one of them, a representative parliament another. IMO, it takes more than a law to keep it civilized.
  • croddin 6y ago
    There are already many things that don't count as free speech based on case law, if something like that were to happen in the U.S. it probably wouldn't be an amendment rather a major supreme court case.
  • Leherenn 6y ago
    Not an American, so feel free to correct me. It seems to me that there are already plenty of laws that breach the 1st amendment if you interpret speech as absolutely any speech (e.g. death threats, libel, ...). And it is constitutional because the current interpretation of speech is narrower than "everything". Doesn't that mean that, if there were the will to do it, free speech could be reinterpreted (by the supreme court?) to not include hate speech, thus not requiring to change the 1st amendment?
• proc0 6y ago
  People are so stupid they think silencing people is a solution.
• manuelabeledo 6y ago
  Well, I would lie if I said that I do not appreciate that there are no cars rocking the nazi flag in Germany.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• s9w 6y ago
  Very soon even Facebook likes will be illegal in Germany if it's the "wrong" ones by the way. That law passed a week ago or two.
  • searchableguy 6y ago
    Explain which law are you referring to here?
    • s9w 6y ago
      A politicians who told Germans to leave their country was killed. That was taken as a welcome opportunity to turn things to 11. There is now another new law "zur Bekämpfung des Rechtsextremismus und der Hasskriminalität". > "Dabei reicht dann auch schon, dass man als Gleichgesinnter auftritt und solche Inhalte teilt oder mit einem "Gefällt mir" versieht" https://www.pcgameshardware.de/Internet-Thema-34041/News/Bund-verschaerft-Gesetz-und-raeumt-Behoerden-mehr-Spielraum-ein-1352588/ https://www.pcgameshardware.de/Internet-Thema-34041/News/Bun...
      • joe_blank 6y ago
        A politician who told Nazis to leave the country was murdered by a Nazi. Suddenly this sounds a lot different.
        • s9w 6y ago
          No he didn't tell that to Nazis. He told that to citizens of his own town who feared for their safety.
          • joe_blank 6y ago
            Why does that even matter? Are you implying that murdering him was in any way justified?
            • s9w 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• kube-system 6y ago
  No. I think that it is a responsibility and a duty for citizens and private organizations to self enforce censorship amongst themselves, as we see happening here. But, I do not think it is a good idea to grant that power to the ruling class due to the risk of abuse. Free speech is specifically a check on political power -- this is why it is entirely okay for private companies and individuals to censor speech but we greatly restrict the government's ability to do so. Yes, some governments with "hate speech" legislation have managed not to abuse the power, but there are plenty of examples of abuse to show that it is a risky step to take. Why should we take the risk of expanding state power if we have alternative solutions?
• spankalee 6y ago
  I think we should at least seriously consider that advocating for the murder or enslavement of people falls under the same speech category as incitement and yelling "fire!" in a theater. And the Confederate Battle Flag and Nazi Flag absolutely do advocate the for murder and enslavement of people.
  • gruez 6y ago
    >falls under the same speech category as incitement and yelling "fire!" in a theater. obligatory mention every time this gets brought up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18917746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18917746
• magnusmagnusson 6y ago
  "This slope isn't particularly sloppy" is the single best reply capturing the delusion and dishonesty of the people who celebrate the limiting of speech and expression heere. At least admit it proudly, that you are placing a punishment on vocalbulary and imposing self-censorship and thus invading privacy too. All these masks attempting to cover-up reduction of politics to friend/enemy distinction are even more insulting than the act of limiting speech in the first place.
  • augustt 6y ago
    People don't want to see hateful shit in video games. You do not have god-given right to be shitty in a car game. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps and create your own community that tolerates hatred.
  • happytoexplain 6y ago
    Frankly, I consider this position to contribute much more greatly to the "reduction of politics to friend/enemy distinction" than any of the comments you're referring to. If a symbol of hatred is banned on a private platform and you consider that an attack on your politics, that makes it borderline impossible to believe that you are arguing in good faith.
    • magnusmagnusson 6y ago
      "A symbol of hatred", the U.S. flag appears to be the choppin block since the Union boys were selling 'free'd' blacks c. 1870. All I ask of the people who are against these historical symbols is that they wear their power proudly without such lame constructs as "hate speech".
  • namdnay 6y ago
    > At least admit it proudly, that you are placing a punishment on vocalbulary Yes I admit it proudly, I live in a country that places a punishment on saying hateful things. I’m pretty fine with it > and imposing self censorship Life in society is based around self censorship. I don’t run around the city center naked, I don’t shit in storm grates, and I don’t shout Sieg Heil. > invading privacy No I don’t think anyone cares what you say to your friends within your home. We just won’t let you say it in public
• andrew_eit 6y ago
  AFAIK Germany's anti hate speech laws revolve around the use of national socialist related lexicon and symbolism. I think it is perfectly reasonable that a line is drawn in this case, regarding where free speech goes to far - i.e. fascism is never OK. Whether the goal of these censorship policies in other countries / companies, is something that should probably be determined on a case-by-case basis. Generally your question brings to mind 2 more questions I would ask you in turn for elaboration: 1) Do you think there should be a line drawn anywhere to say that this is the absolute limit of free speech? E.g. being able to say that some people are less valuable as human beings arguably brings little value any discussion. 2) Do you believe that symbols may change overtime to represent ideas that perhaps do not relate as much to their original meaning as a symbol? I'm talking about the confederate flag here. Granted, I'm not a US citizen, but I do not understand want possible purpose the confederate flag could serve in today's age, other than as an acknowledgement of antiquated values and ideas no longer endorsed by today's culture? Maybe 20, 30 years ago, not as many people really cared whether the confederate flag had anything to do with racism or slavery. But now, its meaning is arguably more hostile, just due to the way it is used as a counter to the BLM movement and other related anti-racism movements. So, why would some one honestly use the confederate flag as a artistic symbol in this way today? Just as no-one would use the SS lightning bolt as an icon or symbol in Europe and expect to not get a reaction from people. In these cases, I would argue that doing is more an act of ignorance than it is an act of freedom of speech. Disclaimer: I am a EU resident in Germany who knows next to nothing about censorship law in this country - this is my humble and probably misinformed opinion. Any knowledgeable Germans please feel free to correct my interpretation.
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  No, I think the ideal end-goal is that hate speech is rejected in the private marketplace of ideas whose protection is the goal of the First Amendment, making anti-hate-speech laws unnecessary.
• ezrast 6y ago
  End goal? No. The end goal is eliminating oppression, and the ideal is to have strong enough cultural norms around this that specific laws are unnecessary. A step in the process? Maybe. I don't know if this kind of legal enforcement is the shortest route from here to there in the US. I could be convinced either way.
• benologist 6y ago
  I think all the prejudice and intolerance in the world is really just bad behavior we need to unlearn and this will be just another tiny little step towards 'detoxifying society'. Hacker News demands we be civil to each other because antagonizing other users has always been superfluous to discussing tech news, if we intend to discuss tech news it is obviously better if the discussion isn't me calling you names. Users intent on antagonizing others have been an unnecessary distraction in multiplayer gaming for many years.