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Thanks for this. We could post stuff about previous commenter, based on literally nothing, doing bad stuff to little kiddies and they would be deleted by HN. Th

Thanks for this. We could post stuff about previous commenter, based on literally nothing, doing bad stuff to little kiddies and they would be deleted by HN. That commenter would probably be alright with that because those types of comments are not ok. For some reason, however, these people are never ok with censorship by anyone if it impacts their beliefs. I find this highly hypocritical. The Reddit hunt for the Boston bomber is a perfect example of how this type of unbridled free for all posting can lead to very bad stuff happening.

crpatino 6y ago
That's what we do nowadays, is it? Somebody walks and say something against our preferred political ideology and we throw vague threats of ruining that person's life with false accusations?
- donkeyd 6y ago
  Like that guy who ran for president with vague threats of not accepting the outcome if he would lose. And then when they lost not accepting the outcome and making up a bunch of stories about wide-spread fraud? If you were implying that I'd actually accuse anyone of doing stuff to kids, you throughly misunderstood the content of my comment.
lopmotr 6y ago
I used to live in China in the pre-Trump days when most westerners believed in free speech. Sometimes I would hear about "draconian" Chinese censorship. It seemed obviously bad by western standards. For example, they would prohibit industrial action in case it threatens some vital industry or prohibit protests in case it threatens the power of the government which could lead to unrest and violence. Or they prosecuted someone for spreading a rumor after Fukushima happened that iodized salt protects against cancer which led to supermarkets getting sold out of it. Or they would suppress anti-government talk like what Falun Gong and the Uyghurs were doing. In the case of the Uyghur, they did actually commit some terrorists acts because of the anti-government things they were telling each other. All that seemed like bad totalitarian censorship. But now American leftist believe similar censorship is OK for essentially the same reasons. "social harmony" was never seen as a valid reason for censorship by westerners before, but since Trump, they changed their mind. You example of accusations of child abuse as a way to insult somebody is actually fine as long as the society can recognize unfounded accusations from actual reality. This is still acceptable for many other insults, like "you're stupid", but somehow, people seem to have elevated sexual abuse accusations to the status of truth. I'd say the antidote to that is to allow more open unfounded accusations so we're all immunized against their effects. We do have the justice system to address real allegations.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  There's a huge difference between government censorship/suppression, and a private entity deciding what they will and won't host.
  - lopmotr 6y ago
    Yes but the difference shrinks when all the private entities that dominate the communication between people impose the same censorship and competition is effectively prevented by network effects. It's more of an anti-trust problem. Nobody would be complaining if it was just some small internet forum doing it.
    - chillwaves 6y ago
      Can google imprison me? Can they seize my assets? Can Google execute me?
      - throwmehaweh 6y ago
        No, but they can use their enormous power and influence to get politicians into office that could write new rules allowing such.
      - rndgermandude 6y ago
        Can Google imprison you? Not in the US, unless their lawyers find a nice way to make a prosecutor go e.g. for some fancy computer espionage charges (see Aaron Schwartz for example), but companies in the past had regimes in their bag and made people go to prison or vanish entirely, or perform forced labor for them. Can they seize your assets? Not directly, but try getting sued by the legal department of a mega corp and see what you have left when it's all over. The end result is the same. As somebody else pointed out, we already had companies that effectively acted as unelected governments in the past, like the East India Company. They used to execute people.
      - treeman79 6y ago
        They have your search history. Or they could make it if inclined. So for a lot of people, yes. They could easily put people in Jail. More likely scenario would be exposing anyone That wants to be anonymous. Actually I think that happens in other countries all the time.
gnicholas 6y ago
Posting false statements about someone molesting children would be libel, so it would not be protected under the First Amendment. Censorship of ideas, even demonstrably false ones, is completely different (and much more dangerous because you have to appoint a censor who decides what is false).
- Retric 6y ago
  How Censorship of lie A fundamentally different from Censorship of lie B? Picking arbitrary facts as somehow political issues is very dangerous waters. I honestly have less problems with someone saying a Holocaust was a good idea than I do when people say they aren’t happening.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    So your good with active calls for mass murder? Because denying something happened doesn’t physically hurt anyone. Mostly just dumb. Asking for it to happen again means one is an evil monster that needs to be stopped.
  - gnicholas 6y ago
    People seem to be upset by my comment, but I am just stating what the actual law is regarding free speech about ideas and about libel. These rules are very well established in terms of what they encompass and don't.(IAAL, FWIW.) I would recommend checking out Professor Volokh's series of YouTube videos on the First Amendment. [1] 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uWzNDKtp9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uWzNDKtp9w
    - Retric 6y ago
      That’s irrelevant to this discussion. Saying free speech excludes a limitation on free speech as defined by a specific country means anything that country excludes is therefore perfectly acceptable. It’s the same Doublethink that defines income taxes as exclusive of payroll taxes by naming a subset of income taxes as income tax.
pydry 6y ago
>We could post stuff about previous commenter, based on literally nothing, doing bad stuff to little kiddies and they would be deleted by HN. And nobody would believe it if it wasnt deleted. They'd just be irritated by it. Nonetheless that's not political speech (unlike the YouTube vids) . It's basic libel. Goebbels was in favor of free political speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of freedom of political speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise - whether that's Trump or whomever. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.
- chillwaves 6y ago
  It's not "free speech" for the president to lie and accuse state governments of defrauding the country, without evidence. This is beyond political speech. It is inherently dangerous.
  - pydry 6y ago
    He is absolutely exercising his first amendment rights to freedom of political speech by lying about what happened without evidence. The first amendment isn't there to protect you from his lies though. It's to protect you so that you can speak the truth when he or somebody like him wants to stop you. Be careful what you wish for. The same mechanisms that are used to shut him up will be used to silence you one day.
    - chillwaves 6y ago
      He's speaking as the POTUS not a private citizen. He has duties to the office and to the constitution that supersede your claim to 1A. What Trump is doing right now is treason against the country. You can call it free speech if you like. And I have zero worries that any of Trump's legal jeopardy will ever effect myself because I am not a career criminal as he is.
    - sanp 6y ago
      And Twitter is free to block him as it pleases
kevinpet 6y ago
So you think Voltaire was a liar? That no one could ever support free speech as a principle, even while disagreeing with the content of that speech?
- hiq 6y ago
  The quote you're thinking about is apocryphal.
  - kevinpet 6y ago
    Thanks. I suppose it should have been too good to be true.

crpatino 6y ago

That's what we do nowadays, is it? Somebody walks and say something against our preferred political ideology and we throw vague threats of ruining that person's life with false accusations?

donkeyd 6y ago
Like that guy who ran for president with vague threats of not accepting the outcome if he would lose. And then when they lost not accepting the outcome and making up a bunch of stories about wide-spread fraud? If you were implying that I'd actually accuse anyone of doing stuff to kids, you throughly misunderstood the content of my comment.

lopmotr 6y ago

I used to live in China in the pre-Trump days when most westerners believed in free speech. Sometimes I would hear about "draconian" Chinese censorship. It seemed obviously bad by western standards. For example, they would prohibit industrial action in case it threatens some vital industry or prohibit protests in case it threatens the power of the government which could lead to unrest and violence. Or they prosecuted someone for spreading a rumor after Fukushima happened that iodized salt protects against cancer which led to supermarkets getting sold out of it. Or they would suppress anti-government talk like what Falun Gong and the Uyghurs were doing. In the case of the Uyghur, they did actually commit some terrorists acts because of the anti-government things they were telling each other. All that seemed like bad totalitarian censorship. But now American leftist believe similar censorship is OK for essentially the same reasons. "social harmony" was never seen as a valid reason for censorship by westerners before, but since Trump, they changed their mind. You example of accusations of child abuse as a way to insult somebody is actually fine as long as the society can recognize unfounded accusations from actual reality. This is still acceptable for many other insults, like "you're stupid", but somehow, people seem to have elevated sexual abuse accusations to the status of truth. I'd say the antidote to that is to allow more open unfounded accusations so we're all immunized against their effects. We do have the justice system to address real allegations.

JoshTriplett 6y ago
There's a huge difference between government censorship/suppression, and a private entity deciding what they will and won't host.
- lopmotr 6y ago
  Yes but the difference shrinks when all the private entities that dominate the communication between people impose the same censorship and competition is effectively prevented by network effects. It's more of an anti-trust problem. Nobody would be complaining if it was just some small internet forum doing it.
  - chillwaves 6y ago
    Can google imprison me? Can they seize my assets? Can Google execute me?
    - throwmehaweh 6y ago
      No, but they can use their enormous power and influence to get politicians into office that could write new rules allowing such.
    - rndgermandude 6y ago
      Can Google imprison you? Not in the US, unless their lawyers find a nice way to make a prosecutor go e.g. for some fancy computer espionage charges (see Aaron Schwartz for example), but companies in the past had regimes in their bag and made people go to prison or vanish entirely, or perform forced labor for them. Can they seize your assets? Not directly, but try getting sued by the legal department of a mega corp and see what you have left when it's all over. The end result is the same. As somebody else pointed out, we already had companies that effectively acted as unelected governments in the past, like the East India Company. They used to execute people.
    - treeman79 6y ago
      They have your search history. Or they could make it if inclined. So for a lot of people, yes. They could easily put people in Jail. More likely scenario would be exposing anyone That wants to be anonymous. Actually I think that happens in other countries all the time.

gnicholas 6y ago

Posting false statements about someone molesting children would be libel, so it would not be protected under the First Amendment. Censorship of ideas, even demonstrably false ones, is completely different (and much more dangerous because you have to appoint a censor who decides what is false).

Retric 6y ago
How Censorship of lie A fundamentally different from Censorship of lie B? Picking arbitrary facts as somehow political issues is very dangerous waters. I honestly have less problems with someone saying a Holocaust was a good idea than I do when people say they aren’t happening.
- treeman79 6y ago
  So your good with active calls for mass murder? Because denying something happened doesn’t physically hurt anyone. Mostly just dumb. Asking for it to happen again means one is an evil monster that needs to be stopped.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  People seem to be upset by my comment, but I am just stating what the actual law is regarding free speech about ideas and about libel. These rules are very well established in terms of what they encompass and don't.(IAAL, FWIW.) I would recommend checking out Professor Volokh's series of YouTube videos on the First Amendment. [1] 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uWzNDKtp9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uWzNDKtp9w
  - Retric 6y ago
    That’s irrelevant to this discussion. Saying free speech excludes a limitation on free speech as defined by a specific country means anything that country excludes is therefore perfectly acceptable. It’s the same Doublethink that defines income taxes as exclusive of payroll taxes by naming a subset of income taxes as income tax.

pydry 6y ago

>We could post stuff about previous commenter, based on literally nothing, doing bad stuff to little kiddies and they would be deleted by HN. And nobody would believe it if it wasnt deleted. They'd just be irritated by it. Nonetheless that's not political speech (unlike the YouTube vids) . It's basic libel. Goebbels was in favor of free political speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of freedom of political speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise - whether that's Trump or whomever. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.

chillwaves 6y ago
It's not "free speech" for the president to lie and accuse state governments of defrauding the country, without evidence. This is beyond political speech. It is inherently dangerous.
- pydry 6y ago
  He is absolutely exercising his first amendment rights to freedom of political speech by lying about what happened without evidence. The first amendment isn't there to protect you from his lies though. It's to protect you so that you can speak the truth when he or somebody like him wants to stop you. Be careful what you wish for. The same mechanisms that are used to shut him up will be used to silence you one day.
  - chillwaves 6y ago
    He's speaking as the POTUS not a private citizen. He has duties to the office and to the constitution that supersede your claim to 1A. What Trump is doing right now is treason against the country. You can call it free speech if you like. And I have zero worries that any of Trump's legal jeopardy will ever effect myself because I am not a career criminal as he is.
  - sanp 6y ago
    And Twitter is free to block him as it pleases

kevinpet 6y ago

So you think Voltaire was a liar? That no one could ever support free speech as a principle, even while disagreeing with the content of that speech?

hiq 6y ago
The quote you're thinking about is apocryphal.
- kevinpet 6y ago
  Thanks. I suppose it should have been too good to be true.