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This is a tired old argument and it isn't convincing or effective. There's a big difference between some kids screaming in your coffee shop and a community on a

This is a tired old argument and it isn't convincing or effective. There's a big difference between some kids screaming in your coffee shop and a community on a website supposedly dedicated to free discussion. A more apt comparison would be a group in a corner having a conversation at a rock concert. Suddenly this argument appears less apt. And while some are screaming for these sites to get shut down over it, most of us aren't. What you see from most of us is recommendation to stop using services that silence you. This is a reasonable response, if someone doesn't like you, go somewhere where they do like you. That's what the comment you're responding to is advocating, embracing and even getting excited about. The internet needs a true public square, not a private entity masquerading as one that for some reason totally unbeknownst to them has to constantly remind everyone that they are not a public square.

Jonnax 6y ago
Where does discord say it's for free discussion? In two clicks I found their community guidelines on their website: https://discord.com/guidelines https://discord.com/guidelines Second rule: "Do not organize, promote, or coordinate servers around hate speech. It’s unacceptable to attack a person or a community based on attributes such as their race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, or disabilities." Calling someone a "retard" or "autist" is considered by Discord to be mocking people with disabilities. Also IRC exists and is still in use by many people. Anyone can set up a server.
- namibj 6y ago
  It's messed up when there are auto-banning bots that hit those with disabilities for speaking out on the issues they face in everyday life.
  - maccard 6y ago
    Have you read the content on WSB? Here's a link that I found on the top of the top thread of the subreddit [0]. Let's be completely clear here, this isn't someone speaking out about issues they face in everyday life. > ive been folowing this saga since GME was 60 or so but sadly i was too afraid to become autistic, and have now gone full retard And this isn't an isolated comment, there are hundreds of comments like it in the 90k+ commetns on that thread, and in that subreddit. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6er79/the_gme_afterhours_thread_part_420_on_27_january/gl2mbyj/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6er79/the_...
    - coding_lobster 6y ago
      They probably meant that because the guidelines discord has setup are automated bots that occasionally hit innocent people while trying to enforce the rules. I think they were speaking in the broader context of Discord servers rather than the WSB Reddit or Discord specifically.
      - namibj 6y ago
        Yes, I was talking about hasanabi's discord server (a twitch channel) in particular, but I'm sure it's not alone and there are reasons. I don't blame them at all, it's the system that sets these incentives.
        maccard 6y ago
        With all due respect, that's not what you said in your comment, and it read to me as an attempt to deliberately spread FUD about discord's moderation practices. If you're thinking of a specific incident, and introducing it as a discussion point, you need to actually mention it. Re-reading your original comment, I still can only read it as Discord banning WSB because people are speaking out about their real life issues
        namibj 6y ago
        It's not discord themselves who enact the harsh moderation (which quite often includes bots banning some words, with punishments from alerting a mod to banning you for a bit), but rather server "owners" who risk platforming if discord deems them unable to police themselves. The problem is, that discord uses certain criteria to determine if a server is able to police itself, and those criteria happen to be fairly harsh on repeat (even if swallowed by the noise/message stream) disability mocking. I'm criticizing the incentives Discord's polices create for moderation. I'm sorry my wording was bad. I certainly did not intend any FUD spreading.
      - maccard 6y ago
        Then they should make that clear, as the thread and the GP's comments are specifically about the situation with WSB. Otherwise, someone who comes in not knowing anything about the situation, and sees the comment and assumes that the WSB discord was banned because its uers were describing their day to day issues living with disabilities.
- betwixthewires 6y ago
  I'm 100% with you. People that don't want their discussion controlled by a private entity with conflicting interests should absolutely not depend on that entity's services. Everyone upset about this should stop using discord.
- mywacaday 6y ago
  I saw a comment on WSB that said they have bots that remove all swear words etc but some people use unicode etc to write the words anyway. I don't know if its true but where is the line for a ban if a genuine effort is being made to moderate?
  - Person5478 6y ago
    The worst part about this observation is that this is the very reason being given for why twitter isn't getting kicked off of AWS. Because they're putting in a good faith effort to moderate, it's just "hard". This is just about power and money, the chances that many of these HNers aren't losing money due to the actions of /wsb is low. I have no doubt many of the posters trying to defend the move are being a bit disingenuous. Not all for sure, but certainly some of them.
mewse 6y ago
> The internet needs a true public square Honest question: why?
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  Because when you can brand any idea as radical or dangerous, you get to dictate what radical or dangerous is, and when you do that, you control the narrative and people.
  - pohl 6y ago
    There are some things that are unambiguously dangerous. The insurrection at the capitol this month comes to mind.
    - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
      Unequivocally. What is the alternative? Banning every single idea besides a pre-approved list of topics? That's Nineteen Eighty Four all over again. If anything, public discourse enables people to observe and see potential clusters, covid could be traced to tweets talking about pneumonia in November and December of 2019. If, instead of squashing them, we figured out the underlying problem, which almost always is lack of prospects, we can act accordingly.
      - pohl 6y ago
        Letting private companies enforce their terms of service may not be a perfect alternative, but it is a reasonable one and has been somewhat effective.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      Yes this most recent operation was a smashing success, in terms of convincing shallow thinkers that it's wrong for subjects to bother their rulers. Just look at what Seattle city council member Kshama Sawant has to deal with right now. Amazon is sponsoring a recall election "justified" because she had the audacity to talk to protesters who were physically inside city hall. (In reality, because she wants Amazon to pay taxes.) Perfect timing!
atoav 6y ago
I have worked as a tutor at university. The best and most "free" discussions I experienced were all happening in a space where everybody was after finding some sort of insight. This delicate balance was at times destoyed by a single person that started attacking people aggresively for who they were rather than attacking the argument they made in a way that makes them understand. Allowing that person to freely speak was reducing the classes freedom over all, because that person wanted to dominate the discussion so much, they fostered a climate were all other discussion was not possible anymore and free speech was prevented from happening. In that case throwing someone out is a totally acceptable option. In fact this is the reason why discussion on this very site work out: because we are after insight and we punish behavior that is pure sophistry, aggressive, snarky, etc. I am convinced that to speak freely as a collective, sometimes we must stop certain individuals from abusing their freedom of speech within our forums.
- bjourne 6y ago
  Not everyone shares your ideas about what the "best" and most "free" discussions are. Apparently, the crowd at this Discord channel were ok with calling each other gays, autists, retards, or whatever. It may not be the highbrow enough for some, but that is no reason to shutdown their community.
  - atoav 6y ago
    Sure, but most people agree on what makes a discussion worse. E.g. if one person constantly interrupts others and leads agressively voiced monologous with no real substance, most people might agree that person might not improve the climate of the discussion to much
- belorn 6y ago
  I have seen a few times now what happen when optimistic people goes with such rationale and attempt to apply it universally. To be more precise, people have tried to ban generalizations of group of people, banning the usage of gender where specifying gender is unnecessary, and of course banning the attacking people for who they were rather than attacking the argument. I have yet to see one community where it worked. The outcome of such experiments always end up the same. People want to generalize about groups of people when its against the right group of people. We want to specifying gender when it is unnecessary, as long it not in the wrong situation. And we want to attacking people for who they were rather than attacking the argument, if its against people which is socially accepted to attack and dismiss. People just love violence when its done for the right reasons and abhor it when it done for the wrong reasons. At the same time we try to apply principles like freedom of speech and find it completely incompatible with our split view on violence.
mqrs 6y ago
> A more apt comparison would be a group in a corner having a conversation at a rock concert. Suddenly this argument appears less apt. This is a tired old argument and it isn't convincing or effective. There's a big difference between having a conversation in a corner at a rock concert, and having a conversation in an online service hosted by someone else outside of that conversation, in a territory owned by a state where the host has to comply with laws which place the accountability of user-generated content on the host. A more apt comparison would be... I don't know, I actually don't have any idea. How about simply not being deliberately offensive or hateful or using whatever rhetoric that could ultimately translate into real-world violence?
- betwixthewires 6y ago
  At least you're original. Do you want a change in this society? I'd guess you do, most people want to change something. Espousing a desire for any change will always be offensive to someone, and so wanting any improvement necessarily includes being deliberately offensive. The right to speak is the right to offend. Real world violence, sure. Let's ban that. And asking people to be nice, that's not a bad thing. And banning name calling in your private forum to promote substantiative discussion, that's probably a good idea. But deciding what unappetizing ideas are allowed and are not allowed to be discussed is a bad idea, I thought we learned that lesson in the last century. Free speech isn't what leads to fascist dictatorship, control of ideas does. All this and I just want to remind you that we are discussing a web site using "white supremacist Nazis" as a pretext to prevent people from organizing against wall street hedge funds.
  - mqrs 6y ago
    > Espousing a desire for any change will always be offensive to someone, and so wanting any improvement necessarily includes being deliberately offensive. This is not true. Whatever you’re disagreeing with another person, you don’t have to call that person any politically incorrect slur, which is really the kind of “offensive” that we are talking about here.

Jonnax 6y ago

Where does discord say it's for free discussion? In two clicks I found their community guidelines on their website: https://discord.com/guidelines https://discord.com/guidelines Second rule: "Do not organize, promote, or coordinate servers around hate speech. It’s unacceptable to attack a person or a community based on attributes such as their race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, or disabilities." Calling someone a "retard" or "autist" is considered by Discord to be mocking people with disabilities. Also IRC exists and is still in use by many people. Anyone can set up a server.

namibj 6y ago
It's messed up when there are auto-banning bots that hit those with disabilities for speaking out on the issues they face in everyday life.
- maccard 6y ago
  Have you read the content on WSB? Here's a link that I found on the top of the top thread of the subreddit [0]. Let's be completely clear here, this isn't someone speaking out about issues they face in everyday life. > ive been folowing this saga since GME was 60 or so but sadly i was too afraid to become autistic, and have now gone full retard And this isn't an isolated comment, there are hundreds of comments like it in the 90k+ commetns on that thread, and in that subreddit. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6er79/the_gme_afterhours_thread_part_420_on_27_january/gl2mbyj/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6er79/the_...
  - coding_lobster 6y ago
    They probably meant that because the guidelines discord has setup are automated bots that occasionally hit innocent people while trying to enforce the rules. I think they were speaking in the broader context of Discord servers rather than the WSB Reddit or Discord specifically.
    - namibj 6y ago
      Yes, I was talking about hasanabi's discord server (a twitch channel) in particular, but I'm sure it's not alone and there are reasons. I don't blame them at all, it's the system that sets these incentives.
      - maccard 6y ago
        With all due respect, that's not what you said in your comment, and it read to me as an attempt to deliberately spread FUD about discord's moderation practices. If you're thinking of a specific incident, and introducing it as a discussion point, you need to actually mention it. Re-reading your original comment, I still can only read it as Discord banning WSB because people are speaking out about their real life issues
        namibj 6y ago
        It's not discord themselves who enact the harsh moderation (which quite often includes bots banning some words, with punishments from alerting a mod to banning you for a bit), but rather server "owners" who risk platforming if discord deems them unable to police themselves. The problem is, that discord uses certain criteria to determine if a server is able to police itself, and those criteria happen to be fairly harsh on repeat (even if swallowed by the noise/message stream) disability mocking. I'm criticizing the incentives Discord's polices create for moderation. I'm sorry my wording was bad. I certainly did not intend any FUD spreading.
    - maccard 6y ago
      Then they should make that clear, as the thread and the GP's comments are specifically about the situation with WSB. Otherwise, someone who comes in not knowing anything about the situation, and sees the comment and assumes that the WSB discord was banned because its uers were describing their day to day issues living with disabilities.
betwixthewires 6y ago
I'm 100% with you. People that don't want their discussion controlled by a private entity with conflicting interests should absolutely not depend on that entity's services. Everyone upset about this should stop using discord.
mywacaday 6y ago
I saw a comment on WSB that said they have bots that remove all swear words etc but some people use unicode etc to write the words anyway. I don't know if its true but where is the line for a ban if a genuine effort is being made to moderate?
- Person5478 6y ago
  The worst part about this observation is that this is the very reason being given for why twitter isn't getting kicked off of AWS. Because they're putting in a good faith effort to moderate, it's just "hard". This is just about power and money, the chances that many of these HNers aren't losing money due to the actions of /wsb is low. I have no doubt many of the posters trying to defend the move are being a bit disingenuous. Not all for sure, but certainly some of them.

mewse 6y ago

> The internet needs a true public square Honest question: why?

PartiallyTyped 6y ago
Because when you can brand any idea as radical or dangerous, you get to dictate what radical or dangerous is, and when you do that, you control the narrative and people.
- pohl 6y ago
  There are some things that are unambiguously dangerous. The insurrection at the capitol this month comes to mind.
  - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
    Unequivocally. What is the alternative? Banning every single idea besides a pre-approved list of topics? That's Nineteen Eighty Four all over again. If anything, public discourse enables people to observe and see potential clusters, covid could be traced to tweets talking about pneumonia in November and December of 2019. If, instead of squashing them, we figured out the underlying problem, which almost always is lack of prospects, we can act accordingly.
    - pohl 6y ago
      Letting private companies enforce their terms of service may not be a perfect alternative, but it is a reasonable one and has been somewhat effective.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Yes this most recent operation was a smashing success, in terms of convincing shallow thinkers that it's wrong for subjects to bother their rulers. Just look at what Seattle city council member Kshama Sawant has to deal with right now. Amazon is sponsoring a recall election "justified" because she had the audacity to talk to protesters who were physically inside city hall. (In reality, because she wants Amazon to pay taxes.) Perfect timing!

atoav 6y ago

I have worked as a tutor at university. The best and most "free" discussions I experienced were all happening in a space where everybody was after finding some sort of insight. This delicate balance was at times destoyed by a single person that started attacking people aggresively for who they were rather than attacking the argument they made in a way that makes them understand. Allowing that person to freely speak was reducing the classes freedom over all, because that person wanted to dominate the discussion so much, they fostered a climate were all other discussion was not possible anymore and free speech was prevented from happening. In that case throwing someone out is a totally acceptable option. In fact this is the reason why discussion on this very site work out: because we are after insight and we punish behavior that is pure sophistry, aggressive, snarky, etc. I am convinced that to speak freely as a collective, sometimes we must stop certain individuals from abusing their freedom of speech within our forums.

bjourne 6y ago
Not everyone shares your ideas about what the "best" and most "free" discussions are. Apparently, the crowd at this Discord channel were ok with calling each other gays, autists, retards, or whatever. It may not be the highbrow enough for some, but that is no reason to shutdown their community.
- atoav 6y ago
  Sure, but most people agree on what makes a discussion worse. E.g. if one person constantly interrupts others and leads agressively voiced monologous with no real substance, most people might agree that person might not improve the climate of the discussion to much
belorn 6y ago
I have seen a few times now what happen when optimistic people goes with such rationale and attempt to apply it universally. To be more precise, people have tried to ban generalizations of group of people, banning the usage of gender where specifying gender is unnecessary, and of course banning the attacking people for who they were rather than attacking the argument. I have yet to see one community where it worked. The outcome of such experiments always end up the same. People want to generalize about groups of people when its against the right group of people. We want to specifying gender when it is unnecessary, as long it not in the wrong situation. And we want to attacking people for who they were rather than attacking the argument, if its against people which is socially accepted to attack and dismiss. People just love violence when its done for the right reasons and abhor it when it done for the wrong reasons. At the same time we try to apply principles like freedom of speech and find it completely incompatible with our split view on violence.

mqrs 6y ago

> A more apt comparison would be a group in a corner having a conversation at a rock concert. Suddenly this argument appears less apt. This is a tired old argument and it isn't convincing or effective. There's a big difference between having a conversation in a corner at a rock concert, and having a conversation in an online service hosted by someone else outside of that conversation, in a territory owned by a state where the host has to comply with laws which place the accountability of user-generated content on the host. A more apt comparison would be... I don't know, I actually don't have any idea. How about simply not being deliberately offensive or hateful or using whatever rhetoric that could ultimately translate into real-world violence?

betwixthewires 6y ago
At least you're original. Do you want a change in this society? I'd guess you do, most people want to change something. Espousing a desire for any change will always be offensive to someone, and so wanting any improvement necessarily includes being deliberately offensive. The right to speak is the right to offend. Real world violence, sure. Let's ban that. And asking people to be nice, that's not a bad thing. And banning name calling in your private forum to promote substantiative discussion, that's probably a good idea. But deciding what unappetizing ideas are allowed and are not allowed to be discussed is a bad idea, I thought we learned that lesson in the last century. Free speech isn't what leads to fascist dictatorship, control of ideas does. All this and I just want to remind you that we are discussing a web site using "white supremacist Nazis" as a pretext to prevent people from organizing against wall street hedge funds.
- mqrs 6y ago
  > Espousing a desire for any change will always be offensive to someone, and so wanting any improvement necessarily includes being deliberately offensive. This is not true. Whatever you’re disagreeing with another person, you don’t have to call that person any politically incorrect slur, which is really the kind of “offensive” that we are talking about here.