[mveety]

Yes it does. Censorship by public or private entities is dangerous because it destroys the open marketplace of ideas. The best ideas, given time, will rise to the top, and censorship in all forms prevents this from happening. Speech that is agreeable to the public/government/whatever doesn't need any protection, but speech that isn't does. We all should protect speech in all forms even if it's hateful or abhorrent.

[smt88]

Yiannopoulos can still be hateful and abhorrent on Breitbart.com and many other widely-read outlets. He can hold an anti-Leslie Jones rally on a major street in the US, and police will protect him (including black police).

This isn't a blow to free speech. It's Twitter deciding not to let someone use its service and its resources for the purposes of rallying racists to berate an innocent woman who acted in a movie.

[dragonwriter]

> Censorship by public or private entities is dangerous because it destroys the open marketplace of ideas.

On the contrary, private censorship is essential to the marketplace of ideas, since it is exactly private parties choosing how they will participate in that marketplace.

(Where a "private" entity -- or a group of them coordinating formally or informally -- has a, de facto or de jure, protected monopoly on communication in a market, then that entity or entities censoring raises much the same issues as government censorship, but private censorship in general is central to, rather than destructive of, the open marketplace of ideas.)

[pseudo_monkey]

So you would agree that Milo et al shouldn't be using the internet to silence marginalised groups then?

[st3v3r]

No, it doesn't. No one should be forced to see your hate and harassment.

Why should I protect someone calling Leslie Jones an ape? And do NOT say to simply "ignore it" or to "log off". None of that works. It doesn't stop it, and asking someone in the public eye to not use social media is basically telling them to not have a career.

[Godel_unicode]

The naïve "all speech is sacred and any censorship is wrong" does not work in the real world. for example, if you yell "fire" in a crowded theatre, you will be prosecuted. Now that we've established that there can (and indeed must) be limits on speech, it's up to a mature society to devise limits which protect speech but also respect others rights.

Banning someone from Twitter is one of the least effective ways to censor an author who has multiple venues which pay them to write. As the linked comic says (I can't believe nobody has linked to it yet, so the obligatory XKCD is below) this is not censorship. This is signaling that his speech was inappropriate and harassment. Being banned from Twitter doesn't stop him from posting on e.g. Facebook. His speech can still be heard by any who want to hear it, this ban merely prevents him from harassing her further.

https://xkcd.com/1357/