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by PaulHoule 3501 days ago
Part of it is that there is not a clear line of where legitimate discourse ends and "hate speech" starts.
1 comments

Sure there is. Posting an article that was contrived by hate groups, is hate speech. Convincing someone to commit suicide because of their sexual orientation, political views, is hate speech. It's not that hard
Who defines what groups are a "hate group?"

Is Black Lives Matter a "hate group?" What about Blue Lives Matter? What about an anti-BML group? Who decides? And once they're a hate group, according to you everything they publish is automatically considered "hate speech" and therefore banned. Seems overly broad.

Honestly yelling "it is just obvious" is very naive and unworkable. People have tried for years to come up with black and white definitions of these things and they've all failed. It often boils down to "when I see it, I know it" but that varies per individual.

> Who defines what groups are a "hate group?"

From what I've observed, every publication has the Southern Poverty Law Center as the arbiter — and then you end up with things like this http://www.theexmuslim.com/2016/10/27/southern_poverty_law_c...

That particular case looks cut and dry, but companies like that need to have a policy they can apply consistently and scalably.

Even there it is very hard to prove things. Was a particular message inspired by a particular post? People get bullied into suicide without there being a concerted effort and conspiracy, etc.

It is a tough issue and please don't frame it as left vs right because one thing history shows is that a law meant for one cause will be used for another. For instance, the "religious freedom" laws that boomed in the 1990s started as an attempt to legalize the use of peyote by the Native American Church. The association with anti-gay causes is entiely new. In reality, the biggest benefactor of those laws has probably been the Church of Scientology.

For the first part, who decides what a hate group is?

For the second, you've merely provided (what I assume are) non-exhaustive examples.