[pvnick]

Folks always make this argument which this kind of thing comes up. Just because you as a private entity can limit free speech, doesn't mean you should. Censorship is generally a bad idea, and I as a private entity can be upset at Harvard for doing it.

[vinceguidry]

The Internet has shown all of us that simple restrictions on speech go a long way towards creating a welcoming and friendly atmosphere. Attacking basic civility and hate speech restrictions on speech is putting principles before reality. You don't want to make any laws restricting truly public speech, but censuring private entities for that is counter-productive.

[pvnick]

Cutting down on trolling, perhaps. But there appears to be an encroaching ideologically-driven purge in some areas against people expressing "incorrect" speech. Most of the complaints seem to be focused on youtube, twitter, and facebook (e.g. pewdiepie; also H3H3 productions appears to be having trouble; the site-wide purge of alt-right accounts on twitter and the banning of Milo; instapundit and james o'keefe were temporarily banned; I think nobody would be surprised if someone like Steven Crowder got in trouble someday soon; etc.).

[julianmarq]

> Attacking basic civility and hate speech restrictions on speech is putting principles before reality.

Now this is quite the 180° turn from how things really work. Setting in place "rules" because they might or might not "offend" someone isn't putting principles before reality how, exactly? It is, of course that's exactly what it is, but I'm curious to how you'd rationalize the opposite.

[maxwin]

How do u deal with hate speech

[pvnick]

Ignore it. How is that even up for debate?

[maxwin]

Apparently, you have never been the target of hate speech. I mean as an organization or platform, hate speech is gonna cause serious damage. You can't just tell individuals in your community or organization to ignore it. For example, in my country Myanmar,we just got free speech. But now we are dealing with hate speech which actually lead to hate crimes. The spread of religious hate speech causes one community of people to set fire/ kill another community of people. You can't just ignore hate speech.

[pvnick]

Target the violence, not the speech. Perhaps it is a cultural thing. Being an American, we have a bit of a libertarian underpinning to our culture, so maybe it is different.

You use the term "hate speech" as if it is a definite thing, but the phrase is nebulous and can very easily be used to target expressions of an undesired ideology in the case that the authorities have an agenda to push (e.g. certain religious authorities may target another religion's evangelization efforts as hate speech; communists might target people trying to spread Western values of free enterprise; etc.).