[atlantic]

> Hate speech is not free speech any more than contract killing is just a financial transaction.

Personal anecdote.

When I moved to the UK in the 1970, there was a little platform in Hyde Park called Speaker's Corner. Anyone could step onto it and make a speech about anything, anything at all; they could do so in the strongest terms, without being bothered; there was always a small audience standing around, and often lively debate would result.

Most of what was said on that platform would now be characterized as "hate speech" by people of your ilk. And the times were not exactly peaceful; there were IRA bombs going off in England at least once a week. Yet the authorities made a point of not interfering, because memories of WWII were still recent, and the right to free speech was considered sacrosanct.

Draw your own conclusions.

[dang]

> people of your ilk

Unfortunately you set off a flamewar with that personal swipe. Please don't do that. Your comment would have been great without that bit, and there would have been no need for the nasty tit-for-tat of the below.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[rjplatte]

That's healthy, and we need more of that, especially face-to-face

[crtasm]

Speaker's Corner still exists, I can't say if it's still possible to voice any opinion there though.

[pjc50]

Ah. The halcyon days of free speech when certain elected MPs were banned from speaking on television; the Zircon affair, the prosecution over Spycatcher, the McLibel trial, and so on?

Perhaps you were free to be racist, but certain kinds of speech affecting the power structure were definitely not free.

[walterbell]

We need that with a livestream and queuing mechanisms to reduce the risk of monopolization.

[close04]

> people of your ilk

I think the conclusion can be drawn even without the rest of the comment. There will always be some bigot dying a little inside seeing the world is evolving and they're left behind.

Spewing out some hate for a couple of other bigots is not that much of a big deal. But today's "Speaker's Corner" has an audience of (tens of) millions. And the bigot doesn't stand up in front of anyone, they do it from afar, in anonymous comments, in podcasts, from behind a mask. If you can't understand how much of a difference that makes than maybe you belong to that age and not this one.

And there's one thing your ilk doesn't understand: you're free to make that hate speech. You shouldn't be free of the consequences. Which is why I said it should be punished, not censored. If it's censored then people might mistakenly take those bigots for worthwhile human beings :).

You'd understand the power of hate speech better if enough voices called for violence against bigoted sexagenarians or something like that.

Oh, one other popular thing in the '70s was KKK which you obviously fully support because it happened so it must be right.

Draw your own conclusions.

[atlantic]

> Draw your own conclusions.

I would conclude that you don't know how to argue, and that's why you prefer to take away your opponents' right to express themselves.

On the flimsiest of evidence, you label me with a number of repugnant attributes (bigot, sexagenarian, left behind, stupid, hateful, KKK), and then, having established guilt by association, you politely suggest I shut up.

I could demonstrate to you my political positions are actually further left than yours, but I won't bother, because in a discussion, what counts is the strength of the arguments themselves, not the identities and group affiliations of the speakers.

My identity, my convictions, are irrelevant. My arguments are what matters. And you haven't engaged with the central argument: that democracy cannot function without unrestricted free speech.

[grkvlt]

> repugnant attributes [...] sexagenarian

You do realise that a sexagenarian[0] is just someone in their sixties, right?

0. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sexagenarian

[close04]

> I would conclude that you don't know how to argue, and that's why you prefer to take away your opponents' right to express themselves

And I would conclude that you believe actions have no consequences when it comes to whatever you like to do. That being free to say or do something means being free to get away with anything that comes out of that. The political position is relevant, this is a combination of character traits and education. Or lack of. You all google "free speech" and only bother to read the first line. Just like the other hicks who think democracy is the right to do whatever the heck they want. You're free to call for violence against others just as you're free to be punished for the consequences of that call.

Well guess what, freedom of speech also considers the harm principle. This is further down the page, too much for most of those people to absorb. [1] "Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else".

Speech is like a weapon. They're not prohibited, and you're free to use them any way you see fit but you have to bear the consequences of misuse.

But the further you go towards the extremes (left or right) you find that people are having a harder and harder time understanding this concept of consequences. It's in perfect correlation with the drop in education and usefulness to society. Low education, low income, spineless, always blaming someone else, and running from the consequences of their own actions.

You're here to "negotiate" something that is already law and principles already accepted by many for centuries. To give a nice shine to something every person with the least bit of decency and education knows is wrong. You even have a hard time understanding the difference between not having your actions censored and not suffering the consequences for those actions. You have no arguments, you have a keyboard and an internet connection, and you don't even take full and productive use of those.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_principle

[atlantic]

> Speech is like a weapon. They're not prohibited, and you're free to use them any way you see fit but you have to bear the consequences of misuse.

Agreed. And there are laws on the books for this; there always have been. The more recent concept of "hate speech" (to return to your original post) is entirely redundant, unless its intended use is censorship.

[close04]

That's pretty simple: hate speech is that speech that you think you're free to make and should get away with it but you actually shouldn't.

If the fact that something is "a recent concept" made it wrong we wouldn't really have concepts, would we? Hate speech and hate crimes are pretty clearly defined.

See what I was saying about that good use of the internet? You'd rather be here trying to prove me wrong rather that spending the time by yourself finding out why you're wrong.

[dang]

Can you please not do flamewars on HN? They break the guidelines and lead other people to post worse. We're trying to avoid that downward spiral.

I realize you didn't start it, but guilt amortizes out pretty evenly once people start going at it like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html