[tux1968]

For some definition of "works" since the analysis doesn't consider unintended effects or potential adverse long-term consequences. This all seems joyful while the technique is being applied to those with whom we disagree, less so once the technique has been turned on you yourself.

Defending free speech means defending those we disagree with, and maybe even hate.

[OmarIsmail]

I think it's pretty safe to say that child porn would run a lot more rampant if it could be easily shared without consequence?

I understand that there's a different level of consequence we're talking about here (legal vs comment deletion) but how we treat child porn is the extreme for intolerance and I think it's safe to say child porn is less than it would be in the more "tolerant" alternative. And I actually do mean think, I don't have evidence, and I don't know, so if there's evidence otherwise that some society accepted child porn with the caveat of "this is bad" always being placed beside it and then saw it's usage and distribution drop I would find that pretty damn compelling case.

I would point to other comparables though. What causes a decrease in smoking? Did putting health warning labels on cigarette boxes decrease smoking? How did that compare to banning commercials and removing indoor smoking?

[leibwiht]

Ideological convictions are not the same as smoking or child porn. Proving that smoking is wrong is easy. Proving that an entire ideology is wrong is not even possible, because "right" and "wrong" in this sense are subjective - they are relative to a specific person with specific interests. You might think "well obviously 'right' is whatever is the best for the most people", but should you really always prioritize the interests of the group as a whole over its constituent parts? For example, should you suppress Tibetian/black/white/Uyghur/etc nationalism because secession movements are against the interests of their host nations? Your condescension is mind-boggling, putting a system of ideas on the same level as satisfying base desires in an antisocial way is ridiculous.

[snowwrestler]

Deplatforming is about deciding which ideas are granted resources (pushed above the cultural baseline), not who is punished for speaking (pushed below the cultural baseline).

People without platforms are still free to speak. If dang banned me from HN I could still go stand on the corner and read my posts aloud and no one would arrest me.

Free speech does not mean I'm entitled to someone else's platform.

[commandlinefan]

You're changing the argument, though (in fact, you're completely inverting it). The discussion _here_ is whether or not tech companies should be forced to police hate speech. You're trying to conflate that into whether or not they should be allowed to.

[snowwrestler]

This sub-thread is about whether de-platforming (voluntary or otherwise) works to limit objectionable content. That's what the Motherboard article above me is about.

[snowwrestler]

I have to admit it's pretty funny that I'm getting downvoted to gray.

Am I being censored or deplatformed? ;-)

I'll see myself to the corner...

[gaius]

Free speech does not mean I'm entitled to someone else's platform.

But if a platform wants to be a "common carrier" and not a publisher with all the responsibilities thereof, it doesn't get to make the distinction, so actually in a very real sense, you are entitled to use the platform of anyone who wants to be a common carrier, by definition.

If you send something controversial via USPS, they don't have any liability for it, and only in very exceptional circumstances would it be intercepted in transit. If they were responsible for everything they carried, the postal service would look very, very different. If it's illegal you can be busted at either end but the postal service itself doesn't care.

[mistermann]

> Free speech does not mean I'm entitled to someone else's platform.

You're thinking of the first amendment, there is a nuanced difference between that and the general principle of free speech.

I'll assume you happened to not be aware of this, but there are lots of people online who refuse to acknowledge that difference and continue to spout the "entitled to someone else's platform" persuasion meme, which is kind of what this whole discussion is about: power, or altering the course of future events. If one's ideas & principles are sound, disingenuously censoring opposing ideas shouldn't be necessary. I believe many pro-censorship people know this explicitly (but would never speak it out loud) and others "sense" it subconsciously.

[jshevek]

(Edit: I agree with everything else you're saying.)

Is the difference between the First Amendment and the moral principle of free speech really that nuanced?

It seems to me one has to be thinking strictly in terms of a single country, a single period of human history, a single document in order to conflate the First Amendment with the moral principle of freedom of speech. This is a very narrow view.

[mistermann]

> Is the difference between the First Amendment and the moral principle of free speech really that nuanced?

It depends if you're trying to win elections or internet arguments, or to ensure a healthy marketplace of diverse ideas exists, because that is the best way we know of to find the best solutions to problems. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube are where modern people "congregate" and get their "information". Cutting someone off of these platforms dramatically lowers the chances that anyone will hear them, that's the entire point of the action. Claims that dismiss this as no problem "because someone else's platform" are not just saying nothing illegal has happened, they are also essentially saying a free marketplace of ideas is not valuable. This is a very new development in western countries, and it's pretty easy to see how far gone most people are already, even on more intelligent forums like this. Partisan politics trump almost everything on certain topics, even one as important as this.