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by jachee 2797 days ago
Asking "who defines hate speech?" is a cop-out. No one ever asks "who defines privacy?" in discussions about that. Hate speech is just as obvious to anyone with a modicum of empathy.

It's plenty easy for people in general (except HN, where no one seems to have any notion of what that could possibly be without a grand arbiter to define it down to the spin of each quark) to recognize hate speech.

Platforms already have frameworks for dealing with bad actors. Hate speech is just like any other abuse of a platform, and should be treated as such.

In short, I have come to realize that I'm never going to convince this highly-privileged audience to genuinely care about actual marginalized people over some imagined, theoretical bogeyman. So this will be my last wasted effort on the subject, here.

1 comments

You're right, you haven't convinced me. Every opportunity everyone has given you to define hate speech, you asy "I don't need to!! It's obvious what hate speech is!!" That's not an acceptable definition. Apparently it's anything you highly disagree with. From talking with you, I'm convinced you would classify a discussion on freedom of speech as hate speech. That scares me. I get the sense you want complete control of all speech just so hate speech dies. In other words, a casual stroll toward tyranny.

I don't think you're examining the problem (and censorship IS a problem) critically. Forgive me, but you are the one copping out. And actually, people do ask "what is privacy." It is being redefined all the time and there are people actively fighting for their definition of it. They at least have a definition.