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by phoe-krk
2529 days ago
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Gab, via their free speech and unwillingness to take down content in general, promotes content that is racist, misogynyst, antifeminist, islamophobic, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, classist, ableist, authoritariant, supremacist, and pretty much anti-intellectual. This is why I oppose that platform. Of course you can have free speech as a person and a code of conduct for your service. You are free to say anything, and your platform has a right to not want to hear or spread anything. |
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There's worlds of difference between hosting content and promoting content. The first is act of broad tolerance, the second is act of encouragement and agreement. This distinction is so important that the very first Amendment of US Constitution is based on it - the US government is obliged to tolerate any religion, but is explicitly forbidden to promote any.
> and your platform has a right to not want to hear or spread anything.
Once platform takes control over the right to hear, it ceases to be a neutral platform and becomes an editorial force. With private companies, it's usually not a problem - even if an unpopular opinion is suppressed and censored on one platform, it can be published on another. With growing monopolization of social networking, and with low-level infrastructure providers being slowly roped into facilitating censorship, this is becoming less and less true. And then we have to remind ourselves - why exactly do we have that First Amendment? If censorship is so good, why not let the government do it - after all, they are the ones that can do it best! Obviously, there are some bad downsides to it. We should remind ourselves from time to time what are those.