[everdev]

> we expect all civil exchanges to be treated equally

Define civil :)

Take any hot button issue like guns, abortion, etc. where your stance on one side of the issue can be seen as immoral or life threatening to the other side. Take a passionate / borderline tweet from one side and you'll probably get a 50/50 disagreement on wether or not it's "civil". Now what? Block the tweet? Warn the user? How many people need to complain before it's considered a problem?

Now go a step further and look at the Westboro Baptist Church. They think that they're doing a public good by shaming those who have died (because they believe God punishes sinners and their families with death). They believe it's a sin not to tell the families that the recently deceased is a sinner. They believe they're communicating God's message. Now you'll probably get 99% agreement that it's uncivil. But now what do you do? Silence an unpopular opinion?

The problem is finding out where the line is for defining what's appropriate on a platform and what will be censored. Is it 50% + 1 consensus? 95% consensus? And who gets to decide? The users? The CEO? A board of censors?

These are tricky answers and different countries and companies draw the line in different places. But the devil is always in the details.

It would be nice if everyone agreed on what's civil and what's not, but unfortunately that's not the case.

[mc32]

So the WBC is an extreme case. Obviously it’s problematic. Their tactics are disgusting, and really it’s counter productive to their cause, though they are more like nasty trolls.

But we’re seeing issues where things are not problematic but because people are guilty of thinking “wrong”. If I want to discuss international politics and think we should liberate/invade country X or conversely we should leave country X well alone, I should not get penalized for articulating a point of view.

One thing I don’t understand is, if I follow janeblow@ I should not get offended by her tweets. I have the power to unfollow her, I can block her. I don’t see why people’s reaction id to get janeblow@ suspended.

[everdev]

> think we should liberate/invade country X

There are some people on the right and left that think that advocating for foreign war is problematic and counter productive. Some foreign wars in history have been justified and others have been out of greed or racism.

I think the point is we all draw the line in different places on what speech is appropriate which is why censorship itself is problematic.

[commandlinefan]

> and look at the Westboro Baptist Church.

That’s actually a great example of why viewpoint censorship is a _bad thing_, for everybody, including Twitter, you and me. Look, you and I both know that there are facts that are true that you can’t express for fear of being kicked off of public forums. In fact, even stating that there exist facts that are true but that you can’t express is toeing the line, even though nobody disputes that this is the case. Since you seem to be more or less pro-censorship, I’ll assume that you’re a bit left leaning, so here’s an example that’s suer to make you agree with me: imagine if publishing climate data somehow became (even more) controversial and people sharing (true, undisputed) global temperature readings found themselves being kicked off of discussion forums.

Now we have a situation where we have two sorts of people being deplatformed: the Westboro baptist church and people who think that the world is getting hotter. This paradoxically makes the WBC seem _more reasonable_ by association. Remember, censorship is retroactively self-justified - since it was censored, you don’t know what it is, just that it was something really bad, so it was bad enough to get deleted. We’re better off if anybody says whatever’s on their mind and, if it’s ridiculous, it gets mocked.

Does that leave some people who agree with ridiculous viewpoints anyway, no matter how often or thoroughly they’re debunked? Sure, but there are two possibilities: one, they’re in a small minority in which case they’re harmless or two, they’re actually a majority which suggests that they might actually have a point - and you, representing the intransigent minority, attempting to control them through censorship is EXACTLY why censorship should be opposed.

[everdev]

> Since you seem to be more or less pro-censorship, I’ll assume that you’re a bit left leaning

What gave you that impression? I was raising questions to show that any censorship (or definition of civil discussion) is problematic.

It's a tough problem because bad ideas can lead to bad things, but stopping good ideas can lead to bad things too. If we all agreed on what's good and what's bad this would be easy, but we don't.

I'd much rather live with the consequences of free speech than live with the consequences of censorship. But neither side should project claim it's a utopia.