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> 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. |
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.