So Censorship is ok in post 2021?

Those who support censorship of any kind are unwittingly helping to give birth to the proverbial dystopian overlords that determine how wealth, information, and dopamine are distributed.

Overreaction creates opportunity for actors that seek to tighten social control.

Take from that what you will, but I for one strongly believe that bad ideas can only be fought by better ideas — not by silencing of any ideas, and certainly not by silence itself. Bad ideas fester in darkness, but will wither in the light.

Just my $0.02

This whole episode has really driven the point home that people are fundamentally tribal - and much of what you believe and feel is right/wrong is determined by which position the 'other' groups are taking. For instance, Glenn Greenwald mentioned that liberals circa 2001 were intensely worried about the No-Fly list, but now people are cheering that MAGA protestors are being put on it with no due process. I've also seen conservatives abandon the idea that private companies should be able to refuse services based on ideology. It's fascinating how malleable people's beliefs can be.

When someone proposes censorship (whether by government or by tech companies), notice that it's never their speech that will be censored. It's always someone else's. It's not even "both yours and mine". It's just someone else's.

That asymmetry should make one question the justifications given for censoring people.

The irony of US companies enjoying Section 230 protections while at the same time punishing other startups such as Parler for not censoring their user content enough, is not lost to me.

"Cutting out a mans tongue does not make him a liar but proves You fear his words"

Are companies that enjoy government protections, contibute vast amounts to political campaigns and count profits in fiat currency stored in government controlled exchanges really private?

Its a symptom of hypercentralized internet, when you complain about facebook/twitter/reddit dictating free speech there is implicit assumption that 'free speech' depends on the mega-platform and there is no alternative. The internet, unlike in cyberpunk dystopias has plenty of alternatives and platforms. If you don't like them, migrate and let the lemmings follow the trends.

When people's "free speech" is to shut down everyone else's free speech because of inciting violence, hate crimes, and the like…removing it is actually upholding the principles of free speech.

In other words, I'll defend your right to say "it"! Er, that is, unless your "it" is that you wish I were dead.

I can't imagine anyone on the old internet agreeing with forcing someone to publish something. Server owner decides - it was that from the beginning. Sometimes there were kicks and bans for no reason whatsoever - that's life.

Can you imagine if a newspaper were obligated to publish your opinions?

Is refusing to do so censorship?

> Previous thread that was flagged for no reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25742866

I was running a poll which was flagged for no reason, “Poll: Do you agree with Amazon, Apple and Google cutting off Parler?” – 136 comments! – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25732809

It is noticeable that there are a lot more articles on /. relating to the current so-called "tech purge" than there are on HN.

The information situation now is more like leaded gasoline than it is "freedom vs censorship", as much as a treatment of that is beyond the pale.

To discover this for yourself you should look at two things:

1. The ads on the local evening newscast on your network affiliate

2. The ads from Taboola that appear on the bottom of every page

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(1) is hate speech that causes TV viewers to hate their fellow viewers, politicians, institutions, etc.

A long time ago there was the story that the media invites people to fantasize that they are in a higher class than themselves and you still see that in magazines like Vouge and the Economist (e.g. all those ads for $15,000 first-class seats)

TV is not like that today. You'd imagine that the viewer doesn't have any money of their own, as all of the ads are about how to spend either a government benefit or health insurance, or how you can get a big payday if you get hit by a car and call William Matar. (You do see ads for car dealers, but if nobody bought a car than nobody would git hit by a car and the ambulance chasers would be out of business.)

In the lead-up to November the air is full of political ads that are entirely hate speech.

I remember seeing an ad in 2010 that I thought was a scam and it turned out in 2018 it really was a scam. But for 8 years everyone was asleep at the switch and let it happen -- a conspicuous display of incompetence that undermines people's trust in the media, government, themselves, human nature, etc.

As for (2) I still see articles to the effect that "Isrealis working for Taboola learned to kill Palestinians with NVIDIA GPUs and now they have a supercomputer cluster that serves personalized ads."

Look at Taboola ads, those crap ads on the bottom of most news web sites and you see the old people with bad skin, scam supplements, car insurance in some town you're not from (a running gag for years), and lately ads for burial vs cremation.

If you are harassed with this for years you are going to think that 80% of your fellow Americans are stupid old people who have no ability to think critically, vote for Trump, etc.

Thus it promotes hate and is "hate speech".

So long as people are in pervasive environment of this kind of communication they're going to naturally hate, fear and mistrust anybody different from them.