Comment by RoyGBivCap
2 years ago
>There will always be people who just want to show up in a space and act like an asshole, then cry "censorship" when they are asked to leave.
Who is an asshole is an opinion. And no one likes being censored. One man's hate speech is another man's basic truism. It's why there is no federal law in America against "hate speech" because there's no objective way to classify it. Your disdain for people who disagree with you says nothing about them and a great deal about you.
I don't have much faith that there are people who value true "free speech" these days. I think the term "free speech" is just a rallying cry to allow what I want to say and prevent others from saying things that contradict my views.
Elon "free speech" Musk recently announced that "cis" is a slur on Twitter but that "deadnaming" trans people isn't, but this is very much an opinion derived from a specific world view and now he is imposing that across the board. Okay, sure, that is his right, he owns the place. But please drop the "free speech" talk when really you just want to elevate your preferred viewpoint over alternatives.
It's an opinion... but there is still a somewhat rough sort-of-consensus. It's not what you say; it's how you say it. It's how you treat other people.
> Your disdain for people who disagree with you says nothing about them and a great deal about you.
You totally miss the point. It's not that they say things that people disagree with. It's that they're being a jerk. And then, often, when they get booted, they say "you censor people who disagree!" No, we don't. We get rid of jerks because they're being jerks, not because of their ideas.
>It's that they're being a jerk.
People define others whose opinions they don't share as "being a jerk" when they're just saying something they don't like, all the time.
> It's why there is no federal law in America against "hate speech" because there's no objective way to classify it.
I actually think there is an objective way of classifying certain undesirable behaviors. In my own communities, we don't allow comments or content that denigrates other people based on their immutable personal characteristics. These would be things like race, nationality, or sexual orientation. These are attributes people are born with, and to treat anyone unfairly for not being born with the right values assigned to the attributes is fundamentally wrong.
But ultimately that doesn't matter. The reason we don't have federal laws against hate speech is because we as a society have decided it is not the government's place to tell people what they can or cannot say, regardless of how abhorrent we may find some of that speech. And this is a position I will vehemently defend.
However, a guy running an internet forum is not the government. The same expectations and rules do not apply to them, because nobody is forced to live under their regime. Ergo, it is not unrealistic for individual communities to form and enforce their own social code of conduct. What people in community A consider "asshole" behavior may not align with the beliefs of community B, and that is perfectly fine, because nobody is forced to engage with either. People shoose which online communities they want to engage with. People don't choose what country they are born in.