Comment by babypuncher

> 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.