Comment by silexia
3 days ago
4chan is controversial and often very ugly, but it is one of the few old school message boards that allows free speech left.
Like the ACLU used to do, we should help them stay online and exercising their free speech, even if it is annoying and gross.
As a long time ACLU financial supporter, I could not disagree more. 4chan is not and never was a bastion of free speech. Comparing 4chan to the ACLU is like comparing a toddler smearing shit on a wall to art. To practice free speech requires an intent to express a point of view. 4chan had to point of view and was just a shithole.
> To practice free speech requires an intent to express a point of view
Excellent, now we can ban speech we don’t like by just saying it doesn’t actually express a point of view
You can't yell out in a theatre that there is a fire and cause a stampede.
8 replies →
Absolutely not. Free speech exists just fine on the Internet, evidenced by the fact that a site like 4chan is capable of existing in the first place. We don't have to financially support repulsive communities just to protect their ability to exist.
If 4chan were taken down by government action, I might be inclined to speak up for them in some capacity, as I don't consider that anything 4chan is currently doing illegal, but that's not the situation here. If 4chan dies because it's a poorly-managed shithole with no allies, then we can and should let it die, and rest easy knowing that it wasn't censored, it collapsed under it's own debt.