Comment by rixed

5 months ago

It doesn't have to be national threat. Social media can be used by small organisations or even sufficiently motivated individuals to easily spread lies and slanders against individuals or group and it's close to impossible to prevent (I've been fighting some trolls threatening a group of friends on Facebook lately, and I can attest how much the algorithm favor hate speach over reason)

That's a non sequitur. Your personal troubles are irrelevant when it comes to public policy, social media, and the fundamental human right of free expression. While I deplore hate speech, it's existence doesn't justify censorship.

  • It is of course subjective. For you hate speech does not justify censorship but for me it does. Probably because we make different risk assessments: you might expect hate speech to have no consequences in general and censorship to lead to authoritarianism, whereas I expect hate speech to have actual consequences on people life that are worse and more likely than authoritarianism. When I think about censorship and authoritarianism, I think about having to hide, but when I think about hate speech I picture war propaganda and genocides.