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2525 points hownottowrite | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.632s | source
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chipotle_coyote ◴[] No.21193515[source]
A lot of comments here seem to take as a given that banning any offensive speech in any forum leads inexorably to situations like this, where the "offensive speech" is political speech offensive to an authoritarian government. But this implies that it's impossible to distinguish between different kinds of "offensive" speech based on any meaningful criteria whatsoever, and this just seems to be fundamentally incorrect.

(1) Someone in a forum makes an "offensive" comment that's a show of support for political protestors which might anger an authoritarian government that not so incidentally happens to be of a country with a lot of customers of a product the forum supports;

(2) Someone in a forum makes an "offensive" comment that's an insulting attack on other users based on race, and the offensive nature is pretty clear to most people -- at least those who don't agree with the attack -- even if it happens to be prefaced with "I'm not racist, I'm just saying...".

These are not incredibly difficult to distinguish between. The commenter in the first case is supporting a marginalized group; the commenter in the second is attacking one. Punishing the commenter in the first case is kowtowing to an authoritarian government for baldly monetary reasons; punishing the commenter in the second case is showing support for an oppressed group in a way which is probably not going to bring you any financial benefit -- your company's accountants are not going to step in and say "you need to ban Pepe1488 for consistently sounding like a white supremacist because if you don't, it could cost us hundreds of millions of dollars" -- and whose PR benefit is, at the least, debatable. (The people in the oppressed group might love you, but if there is any press coverage whatsoever you are going to be inundated with threats.)

There's a principle involved here which can lead you to boycotting Blizzard, but that principle is "we should support the right of people to protest against their goverment." The principle isn't "you should never ban any offensive speech of any kind at any time because to do so inexorably leads you to taking the side of authoritarian governments." (Use a slippery slope argument once, and you'll use them everywhere.)

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1. xigency ◴[] No.21194208[source]
"The Most Intolerant Wins"

> Let’s go one step further, “Should a society that has elected to be tolerant be intolerant about intolerance?”

> We can answer these points using the minority rule. Yes, an intolerant minority can control and destroy democracy. Actually, as we saw, it will eventually destroy our world.

> So, we need to be more than intolerant with some intolerant minorities.

[0] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

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2. xigency ◴[] No.21194526[source]
It seems that without the article's context, these are controversial points. The word 'minority' here is used to describe a group of people bound by their ideas and opinions.

The minority rule states that the opinions of a few can be projected onto a whole through an emergent property. If a few people do not like to eat spicy food, the whole office might cater mild or bland for an event. An outsider would think that the entire office dislikes spicy food.

If there is a small group of people who think that expressing certain ideas is incorrect, then an entire group might avoid speaking them.

A free society needs to make constant, conscious decisions about what ideas cannot be expressed, because if smaller groups are allowed to make these decisions without review, then all free speech will dry up in a real way.

We should always argue when some group says they don't like hearing certain things. The fact that we are often arguing is a sign of good health for free speech.

3. kerkeslager ◴[] No.21194907[source]
I think a more nuanced essay on this subject is: I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup[1].

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...