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2525 points hownottowrite | 9 comments | | HN request time: 0.407s | source | bottom
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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. colorincorrect ◴[] No.21194265[source]
>These are not incredibly difficult to distinguish between

this is fundamentally misguided. who gets to judge who is the marginalized individual? global geopolitics is more complicated than there being strict good actors and bad actors

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2. hannasanarion ◴[] No.21194328[source]
"Are they being shot at by police, or are they police shooting at people" is a good place to start.
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3. colorincorrect ◴[] No.21194595[source]
some things are not quite as well-defined as that: "whose home land is this" is a common motif you can ask. ask that question towards North Americans, and you might have to say all your land originally belonged to the Native Americans; Canadians are in the process of reconciliation with the Indigenous groups, but speaking as an outsider, it doesn't seem like the reconciliation process can do much justice compared to what they suffered through.
4. anchpop ◴[] No.21194608[source]
That seems like an extremely bad rule of thumb to me. Neo nazis sometimes get into violent confrontations with the police, for example
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5. colorincorrect ◴[] No.21194724{3}[source]
and don't forget the fact that police (by intended function) go after criminals: are you supposing that every obvious criminal that police go after are actually the oppressed one?

well.... maybe you can make that argument.... but i think that is beyond the scope of the original intent.

6. hannasanarion ◴[] No.21194758{3}[source]
Do they? More often I see the police protecting the neonazis, or marching with them out-of-uniform.

The FBI has been warning about white supremacist infiltration of police departments since 2006[1], and nothing has been done about it, because the infiltration is already complete: most cops are at least comfortable with white supremacy. Those who speak out against white supremacy from within police departments get kidnapped and beaten by their colleagues, or left in dangerous situations without backup.[2]

1. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-i...

2. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/414/right-to-remain-silent#...

7. rjf72 ◴[] No.21194799[source]
The problem with this is that context matters. I think we'd probably agree that the most conservative requirement for somebody to discharge a weapon is when he has a reasonable reason to believe his life, or the life of another person, is in danger. So what were the contexts of the shootings? Were they arbitrary, unjustified? Or did the officers have some reasonable justification in fearing for their lives or the lives of others?

Fortunately, unlike in times past, we don't need to rely on hearsay or propaganda. Everybody has their camera out and we can see what's happening, at least most of the time. This [1] is the video of the first shooting. And this [2] is the video of the second and, to my knowledge, final shooting. Do you feel the officers acted disproportionately, abusively, or in an otherwise inappropriate fashion?

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN4MvOrPotk

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHKbe5mAoNo

---

For those concerned the videos are mostly safe-for-life in what is depicted, even if it is somewhat unsettling.

8. chipotle_coyote ◴[] No.21195224[source]
In the general case of offensive speech, we're not usually talking about global geopolitics -- that's a relatively unique feature of this specific case. The premise "there are specific cases where making a judgement call is going to be difficult" is true; that doesn't make the conclusion "therefore, we should never make judgement calls" true.
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9. colorincorrect ◴[] No.21195378[source]
i agree with the conclusion: that we should make judgement, and step up if the occasion requires us to; but i find the general claim that "These are not incredibly difficult to distinguish between" to be very delusional and harming

in the case of offensive speech, i agree that usually we can see what is bad. but without going into detail, i think its also a bit more subtle that