If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
(Since someone is now about to accuse me of stealth Brexit sideage—no, this is just about the tiny business of moderating an internet forum, and that is all.)
I don't lightly ban a 7-year-old account, but (a) we've warned you many times:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22976700 (April 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20912638 (Sept 2019)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20477028 (July 2019)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19765448 (April 2019)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865589 (Aug 2018)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17623237 (July 2018)
... and (b) you've broken the site guidelines repeatedly lately.
HN exists (partially) to surface interesting news and foster discussions of that news - flamebait is never interesting and it doesn't lead to interesting discussions. We of the internet discovered, during the usenet days, that reducing a conversation to a shouting match is boring - so to promote a more healthy dialog HN specifically removes inflammatory comments unless they bring an interesting topic to light (and even then it's just nicer to communicate in a polite manner) - as this is the goal for this private forum it's completely within its right to restrict discussions that go against that goal and restrict users that repeatedly violate that goal. The internet is a large place and there are plenty of other forums that cater to other forms of expression - the first amendment exists primarily to make it illegal for the government to say such places can't exist - it doesn't obligate all places to act in such a manner nor mandate the existence of such places.
Private entities are allowed to do whatever they want with their platform regarding speech. Twitter, HN, etc. are not obligated to give everyone a megaphone.
There's no way you don't know this already. It comes up every week.
It has been co-opted fairly recently -by some- to mean that no one can silence you anywhere. This is a new interpretation, and unrelated to the USA constitutional right to free speech.
This has never been the case. If you say something offensive to me in my house, I can rightfully remove you. You can continue to say the thing somewhere else, just not in a private house.
Hacker News -in this instance- is a private house. If they allowed unlimited free speech, they would have to allow personal attacks, spam, off-topic submissions, etc... Part of the value of HN is that the speech IS NOT free.
You and I can come here and trust that the conversations will meet a standard, banning people who flagrantly abuse that standard is also a form of free speech.
edit: after seeing your edit, it looks like this is a disingenuous question intended to start a flamewar. If that isn't your intention, you should be careful about how you phrase things.
This is meta navel-gazing and is generally not considered on-topic or useful here. That's probably the main reason for the downvotes.
To try to answer the question though, since we're already here:
There are two (at least two) definitions of "free speech" in the US. The "strict" one related to the Constitutional principle enshrined in the 1st Amendment which basically means that the government can't make certain speech illegal and then put you in jail or otherwise punish you for what you say. For better or worse, the courts have generally ruled that there are limits to that though, hence the old saw about "yelling fire in a crowded theatre".
Beyond that, some people look at free speech in a colloquial sense as meaning something like "I can say anything I want, anywhere I want, anytime I want, and nobody can interfere in any way with my doing so". This would mean, for example, that a private web-forum like HN banning an account could be seen as a violation of "free speech". This is not even close to a universally accepted definition, but at this point I guess we could say it's close to being "widely adopted" at worst.
I think most Americans though, accept that as an individual no one of us has standing to compel another individual, or private organization, to assist in transmitting, propagating, relaying, or distributing our speech. So HN banning an account may be distasteful to some people, but it's not a violation of the principle of "Free Speech".
YMMV.
Likewise, I would caution you about your own phrasing, particularly << So, there--the enlightened, FREE Western man or woman or "it", please tell me, is your freedom of speech an illusion and only applicable to Moslems? >>
You have had your question answered thoroughly, but you have escalated to examples that have already been explained (in one sentence: private companies can choose what to publish (Hebdo) and what not to publish (HN, Twitter) without government interference), and chosen a phrasing that is generally acknowledged to be insulting to non-gender conforming individuals.
This isn't a debate in intellectual good faith.
I've unbanned you now. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and mitigate the ways that you've been breaking the rules, that would be helpful so we don't end up in this boat again.
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That may be, but you still have to follow the rules. You broke them here, have broken them elsewhere, we've warned you many times, and I've just told you how to get unbanned if you want to.
The answer to your question is that HN is just a specific type of web forum a specific set of rules. It's not an anything-goes place and never has been, and it's hardly the "western world".
Who decides whether the guidelines are fair? well, that has to be someone's job and it happens to be my job, so for now it's I who decide.
Since you've broken them badly in all kinds of places recently:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32671575
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32660805
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32659189
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32648075
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32646308
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32628649
(and that's just a few examples), I've banned your account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
I realize there's a critique of gardeners which argues that nobody should ever pull weeds, or even label any plant a weed—but I think most people come here for the flowers, and for that there needs to be a shit-ton of weed-pulling.
people who do nothing but shout their arguments without engaging in good natured discussion are therefore equally not welcome. as a community we need the ability to stop those people from derailing our discussions.
the problem with flaimbait is that it is that it motivates people who like to shout. in a perfect community where noone engages in shouting matches, flaimbait would be unable to start any fights. it would therefore be harmless and ignored. but rarely is a community perfect, and so it is helpful to remind people to not do that.
to know why this particular comment was flaimbait it may be necessary to learn more about the topic and what kind of responses it draws out. understanding this is the job of the moderators. and while the moderators aren't perfect either, they are doing a god job so far, and instead of rejecting particular moderation actions it would be better to find different, less controversial ways to approach the topic in question, which in this case surely did happen. the topic brought up by the banned account has been discussed on this site multiple times in a more civilized form.
right here we have an example of an engaged civilized discussion. this is as it should be, however it is off topic, so people would still be in their right to downvote all of the comments in this subthread, including mine. we can and should have this discussion, but not here where the topic is the death of the british queen and not freedom of speech.
The problem is, the mods at Twitter may have a disagreement with a user and ban them arbitrarily, like they did with Peterson. Pretty soon, you will not be able to read anything except what appeals to the Twitter mods. Your thinking will be forced and re-defined and you won't be able to say what you think, because of the repercussions.
[...]
In a world where you can only say what you are allowed to say, people will stop thinking and everybody will say similar things. I hardly call that "freedom" and "pursuit of happiness".
i agree with your general sentiment, which is why i pointed out the difference of how germany treats its freedom of opinion. a few years ago a new law was enacted that requires the swift removal of online hate speech and one of the first people blocked because that law was someone making anti-muslim comments. so no, there is no allowed hate speech there.
the difficulty is to figure out what is to be considered hate speech and what isn't. some of that we may have to learn through trial and error.
the new law is controversial because it forces companies to act on mere notification without a court order. which, while considered normal in the US, is not how germans like to do things.
It's pretty sad because people here come from different cultures and different personalities, and some people just naturally express themselves more assertively, cynically or provocatively.
Some people prefer hypocrisy and softened words and respect for others, while others prefer getting a clear point across, and using cynicism and exaggeration are valid tools for that.
Looking at previous posts of this person, he's clearly naturally cynical. Does that merit ban? Should all cynical people walk on the tips of their toes in HN to avoid "flamebait" ?
In the name of protecting those easily offendable, we're becoming intolerant of those who don't understand subtle nuances. Or those that just have to respond. Or those coming from cultures with naturally less tact.
This poster didn't even open up the problematic subject himself but responded to someone else.
It absolutely isn't when that expression is Correct™. You can blather about Brexit horrible and its voters are deluded or selfish, but you have to tread carefully if you voice the opinion that the EU is not roses or Brexit is the better alternative. You must be very polite and non-confrontational about it.
Same as covid. You could rant and rave about anybody questioning the ever-changing official narrative and denounce them as science deniers and selfish, and that was pretty well tolerated. Asking any questions or expressing any doubt would have to be done extremely carefully again.
Same as any topic. This is better than most places I've found though. At least you can be in the minority, question authority, and have "wrong" opinions about many (not all) things. You are definitely not afforded the same privilege as others though. Which shouldn't be a surprise, you have to learn to read a room, especially a room in somebody else's house.
The EU is not without a great many issues, notably the weakness is the central banking mechanisms of the EU/Euro - and the Euro in inseparable from the EU, and tbh, kinda endemic of the issues with the EU. It's an almost country, its missing the accountability of a full country, but still has some sovereign powers. I think the flaws in the EU are fixable, but not without making it look more like a democratic supranational government.
However, for all of the EU's flaws - the UK is hurting now, largely because of Brexit - who knows, in 50 years it may turn out for the best. But I honestly suspect not - only time will tell.
I do think the banned comment was the tired, tiresome kind of thing that people who feel passionately seem to find a way to shoehorn into discussions where they are off topic or add nothing substantive. And I think the comment they replied to was as well.
I don't really see much difference, other than the nature of the opinion. Yes the banned poster did address their parent specifically, but... really the parent put out their opinion about a bunch of things, if that is substantive then it should invite questions or disagreements so addressing them on the topic of their opinions is appropriate, surely.
No disagreement there, the glib angry stuff people insert into a conversation tend to flatten all reasonable conversation into vitriolic bursts of outrage or anger.
The expected value of a post includes the subthreads that it generates: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... You can't just evaluate each comment atomically and then sum up the values of the atoms.
This is the real reason for the dynamics that you and throwawaylinux are talking about—not cultural or ideological bias by the mods. That's just the reason people tend to reach for because it's simpler and feels like it must be the reason.
We do what we can to mitigate such effects but there's only so much we can do. In the end, this is one big community system and people are responsible for the effects they have on it. That's one of the more counterintuitive and little-noticed aspects of how things work here.
Here are a couple of older comments explaining more about this, in case anyone wants more.
But no I think it's even simpler and it's not about what should be. People are generally fairly close minded and are easily upset by hearing about opinions contrary to their own. That's it. It's just the human condition.