Queen Elizabeth II has died

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.

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.

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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.