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286 points saikatsg | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.299s | source
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sashank_1509 ◴[] No.45144744[source]
I’m a big fan of 100% anything goes free speech. But the insanity of how X has implemented this, makes me think twice. In turns out that if you allow completely free speech on a town public square, one of the most popular high engagement speech will be prejudice and hatred towards out-groups (to throw an olive branch to rightists, an outgroup can be immigrants for rightists or nazis for leftists though these days my X feed it is just anti immigrant and I don’t see much brown shirt hysteria ).

Now I’m convinced, free speech maybe works in a technocracy, where the common man has no power and could scream whatever he wants and you could ignore him. In a liberal democracy, probably speech, especially speech to the masses need to be policed, because the ideas that win to the masses are just complete insanity. And so my new leaning goes, I still can’t give up on my free speech prior, I don’t mind all the insane nonsense I see on X but I would mind if someone tries to implement that in real life and the way things go, I think that’s just a matter of time.

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1. mcdeltat ◴[] No.45152889[source]
I think you have a reasonable take and kudos for re-examining your beliefs with new evidence. I also believe in personal freedoms but at the same time god damn it do us humans have a penchant for "freely choosing" things that are terrible for our wellbeing. Freedom lets us live without fear of injust incarceration, but also gave us potentially society-ending things like climate change. I'm starting to believe that many freedoms we have we'd be better off without - however the issue arises of how to implement that when it seems easy for bad actors to abuse broad controls on the masses.