And who is going to ban Trump from Twitter?

They should be able to talk all they want. Right up unto the steps of the gallows.

A lot of people don’t seem to remember Alex Jones getting banned from YouTube in 2018. While rightwing, ultra-MAGA’s were already a thing, they were relatively small compared today. Alex Jones was the first high profile ban from social media and it was like tossing gasoline onto a small bush fire.

You have to remember that Trump did not win the first time because he had an army of fanatics. A lot of other factors were at play; from people still upset about the DNC’s snubbing of Bernie, to people who weren’t fully paying attention (remember, politics used to be boring), to people who voted for Trump simply “for the lols” (don’t discount this last group, any historical account that doesn’t factor in how important internet memes were to getting that man elected is being willfully ignorant) . Die-hard MAGA’s were relatively rare, and usually a source of ridicule.

Until their spokespeople started getting banned from places. It seems so small by today’s standards. People get banned and deplatformed all the time. But Alex Jones was the first real incident, and people saw it as a massive attack on free speech. To his relatively small number of followers, the man had his free speech rights violated by the left-wing news cabal for daring to speak the TRUTH™. Suddenly, all their bullshit was justified.

I’ve always been pretty far-left but I got a deep chill when that happened. I remember remarking to my friends that banning political speech, no matter how full of shit, would only cause problems in the long run, and so it has. Precedent was broken, and the right took it as a declaration of war. I truly believe things would not have gotten nearly as insane as they are had Google not decided to ban him. He deserved it, but they opened a door that couldn’t be shut again; and following this was a couple years of high-profile bans of rightwing figureheads and safe-spaces, all cumulating to the shut down of /r/theDonald in 2020. And the infection, which had been contained to a few small corners of the internet, suddenly exploded.

That’s moderation. When there’s a law against it, that’s censorship.

Frankly a couple of countries have passed laws against Nazi speech and paraphernalia, and after the Nazis plunged the world into the biggest war of all time and murdered 12 million people for their racist ideology, I’m cool with that. If that’s the bar: I can live with it. Murder 12 million, your little club no longer gets to meet.

There have always been rational limits on speech.

What about censoring neo Nazis?

ineffective, disastrous, & still no bueno. better to educate & discredit their weak reasoning.

Censorship is, at best, a band-aid. And they can always find ways around it. The best solution isn’t to block them from view temporarily, but to teach people to evaluate what they say with empathy and critical thinking.

That is, of course, difficult to accomplish. But then again, there’s no easy solutions, only easy excuses.

DNS is not Twitter. Blocking DNS is the equivalent of blocking off the street to the pub. Getting banned from XYZ service is the equivalent of starting shit at the pub and getting thrown out.

That belongs to a terrorist organization. No thanks.

It is real. There is a lot of hypocrisy, particularly among the right. But the difference between Europe and the US is stark.

Compare the criticism of the DMCA or Google’s Content ID to this affair. It’s on completely different levels.

limits on hate speech

which is bullshit: not being merely offended is not a fundamental liberty, no imminent risk of damage to an interest a person has a basic right to results from merely expressing an opinion.

such laws are readily abused

• German repression of political expression: live police suppressing pro-Palestinian protests as anti-semitic, raids & arrests over calling a politician pimmel, internet patrols penalizing vitriol, insults, & satirical images of politicians showing fake quotes
• UK repression of political expression: designate Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, arrest pro-Palestinian protesters, arrest someone over a social media post backing Palestine Action

& ineffective at preventing the ideas & ideologies they oppose from taking root & gaining power. the advocates of repressive policies are only mildly inconvenienced or continue undeterred underground. the German AfD isn’t struggling. far-right parties like Reform UK keep going. so, they fail to keep anyone in check while also undermining basic freedoms.

ability to justify truth & correctness is far more important than attempting to coerce conformity to correctness through dogma, taboo, & censorship. weak ability to justify makes people incompetent defenders & weak believers of correctness. individuals hone justifications & acquire competence to deliberate effectively through practice of vigorous & open deliberation with adversarial positions. censorship, even of incorrect belief, robs both those whose speech is suppressed and their audience of open deliberation they need to justify their beliefs and actions competently & effectively.

only cowards fear words.

I’m all in on no limits for free speech. The government’s job is to provide services, not determine and police morality. And hate speech does not have a concrete definition, so it’s a moving target (the government could define talking shit about Republicans as hate speech and make it illegal, for example). I don’t like Nazis or racism or homophobia, but i like the idea that you are legally allowed to say nazi, racist or homophobic shit and I can hear it and choose to shun you.

I’m glad Canada is there for you with their rules if that makes sense to you. Not everybody has to agree with no limits on free speech – plenty of places to live with mostly free-ish speech laws.

How did free speech help when the Nazis humiliated jews publicly in the 1930s?

How did it help taking “jew-baiters” like Julius Streicher to court during the Weimar Republic? Obviously it didn’t.

It seems obvious that I want the state to prevent hate speech, especially against minorities.

You want the state to act against hate speech coming from the elected head of state. What about that seems like a good plan?

You can’t convince people that Trump is a bad guy, and so you want the state to go after the bad guys. Maybe you can convince people that the state should smash bad guys. It’s not hard. But Trump is in charge of the state and not you. He’ll decide who’s a bad guy.

Explain what ? That I can read and understand ? I am saying that it’s not ok for CEO of company to cancel services in whole country after receiving spam email. It’s not ok to call politicians to support online aggression actions against foreign country and at the same time wash mouth with freedom. But well I know you who praise him. Good luck and keep destroying internet.

In addition, we are considering the following actions: 1) discontinuing the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber security services we are providing the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympics; 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; 3) removing all servers from Italian cities; and 4) terminating all plans to build an Italian Cloudflare office or make any investments in the country.