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Taking a stand against content moderation was a fundamental leftist position some years ago...

That said, I absolutely agree that leftist positions do get censored. Even if I currently like to underline my dissociation with its authoritarian excesses and general dishonesty on certain subjects, the problem is a general one.




Unrestricted free speech was always a strange issue. Hitchens' very eloquently presented how control of speech was used to suppress a lot of groups, and he knew about the dangers of radicalization, incitement, hate speech, but considered those negatives acceptable.

However not everyone thinks that it's so great.

I don't know, and it's probably not something we can just settle easily.

It's usually true, that a society cannot simply rely on "laws" to save it, and when the power imbalance get too extreme, then laws won't save anyone anyway. Though it seems having some kind of policy and publicly agreed way to stop serial inciters is not a bad idea. After all information censorship generally happens through claims of potential national security hazards and other gag orders, not by a too wide interpretation of hate speech laws. (But of course human creativity is pretty limitless when it comes to suppressing others.)




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