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How does one definite hate speech? Who gets to decide? That's my entire problem with this philosophy. Some one or some group feel holy enough to be the arbiters.

Yes, real life is hard and complicated and there's no easy way to decide it. We collectively do the best we can and keep trying to improve. That's just reality. That's why free speech absolutism is naïve- it appeals to our desire for one, simple, always enforceable rule but it's not the way the world works that one simple rule is always the best outcome.




The issue is, that collectively deciding what speech to ban, in a democratic manner, requires discussing that speech openly and publicly. But if the speech is illegal, that discussion can't happen. It's a Catch-22; censorship is incompatible with democracy!


> But if the speech is illegal, that discussion can't happen.

What kind of argument is that ? How do you think they trial people for hate speech ?

Murder is illegal you can still talk about it just don't plot an assassination. Being a nazi is illegal in germany, you can still talk about nazis and nazism

It's not a banned list fo words that immediately put you in jail for uttering them


No, that problem is quite simple to solve by designing the laws appropriately. For example, in the German criminal code, the first basic prerequisite for the applicability of the hate speech ban is that it occurs "in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace", which does not apply when talking about it in legal debates.


Exactly. Everyone acting like we have to have the perfect, be-all-end-all solution to everything or nothing. Our society evolves over time, slowly getting better (and hopefully not regressing).




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