470
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
470 points (81.8% liked)
sh.itjust.works Main Community
7584 readers
1 users here now
Home of the sh.itjust.works instance.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
The people screaming about free speech for bigots & fascists seem to neglect the free speech of the instance owners and admins.
They're doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. Paying for bandwidth and servers. Donating their time to create the software, work out the kinks, and moderate the communities so we don't strangle each other.
From their perspective: Would you want to use your money and time to rebroadcast Nazism or similarly toxic ideology? Because that's what they're being asked, and most of them say "HELL NO!" When the chuds are demanding that these people rebroadcast such crap, it's like they're asking these admins to do a Hitler salute with them.
This is their space. They have free speech rights too. That's what curation is, free speech. You send a message by the choice of messages you rebroadcast or refuse to rebroadcast.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
That can be used by any authoritarian claiming to be the greatest good.
It's great to bully and censor but inevitably ends in subjugation.
That's the types that want this end up in very small circles or simply agreeing with whatever authority sells.
As long as you have clear boundaries as to what's acceptable or not, a population with critical thinking skills will always be able to tell what's going on.
I had this debate with a friend a while back. He said we should tolerate nazi flags because "what if the government decides the pride flag is a hateful flag". Well, the nazi flag (at least coloquially) stands for "Kill all jews", while the pride flag stands for "Be proud of your sexual orientation and gender identity". One of these passes the hate speech/incitement test, the other doesn't.
There just needs to be consistent and well thought out rules in place. If it's the case, I'm not scared of authoritarians using the paradox of tolerance to their advantage because it's so transparent.