Is it hypocritical for free speech advocates to moderate comments on their own site?

WORD

grumble, grumble

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Are you shivering with:

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Picking sides is for the lazy.

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I hate to repeat myself, but I s’pose this is the place to post the obligatory xkcd:

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He owes you people nothing - NOTHING!

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Damn right, and who the hell wants to visit a place where you can say anything you want?

People that enjoy wading through big stinking mounds of shit, like, neck deep, just slippery enough to mover through but all the solid bits kinda make you seem a bit more bouyant than if it were a lake of diarrhea, like you can almost but not quite grab them and pull yourslef out, so it’s just slow going, staring up into the constant shit rain trying not to get on your lips the filmy green stuff that sits on top of the more solid stuff below .

Then you meet someone else struggling along miserably, sputtering poop and you think you’ve found a compadre and that together you’ll rise above this constant shitstorm that’s drowning all but the tallest,

and what happens?

They climb, kicking and screaming onto your shoulders and take a huge dump right on your face.

Just sayin, freedom yo

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I was going to pick Team Apathy but I realized I just couldn’t be bothered.

Liked. Also… Ewwwww…

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I live in a place like that. Only I surround myself with people who say things I like to hear.

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Yo @codinghorror @sam I got a notification that says

beschizza moved Facebook bans famous war photo because […]

When I click on the notification, Discourse shows me the old topic, and specifically a post I had nothing to do with. I think clicking on the notification is supposed to direct me here instead, and point me to one of my own posts which have been moved here.

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Especially the fair and reasonable words spoken from a place of relative humility.

I believe term and condition 10 applies here, thoroughly: Rules lawyering will fail.

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Aha but that makes you the moderator, at least directly around you.

A place where anyone can say anything they want no matter what is definitely shit lake, aka, Earth. The secret is the one you have, build a boat.

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No one listens to me enough for me to be called a moderator.

Surround yourself with people you like and who like you and you rarely are going to hear anything you don’t want to. I guess like a safe space. I mean, they could go tell me to go fuck myself, but they don’t.

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Actually the shit lake metaphor is probably best for the internet alone. People in real life are almost always tolerable and the ones that aren’t end up on the internet or incarcerated or get elected or something

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Do you really mean that? What kind of hellhole would that be? People you like and who like you aren’t always going to speak and act exactly the way you want to hear and experience.

What you’re describing is apparently one of the commonalities that seem to be the basis for Trump supporters: people who live in places where all their neighbors look like them and have the same lifestyle.

There isn’t only one way to think or be.

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You people are hard to please.

I am just saying that in my network of friends, I rarely hear a “discouraging word”, and my closer friends are even better because we have similar likes and interests and similar ways of thinking.

No, they aren’t programed robots stroking my ego 24/7, but no one has killed one another yet, so we got that going for us. There are no limits to our speech, but I am sure decorum is keeping some of the verbal knives in check. But that really is the point, right? No one really wants to know what everyone really thinks about them. THAT would be hell on earth.

It would be awesome if we all lived in cookie cutter houses next to each other like in Edward Scissorhands.

Of course not. But I doubt you are close friends with people you are diametrically opposed to. And even if you are, I bet then they can still speak frankly about things you don’t agree with. Certainly on my FB feed I hear shit that is off my scale of agreeing with, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still have things in common with these people.

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The right to free speech is different from free speech. In the US, the right to free speech is synonymous with the first amendment, but the rest of us don’t necessarily have that. Can you have your freedom of speech taken away in a state of anarchy where there is no organized government? Yes, because there’s a much broader definition.

The UN defines it as:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Nothing about governments in there, and it’s not legally binding. It’s simply a broad definition of what it means to have freedom of expression within a given context. I’ve never once referred anyone’s “right” to speak freely, just the principal of speaking unhindered and uncensored. The cartoon doesn’t touch on censorship because you can be censored by anyone, including other people and corporations.

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*just the principal of speaking unhindered"

We are each hindered by our responsibility to speak responsibly, from this is derived the privilege of being listened to and possibly even taken seriously!

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Hey friend! The word ‘Handicapped’ is outdated. It’s generally better to use people first terminology. Instead of “the handicapped”, or “handicapped person”, try saying “person with a disability”. This is because a disability is not one’s defining attribute. I think I made a comment about life being harder for people with mental illness. This was from my own first and second hand experience. I’ve certainly never seen it make life easier, and it was an appeal for compassion, not an insult.

I’m not totally sure what this comment means. When I say “arguing” I mean discourse. Discussing different views on a subject, which is usually a good thing. Could you possibly summarize what people have been patiently trying to tell me?

When you say one thing you mean another? I can move goalposts too!

I submit you are not here for discourse or argument, but to fight and possibly, and excuse this conjecture on your motives. boost your ego by playing word games nobody but you can win, as you are the arbiter as well as a contestant in the game you’re having with us. Discussing someone s opinion with them is fine, if they’ve stated it. Summarizing that opinion with a broad brush and then asking them to defend against your painting, that isn’t discourse, it’s a rhetorical game.

straw man and True Scotsman are logical fallacies people use. I think you may be one of those people. If so there is hope for your rehabilitation into polite conversation. But those two terms are a good place to start if you want to understand, truly, the lead balloon effect.

Just my opinion. Amusing on some level. I’d much rather hear you speak about your responsibilities to the community rather than vice versa. That horse goes before the cart, just a reminder.

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