This xkcd comic didn't age well: https://xkcd.com/1357/. Liberals used to cheerfully link to this whenever a conservative was deplatformed. I don't think they'll trot out this xkcd anymore when their favored people are being censored.
Nope, it's still a great illustrative comic. The people that disagree with the censorship are the ones showing Zoom the door. It's all individual choice, from Zoom and from those who agree / disagree.
I don't agree with Zoom's censorship because I don't agree with China's laws. But I'm not in China, so I have the luxury of expressing my opinion about pretty much anything. Zoom, having operations in China, chose their path. Fine with me, it just means Zoom are lower down my list. That's precisely the scenario depicted in the comic.
This has always been a really stupid comic. I like most of Randal Munroe's work, but this one has always rubbed me the wrong way.
But then again, Americans are always conflating the principe of free speech with your first amendment.
Exluding private companies from free speech discussions has no real use when they have monopolies or oligopolies, and your websites keep getting shit down because people are complaining to your ISP about content, or when payment services such as Visa and Mastercard refuse to do business with you.
Private company does not reduce their client base by itself . Either way it's outside pressure, by vocal minority , in case of youtube/twitter , or powerful minority, in case of zoom.
Either way it's bad
Is there an objective way of distinguishing between an activist and a bigot? The CCP can just say that they consider this activist to be a bigot.
Internet platforms should never have been in the business of censorship. Unfortunately, liberals encouraged them to censor their political opponents for short term gain. The result is sad but predictable. Any speech that offends someone powerful is now subject to possible censorship.
The easiest distinction between activism and bigotry is to tolerate everything except intolerance itself. Activists mostly fight for more rights/freedom, and bigots mostly look to prevent that. It's not a perfect boundary, but I've found it works well for the significant majority of cases.
I'm surprised why hating on America is fashionable in HN. If this hatred was directed against countries like France or Germany it would be immediately shut down as "nationalist flamewar."
I'd also like to point out that the US has a higher GDP per capita than most European countries and more Europeans immigrate to the US than the reverse. If US is as bad as you say then why does that happen?
USA is rich at the moment since the dollar is extremely strong, its GDP per capita wouldn't look so good if it went down to 2009 levels again.
USA is an attractive emigration target since it is the biggest country which speaks the lingua franca, you see all English speaking countries enjoying similar advantages. This also naturally helps with university prestige and startup success.
This comment is unnecessarily antagonistic. The government here doesn't intrude as much on private employment contracts as in Europe. Maybe as a result the salaries in the US are much higher and unemployment rate over time also much lower.
Karl Popper was talking about intolerance as in a group who resort to violent actions against another group (e.g. killing people for making cartoons). Merely expressing an opinion is never intolerance. Karl Popper, a lifelong supporter of free speech, must be turning over in his grave to know that his opinions are now being used to stifle speech.
Also who gets to define who is intolerant? Chinese government will surely say that the Hong Kong protesters are intolerant. Does it make it okay to censor them?
“In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”
I completely agree that opposing views that can be argued against rationally should always be allowed. But we were talking about literal nazis who advocate (and act upon) VIOLENT intolerance.
Free speech only for political mainstream is political mainstream speech, not free speech. E.g. completely open borders and unrestricted immigration is surely outside the American political mainstream, is it okay to ban any discussion of it?
When conservatives were banned en masse the liberals cheered. Their argument was that censoring by private companies was totally acceptable. Now that their preferred positions are being censored they've suddenly rediscovered the value of free speech. I hope they learn the lesson from this - free speech is too precious a right to be given up just to shut down your opponent. If your opponents are censored today, you'll surely be tomorrow.
The racism is actually shown by Kashmiri Muslims who ethnically cleansed Kashmiri Hindus. Hundreds of thousands of Hindus were forced to leave the Kashmir Valley.[1] Hundreds of Hindu temples were destroyed.[2][3] Even now they're forcing people from other Indian states to leave.[4]
If the behavior of Indian forces is really as bad as it is claimed then why no large scale migration of Kashmiri Muslims happened like it happened for Kashmiri Hindus or Rohingyas[5]?
How can the parent topic be something to do with the topic but this comment is not? How can one talk about the Kashmir conflict without discussing it's history? There's regularly discussions about various political/controversial topics in HN without them getting shut down. You are really showing your bias here, dang.
The parent comment had at least a tenuous connection to the topic of internet shutdowns, while yours became unhinged from that completely and was only about the politics of Kashmir. Both were bad, but yours was worse for HN for that reason. This has nothing to do with which sides you and the other person are on. I don't care, nor even look at the comments for that information.
It always feels like the mods are biased. The other side feels the mods are biased the other way. In reality we know nothing about Kashmir; we simply know is that HN is not a place for people to have flamewars about it.
> If the behavior of Indian forces is really as bad as it is claimed then why no large scale migration of Kashmiri Muslims happened like it happened for Kashmiri Hindus or Rohingyas[5]?
A plausible answer (I know not if this is true or not) is that the Indian security forces are preventing people from emigrating. This is why you don't see a massive exodus of Uighurs from Xinjiang, for example.
On topic 4: India is encouraging citizens of other states to leave.
On topic 2,3: locals were fighting hindu locals mostly in response to political conflicts. This happens everywhere in all of India where temples and mosques get destroyed.
On topic 1, those were insurgents seeking independence.
Much of the violence against locals has been in response to political events. India has found it difficult to maintain peace in kashmir. And so has the kashmir govt.
But like normal terrorism, do not attribute the actions of a few to all people.
Lowering tension and then creating agreement is the only way to ensure peace. The current govt has not done that.
