CMV: It's scary that the freedom of speech is rapidly being abandoned in favor of the prevention of hate speech.

The answer to both is yes. The metric for whether racists are allowed a voice in discussions isn't your own personal saturation. Moreover it is next to irrelevant whether you think said content was worth keeping around. Censoring content is the lazy, moralistic way out of a situation where you can simply let people decide on what content they like, and thus becomes relevant. I'm not a fan of coontown's content but that does not mean I get to decide other people shouldn't like it as well. I have no issue with Reddit's decision because, as OP stated, it is private, but that's about all there is to its legitimacy - they did it because they can, not because it's fair.

Why do we need to be fair to racists?

Tell me, do you really think turning reddit into a recruiting ground for more racists is a good thing? What if I wanted to turn reddit into a recruiting ground for more people who want to censor racists? How would you feel about that?

Would you jump on board the, "just let the people decide" train?

Oh. Ok then. My bad, I really, really thought I had loaded up CMV.

Oh, okay then. Do you not think bigots are scum? Please educate me on the ways in which racists, sexists, and homophones are good people worthy of respect.

Giving a platform for me or you for the sake of free speech serves no one but me and you to sway others into our lines of thought. It is just mindboggling to me how you cannot understand the double standards in this sentence.

And giving a platform to racists serves no one but racists to sway others into their lines of thought. Hooray! You've justified creating more racists!

I can't even continue this right now. If you think it's a bad thing that I say bad things about racists and other bigots and yet think that they should have every avenue to spread their hatred then fine. I guess you're not the hero racists deserve, but the one they're going to get because...free speech.

So I guess I'll just shut up about censoring them, because censorship is lazy or something.

/r/changemyview Thread Parent