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The Beave | 7 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 Oh. My dude. Yes. I hadn't even thought of taking that tact, and yet... 

Your summary is pretty poignant. It highlights my gut feelings of disgust at the insistence of any sort of "safety" in the system. The only safety I want is keeping my nsec private. And that's on me. 

If you want free speech that is unfettered by state constraints, you WILL be exposed to tons you find gross, extreme, disgusting, etc. You cannot have things both ways. You can build your walked gardens, but that is just highlighting your own inability to overcome what others are foisting on you. Not being boldly yourself in the face of things you can't stand is a personal foible. I won't support that, especially since I know many people really are much stronger than they give themselves credit for.
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f0xr | 7 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +3 
 I feel the same way. Free speech is meaningless if it has exceptions. Nobody objects to speech they agree with, appreciate, or are indifferent to. Free speech only matters in relation to speech you personally disagree with, don't like, find offensive, or feel threatened by. 

The thing about speech, and what makes free speech not only ideal but essential, is that it's... just speech. Not matter what the speech is, the words don't actually do anything. They're just words. If you don't react to the words, it's as if they never happened. Life goes on. 

And it's perfectly fine to disregard speech. You don't have to read a book you don't want to read. You don't have to have a conversation with someone you don't want to talk to. You can literally ignore every word they say, or just turn around and walk away. They can scream at you, and nothing has actually happened. You can just keep walking. 

That's how I personally feel. I find the concept of "hate speech" unrelatable. 

And all that applies ten times more online, where the person is somewhere else on the globe and not even close enough for any possibility of actual harm occuring. You can literally close your eyes or power off the screen and the words are gone. 

If you want to take steps to filter the speech you see and interact with personally, that's fine. That's your privilege. But as soon as you start discussing how the group can do something to limit how many people are exposed to certain speech or how to punish someone for some kind of speech, I'm not on board with that.