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Hate speech absolutely is protected by the first amendment.
Citation needed. Hate crimes are a thing in US law, but hate speech is not.
What's not protected are threats and incitement to violence. Nazi demonstrations are both.
This is incorrect. Hate speech does not exist in the US on a federal level.
If I key your car and write "go back to [place] you dirty [racial slur]" I will get charged with vandalizing your car and an increased penalty because it's a hate crime.
But if I'm not committing a crime I can go around saying all sorts of hateful things and the 1st amendment protects me. That same sentence from above can be freely said with no legal penalties.
Hate speech is just a load of bullshit pushed by those demanding censorship
Bigotry should be unwelcome everywhere. Sadly, too many platforms give bigots the unfounded impression that they are entitled to have their reprehensible idiotic opinions receive greater respect than spam.
No rational person disagrees that bigotry is a bad thing. The problem is that giving the government the power to regulate what is and isn't "proper speech" has the potential to inevitably shut down non-bigoted speech.
For example let's say we start banning all speech that is racist. The government goes and arrests the Nazis. 15 years later, there is a far-right party in power. There's a popular protest movement from black people - something like BLM.
Government says it's racist and starts arresting people. It doesn't face any legal challenges because we removed freedom of speech and depending on your interpretation of "racist" or "hateful" you can fit almost any speech that is controversial or racially focused into that definition.
We simply can't allow this. The US is fuckin awful on so many fronts. Freedom of speech is one of the precious few things it does well.
In your rush to fiercely defend the rights of nazis and bigots, you didn't notice that I was talking about social media, not the government. Mostly because when nazi shit whines about "censorship" they're usually whining that some platform isn't obligated to host their hate for them.
I was gonna say that the rest of your comment was predicated on making a rebuttal of something I didn't say, but you said something that needs addressing:
Law enforcement was already packing BLM protesters into unmarked vans. Said law enforcement was not wearing any identification. Cops have already done what your nightmare scenario says, without consequence. They sure as fuck choose to protect people waving nazi flags though. Professional courtesy.
You're really willing to assert nazis' rights as being required if we are to protect the rights of the marginalized, while not noticing that in practice nazis have rights that we deny to the marginalized already.
The comment you responded to was talking about hate speech. Hate speech is usually talked about in a legal context - ie European countries and their laws against hate speech. I don't think it fundamentally changes the argument either way though. I think private platforms should be able to ban whatever they'd like to a point. Once you reach a critical mass where you're big enough it becomes almost like a public utility - any lawful speech should be allowed.
Yes, and they were tracking the movement through use of surveillance technology. This isn't news. But they have to do it secretly - it limits their ability to disperse the protests. Now imagine they have the ability to remove any and all support for the movement on social media and openly arrest anyone with a tshirt or what have you. It can get a hell of a lot worse, trust me.
Tell me, are you willing to give Trump the power to control what is and isn't valid speech?
And you're continuing to argue against things I haven't said. You can do that without my continued participation.