It truly is to me as well. It's something you expect nazis to say.

Imagine if the comment was

"The idea that I'm seeing any of these comments arguing to the contrary means HN is already infiltrated by israel and other jewish sympathizing groups."

It's a form of intimidation to silence groups one disagrees with. I can't believe his comment is the most upvoted on HN of all places.

All the pro-censorship people here are behaving no differently than the neo-nazis they claim to hate. Not only that, both groups share the hatred of free speech and the principles which kept the US from being a nazi germany.

Everyone here is forgetting that Nazi Germany happened because germans supported censorship. Censorship allowed a minority group like the nazis to take over the government and silence everyone else. If the germans had an appreciation for free speech back then nazi germany would have been impossible since most germans opposed hitler and the nazi party. Nazi germany happened because of censorship laws which allowed hitler to ban all political parties and all speech he disagreed with.

But nobody learns history or philosophy anymore it seems.

> Whatever happened to "sticks and stones"? Do kids not learn that mantra anymore?

It seems like kids are taking gender studies instead of philosophy and that is frightening. All the arguments are based on emotion rather than reason.

How is this any different than germans throwing chinese tourists in jail for making nazi salutes? Or saudis throwing atheists in jail because they offended their faith. Or russians throwing lgbt people in jail for being "offensive". Or the chinese throwing pro-democracy groups in jail because they find them offensive. Or Larry Flint in jail for distributing offensive pornography.

Anything can be viewed as offensive by anyone. That's why we have free speech rights. To protect ourselves from the offended.

It's sad that the internet ( what I grew up believing was going to be the defender of free speech ) is slowly turning into a tool for censorship. And it's sad that the population of "netizens" who were extremely pro-free speech in the 90s and 00s are turning in favor of censorship as less educated people brainwashed by the pro-censorship media join the internet.

Hint: In other words, neo-nazis have no shot right? So let the neo-nazis have their say.

People like you are so shortsighted that it is bizarre.

We have free speech so that neo-nazis CAN'T win. You start limiting free speech and that's why you have nazi germany.

As my jewish philosophy professor said, nazi germany happened because of censorship. That's why she adamantly supported neo-nazis, kkk, etc having marches and even giving speeches in colleges/forums/etc. And as she said, as long as the most offensive forms of speech are protected, then she knows everyone, including her free speech, is protected.

> The concerted effort to equate Neo Nazis to pornographers, atheists and lgbt people is rather worrying as well.

It's worrying if you don't understand what free speech is about.

The reason why I support free speech for neo-nazis isn't because I agree with them. It's because I don't agree with them.

It's not a matter of just censoring neo-nazis. It's a matter of setting precedence. Okay? If you say it's okay to censor one ideology or one form of speech, then you make a mockery of free speech and nobody has free speech.

If people who disagree with neo-nazis are in power and they censor neo-nazis, then how do we protect ourselves when people who hate porn or gays or atheists are in power? Hmmm? Have you thought about this or are you just going by "emotions"?

The reason why nazi germany happened is because germany had censorship laws. So when hitler won a small minority of votes and he took over the government, he could ban political parties and political speech. If germany had free speech and you couldn't silence the 80% of non-nazis voters, nazi germany could never have happened.

"Saying I support censorship because I find X offensive" is justification for saudis censoring atheists, chinese censoring pro-democracy groups and thais censoring anti-royalty speech.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15035308

Okay? So please take a course in philosophy and try to learn what is really at stake. Because if people like you were in charge in the 1950s, 1960s, etc, we never would have had lgbt movement or atheist movement or the civil rights movement. Because they all would have been censored because they were offensive.

Believe it or not, there was a time in america when lgbt, atheist and civil rights speech was deemed more offensive than nazi speech. Thank god people like you weren't in charge and thank god we had free speech rights so that lgbt, atheists and civil rights groups could speak and express their ideas.

And oddly enough, the pro-censorship people like you are more like nazis since the nazis loved censorship. If you truly are disgusted by nazis, then you should be disgusted by censorship.

Do chinese and germans deserve free speech too or just thais?

Edit: @0xfeba

> That argument is convincing only on the shallowest level.

Only if you are pro-censorship and have no appreciation for principles.

> Germany arrested, fined, and released those tourists.

Are you saying it's good or bad?

> Thailand has given dissidents lengthy prison sentences.

But that's the law.

> How about we worry about Germany's speech laws after we free people who are stuck in retched prisons for 10 years?

How about we worry about both? How about we worry about free speech and principles.

Talk about shallowness. The german law allows for imprisonment for 3 years for nazi salutes. If the chinese got 3 years and the thai got 3 years, would you think both are equally wrong?

You don't seem to have an argument so you are just nitpicking. I don't remember you being outraged that the chinese tourists were arrested. I remember you celebrating german law.

Chinese tourists gets arrested for making silly nazi salutes. Everyone celebrates it because that's german law.

This guy gets arrested for sharing silly articles. Everyone is upset he got arrested for breaking thai law.

FB, GOOG, MSFT, etc all serve billions of people. FB's network has a 1 people more than china.

The pro-censorship crowd wants to distract with "government vs private company" argument but that really doesn't fly when these companies are larger, wealthier and more powerful than a handful of countries.

FB censorship would affect more people than the communist chinese censoring content in china. That is extremely dangerous.

> But more abstractly and insidiously, the value has mutated to give license to liars and manipulators of all kinds.

It never mutated. The point of free speech is to give liars and truthtellers and everyone in between the right to speech. Otherwise, we only have speech from liars.

Free speech exists so that the liars don't get the monopoly on speech. That's everyone can have their say.

It's one of the reasons why we have progress. Imagine if we didn't have free speech. Then abolitionists or civil rights activist or LGBT activist or women's suffragists would never had a right to speak. The people in power would have denied them the right to speak.

Does that also apply to pornography? What about atheism? What about lgbt content?

The concerted effort by the pro-censorship crowd to exploit nazis to promote censorship is rather worrying.

I can't believe this is what social media and the tech industry has become. And I can't believe there are people actually supporting this kind of censorship.

What ever happened to principles? Do people not realize that they are sowing seeds of their own destruction by supporting this kind of arbitrary censorship from large social media companies, CDNs, ISPs, etc.

It's an incredibly terrible move. Such an arbitrary and biased move.

What has happened in the past few years where everyone defended free speech to everyone deciding arbitrary and whimsical censorship is something to be lauded? It feels like someone just flipped a switch and people became pro-censorship.

The tech industry is doing the same the chinese or russians are doing. Justifying censorship for "good/morals/etc".

Hate the nazis all you want but we are hurting ourselves by allow censorship on this level. These peole aren't going away. But now there is terrible precedent where social media/tech/etc can censor whatever they want. It's incredible.

Go read about what lincoln felt about judges.

CEOs of large corporations have no problem doing business with china or israel or russia or any other questionable locations.

> Matt Levine says it best:

Is that the really best?

As a kid, I used to associate google, yahoo and the whole of internet as a bastion of freedom.

It is shocking to me that liberals ( a group I used to identify with until fairly recently ) are the proponents of censorship on the internet and in america. It is shocking to me that google, godaddy and the internet is now synonymous with censorship and propaganda.

Not only is censorship giving daily stormer and neo-nazis more sympathy/credibility, companies like google, godaddy and the liberal movement is making a mockery of liberal principles.

My first philosophy course in college was with a jewish professor. We were discussing free speech and the rights of neo-nazis/kkk/hate groups to free speech. I clearly remember her saying that protecting the rights of neo-nazis/kkk to free speech is the only way to ensure the rights of speech speech for everyone. Free speech rights exist to protect "offensive" speech - whether it be pornography, atheism or hate speech.

What has happened to the tech industry? What has happened to the liberal movement? How did the tech community and the liberal movement get hijacked by anti-free speech and oppressive extremists?

If conservatives are pro-censorship and now liberals are pro-censorship, what future is there for individual rights, free speech and the liberal world order?

Using that logic, should every male feel unwelcomed because of the pro-female activity at google and in corporate america?

Can't damore and every male make the same argument?

Should men feel offended that ycombinator has a "Ask a female engineer" segment but no "Ask a male engineer" segment?

Wow. That's blatant sexist bigotry.

Can you imagine if someone said the same thing about women and what the reaction on HN would be?

He was an athlete who ran in marathons. Never smoked or drank. But cancer still took him. Such a terrible disease.

Almost every major company has been doing it for many years. Especially large companies with tons of cash overseas. Instead of repatriating cash from overseas and paying taxes, corporation borrow against their overseas cash and pay dividends to shareholders or invest.

Imagine if you were APPL and you have $1 billion a in tax haven in europe. You can bring it back to the US and pay 20% in taxes or borrow against that $1 billion and pay 1% in interest.

Edit: @seanmcdirmid

> Except it isn't so much the tax haven in Europe as it is profit stuck in china (their second largest market)

Their second largest market is Europe and has been forever except for a blip in 2015/2016.

And Apple's foreign headquarters is ireland.

Most of apple's overseas profits are registered and kept in europe.

"Apple’s expanding overseas cash pile has drawn scrutiny from the European Commission, which says the company should be paying corporation tax on profits from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and India in Ireland, where it registers those sales."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/05/01/apples-cash...

Ireland and europe are tax havens for many of the silicon valley companies, including google, facebook, etc.