A few days ago I made a post to gauge this community’s opinion on whether it should allow nice comics by bigoted artists. I think we have a consensus.
The majority of comments were very in support of banning comics by artists like Stonetoss and Jago. I heard from queer people who said they’d feel safer if the rules were changed. A lot of people were concerned about this community becoming a “Nazi bar”, the comment expressing that feeling got a LOT of upvotes.
The people against the change had two main arguments: anti-censorship, and personal responsibility. A few people equated active moderation practices with book burning. Nearly all of these “against” comments were downvoted or ratiod, and tended to have a lot of arguments underneath them, while the “pro” comments went uncontested.
On the internet, 10% of people will disagree with just about anything. With that in mind, I think we’ve reached a consensus. The community wants a rule change so that users can’t post inoffensive comics by bigoted artists.
That means no more Jago comics. I see a lot of people in the comments under the Jago posts, getting angry and saying they want this rule change. People aren’t happy with the user who’s posting all the Jago comics.
Mods, this is what we want. Please change the rules and get Jago’s comics outta here.
Freedom of Speech only means that the government cannot censor you.
It has nothing to do with what businesses, individuals, groups, or anyone else does.
When the United States runs a social media, then they can argue that all they want there.
That is just the US legal definition and it is very flawed.
Freedom of speech, more broadly, is the ability to express an opinion without fear of retaliation. This implies constraints on social organizations of all sizes.
Freedom of speech should also be compatible with the paradox of intolerance (unless intolerance is chosen to be socially accepted), which implies censorship at many levels.
The only caution with that is, private companies have a LOT of power and control right now. Easy to argue they shouldn’t, of course.
An example might be Visa enforcing “content guidelines” on any paid content on Steam providing NSFW games. Like, say, any game that acknowledges gay people exist. Payment processors and similar companies have claimed that’s a freedom of speech stance.
But yes, we can definitely keep it simple in forum communities constantly under human enforcement.