Any attempt to understand "the users here" as a unit is misguided. Hacker News doesn't have a single opinion on anything. You get a different sub-community showing up for each thread depending on topic and time of day, so the sentiment will always fluctuate from thread to thread.
It's the only perfect system that is achievable and can be what it claims, a space free of censorship. There is no 'only the bad things' that can be censored, as you've illuminated here, different people will have different sensibilities.
In the mean time, however, we can educate ourselves and steel our nerves as we may come across ideas and content we don't agree with or care to be exposed to. As responsible netizens we shouldn't let it affect us to hysterics and cries of censorship, and instead stay away from the places that do. It starts with personal agency and responsibility for yourself and those you're charged with rearing.
I'm glad I got to hear your opinion but the only reason you were able to make it here is because this place is heavily moderated. No popular forums can survive a lack of censorship in any form.
> I remember when the idiots here were congratulating Uber for killing that woman, because her death wouldn't be in vain; it would improve their self-driving software.
We will reach Peak Scientistic Neo-Liberalism on the back of such sacrifices. Progress, profits, enlightenment, efficiency and safety, at any cost.
Cloudflare banned Kiwifarms (this ban is not justified), and Kiwifarms is still running their own servers. Which are ddos'ed by people who don't want others to hear what they say. Some people are thankful that they were able to convince a corporation to remove its fire protection from a server so it could be burned down in peace.
Look, Microsoft is just trying to protect you from bad actors and bad words. Imagine if someone was trying to use minecraft chat to spread the same message that was in kiwifarms. Without Microsoft regulating speech, then those bad actors words may get out to the public. You "can still run your own servers, if you'd like" - but instead of getting ddosed you just will be listed as unsafe.
Kiwi Farms went into the realm of swatting people and trying to get people to kill themselves (with one or two successes).
Of course that being said I fail to understand why more normal remedies couldn’t apply there. Swatting is a felony and hounding someone to suicide is at least very civilly actionable. Why did Cloudflare need to be the police here when regular police or the “Sandy Hook solution” seemed warranted?
Re speech - The government typically does not fare well when they try to restrict a persons speech.
Re Swatting - because there was no proof. The forums actually had a pretty hard policy about anything that appeared to be swatting related and banned users immediately for it. With the forums taking a hard stance against swatting, with proof, why would they have been found liable.
So because nothing was provable or illegal, the internet begged a corporation to remove its fire protection service. Once it was done, to the surprise of literally noone, someone burned it down.
I have trouble reconciling when the community supports corporations policing speech and also complains about it. In my opinion, its based on whether the people like the speech or not. It makes me concerned that the concept of free speech, at least that which I grew up with on the early internet, is no more.
