Mike Dilger on Nostr: I shouldn't just take one side of the issue here. The argument against hate speech is ...

I shouldn't just take one side of the issue here. The argument against hate speech is that it propogates the hateful ideas. And this is true psychologically. Most people, the more they hear something, the more they adopt that view (it is not true among skeptics, but skeptics are a small proportion of society). And so this is a valid argument in favor of supressing hate speech.

But it has to be considered in balance with the other arguments. How much does one person's hateful racist view impact listeners to adopt that view? How much does it depower their anger? How much pushback against the idea is there? In some situations, usually echo chambers, hateful ideas just tend to grow stronger.

But I'm still mssively in favor of drawing legal distinctions at 'actions', not words, because it is far too oppressive and dangerous to start legislating words where there are no clear cut boundaries that prevent the government from going too far, and where interpretation and context matters immensely.