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You are moving the goal post but if you are really so ill-informed about this issue, I will go ahead and give you an example:

If a well funded group of people are publishing information about a minority group in order to incite and justify genocide, like what we have seen happen on Facebook in Myanmar, I think the rights of the people being massacred should trump the rights of the genocidal's free speech.

Is that argument dumb or evil?




> Is that argument dumb or evil?

As a pro-free-speech advocate, I think that argument is important and smart and good.

Free speech does have disadvantages, and those disadvantages can have serious consequences.

The attempt to hand-wave those disadvantages away with "but enough people will just be perfectly rational and care about truth, and then all those good people who love truth will prevent genocide!" is... extraordinarily naive.

Whether to support free speech is a question of weighing advantages and disadvantages. I happen to think the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. But if you seriously can't see any of the disadvantages, and can't empathize with a person who reasons that those disadvantages outweigh the advantages, then you're probably not thinking clearly enough.


"But what if the genociders are right?"


Saying "but what if the gays are not that bad" 70 years ago would get you labelled a lot of things and censored. Same thing happens now in certain countries.


So your response is "But what if the genociders are right?", but unironically.





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