A staged debate is a curated event. There might be strategic reasons to invite a bigot on stage, but you're certainly not obligated to--in general I think putting reasonable voices next to ignorant ones gives an air of legitimacy to ignorance and drags down the reputation of both the reasonable voices and the curators. So yeah, don't invite a bigot on stage.
Curation is not the same as censorship. Curation is a whitelist where by default you don't let anyone speak, and choose specific people to give voice to--the choice of who to give voice to is in itself an act of free speech which I think should be protected. Newspapers, TV news, staged debates, etc. are all curated venues. I absolutely support boycotting Fox News and its sponsors, for example, because they're a curated venue which has decided that bigotry is the message they want to put out into the world. If the Mother Jones or ProPublica started hiring bigots to write their articles, I'd support boycotting them too--these are curated news sources and I donate to them because I expect them to limit their content to quality content.
A curated venue is different from a communications platform where the default position is to let everyone speak. Letting someone speak on a communications platform doesn't lend legitimacy to their opinions: everyone knows that any idiot can post on Facebook. Censorship is adding a blacklist: the default position is anyone can speak, but you've decided to make an exception to that rule.
The topic of this subthread isn't curated debate in curated venues, it's censorship of debate on social media.
If you want to argue that Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/Instagram/YouTube/HN should be curated venues where only academics are allowed to post on topics they are experts in, then start by showing me which credentials you feel qualify you to debate about human rights. If you actually believe what you're saying, then follow it to its logical conclusion and self-censor.
To be clear, I'm not actually saying you should self-censor--I don't believe that social media should be limited to academics. I'm merely pointing out that you aren't following your own principles.
Curation is not the same as censorship. Curation is a whitelist where by default you don't let anyone speak, and choose specific people to give voice to--the choice of who to give voice to is in itself an act of free speech which I think should be protected. Newspapers, TV news, staged debates, etc. are all curated venues. I absolutely support boycotting Fox News and its sponsors, for example, because they're a curated venue which has decided that bigotry is the message they want to put out into the world. If the Mother Jones or ProPublica started hiring bigots to write their articles, I'd support boycotting them too--these are curated news sources and I donate to them because I expect them to limit their content to quality content.
A curated venue is different from a communications platform where the default position is to let everyone speak. Letting someone speak on a communications platform doesn't lend legitimacy to their opinions: everyone knows that any idiot can post on Facebook. Censorship is adding a blacklist: the default position is anyone can speak, but you've decided to make an exception to that rule.
The topic of this subthread isn't curated debate in curated venues, it's censorship of debate on social media.
If you want to argue that Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/Instagram/YouTube/HN should be curated venues where only academics are allowed to post on topics they are experts in, then start by showing me which credentials you feel qualify you to debate about human rights. If you actually believe what you're saying, then follow it to its logical conclusion and self-censor.
To be clear, I'm not actually saying you should self-censor--I don't believe that social media should be limited to academics. I'm merely pointing out that you aren't following your own principles.