<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>lopmotr</author><text>You seem to have an assumption that people aren&amp;#x27;t competent to decide their own ideas and only follow what they see the most of. That&amp;#x27;s true to a large extent but you&amp;#x27;d have to ban all religious information too if you really meant it.&lt;p&gt;This whole idea that false information needs to be suppressed only became popular after Trump&amp;#x27;s election win. People needed an excuse to explain that because they couldn&amp;#x27;t imagine so many normal reasonable people could possibly vote for him. The only explanation must be that they were not very intelligent and got suckered by external influence. That&amp;#x27;s a pretty arrogant viewpoint and its conclusion - censorship - is pretty naive direct action that ignores their legitimate concerns as well as the obvious horrible side effects that come with censorship. Since when did &amp;quot;these people aren&amp;#x27;t smart enough to take care of themselves, let&amp;#x27;s tell them what to do because we know what&amp;#x27;s best&amp;quot; ever work on a large population who are different from the &amp;quot;bosses&amp;quot;?</text><parent_chain><item><author>pjc50</author><text>&amp;gt; more speech, not less&lt;p&gt;When speech can be automated, this turns into a question of who has the largest promotional bot army. True speech can be drowned out with an infinite array of conflicting lies.</text></item><item><author>srslack</author><text>&amp;gt;the understanding of platforms like Medium had been that they will not censor people for ideological reasons&lt;p&gt;They threw out their integrity as a publishing platform when they updated their ToS a month ago: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=16431403&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=16431403&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, there is not much of a point to their existence when they throw this away, other than being a virtue signalling magazine with unpaid authors that doesn&amp;#x27;t even follow their own vague ToS.&lt;p&gt;This week has been horrible for speech and freedom on the web. But surely a much needed reminder that suppressing speech does not work. The remedy is more speech, not less: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;prospect.org&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;remedy-more-speech&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;prospect.org&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;remedy-more-speech&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Without holding this uncompromising stance, I&amp;#x27;m of the opinion that one cannot call themselves a liberal, in a liberal democracy. It is the cornerstone of a functioning, modern liberal democracy, and the recent trend of this self-censorship by big technology companies is worrying.</text></item><item><author>greyman</author><text>&amp;gt; You are trading freedom for convenience and access to an audience.&lt;p&gt;While this is certainly true, the understanding of platforms like Medium had been that they will not censor people for ideological reasons, or will do so only if the content is clearly illegal or disturbing. If they will freely censor people, there&amp;#x27;s not much point of their existence.</text></item><item><author>smg</author><text>A blanket statement like &amp;#x27;Medium is bad&amp;#x27; does not have enough nuance. Medium is for profit centralized service. You are trading freedom for convenience and access to an audience. It is for you to decide if this tradeoff is profitable.&lt;p&gt;For me, having Medium as the sole repository of my content does not seem like the right tradeoff. Maintaining a static site with a CDN costs less than 5$ a month. Having complete control over the content is far more valuable than the audience that Medium brings. Mirroring posts to Medium can still allow me to reach that audience.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Medium suspended our account and blocked access to all our published stories</title><url>https://mastodon.xyz/@Liberapay/99744324870271197</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>Zak</author><text>Suppressing an automated service disruption or preventing the spread of spam is different from policing content on topical or ideological grounds.&lt;p&gt;Looking at reddit as an example, I don&amp;#x27;t like where this is headed. First they came for pedos and creepers, and I said nothing because ewww. Then they came for assholes and trolls, and I said nothing because good riddance. Now they&amp;#x27;ve come for gun coupons, and I don&amp;#x27;t want to flee to Voat because it&amp;#x27;s dominated by assholes and trolls.</text><parent_chain><item><author>pjc50</author><text>&amp;gt; more speech, not less&lt;p&gt;When speech can be automated, this turns into a question of who has the largest promotional bot army. True speech can be drowned out with an infinite array of conflicting lies.</text></item><item><author>srslack</author><text>&amp;gt;the understanding of platforms like Medium had been that they will not censor people for ideological reasons&lt;p&gt;They threw out their integrity as a publishing platform when they updated their ToS a month ago: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=16431403&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=16431403&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, there is not much of a point to their existence when they throw this away, other than being a virtue signalling magazine with unpaid authors that doesn&amp;#x27;t even follow their own vague ToS.&lt;p&gt;This week has been horrible for speech and freedom on the web. But surely a much needed reminder that suppressing speech does not work. The remedy is more speech, not less: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;prospect.org&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;remedy-more-speech&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;prospect.org&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;remedy-more-speech&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Without holding this uncompromising stance, I&amp;#x27;m of the opinion that one cannot call themselves a liberal, in a liberal democracy. It is the cornerstone of a functioning, modern liberal democracy, and the recent trend of this self-censorship by big technology companies is worrying.</text></item><item><author>greyman</author><text>&amp;gt; You are trading freedom for convenience and access to an audience.&lt;p&gt;While this is certainly true, the understanding of platforms like Medium had been that they will not censor people for ideological reasons, or will do so only if the content is clearly illegal or disturbing. If they will freely censor people, there&amp;#x27;s not much point of their existence.</text></item><item><author>smg</author><text>A blanket statement like &amp;#x27;Medium is bad&amp;#x27; does not have enough nuance. Medium is for profit centralized service. You are trading freedom for convenience and access to an audience. It is for you to decide if this tradeoff is profitable.&lt;p&gt;For me, having Medium as the sole repository of my content does not seem like the right tradeoff. Maintaining a static site with a CDN costs less than 5$ a month. Having complete control over the content is far more valuable than the audience that Medium brings. Mirroring posts to Medium can still allow me to reach that audience.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Medium suspended our account and blocked access to all our published stories</title><url>https://mastodon.xyz/@Liberapay/99744324870271197</url></story>