I think we basically accomplish the same thing with libel and criminal statutes. There’s a pretty clear line. It’s kept limited to a strict victim-perpetrator dynamic, where you’re not going to get arbitrary speech suppression where no one was harmed.
this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
74 points (84.3% liked)
No Stupid Questions
48180 readers
888 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I think it should. People should me able to say what they want. Even the most stupid or hateful things. They are thinking them anyway, it's not like hat it's going to disappear with a ban on hat speech. Hate speech is the expression of the hateful thinking but not the root.
Ban on hate speech would be like puting on a blind and thinking that you made the sun dissapear.
load more comments
(10 replies)
No, and it's not as bad as americans think, it isn't like something experimental, it's a reality.
"hate speech" gets classified depending on how abstract it is. if you make a fair point to complain about something/somebody else, that's one thing. when you directly attack someone else and call for physical violence against them, that's not free speech, that's a crime and should be forbidden.
I know it already is but should it be?
BDS would seem to suggest otherwise. We care less about actual hatred than criticisms of our ethnostate agendas, but it's through the perceived hatred that cry-bullies thrive. Hate speech laws only make their bullying more effective. Look at Palestinian action in the UK. The lack of these laws protect us more than they would help our political rivals, who would love to see them pass. Billionaires can give a Nazi salute at CPAC with virtually no consequences and no laws were unanimously passed to provide those consequences, whereas BDS was widely adopted. TLDR, you can't trust politicians to tell us what hatred is.
YES. Someone or something will manipulate criteria for what is hate speech OR ANTISEMITISM, all for its convenience to support genocide or BILLIONAIRE to oppress common people. Imagine if it's not protected by laws. Fuck censorship, BURN ISRAEL AND KILL BILLIONAIRE!
No, but it's better to have it protected by free speech than it would be to have governments decide what constitutes hate speech.
I think the government should only regulate credible threats made with the intent to terrify, with the onus on the prosecutor to prove that the threat meets both criteria. This is how the first amendment is already applied, you can say anything short of yelling bomb in an airport or saying you will kill someone while showing them a picture of their house.
That being said, the government should allow private citizens to sue when speech still harms, but does not meet the criteria for a credible threat, such as; libel, slander, hate speech, or particularly dangerous misinformation. However the government should not be allowed to pursue these cases on their own, only act as mediator alongside a jury. The burden must also be on the accuser to demonstrate such harm.
This way there is still a legal path to restricting hate speech, but with a bar so high it's only worth going after the most egregious offenders. If you allow the government to define hate speech, then you open a path to censorship of political opinions. On the other hand, if you regulate nothing, you get people screaming bomb in at airports or trying to convince you that drinking industrial bleach can cure almost everything.
abolish all laws, and let oppressed people deal with hate speech the way they want
Despite interesting debates. I think they all ignore the big issue: the internet.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Nah. It's better when it's not.
I think speech that a reasonable person would know to cause danger to others should be illegal.
Like trying to start a human stampede by yelling "fire" in a crowded stadium should be illegal. Having a club where you talk about how great it'd be if a certain group of people would be murdered, and here are some ways to get away with murder? Should be illegal.
And even if you do think that freedom of speech should include objectively harmful and dangerous speech, Americans need to understand that limits on speech can be placed in more places than not. Private places and businesses can exclude people for things people say. This is much more true on the internet, which is a global space.
No. They should get fined for every statement
No
NO?