> If you read my original comment you'll see I am not actually calling for censorship. I am calling for any developers responsible for providing Gab with technical assistance to re-evaluate what they are doing with their skills. It's a matter of professional ethics and it matters quite a bit to me. If they are helping Gab in any capacity they either agree with the content on it, or are taking a cynical payday. Either way its repulsive and it needs to be called out.

You ARE calling for censorship. It's no less censorship just because it's developers doing the censorship instead of governments.

> While we are on the subject of censorship: yes people with vile viewpoints exist. Yes they have a right to express those viewpoints. NO a platform does not have to help them spread said viewpoints. I would like to remind you that Gab is a _business_, not a government. They are under no obligation to honor the 1st amendment.

The thing about unalienable human rights is that they are UNALIENABLE. The right to free speech doesn't simply go away when you put a business in charge.

I agree that the first amendment doesn't apply to businesses, and this is one of the largest reasons that we should be concerned about the increasing control that businesses have over the most influential of our communications platforms. This how free speech dies--all mainstream communications are moved onto corporate platforms where free speech isn't protected, and then opponents of free speech call for censoring views they disagree with.

You seem to be under the misconception that free speech is only important because of the first amendment, but the opposite is true. The first amendment is only important because it protects free speech, which is what really matters.

> It's no different than places like Hacker News which heavily moderates its content.

It's different because Hacker News purports to be a forum for specific topics, rather than a general communications platform like Gab or Twitter.

> Codes of conduct exist for a reason and it is to protect the vulnerable. If you don't feel that deeply in your bones it's likely because you aren't a member of a demographic that is under threat.

And here we get to the crux of what you completely ignored in my previous post: the censorship you're demanding DOESN'T PROTECT THE VULNERABLE. It just doesn't work. The people who hold racist, nazi, sexist, violent, etc. viewpoints don't simply disappear because you censor them. They still exist, and censoring them merely drives them together, into more unified communities, since they can't talk to anyone else. We lose the opportunity to talk to them, and change their minds. The censorship you're demanding is not the solution to to the division in our culture, it's the CAUSE of the division in our culture.

When you call for censorship, you're opening Pandora's box. Maybe today you can successfully censor Nazis, but only a few short decades ago, Nazis were in power and censoring other people. Censorship doesn't benefit the right ideas, it benefits the ideas that are in power, and the ideas that are in power aren't always right. Before you throw away free speech and call for censorship, consider that free speech allows YOU to say what YOU'RE saying, and in the future it may be YOUR ideas that are censored.