It is the very definition of censorship.

And one man's "harmful communication" is another woman's useful communication.

Since your comment is egregiously wrong and, in my opinion, harmful, I'm going to delete it so that it doesn't mislead people about the harms of censorship.

See where I'm going with this?

I say my opinion, you present your side, and we can debate, or move on, but we have both had our say (albeit, at varying shades of grey on HackerNews ;)

The notion of "harmful tweets" is a very 2020s phenomenon but the concept goes back thousands of years. There's a reason our Bill of Rights is strongly inspired by Voltaire, Descartes, and other (then) modern thinkers.

"I disagree with what you say, but I will give my life for your right to say it."

It feels as though we've backslid from that ideal.

It’s pretty simple, really.

“I hate Bob” is fine.

“Bob should die” isn’t.

Some tweets don’t need to exist because it might lead Bob to be killed, especially when said by someone with a cult-like following.

"Bob should die" should be allowed to exist and is. It can be said jokingly, yes it's bad taste but not credible.

"Bob, I am coming to kill you" or "Bob I'll kill you if you don't do X for me" a court would say is probably a credible threat, which is already illegal.

Why do we want to shift the responsibility of deciding how to police speech to private companies?

Sticks & stones.

Jokes aren’t included.

However some jokes already are illegal or at the very least will get you in trouble, for example there’s one word you can’t joke about in airports.

My point was credible threatening speech is already illegal in America.

Another point would be who decides what is or isn't a joke or hateful?

Do you want the companies to decide what the correct speech is, would you like a government panel to police speech?

Currently, I like illegal speech being the only rule because it gets murky otherwise.

If this were your platform and its T&C explicitely said that harmful content is not allowed, in my opinion it’d perfectly fine that you delete a comment you deem harmful.

> "I disagree with what you say, but I will give my life for your right to say it."

FYI none of the people you cited ever said that. This is a 1906 quote by Evelyn Beatrice Hall that has been misattributed to Voltaire.

I want to agree with your argument. But your point that this is censorship is so off base. By definition, it's just not.

Censorship can be performed by private companies. From Wikipedia:

“Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.”

Are you being purposefully obtuse, or do you actually believe that HN wrote your comment?

Your stance is effectively that social media sites are publishers instead of platforms. This is my opinion as well, but it carries with it liability. Unfortunately, they currently are immune to such liability while being able to choose who can say what.

If they want the protections the phone company gets, they need to act more like the phone company.

It's not really. You can disagree with something but still not be responsible for it and carry it on your properties. You can also disagree with it and not carry it.

I can even prove it.

That's how it works. Right. Now.

Control. Trump is not controlled by Twitter. He is controlled by the government just like the rest of the US. A school, they control the children, and they have a limited control over the child's free speech. Your job, possibly a private institution, has control over you. They can censor you with the power they have.

We need the 1A because we don't get to choose our government, we do get to choose our internet messaging platforms and they choose to work with us.