Warning: mods in this forum are silencing legitimate discussion

[aronowski]

@Privacc

I take free speech very seriously, otherwise we just going to become Facebook in here.

This historically has already been explained. On the courtesy of @adw:

@adw

I’m not sure why this cognitive bias regarding freedom of speech and censorship as applied to the forum seems to be so pervasive and persistent. Let me be very clear: Censorship is extremely bad when the government does it, and freedom of speech is extremely important as a legal right. However, neither of these things are applicable to private spaces like this discussion forum. It is not possible for us to censor anyone’s free speech, because we are not their government.

The reason it’s bad when a government censors its citizens is because that means the citizens aren’t allowed to speak about the censored topic anywhere in public without risking fines or imprisonment (or worse), but this doesn’t apply to a single-project internet discussion forum that no one is forced to use and to which everyone has nearly-limitless alternatives (in terms of places to “speak”). No one has a right to say whatever they want here. This is not the public square. This is the Qubes OS Forum. If we never “censored” anything here, the forum would be overrun with low-quality posts that contribute little-to-nothing to the project. (Some might say we’re already approaching that point.) Having no intention to “censor” the discussion simply means having no intention to moderate the forum.