The idea that bad people having a voice on social media causes other people to become bad people (often the argument as to why we must defederate from bad servers) is equivalent to:

Thinking violent video games cause people to become violent.

Thinking explicit song lyrics cause people to become criminals

Allowing people to be openly homosexual will cause others to become homosexual

Banning books

@freemo Being exposed to ideas can do harm.

Examples: people purporting to be leftist indulging in war propaganda. Happening right now in germany - they want war.

So, what is the distinguishing criteria, what do we need to stop?

I guess stopping the bad people is out, they do have figured it out enough to have sway.

Not accepting calls to hate might be an idea?

@admitsWrongIfProven You havent actually made the case that being exposed to ideas can do harm. Your example is a bad idea, sure, but you havent made the case that it was exposure to the idea that is the cause rather than the predisposition of the people to draw such conclusions on their own. It is very likely such ideas would largely have developed independently of exposure.

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@freemo You know what kind of idea i mean. There are different kinds.

@admitsWrongIfProven @freemo I disagree with this whole good/bad classification.
Different people have different ideas and blocking people based on their ideas equates to deciding you wish not to have any kind of interaction with those people.
I'd rather share ideas: some times I'm convinced I'm right and other people show me I'm not, other times I can explain people why they're wrong.
I believe it's better to allow conversation to happen; even if the other people say utter bullshit.

Now, this is different from blocking certain things: I'll gladly block things I don't want to see. Such as videos of extremely violent acts or pornography.
Someone claiming the earth is flat, or that covid is a conspiracy or that I should support the war in Ukraine is not something I'd block, as long as there's a person behind it actually believing that stuff. The first two are scientific theories and the third is a moral and economical opinion. I believe it's more likely to increase the amount of people who joins these beliefs by isolating them rather than including them in a larger community where they can get in touch with different people and opinions. You can observe this behavior at large in real communities: it's easier to find people more open to different ideas and opinions in large cities rather than small isolated villages.
I'd argue that it may be nice to block people who are purposefully diffusing fake information, however I'm not sure how you could distinguish them from other people. And, frankly, at that point you might very well block most newspapers.

I believe people are able to think and it's actually good to expose oneself to what other people think. I got into conversations with people who believe the earth is flat, despite all the mockery they do bring up some very solid points backed up by experimental data, which makes this flat earth thing a scientific theory, alas a useless one. But it's nice to get into a conversation and question your own surest beliefs.

All in all, I believe that communication among people should be allowed without banning based on ideology. I'd let racist people and misogynists and what you want able to be there and express themselves and their opinion, as long as they don't directly attack and harass someone specifically. I'd do this despite it being despiseful because I believe it's the better option.

@rastinza @freemo I do not wish for ideas to be censored, neither by good/bad categorization nor another one, and i am sure neither does freemo.

The comment you answered to is quite unspecific, and i must admit i don't follow my own thoughts here completely.

What i think might make sense is to think about calls to action, be it violence or hate. At some point here there might be a meaningful distinction. The general censorship of ideas is not what i meant, anyway. So in the end, we do agree on what you said.

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