General Discussion

1. I see/hear hateful rhetoric from both sides every single day.

2. Rather than pressuring social media & other platforms to censor ideas or info, I wish their community guidelines would prohibit ad hominem attacks, and not just on other members, and require that all persons be spoken to and of with basic courtesy and respect. If you don't like what someone's doing or saying, critique their actions or message, but don't just call the messenger names or smear them with unfounded allegations unrelated to what they actually did or said.

3. I do not believe in censorship as a solution, because it fails to address the underlying causes for hate (e.g., the impoverishment of the population creates fertile ground for scapegoating); it spurs a race to see which authoritarian-inlcined oligarchs can censor who the most/fastest, ultimately becoming a means of oppression rather than a solution; and because, even when motivated by the best of intentions, censors invariably end up suppressing info that turns out to be true and important for the rest of us to know. It is truly a cure worse than the disease.

Different kinds of problems demand different kinds of solutions.