That's fundamentally not the same thing, don't be obtuse for the sake of debate points.

Insults and general demeaning comments should not be punished in the court of law. Saying offensive things should not be punished in the court of law.

As I said before, the action/intent is the part that should be punished. Providing private information about someone who you disagree with or want to incur harm upon is an action with malicious intent.

As a leftist, I fail to understand why we always jump to tone policing and purity politics? We can identify the material conditions that cause radicalization and general bigotry and act upon these things, but we always just jump to punishing people for being radical bigots, which only further galvanizes those positions.

We're not making these spaces smaller, we're making them more volatile by doing this. They see these conversations and think "this is why we have to remove leftism, because they will punish us for crimes we have yet to do" and that's precisely what this argument is.

If they're just saying that, I certainly don't want to be around them but I don't think they should go to prison. If they act upon that, that's entirely different and should be treated as a hate crime.

Also, you just said it. Does context matter to you? What about intention?

I think their point is that you don't throw them in prison just for saying it. If they actually do it or influence others to do it then that's very different. I always try to think how a law could be twisted or abused, and once you make simply saying something illegal that opens the door to a lot of authoritarianism.

Because what is insulting enough to warrant removal is extremely subjective. Pretty much everyone agrees there's a line somewhere, where people draw that line is very different. I would never even consider trying to stop people from making bad edgy jokes, but I will tell them the joke isn't funny and they just seem like a bigot if that's what I think.

I also wouldn't consider 4chan a public place. Someone holding up a sign in a train station that says "gays are an abomination" I would agree should be removed as they are actively making a public space hostile to someone. But then I'd also put different standards on a non-spontaneous demonstration, as those have to be cleared beforehand and won't happen on a super frequent basis, and there needs to be some way to voice any opinion that doesn't outright call for violence.

Get over it Karen. Fucking baby.