Thread 58093 ("Why I’m leaving discuss.python.org"), post 54
Brett Cannon (@brettcannon), in post 50:
I personally disagree with that assessment
What @Rosuav said.
It’s easy to disagree when you aren’t one of the ones who feels excluded.
Brett Cannon (@brettcannon), in post 50:
If you truly think the PSF CoC is that harmful then this place simply might not be for you as the CoC will continue to be enforced.
I agree wholeheartedly, and in fact I am about to start assembling my departure thread. In fact I have had this in mind the evening of the 14th, but there’s just been so much else to say and read about it, plus I was in the middle of reading through several previous #packaging marathon threads pseudo-simultaneously.
Brett Cannon (@brettcannon), in post 50:
Think about the situation that someone posted hate speech; that cannot stay up and be available to the public in any form.
Because of legal liability? Or because having the option to see something objectionable is inherently harmful? Or because forms of expression that everyone agrees to be socially reprehensible except the fringe minority who express them, somehow empower that minority when they’re allowed that expression? Or because said expression is somehow convincing to others? Or because intimidating others causes them to become more sympathetic to one’s own views, rather than less?
None of those strikes me as especially plausible. As far as I can tell, this rule is entirely deontological.
Chris Angelico (@Rosuav), in post 51:
Maybe that’s a problem too US-centric for me to understand, but is there a form of hate speech that is so terrifying that you can’t even leave behind an indicative marker showing what was removed?
From what I can tell of American political discourse, absolutely yes, to the point that I don’t feel comfortable trying to give any more hint to you about what it is, never mind that their country was built to uphold freedom of speech as one of its most sacred principles. (To the extent that people from other countries often wrongly conflate the First Amendment of the US Constitution with the concept of freedom of speech generally, which is a serious and fundamental philosophical error that causes great harm to the discourse.) It seems wrong-headed to me (see above), but it is what it is.
However, it’s worth noting here that Brett is not just “not from the US” but about as proudly Canadian as it gets, at least among members of the core dev team. (It’s kinda nice here overall, actually.)