New Rule - Promoting Terrorism

[Shell B]

I don't like the growing number of rules which seem to be devoted to restricting content, like this one.

I agree to a small degree, though I am more averse to the ones that promote a certain level of decorum, such as the Prime Directive. However, I think you'll find that this rule will not affect you whatsoever.

I recognize there are things and situations it is desirable to avoid, but sometimes the cost of doing so outweighs the benefit.

As a person who has to personally deal with situations here that become problems, in my own free time, off this forum, I disagree. If you want to take the reins and deal with reporting legal issues to the proper authorities, I might change my mind.

I can't help but see such rules as discouraging people from expressing ideas and opinions

If your ideas and opinions are that terrorism is good, and you want to promote it here, we WANT to discourage you. In fact, we will not allow you to do so.

and ultimately having a chilling effect on people's feeling of freedom, if not the actual fact of such.

We don't want people to feel free to promote terrorism on this forum.

the remedy for bad speech is more speech, not less.

In some cases, that is true. Clearly, there are some types of speech that are not only, as you mention below, legally problematic, but also morally so. There is a real problem of terrorists finding a home on social media, where they recruit. Obviously, it's unlikely to happen here, but we do attract religious zealots and trolls who may try to use this platform, even jokingly, for that. It will not be tolerated, as the rules stand now. As I've said before, this is a very specific rule that will rarely, if ever, apply to anything anyone has said or will say on this forum, but we have the right to protect this space from that kind of extremism.

Yes, there may be dangers, but perhaps it's better to allow the occasional kerfluffle or situation occur and deal with it that way, rather than proactively making rules about content.

I'm all about letting kerfuffles occur organically. I don't think promoting terrorist organizations qualifies as a kerfuffle. When you join a mainstream social media site, you agree to an absolutely fucking massive number of restrictions to what you're allowed to post. Chief among them is terrorist recruitment/promotion of terrorist organizations. This forum has a fraction of the restrictions you would see elsewhere because it wants to promote discussion in most of its forms. There are a select few that aren't welcome for obvious reasons. Even before this rule was in place, do you really think someone could have come here and tried to promote a terrorist organization and staff would have just let it slide? It was always implicitly against the rules because it's explicitly against the very basis of human decency.

But even if there are, I think the liability, if such exists, would largely be ameliorated by the infrequent occurrence of whatever lurking danger this rule is meant to prevent, as well as the practical likelihood of actual legal consequences following any problematic episode.

Well, the liability isn't yours to shoulder. This will likely never be a problem, but it's not a problem I'm prepared to deal with in my personal life. If there is any liability, which I don't recall being part of the discussion to make this rule, that sounds like an awful time for me. Now, I'm only more behind this rule.

I don't know all the reasons behind this rule, and the rule against discussion of pedophilia, but needless to say, I find them a discouraging development.

There isn't a rule against discussion of pedophilia. People discuss pedophilia on here all the time. There's a rule that restricts how you can talk about it, which is because we have minors on the forum. I'd have promoted such a rule even if that weren't the case. Pedo=bad.

Guys, you can talk about terrorism until you're blue in the face, and you will likely never break this rule. This isn't a rule against content. It's a rule against context. Unless you're secretly trying to recruit people for your fave organization, this doesn't matter. It will never matter.