Internet startup incubator Y Combinator, which specializes in discovering new and useless dot-coms to give money so that its members can profit off of re-selling the stock after the IPO, banned Gab.ai founder Andrew Torba after he typed “build the wall” on Facebook.

Ideological censorship is different than morality-based censorship, and this case shows how. Morality-based censorship removes speech which violates the bounds of what is acceptable. Ideological censorship removes those who are non-conformists to the “narrative,” or agenda in ideas of the censors.

SJWs approached Y Combinator site Hacker News early in its career and dominating the way they always do: complaining about any speech which does not fit within the narrow bounds of political correctness, which is a political agenda pretending to be a moral one, and excludes all dissent.

I just got a call from @ycombinator, letting me know that I have been blacklisted from their network because I said "build the wall."

— gab.ai/a 🐸 (@torbahax) November 11, 2016

Torba apparently expressed a taboo sentiment by repeating a statement made by President-Elect Donald J. Trump, “build the wall,” in reference to a ten-foot impenetrable barrier to be erected on our Canadian border to prevent immigration by tone-deaf three-note war metal bands. This upset the SJW-leaning admins of Hacker News and caused hte ban.

On the thread discussing the banning, SJWs from inside and outside the organization expressed a number of rather foolish statements.

We support free speech, obviously. And we’re happy to fund people with all sorts of different political views.

We do not allow harassment, for which Andrew unfortunately set a new bar in our community. You can look at his Twitter or Facebook for plenty of public examples, to say nothing of what he’s said privately.

This shows you how SJWs impersonate moral censorship with political censorship. Disagreeing with someone on Facebook is not “harassment,” which means a targeted pursuit of someone in real life, not merely posting comments to them on social media where on every site they can block the user and not see the statements.

Silly.

From the screenshot he himself provided [1], it looks like he was confronted about making people at YC feel unsafe, and responded by saying they “shouldn’t be on the internet”.

Unsafe? How do words make them feel unsafe? These people are living in fantasyland. He made no threats; he merely disagreed with their political view, and apparently that made the little shrinking violets have a panic attack and start attention whoring for victimhood points.

Laughable.

When you’re a dissident or ideological minority in any context, it’s absolutely essential at all times to be the kindest, gentlest, sweetest person in the room. That way, when they ban you for “feeling unsafe,” it’s obvious to everyone what’s going on.

Obviously OP wasn’t actually a danger to anyone. That’s ridiculous.

This is terrible advice because it forces dissidents to spend all of their time being nice, and that causes them to deviate from their message. It is a thinly-disguised attempt to neutralize criticism by imposing upon it rules that render it mute.

But YC is big on bringing in founders from other countries and giving them the tools to be successful in America.

In those scenarios YC is the foundation of their life in the country. Funding, documentation, network, etc. To have voices in the group that’s supposed to help you start talking about “build the wall” and deporting people, especially in the context of the larger Trump political movement?

They are importing people who cannot take criticism? Not getting the best and brightest if that is the case, but worse, they are creating a culture that is toxic to any viewpoint except the kumbaya that pretends humans can all get along, when history shows us repeatedly that the opposite is the case. You either embrace the ability to have dissent, or by blocking it, force it underground where it becomes nasty.

Stupid.

I mean he actually posted a picture of him self and his middlefinger pointing at ycombinator?! seriously he is a hater and not somebody that should be taken seriously.

In a sane time, this person would be immediately ejected from the room for lack of intellectual, moral and social maturity.

Freedom of speech does not mean one is free from the consequences of speech.

This is something a lot of young folks don’t seem to understand. You can say anything you want. Go for it. And you will own the consequences of what you said, whatever they might be.

Another fool. The point of free speech is to protect people from consequences of that speech because the speech itself has no bearing on their ability. He is hiding behind this idea of “consequences,” which actually means retribution, because he likes the idea of censoring others.

The issue is not even free speech, but open ideas. To have ideas, you must not have filters. If you allow people to be petty and smash down those they disagree with, as happened to Brendan Eich, you are not supporting open ideas but a controlled, totalitarian worldview in which anything but the party line is a threat and therefore unacceptable.

What a maroon.

Freedom of speech also only applies to the state. The government cannot suppress your free speech.

It says absolutely nothing about what private parties (or companies) can do about speech.

We hear this nonsense quite a bit too. Open ideas is a social commitment that all of us uphold because it is the right thing to do. Whether one person or another owns the computer it is on is beside the point, and merely a pretext for making all speech privatized so that censorship can be the norm.

Torba, if you’re reading this, consider that Curtis Yarvin’s Tlon receives angel investment from well known SV VCs and he also posts here regularly.

So the guy who literally invented neoreaction isn’t suppressed by YC because of his views then it is pretty unlikely you’re getting persecuted because of yours.

Another sophomoric view. Yarvin was banned from at least one conference for his views, and in the ensuing battle, the forces of censorship realized that they had more to lose from public opinion by censoring than they had to let a guy who rarely talked about his past as Neoreaction writer Mencius Moldbug have a say… about his technology.

As you can see, SJWs never tell the truth; to them, “truth” is a means to an end, and that end is advancing their ideology at the cost of everything else, including open ideas and sanity.

Tags: andrew torba, censorship, curtis yarvin, gab.ai, hacker news, paul graham, sam altman, twitter, y combinator