The whole premise here rests on false equivalences.
Banning Nazi imagery here on Derpibooru is not an issue of freedom of expression because Derpibooru is a platform, not a government. Derpiboore cannot regulate what you are allowed to create. It cannot regulate what you are allowed to post somewhere else. All Derpibooru can regulate is what can be disseminated from their platform… and guess what? THEY ALREADY DID. This was never a free-for-all of “free expression.” There were always rules for what you can and cannot post long before this Nazi question came up, and no one was arguing that these rules were a “freedom of expression” issue then.
So why is this suddenly one now?
This doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t add up to logical consistency or consistency of motive. If “freedom of expression” wasn’t a problem before now, and you were fine with certain things not being “expressible” before, I call bullshit on the honesty of arguing this “Nazi pictures = but muh free expression!” equivalence. You have some other reason you’re not being honest about, and crying about freedom of expression is a smokescreen that sounds more acceptable than whatever ugliness lies at the heart of your real reasons for wanting to enable Nazis, or perhaps more likely the apathy and selfishness of just not caring that you are and not caring who it hurts.
First: I am far from apathetic on this issue. Secondly: Your own words are as offensive and harmful as any of the nazi imagery on this site is, to me. Third: The fact that I won’t argue for you to be silenced despite my disagreement is proof positive of my claim that this is not about political factions. Fourth: I have always maintained that people should be allowed to post what they want regardless of content as long as it does not harm others, even long before this became an issue now, the rules here allowed for virtually all of the freedom of expression that I desired and I did not see a problem with them before as they did not specifically dictate an ideological bias to the content that is allowed to be posted and did not restrict freedom of expression. Fifth: Platforms can engage in censorship, but more importantly censoring in an archive defeats the purpose of an archive. Sixth: How dare you attempt to tell me my own motivations? You know nothing about me and you have never spoken to me before in your life. Attempting to smear my motivations as disingenuous when you know nothing about me proves to me you’re acting in bad faith and attempting to poison the well. Seventh: The fact that you consider Freedom of Expression so trivial a point that you place it below protecting people from seeing things they don’t want to see is the very reason your side of this argument cannot be allowed to win. To achieve that goal is to demand draconian measures to control what is allowed to be posted that expand as people take offense, eventually leading to the stagnation and sterilization of all content into an ideologically normative lump. This is an inevitable result of allowing censorship to take root. Eighth: I was okay with ‘certain’ things not being expressible as I laid out above: Direct, actionable calls to violence and targeted personal harassment. Those were basically the only things covered by the site’s policy before and I feel they should remain the only things covered now. That is a consistent, logical argument that has not changed once since the beginning of my arguing here. I’m sorry you can’t see it that way.
But if you believe those are valid grounds for restricting what can be posted, then that’s the crux of the argument FOR banning Nazi images. Nazi ideology and history is inextricably intertwined with directly calling for physically harming other groups. THERE IS NO SEPARATING A PICTURE OF A NAZI FROM THE BAGGAGE THAT NAZIS CARRY.
Wrong. Artistic expression exists outside of your political paradigm and you have no control over the intent or actual meaning of artwork you do not like. Nazi pony is primarily a parody or satire, two of the most protected types of expression ever conceived of, going down to being protected under the idea of Fair Use within US legal code, that specifically protects the right to use copyrighted material to produce parody or satire. Whether you like it or not, the artistic intention of the nazi themed content on this site has not been to create a direct, actionable call to violence or to target and harass a specific individual. The association you have, your political group has, your side of the argument has, the broader culture has or even nazis themselves have with the symbols and iconography in question is irrelevant if that is not their specific use in this case. The right to use symbols culturally associated with violence without actively calling for violence is a cornerstone of freedom of speech, otherwise every political cartoonist who drew a panel about the political violence we’ve seen anywhere in the world would be equally culpable under the rules. The value of free expression is held above political conviction or ideology for a reason.
Completely missing the point because this isn’t about not hearing things you don’t like. It’s about not allowing people to be marginalized and pushed out of the community by fostering (whether intentionally through or inadvertently through thoughtlessness or apathy and indifference) the kind of hostile atmosphere that things like casually plastering up Nazi symbols inherently and unavoidably creates for certain classes of people who have been their targets.
You are marginalizing and pushing people out of this community for using symbols and liking things that you do not like when you specifically ban their free expression. You are doing exactly what you say you don’t want to do to others because you disagree with their choice of iconography. There are virtually no actual Nazis who post Nazi horse, just artists who enjoy making dark humor or content that is satirical or comedic in a way that you do not appreciate. You cannot laugh at the joke, so the comedians must be thrown out of the club, nevermind that the majority of the userbase does not want them thrown out. There is no hostile atmosphere being fostered by nazi imagery being posted, because it is not directed at any real people or a call for actual violence against a real group. A hostile environment is one that specifically says that someone is not welcome. Parodies and satire of nazi imagery do not say no one is welcome, in fact quite the opposite: banning parody and satires of things that a political faction does not enjoy specifically and clearly states that those with a opposite political leaning or those who care about true freedom of expression (myself included) are not welcome here. You are literally attempting to create the kind of hostility you accuse the nazi imagery of creating when there’s been no indication that it has driven people away due to anything but political motivations, which has nothing to do with the site’s policy directly being unwelcoming: but rather to do with people choosing to recuse themselves of the site’s usage because they don’t like what’s here. That’s not an unwelcoming environment – it’s an environment that doesn’t discriminate being told to discriminate by people who want discrimination based on their personal preferences.
Tl;Dr: You’re wrong, objectively so.