You also mention a certain example post as being “gratuitously offensive”. This raises other aspects of consideration. Let us say that the poster of that question could have used a less extreme example to effectively argue the same point. Should they have, and if so, for what reason? For example:
a. is it merely inherently wrong to ever sort of increase the amount of
“mental existence” (thoughts, writings) of things which are
inherently morally wrong; i.e., because child rape is wrong, we
should always, generally, and categorically strive to not even think
about or discuss it - which would lend it a kind of noumenal existence in the
world - unless we find it necessary for some reason? Perhaps this is a sort of “moral idealism” in the epistemological sense of “idealism”: if murder is wrong, we actually feel that we wish to decrease even the amount of mental phenomena in our universe regarding murder. (This would be an “inherent” axis of a moral consideration, i.e., the point is to designate something as inherently bad, but that our final decision regarding some action would be based on an interaction between multiple inherent moral criteria, so we might still choose to do something if it is moral in regards to other inherent criteria, like “discussing this topic allows us to understand what the ethical optimum is, so we should do that because it’s for the better.”)
b. The argument from direct negative outcomes. I am running out of time and space here, so I summarize this is related to the idea of “trigger warnings”, where it is wrong to expose people to awful ideas simply because it is inherently traumatizing and/or emotionally painful, and can cause suffering.
c. The argument from extended negative outcomes / consequences: we should never allow people to even question these ideas because it is leading to a culture and a society where such awful ideas begin to gain more traction and sanctioning, even if minor. We pragmatically want to oppose the occurrence of those social phenomena, by socially communicating to people that they are so wrong and unacceptable, we forbid them from having any type of connection to our platform.
d. The argument from common sense, intuition, or perhaps a kind of epistemological “agnosticism”: “I don’t know if I have or need an argument for why this should be; I choose to believe intuitively in that it is wrong; I do not wish to open the possibility of making an error in reasoning which could allow me or someone else to falsely justify something that does, in light of later theories, turn out to be morally awful. I choose to hold the intuitive belief that such things are wrong.” This is certainly a valid perspective which, again, I’d love to analyze deeper, philosophically, as to why it may indeed be deeply logically and morally justified.
