The Free Joy State wrote:Ethel mermania wrote:
Your right, free speech isn't important at all. Look at all those troublemakers in Hong Kong, stirring up the public, destroying order, slurring the government leaders. We need to support shutting that kind of talk down, and isolating those rabble rousers from the population. And no need to tell where the government will shipp those miscreant criminals too, it just causes unrest in the people.
Now to be fair I do agree with your point about my fellow American rightist's complete lack of understanding of the importance of free speech. That the answer isn't more restrictions on speech. (Ie repealing section 230 instead of strengthening it)
That said your living in a location that is well on its wqy to becoming a tolatarian nightmare and you still aren't supportive of free speech, is surprising.
To be fair, Twitter saying 'Go peddle your hate-speech somewhere else' to far-rightists isn't censorship. They can go to another site that welcomes them. They can start their own site and say 'Here, we love far-rightists and leftists are banned'.
And, frankly, a lot of the current free speech discussion seems to miss that point.
In Hong Kong, it was censorship, as it was the government restricting protests. As now, with the new Security Law, it's the government saying that certain topics are banned and supporting independence is forbidden -- whether for citizens or non-citizens. There are real-life repercussions (rather than just having to find a new site, of which I understand there are many on the internet).
When governments do this -- as with Russia's attempt at stamping out political opposition or Poland's restrictions on journalists -- it's a real cause for concern, and something to fight against at all costs.
Either there is free speech or there isn't. Twitter, you tube, tik tok, et al. are the new milk cartons in the public parks. In this day and age Stop speech there, you are stopping it practically everywhere. In communist China the government does it. In capitalist America corporations do it.