The number of people expecting me to deviate from my consistent and fundamental principles that no government anywhere should have the ability to control who can and can't speak OR listen to speech, as long as they have an argument THIS speaker is really REALLY bad, is absolutely fascinating.
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I sincerely want there to be a way for us to make people Not Be Assholes, and... we can't do that.
I really do think a lot of the pushback is people wanting a Magic Fix for things they don't like. The only fix is to get our hands dirty doing the hard work of shoving society forward.
And it's hard.
You have to get to know people you might disagree with, who might not understand you, and form bonds with them. Build community. The more we do it, the less assholes.
I think you run into some maximalist cases where the principle is in tension with truly dreadful consequences of some ppl & speech/advocacy
Again, it's a maximalist case
Thing we're bad! Look at that guy! And now the libs are defending a fascist state. Motherfuk.
GIVING ANYONE IN POWER THE ABILITY TO DETERMINE WHO IS AND ISN'T PERMITTED TO SPEAK IS ALWAYS ABUSED AGAINST MARGINALIZED PEOPLE AND WILL ALWAYS BE USED TO HARM MARGINALIZED PEOPLE AND NOT WHATEVER "BAD" SPEECH YOU WANT TO SUPPRESS
e.g. if you say some Nazi shit and get beaten up for it, that's just turnabout*
(*in a perfect vacuum scenario where the assailants aren't just making up accusations to justify assault)
While I know the platform is not the speech, the platform is often how speech is accessed.
And while users can (eg) chase Milo off of Twitter and that doesn't cease his speech, ...
And that is difficult for me to accept. Especially here in Canada, where hate speech IS illegal.
i do see more sense in arguments stating that the TikTok ban does not actually directly target peoples' speech, and they're still free to express it elsewhere.
That happened less than 3 years ago. Like. Literally less than one presidential administration, and they have not had any change in who is in charge of the country since then.
So, yes, I agree that Zelensky has not been abusing that law. Which is good!
As Ed puts it in @tkingfisher.com 's Digger:
Ed: Evil is having reason, always, many and many. If hunter beats mate, has reason, always. Mate is lazy, burning food, is stupid, is speaking on and on. Is always being a reason.
Digger: But Ed, those aren't good reasons!
One will win out eventually because people need services, whether public or private - or some other magical thing the anarchist comes up with.
2) Even absent a corporate right to speech, the individual recipients of that speech retain the right to receive it.
Corporations are separate from people, even if they’re made up of people.
Companies can say whatever the hell they want. It’s when they start throwing money behind it and buying slices of power that it becomes an increasingly difficult to surmount problem.
Fuck China and their genocide. Fuck America and ours. Fuck the corporate oligarchy above all.
Basically, in order to have moral principles and beliefs you stand on, you have to have grown up more than they.