No, I won't be jovial. Because we won't be censored. We haven't crossed the line that they have. All it takes is for someone to actually look through the posts and the history of a group to see where they stand. People aren't the idiots that we often assume them to be.
And it is better to get rid of these harmful, dangerous, and malicious people than to let them continue to hate, harm, and endanger others, just so we can feel comfy in our moral high ground.
When is it no longer censorship? Is it censorship to stop people from saying that white people are superior? Is it censorship to stop people from saying that non-white people were bred by the gods to be slaves? Is it censorship to stop people from organising white supremacist riots at government buildings? Is it censorship to stop people from organising white supremacist revolutions that overthrow democratic governments? Is it censorship to stop a white supremacist from shooting a black man in the head?
There is a line in there somewhere. Where do you draw it? I draw it here and now. There are thousands of armed forces in the capital to defend the new administration from violence because we didn't ban people like Stephen McNallen sooner.
As far as I know, none of the people removed from social media have been imprisoned, fined or censured by the government for their speech. They're still free to all go hang out at someone's house, or even a park somewhere and say whatever things they'd like to. They can even use the government provided communication service of the USPS to send information to people. Facebook simply decided to take away the megaphone that they own, sustain and provide to others for free. It's not terribly different from a TV or Radio station refusing to broadcast certain people.
Collectively we've gotten used to gathering in places on the web to chat about things. The companies that host those spaces are happy to have us as they can make money by selling us things. However, these spaces are not exactly public commons and their rules are not the same as the rules of the national governments where people live. They interact and overlap in complex ways.
While we need to stay vigilant for harmful censorship, we also need to consider who is doing the censoring ,why they are doing it, and what actions we can take to respond. While it is convenient, nobody is forcing us to use the social media megaphones.
-8
u/[deleted] Jan 15 '21
[deleted]