Free speech was always just the pretext. They still rage about Europe or Australia regulating social media or punishing people for using social media to commit crimes, even when the arguments those actions infringe on protected speech are far weaker than this situation.
I would not trust any corporation (sometimes it's profitable to remove something so they retain control of some market) or government (sometimes it secures their power to keep people unaware of some facts about their actions) to only censor what is "truly" good for us to have censored. Why would anybody? The free exchange of ideas is a prerequisite for a just world. You cannot build one without it, because to build a just world you must change what is unjust. To change what is unjust, you must remove power from those who unjustly hold it. You can't do that if you can't communicate the injustice. If you place limits on the free exchange of ideas "just for this one really bad thing" then you have forfeited your own future ability to resist when a good and true idea is wrongfully labelled harmful by powerful and corrupt figures. Every single authoritarian regime in history has made speaking ill of the leadership a crime, because speech control is powerful. The power to ban information is too great to be entrusted to any authority at all. Depending on how thorough the "ban" (web text filter at the ISP level? mandatory AR implants at birth filtering banned content? worse?), it's anywhere from an abhorrent violation of human rights and the principles behind scientific inquiry all the way up through literally the most powerful weapon which could even theoretically be designed.
Must we burn this book? No. The answer is always no.
I am in favor of extremely strong free speech, legally and more importantly morally, because there is simply no acceptable alternative.
> I am in favor of extremely strong free speech, legally and more importantly morally
Sure. Whatever. Irrelevant.
The point is the loudest voices in Silicon Valley who were all in on free speech, knowingly joined hands with an authoritarian who is trashing it in its most protected form, political speech.
Not irrelevant. I'm responding directly to somebody saying people like me basically don't exist so that I am a data point. We do exist. We're rare, but not that rare.
Frankly, I don't believe you without some strong evidence that you had fought or pushed back against this admin's censorship in some form, that is more than just words. Every single person I have met or read about who espoused your views, inevitably showed up on the side of censorship when they didn't like what the other guy said, or is still willing to vote for the candidate whose censoring others because of some social war bullshit.
For instance I used to be active in /r/Libertarian until the day the Mises Caucus took over and they banned anyone who said there were branches of libertarianism that were left leaning, for lying.
If, and I really stress the word "if" there, you are telling the truth, then cool, but you are exceedingly rare in that case
edit: Also lol, none of the "free speech absolutist" elon fanboys showed up, but my comments been flagged to reduce its viewership. Not really changing my mind on the opinion of people in this forum who wax poetic about free speech
You can look through my comment history here, if you like, to see that I've been consistently banging the same drum at least since 2020, but unfortunately without connecting this profile to others I can't show you I've been on it for much longer. Internet evidence might go back as far as perhaps 2010, but before writing a word about it online I'd already had some years under my belt telling people in person that W's national security letters including a gag order was hideously wrong or that the DMCA and its exception list process was unacceptable on first amendment grounds. I assure you, regardless of who is being officially censored or "just" denied a platform or communication tool to which they would otherwise have claim but for the content of their speech, by any government or corporation in any nation in any decade, it is, was, and always will be wrong. It was even wrong to try to suppress ISIS recruitment drives, and if THAT doesn't convince you I'm principled about it I don't know what will. And again, I admit we're rare, but I tell not vanishingly so. In my real life circle I know two others and online several more. I think we're at LEAST as common as principled vegans.
I would not actually expect anyone to provide the level of personal information I would need to believe you.
I am just letting you know that that is where the bar is for belief, because so many people flying under the banner you claim, have never actually been principled and only used the ideals as a cudgel to achieve their goals.
I’m communist leaning myself so I understand the pain if you’re telling the truth as I get the same level of skepticism
