The thing is that people will tell you it wasn’t actually censorship because for them it was only the government being a busy body nosey government telling the tech corps about a select number of people violating their terms (nudge nudge please do something)… so I think the and/or is important.
Great post mc32 (I hope you're a Wayne Kramer fan!)
This private-public tyranny that's going on right now. The FCC can't directly tell Kimmel, "you can't say that" they can say, "you may have violated this or this technical rule which..." This is how Project 2025 will play out in terms of people's real experience. You occupy all posts with ideologically sympathetic players and the liberality people are used to becomes ruinous as, "the watchers" are now, "watching for you." The irony is that most conservatives believe this is just, "what the left was doing in the 2010's in reverse" and I don't have a counterargument for this other than, "it doesn't matter; it's always bad and unethical." Real differences between Colbert and Tate taken for granted.
All sides and i mean all sides with one tiny sliver of an exception will be hypocrites about freedom of speech. I’m not an absolutist as I think there are things we know produce harm in people, specially susceptible young populations, but definitely strictly political speech should be protected and allowed. How can we not have debates about efficacy of medical products or about trustworthiness of the data?
> How can we not have debates about efficacy of medical products or about trustworthiness of the data?
We must be able to have those debates, but we must also guard against grifters selling 5g-proof underwear to the functionally illiterate or serving up vaccine skepticism based more on their desire to score political points than science.
The devil will always be in the details, and it's a tough balancing act. I personally suspect that the way we do this is by checking credentials.
Doctors and scientists should be allowed to offer alternative theories. Meth-addicts posting from labs hidden in the Ozarks, software developers, and unqualified politicians, maybe not.
