With freedom of expression, and your "we don't. Well we do", it's really best to err on the side of too much freedom, even if we get stupid youtube videos and comments along with it.
For there to be freedom of speech we can't be deciding who has the right to speak. We can only hope to keep the idiots penned up in places like youtube so they don't come to places we value.
In order to be a free country there must be freedom, even if you don't like what other people say. This is a dangerous precedent.
We are rapidly getting to the point where elections are not based on merit of candidates but by what the media says and allows to be said.
Having a free press and allowing citizens to be heard becomes crucial to a functioning democracy.
That being said, I'm also in favor of letting companies have freedom to run their companies as they see fit as long as it is legal and moral. But this decision by YouTube saddens me.
If the media didn't keep censoring and banning people I doubt the Capitol would have been stormed. When you take away people's ability to be heard, debate, and participate in democracy, people feel they have nothing to lose. Recent events are the consequence.
That's part of life in a post-Enlightenment world.
You don't get to have the all the great shit without all the worst shit along with it.
The very nature of freedom means at some point, someone is going to do something you don't like. And I don't mean the mosque shooting. That was illegal. I mean part of having a free society means you have put up with people saying crazy nonsensical bullshit that any reasonable person would laugh at and then click on a new video. And you're going to have some group of people who are just dumb, or are easily impressionable, or are easily persuaded, or are whatever.
Maybe the sickness isn't in the platform, either... maybe the sickness is somewhere else... and nobody wants to bother with it because its actually hard, and will actually cost money to deal with it.
And to that, I also say, "Too goddamn bad." Its not a buffet and you don't get to choose, you have to accept the whole dinner, the hákarl along with the strawberry cheesecake.
Whatever happened to freedom of speech. This is exactly what autocrats everywhere want and even we now believe it to be good - just because of youtube comments. Comments which reflect the real us. With a real name policy it will be replaced by a few polite lines with emoticons.
Unfortunately, it seems freedom of speech has become one of those things a disturbing number of people only seem to see the negative side of. In a certain sense, it's in the same quagmire as capitalism, IP laws, and to some extent privacy; easy to see the negatives and abuses in, but also something that helps or protects everyone else too.
The idea that we should temper our outrage at government misbehavior based on how much the target seemed to deserve it is an unbelievably dangerous one.
We should be just as outraged when the government violates the rights of a total scumbag as we are when they violate the rights of an upstanding citizen. To do anything less is to make a total lie of the idea that we have any rights at all.
Imagine if the government censored a movie and the response was, well, before we get all outraged at this blatant violation of freedom of speech, what if the movie was about really bad stuff? Well, there's no point in "freedom of speech" if it only protects the things everybody likes.
Thanks for that! So many people fail to appreciate the value of free speech. We put up with stupid, ignorant, crack-smokin crazy, bigoted speech so we can hear the voices of people outside the mainstream who have something valuable to say.
Freedom isn't free. We pay for freedom of speech in whatever tragedy comes from spreading of "fake news" or whatever because society has generally agreed it's better than tyranny.
Incredibly stupid. And the problem is if you oppose it, you're labeled a sympathizer.
There's a valid third option: recognize that freedom of speech is an essential human right. Some may choose to abuse it, but history has a way of sorting those things out.
But you'd think if we really value free speech in this country, and not just the First Amendment, we wouldn't be so quick to want to suppress the speech of others.
Believe or not, whatever we (people, collectively) decide to allow or disallow is very likely going to profoundly affect shape of freedom of expression for future generations.
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