[kypro]

Are you even paying attention? This isn't true. You can be censored from social media for all sorts these days. This last year we had a UK media organisation banned from YouTube for questioning the UK COVID response. People in the US are no longer allowed to question the legitimacy of their elections on most social media platforms. Even US media outlets like the NYPost were censored for running stories Twitter didn't like during the US election.

Yeah, sure you can be banned for questioning if an untransitioned man wearing a wig is really a women, but this isn't what most people are concerned about. The censorship has now gone far further and in many cases to simply disagree with mainstream narrative on some politically charged subject will be enough to have you removed. One of my favour YouTubers "Mouthy Buddha" was banned for making some videos about Epstein and paedophilia -- the guy produced "conspiracy" content but it's really high quality stuff with no hate at all.

I mean even the US president was banned for "violence" despite asking rioters to go home, being acquitted and the FBI finding that there was no coordinated insurrection plan.

I'm not coming at this from any political position. A lot of content social media platforms censor I don't like, but that doesn't mean I think it should be censored. Things like racism have been deliberately defined in a very loose way that practically anything can now be considered racist and used as an excuse to censor. A popular comedian in the UK got banned during the world cup for saying, "all I'm saying is, the white guys scored". He was mocking how the UK media had been running stories for weeks about how the "diversity" of the England team is what made them great, but that wasn't allowed because "racism".

[M2Ys4U]

>I'm not coming at this from any political position.

Saying that after your previous paragraphs doesn't erase the political content of that previous paragraphs.

[kypro]

I meant more in the sense of classical left/right divide -- I felt the parent commenter was suggesting it's just right-wing troll types that are being censored, which isn't the case.

I'm definitely in favour of free-speech, I'm just not particularly left or right wing in my political views or voting habits.

[rrose]

> People in the US are no longer allowed to question the legitimacy of their elections on most social media platforms.

> Yeah, sure you can be banned for questioning if an untransitioned man wearing a wig is really a women, but this isn't what most people are concerned about.

> the guy produced "conspiracy" content but it's really high quality stuff with no hate at all.

> I'm not coming at this from any political position.

can you hear yourself?

[TheRealSteel]

>People in the US are no longer allowed to question the legitimacy of their elections on most social media platforms.

You mean, they aren't allowed to spread absolute blatant lies and falsehoods, that have already caused at least one deadly riot, in an attempt to overthrow a fair and legitimate election that just happened to not be convenient for their personal agenda? Good.

[enumjorge]

Your comment is exactly what I'm talking about though. Let's break down your first paragraph, while keeping in mind the context as stated by the parent comment is content that is "not allowed" on major tech platforms:

> This last year we had a UK media organisation banned from YouTube for questioning the UK COVID response.

I'm not from the UK and haven't kept up with news about the UK, so I can't really comment on this one. But out of curiosity I looked it up. If we're talking about the same instance, one of Rupert Murdoch's radio shows was banned for content that YouTube flagged as contradicting the World Health Organization's guidance on COVID. That content was then soon reinstated. That is notably different than saying you are not allowed to "question" the UK government's response to COVID. YouTube misidentifying content on their platform is well documented and happens all the time outside of the context of politics. So again, YouTube's actions here were flawed, but far from the political censorship that you imply.

> People in the US are no longer allowed to question the legitimacy of their elections on most social media platforms.

This is blatantly false, and so easily disprovable. People on Twitter and Facebook constantly repeat falsehoods about election fraud. I just now Googled "youtube biden president illegitimate" and got several results back attacking the legitimacy of Biden's presidency. The funny thing is I only clicked one video because I want to avoid YouTube's recommendation engine thinking this is content I want to see. YT surfaces fringe ideas so readily. How do you think that stuff spread in the first place?

> Even US media outlets like the NYPost were censored for running stories Twitter didn't like during the US election.

Twitter bungled their response on this, and they backed down after they were rightly criticized. One tabloid getting banned from one social media platform is again, not at all close to certain topics not being allowed on major tech platforms. Content attacking Hunter Biden (the topic of the article that got the NYPost banned) happened before, during, and after the the ban. The NyPost is also back on Twitter.

The rest of your claims follow a similar pattern.

I again repeat my assertion that censorship in major tech platforms is flawed and problematic, but the narrative that certain view points are being choked out by tech platforms is simply not true. Fringe ideas have flourished in the age of social media, and would have not entered mainstream discourse if it weren't for the tech industry.

[mpalmer]

> People in the US are no longer allowed to question the legitimacy of their elections on most social media platforms.

Sounds almost reasonable, except:

Putting a question mark after misinformation and conspiracy theories doesn't magically transform them into reasonable questions.

And pluralizing the word "elections", doesn't fool us into thinking this is about more than the 2020 presidential, and Donald Trump's lie that it was stolen.

It has been thoroughly litigated and found to be legitimate by both public and private entities. Anyone continuing to "question" it most likely has an agenda of undermining that legitimacy.

[SerLava]

>I mean even the US president was banned for "violence" despite asking rioters to go home

So if I was to try to get you killed on this forum but then my next post said "violence is bad though" would that make the first part go away?