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by deanCommie 1221 days ago
Maybe you should instead advise your business partners not to host content that threatens the lives of specific individuals based solely on their identity group? Including coordinate doxxing, harassment, swatting, and threats of violence?

It's nice that you have the option to take such a professional attitude that can advise companies in the abstract based on free speech absolutionism, but the details really matter.

I know too many Americans genuinely believe that free speech absolutionism is the only way to prevent a descent into 1984 authoritarianism, but Canada and Europe seems to have found a way to restrict nazis and threats of violence against races and LGBTQ people and ending the "slippery slope" there.

1 comments

Many Americans would disagree that they "ended the "slippery slope" there" or have anything close to free expression. Look at the Trucker protests during Covid, arresting people for harmless jokes on Twitter, or because a dog raised it paw.....

Come On now. Neither Canada, nor Europe have free speech, while they may not be to 1984 authoritarianism yet, they are well well down that path.

> Trucker protests during Covid,

Watch a video of the protest in Ottawa and come back to me and tell what you would have done if this was happening inside your city.

> arresting people for harmless jokes on Twitter

I'll give you that one - https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/7/22912054/uk-grossly-offens...

The law is a mess. But ironically it's not because of a degradation of free speech, but rather because of legacy laws that haven't been caught up with the times.

> because a dog raised it paw

While I personally wouldn't have made a stink out of that one either, let's not pretend that's all it was.

The man trained his dog to raise a paw in response to the command "Do you want to gas the Jews?" and then put it online.

I realize it may be difficult for Americans to understand why the rest of the world takes such a zero-tolerance policy with fascism considering they are only 6 years removed from having elected a fascist president, but there are good reasons why the rest of the world takes a zero tolerance policy with Nazi speech.