| > If you don't want to be all alone, you shouldn't have to opt in to becoming a part of the hivemind. You don't need to be all alone, you just need to be mindful that maximising freedom for all includes the freedom for others to choose not to want to associate with you if you insist on being disruptive, and what different groups find disruptive varies, and you can not expect everyone to voluntarily subject themselves to disruption, and in many cases harassment and threats. You don't need to opt in to a "hivemind". You just need to find a community that does not consider your speech offensive, or create your own. The Fediverse has communities that span the political and social spectrums, from the furthest left to actual Nazis, many of which certainly very much refuse to engage with each other but all of which still are able to exist and exercise their speech to those willing to listen. > and the Fediverse "The Fediverse" does not censor. Individual instances and sometimes groups of instances censor. Nobody stops you from hosting your own discussions and federating with those who are willing to consent to engage with you and saying whatever you want. What you have no right to expect of others is for them to yield and put you in charge of what they're forced to listen to. > Where are the censorship police in public parks and libraries, asking people to leave? These spaces are perfectly fine and nobody is being harmed in them. There's no reason our internet deserves special padded walls, memory holes, and horse blinders. Try to strip off completely in most parks, or shout in the library, or going up to random people and harassing them with speech they find threatening or offensive, and you'll see that every space have community norms that are enforced, and will censor you if you act in ways incompatible with what we've decided is appropriate for that space even if you're entirely free to act the exact same way elsewhere. Protecting the freedom of all also means enabling the creation of spaces with restrictions. > Remember that just twenty years ago, democrats and liberals were the protectors of free speech. The pendulum swung to the right (and it'll probably swing back left again). That's why this platform- and infrastructure-level censorship is so upsetting. Tools that "protect" today might be turned against you tomorrow. This maximalist view of wanting us all to carry speech we don't want to has nothing to do with free speech, but about a desire to force us to listen, and it has a deeply authoritarian undertone to it. I'm all for broad and strong protections for people to say what they want, but not to be forced to let them do so in my own space. |