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by krapp
268 days ago
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>All of the arguments used to excuse cancel culture ("right to speech not to a platform", "it's a company censoring you, not the government", "freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences") are now being leveraged by the right. Those arguments are correct though. Free speech doesn't guarantee a platform. Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences. The First Amendment does only apply to the government. None of this was controversial until the right decided shitposting their hot takes on black people and the Holocaust was a fundamental human right. And they're being leveraged by the same right wing that wanted the government to seize control of social media platforms and force them to allow right-wing content and make moderation illegal. And Jimmy Kimmel's firing was due to pressure by the chair of the FCC, which isn't even the context in which those arguments were made and is an obvious violation of the First Amendment But zing, I guess.. |
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This was the sales pitch, but it wasn't reality. People were being banned for much less severe speech than this kind of stuff and the window was slowly creeping towards less and less severe disagreements with the dominant narrative. I think bans for COVID stuff were particularly galling for many people[1].
There's a fair argument that the COVID situation was dire and required drastic action, but this can't be papered over in retrospect by saying that only holocaust deniers and racists were being banned.
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/2/twitter-to-permanent...