[strictnein]

> "leaning on tech companies during an epidemic"

The government partnering with businesses to restrict speech is actually a really bad thing. Thankfully we've pulled back from that now. Trump being corrupt and a garbage human doesn't negate that fact.

[immibis]

I think it would be interesting to hear your take on this hypothetical situation: I have been cursed by the Devil himself, so that whenever I say "xyzzy" and then the name of a person and then "plugh", that person drops dead.

Should the government restrict my speech?

[strictnein]

The devil doesn't exist, nor does magic.

The law does speak on this though, already. If you run a gang, and you say out loud "Charlie is such a pain" and every time you say that phrase, the person you named is killed, you are also held liable for those killings.

[immibis]

So a restriction of speech.

[strictnein]

Yep, lots of ways that we restrict speech. Criminal speech is not protected. Business speech is also not protected. Telling Eastasia about our new spy plane is also not protected.

Saying stupid, abhorrent, wrong, etc things online is, thankfully, protected. If you don't think that it should be, just imagine the person you dislike politically the most being the one who decides what should be allowed and what shouldn't.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

[immibis]

Earlier you stated - and I quote - "the government partnering with businesses to restrict speech is actually a really bad thing" but now you state it's okay to restrict certain classes of speech. Is it bad or isn't it? Suppose every time I tweet "xyzzy", someone's name, then "plugh", they die. Would the government be justified ordering Twitter to ban me?

I don't actually need to use magical examples any more since you provided three of your own:

> Criminal speech is not protected.

So if I keep tweeting "kill this guy" and people are killing all the guys I name, should the government partner with Twitter to restrict my speech?

> Business speech is also not protected.

So if I tweet "I'm buying Twitter for $420 per share" and then don't do it, should the government partner with Twitter to restrict my speech?

> Telling Eastasia about our new spy plane is also not protected.

So if I tweet to Eastasia about our new spy plane, should the government partner with Twitter to restrict my speech?

This actually happened, on Discord. Was it really bad when the government partnered with Discord to restrict the speech of that War Thunder player?

[dns_snek]

So you're murdering people and asking whether the government should stop you? Obviously? Not just by restricting your speech but by using lethal force if necessary.

[immibis]

So you agree that speech which causes deaths should be restricted?

[strictnein]

It's not speech. You have a gun that fires when you say a word. You having a setup that fires the gun when you say a word instead of pulling a trigger doesn't mean you are utilizing "speech" in any meaningful sense of the word, other than that the gun responds to a sound.

[immibis]

There is no gun involved. I say the words, and the person dies. Should the government restrict my speech?

[strictnein]

Again, we don't live in a fairyland, we live in reality. A gun is real, your magic is not. If you had a gun that fired based on a sound, the fact that a sound is used does not matter. It is not "speech". Noise is not protected speech.

Likewise, if you had the magical ability to kill a random person with your magical sounds, you are not practicing "speech", you are using a magical technique in your make believe land to kill random people.

[dns_snek]

Yes, for some definition of "speech which causes deaths". This definition should include calls to violence but exclude, for example, vaccine skepticism.

[wredcoll]

There's a big ol' messy line between a powerful entity saying "I would like you not to do that" and "I'm going to stop you from doing that".

We don't want to be in some world where the gov can't ask people to stop being/hosting vaccine deniers.

[raw_anon_1111]

We have pulled back from that with Trump suing companies who have said things against him and then paying him off - see Paramount, Disney, Facebook, X, and Google.

Not to mention the new press corp policy that everything that press says about the Pentagon has to be approved by the government. It was a policy so abhorrent that Fox News even refused to sign.

He even threatened to take away ABCs broadcast license because someone criticized a dead racist podcaster.

Conservatives all over the US - especially in “the free state of Florida” - are firing public officials who criticize him.

(and every time I dare say that Kirk was a racist who said a good “patriot” should bail out the person who best Pelosi’s husband almost to death, I get flagged)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...

[strictnein]

I like how the first quote on that link was taken out of context. It let's me know that the rest of those likely are as well.

The statement he was making was that programs like Affirmative Action and DEI can lead a person to think those things, and he doesn't want to think those things.

Not a fan of his, but if he's such an evil person, one wouldn't have to resort to twisting his words.

[raw_anon_1111]

So what “context” makes this okay “ If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”?

What “context” makes it okay to call someone a “patriot” if they would be willing to pay to bond out the guy who beat Pelosi’s husband almost to death?

Did he also speak out against the unqualified people in the Trump administration like RFK Jr., and the entire DOGE effort? Where is the outrage about Trump appointing his own lawyer to be a DA who has never prosecuted a case because all of the qualified ones wouldn’t go after his enemies? Is it only “unfair” if a non White person (supposedly) gets a job they aren’t qualified for?

So he was “just saying what other people think”. He was actually a good caring Christian man that wouldn’t say a bad word about anyone…

Most of the time when “great men” die, their true believers quote what they said during their life. Not one of his supporters will quote his most famous speeches.