As long as their is a government there will never be true freedom of speech. There will always be something that a government won't allow. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, necessarily. True freedom would be chaos. There has to be rules/regulations/guidelines/etc. If someone says they're going to kill/harm someone, that should be taken as a threat, and that individual/group should be dealt with appropriately. If everyone had the freedom to say/do whatever they wanted we would just have to hope that everyone had excellent morals. Unfortunately, we know that this isn't the case. So we must restrict certain "freedoms" for the good of everyone. It's just one of those slippery slopes as to when/where it becomes too much restriction (i.e. bad). Someone will always be upset with those restrictions.

Free Speech in the US, at least, means freedom to speak out against/criticize your government. It doesn't actually grant you anything else.

Well. Freedom of speech is complicated.

When that freedom of speech entails the intention to hinder and restrict the freedom of others.

Freedom of religion is also complicated. As the manifestoes of many religions promptly encourages certain groups of people to be denied their freedom, and also certain aspects of holy books that directly opposes the law and the human rights that have been established in the 21st century.

So should there be freedom of religion when aspects of that religion opposes the law ans tramples on individual rights of people and groups?

Important to remember that religion, and the books associated with the religious practice, are in strict opposition to the law and human rights, and thus illegal.

Your example is not the same.

You can say what you want, and there will be consequences if its hate speech, but you can say it with certainty that you won't be killed for it.

The issue when defining speech is how far it extends before you are incurring on the rights of others.

For example, if I own a business I have the right to deny someone from ordering my product on certain grounds. What those grounds are shift based on social norms. You use to be able to deny people business based on race, but today that "freedom" is removed so that others have the "freedom" to not be discriminated against on this basis.

The challenge is often that imaginary "line" is not defined and changes its definition based on culture, generation and even individual. What can be criticized? What can be championed?

Also, there are two forms in which censorship occurs. State authorized and public/market pressure. The former is easy to spot as a law with punishment is passed, but the latter is trickier as runs into majority/minority rights and often leads to partial censorship such as time and place restrictions.

Simply put, freedom of speech or expression is an ongoing experiment which constantly changes due to the desires of the people of a given place or time. We're still finding the balance, and likely will continue to do so for centuries to come.

For some people, freedom seems to be all about the freedom to hate, discriminate and dominate.

While for others, freedom to love, freedom to be happy, and freedom of individual expression.

I think the latter is the way to go.

If only everyone felt the way you do.

"Below you'll find a video which explains this budding issue in greater detail. It appears that a video made by the same youtube user exposing the Charlie Hebdo attacks as possible government propagandist material - as part of a grander scheme to increase censorship - was itself censored on youtube."

To be honest I've no problem with the governments patrolling the internet. You would get arrested for going around shouting "f**king cunts" into everybodys face in the real world but on the internet that abuse plus far worse abuse can just go unpunished.

Long story short I think the internet brings out the worst in people and if you've nothing to hide you've not got too much to worry about. I'm all for government censorship lol.

Truer words have never been spoken.

you can't let demagogues run rampant under the banner of "freedom of speech", a lot of people are easy to entice by "simple messages and answers" these people provide in the form of scapegoats

and that conspiracy theory this youtube channel is crafting is a total joke