High profile twitter users hacked, Checkmarks locked to secure site.

[Darwinianevolution]

vivster said:

John2290 said:

Hate speech is speech, lies are speech. You can't go drawing lines short of threats to physical health. I have found some of your posts hateful and very often falling into falsehoods like your take on Covid being just the flu before it reached pandemic levels and hateful against straight, white males but id never ask you to be silenced for it. Say what you like, make an Irish slur or whatever and as long as you don't threaten to physically attack me, you should be allowed to say it. It's that simple. I believe you even said once it's a good thing to cull the old and weak if i remember correctly... should you be silenced? If you go on about silencing others at least hold yourself to the same standard.

If I'm killing or physically hurting people with my speech I should be silenced and if I don't stop killing people with my speech I should be removed from society altogether. Trump is not only hurting and killing people with his speech but he is also entirely unremorseful. So not only should he be silenced, but removed from society altogether.

See, it's very easy to draw lines. Free speech is a myth and only a moron would argue that speech should not be restricted in some form. Humans cannot be trusted to not hurt others, so of course they cannot be trusted with absolute freedom. It's how societies work and it's why laws exist.

There are procedures and laws to protect people from actual defamation and harassment on the internet already. That doesn't mean every single act or opinion (no matter how misguided or malicious) on the web is a threat to someone's integrity, otherwise we would have to close down the entire internet altogether. Also, if people should be removed from online society, then what about when the cancelled gets attacked? Someone who's been cancelled and is the target of a defamation campaign won't be able to defend himself because he won't even have a channel to do so. And you can't take people's rights to defend themselves.

And no, free speech is not a myth, is a human right that took a lot of fighting to obtain wherever it's active. Hell, you can complain about politicians because you live in a country with free speech. Try to do that on China and see what happens.

Last edited by Darwinianevolution - on 16 July 2020