I think I have finally figured something out I was struggling with since 2022..... · 1:33am September 5th
Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, I have struggled with something. I didn't want that Twitter dies, when so many demanded that it gets shut down and left it because they were against Elon Musk's free speech plans. I was thinking of all the pony content on there, of the history of the fandom and the history of MLP: FiM that would get lost then. I was also worried about what Elon Musk said about free speech getting stifled online. I hadn't heard about that before, because I was never much involved with politics until then, but it made me aware of the DSA and the EU's plans with it.
I agreed with Elon Musk and said that censoring free speech on Twitter and blocking it is wrong. I was criticizing the EU a lot for the DSA and for dictating people what they can say online. And I was thinking that everyone should say what they want online, whatever their opinion is and their thoughts are, even if it's something that offends other people a lot or that someone feels hurt by, because I felt uneasy about the idea to deny people to speak freely.
I was never rascist, homophobic or transphobic, even though I probably looked like that to some with how much I stood up for Elon Musk and criticized the free speech censorship plans. I was also saying that free speech does not equal hate speech and was talking a lot about how all those enraged people who were attacking Elon Musk right from the start mixed up those terms and said that they only read "free speech" as "hate speech" because they are paranoid. I even accused some that they outright want to censor speech online because they are totalitarian in their mind and enjoy censoring people and wielding power over them. But I was not truly sure where to draw the line between free speech and hate speech myself.
I felt confused and torn between the idea of censorship and the idea of a nice online climate where people can feel safe. And I was always erring on the side of just letting people say online whatever they want, while toying with ideas like not allowing only specific words, limiting the reach of hate tweets or only preventing targeted people from seeing hate tweets by not including them in hashtag and search feeds and by deleting tweets in which these people get directly pinged, so as to not dictating people's speech online, but also to prevent victims of hate speech from being targeted.
But overall, I was more on the side that speech should not see any restrictions at all and I was very angry at the EU for wanting to control that and at people who cried for that on Twitter, supported those plans and vilified Elon Musk.
I knew that something was wrong on Twitter with all the hatred that transgender and homosexual people and people of color, among others, get there, but I was supporting the idea of absolute free speech and felt uneasy about the plans to control it anyway. And I was not able to make sense of that contradiction in my head.
Over the last few days, I was reading a lot about how a judge in Brazil who is head of the Supreme Court there, Alexandre de Moraes, and who managed to seize control over pretty much all of Brazil's government, while being backed by Brazil's president, had a fight with Elon Musk for months, about the demands to suspend certain Twitter accounts of brazilian people and oppositional politicians and how he threatened Twitter and its employees, before he ordered to block Twitter in Brazil, because Elon Musk did not comply with his demands. All this made me think abouf the entire Free Speech vs. Hate Speech/Censorship dilemma again.
When I read it all and was doing research and getting informed about what exactly is going on with this situation, I empathized with the people in Brazil and even said in a tweet that I will follow the call someone made and set my VPN to Brazil every time I go on Twitter, to solidarize with the brazilian people. In the same tweet, I was saying that governments shouldn't boss around their citizens. And when I wrote this sentence into my tweet, everything was suddenly very clear.
After writing this tweet, I was thinking about how this block of Twitter violates the rights of the people of Brazil to decide where they wanna talk online, that I hope they'll ignore the VPN ban that Alexandre de Moraes also issued (with the threat of an 8,800$ daily fine for everyone who accesses Twitter through a VPN) and that they will stand up to him. I came to the thought that the government of a democratic country should never attempt to control what people can say online, because once a law like that to ban certain speech online exists, it can easily be abused to ban everything that the government doesn't like to hear and because it limits the independence of people and makes them more dependent on their government.
If it would ever get to the point that a (former) democratic government or a state approves what people can say online first, I was thinking, then you will have the feeling that anything you say, the things that aren't banned, you can only say because the government is okay with that. You will always have the feeling that the legal things you say are pre-approved for you to say by your government. Because when you have a situation where your government decides what is okay for you to say online and what isn't, then it does approve what you want to say first before you can say it without the threats of post deletion, account suspension or prison sentence/fine. And what the government deems okay to say can change anytime, what is allowed for you to say today, can already bring you into trouble tomorrow. If it would get to this point, you would not feel anymore that you can say something because it's your right to say what you think, but because your government allows you to say it. Your freedom to speak would be gone.
I was thinking all these thoughts and I suddenly realized what had bothered me so much in 2022 when Elon Musk faced so much criticism and when I stood up for his free speech vision. It's the idea of governments controlling speech online and getting rid of hate speech, instead of the people doing it themselves.
I don't like hate speech. I think people shouldn't talk about others like that. But I also don't want that governments are taking care of ending that. Once a government has a law in place to ban hate speech online, it could one day abuse such a law to ban other things too; like criticism of the government or individual politicians, opposition against new laws, organization of protests and dissent, and persecute people for that. And even if it should not come to that, people still waive away their ability to limit and defeat hate speech online themselves by relying on their government. It makes them more dependent on their government to do things for them, instead of becoming self-dependent. It would be better and healthier for the people to defeat hate speech by themselves and independently.
This is my real stance on it and I finally understand it. I don't want hate speech online and I don't like everything that Elon Musk is doing, but it's better for the people and better for the future if they take care of this problem themselves, rather than letting a government do it for them with laws and regulations. This is the reason why I will always be against it when any government tries to control what can be said online and always do what I can to fight that.
In February, I was writing a blog entry about how I only talked vaguely about topics like rascism, because I was selfish and didn't want to strengthen cancel culture in the fandom out of fear of pony content disappearing as a result, how many people in the fandom, including my friend, began to think I'm a bad person because of that and how I want to talk more about important serious matters from now on so that people can see who I really am.
I think this blog entry is an important step to that goal, because I have been struggling with this for two years and I know that people who have seen my tweets back then think of me as a hate speech supporter.
I do not think you are a bad person for thinking things like this as I do not believe in bad or wrong opinions.
your opinions are perfectly sane and rationally. I personally don't mind all the hate speech. because half the time it's a literal joke and the other half of the time I'd rather the assholes of society announce to me loudly and clearly their assholery.