Comment on Mastodon says it doesn't 'have the means' to comply with age verification laws
sqgl@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks agoThe ideal of free speech is a naive fantasy especially with social media which can amplify the craziest of ideas which can go viral.
General_Effort@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I mushed a lot of things together in my post. Copyright and political censorship have very different motives behind them. The point is that, to enforce copyright, you need extensive surveillance of online content and the means to shut down the exchange of information. That requires an extremely expensive technical infrastructure. But once that is in place, you can use it for political censorship without having to fear pushback over the economic cost that would come even from politically sympathetic actors. Conversely, if you introduce political censorship, you might get support by the copyright industry, including the news media, for helping their economic interests.
Where it gets to political censorship, the paradox of tolerance is exactly the lunacy that I’m talking about. In mad defiance of all historical fact, there is belief that liberalism is weak, that political dissidents must be persecuted, information suppressed. Never in history has democracy fallen because of a commitment to tolerance. All too often, they fall because majorities feel their personal comfort threatened by minorities and support the strong leader who will “sweep out with the iron broom” (as a German idiom goes).
Do you notice how that Wikipedia article has nothing to say on history?
sqgl@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Never occurred to me.
The would be fascists don’t want democracy. Note how Trump is softening up the public by using the term lately.
Good essay:
The goal is to shift the Overton window: dictatorship is not a threat, but a regrettable necessity.
dictatorship as safety, democracy as danger.
…substack.com/…/trump-says-americans-would-rather