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The Internet Is About to Get a Lot Worse (US focused)
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this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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It is a mistake to think of a government making choices in the same way an individual might make choices. A government is not a person, and a collection of people is not equivalent to a single individual in its ability to have coherent values and act on them. Instead, some framework for cooperation and compromise must be used. If your framework sucks, if it's especially wishy-washy and subjective, power seeking assholes will be more able to twist it around and abuse it. Civil rights don't always work perfectly, but they work better than the alternatives (like hoping a dogmatic ideology will be able to seize absolute power, agree with itself, and maintain sane values all at once).
It seems obvious to me that if free speech protections are eroded in the United States, that opens the door to the right in particular suppressing the sort of speech they clearly want to suppress and are actively trying to suppress. They have control of state governments, they get in power federally and pass laws on a regular basis. Is there any reason to think that wouldn't happen? This bill seems to be a perfect example: bipartisan legislation giving both sides censorship and intimidation powers.
As for whether the approach works in practice, and can avoid being a bare expression of the power of whoever is in charge at the time, here is a summary of historical supreme court cases related to Free Speech. I don't think all of these are necessarily for the best, but it seems clear that for the most part (with some notable exceptions) they are not egregious deviations from the principle, and are not expressions of the whims of whoever is in power at the time. It represents an actual restraint on those who would like to exercise power over others.
Since you seemed to reply in earnest, I'll link this and highly suggest you watch it. Even if you don't end up agreeing, I think it lays out the crux of the issue with human rights as an idea in a clear concise manner. It's only 20 minutes long and it's well put together.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AhRBsJYWR8Q (I dunno how to do the in line text link)
I'd go point by point through your post (which I did read) but I'm swamped with work and shit.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=AhRBsJYWR8Q
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
There is a lot here I agree with. I've seen stuff from this channel before and it's pretty good. Human rights are somewhat arbitrary, and are influenced by what makes a convenient compromise between power interests. However I don't think that necessarily contradicts what I am saying, because what I am arguing against is not the rejection of civil rights as a concept, but the catastrophe that would come from the dismantlement of this particular one in this particular way given the context of our present society.
From the video:
So removing rights is not by itself a solution, and can do harm. We do not exist in a society where the fabric holding it together is "significance of community". The spirit of discourse I see from authoritarians is very far from suggesting a way to reorder our world around "significance of community". Rather on all sides it seems to be rage manifesting as a desire to silence and dominate their enemies, with the consequences only an afterthought, that can or should not be seriously considered. Even while claiming mutual hatred, they pursue this shared objective together, and things like this bill show that they aren't even very committed to hiding it. The reasons why the success of one means the success of the other in this case are obvious; the loss of the right of Free Speech in this context means the empowerment of people who want to use censorship as a weapon, and weapons don't discriminate.