Social media posts inciting hate and division have “real world consequences” and there is a responsibility to regulate content, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, insisted on Friday, following Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking programme in the United States.
Social media probably shouldn’t, but the law should allow for a free for all. I personally think we should be closer to “free for all” than “completely locked down,” but everyone has their preferred balance.
The creator of Lemmy is just one example. They remove a lot of content that isn’t hateful, just against their political ideology. I used that as an example of a private social media website which does a lot of censoring, even though the creators are sort of, somehow, outwardly against censoring? So everyone is human is my point.
The article in question is about hate speech, not political dissent. Hate speech is pretty widely moderated away on Lemmy, and I think a majority of people here are cool with that. Some here are arguing semantics which is fair. Censoring is censoring which is the definition of censoring. I’m in the camp that if someone online is threatening another person or group of people, that should be hidden/removed.
It’s also by a politician with political power.
Do you know what the difference is between political dissent and hate speech? A clever application of the law, or a particularly persuasive lawyer. The law should be limited to prosecuting credible threats of violence or other speech intending to cause direct harm (e.g. repeated harassment, shouting “fire” in a crowded room, etc).
Overbearing private moderation is absolutely fine, since people can take their speech to another platform or create their own. Laws controlling speech is another matter entirely.
Lemmy devs are free to moderate their instances however they see fit, and I’m free to not engage with their instance.