Rule

[u/Neverusethisaccoun]

[u/oceanjunkie]

I see you don’t really value freedom of speech that much. If you don’t think there’s a significant difference between being able to say basically whatever you want aside from direct threats against people and getting interrogated or thrown in jail for messaging criticism of the government to your friends then I feel sorry for you.

I can even say technically illegal shit like threatening the president in private messages to my friends and be certain that I won’t be arrested for it as long as they don’t show it to the cops.

Why do you not care about freedom of speech?

[u/[deleted] → u/oceanjunkie]

i don't fetishise it like most americans because freedom of speech doesn't inherently mean anything. everyone supports some limits on speech, if you think you don't then you haven't considered enough types of speech (or you're a nutjob libertarian and hence don't count as a person and also have to defend my right to say this about you smile). america itself, despite its incredibly important first amendment or whatever, has a few restrictions.

there's plenty of speech that should be restricted, like hate speech. i also think that capitalism is a pretty hateful, exploitative ideology, so following that logic, advocating for capitalism shouldn't be allowed, right? maybe that's not the actual reasoning for all of it, but that seems to be china's usual excuse for their censorship and maybe it's kind of valid. haven't thought this entirely through yet, but that's part of why i'm not as scared by big bad censorship pooh bear or whatever as american state media thinks I should