Freedom Taken, Not Given
For years I have heard the term 'free speech platform' be said. I would hear and see people tout whatever as being a free speech platform or something as promoting free speech. Recently I have come to the realization that at least when it comes to the internet, free speech isn't the issue we should be addressing but instead we should be focusing on censorship resistance.
When I hear stuff about free speech, it's mostly in relation to some centralised entity. People will demand nonstop that an online platform give them the freedom of speech when instead they should be taking the freedom for themselves. It seems that most people aren't even aware of any other possible way to express themselves other than these shitty social media platforms. They don't realize that they don't need to rely on something to give them the freedom they want but can instead use tools that let them take the freedom they want with little risk of censorship and/or easy ways to mitigate it.
When you have the right tools, you don't need to worry about someone giving you the freedom. When it comes to online stuff, there are protocols and software that is designed to not have to rely on some authority letting you have freedom or at least making it extremely easy to migrate, export, and mirror whatever it is you want to share in case of censorship.
A problem with relying on free speech is that people will often argue over what is or isn't free speech. When you instead have censorship resistance, you can bypass this argument. You don't need to worry about people's interpretations. Although if certain speech is deemed illegal, it will be on you to protect yourself from being prosecuted.
When speaking of free speech and censorship resistance, you should use country neutral language. I'm tired of seeing people claim whatever is unconstitutional or goes against the first amendment of the US Constitution when talking about a global entity or something that can be used by anyone in the world. People outside the US don't care about its laws. We also don't need to force entities through legal means to give us free speech. Forcing a private company to allow what you deem as free speech is just authoritarianism, especially when truly censorship resistant alternatives exist. People should voluntarily stop using these platforms and let them bleed to their death or be forced to improve due to competition from superior things. People that want whatever thing usually being a social media company to be legally forced to allow what they consider free speech probably have a social media addiction and shouldn't be using it in the first place.
Shut Up About Social Media
Society has an obsession with social media. People mostly choose it to say or share what they want and I view this as a problem. I view social media as a blight on society that is one of the biggest evils in this world. Most social media is controlled by a central authority that as said in my Memes, Constructs, Illusions article has an extreme amount of memetic influence on the world with its algorithms that can manipulate people and could have possible agendas. Even a decentralised, non-manipulative social media I don't trust nor would I use due to there still being a lot of memetic influence from what I've seen and retaining the same pettiness and pride of conventional social media.
People should stop obsessing over social media and instead use things focused more on publishing work instead of interaction being the main part. Having your own website or using some truly decentralised protocol is what I first think of in terms of a good way of publishing what you want. You could have social aspects added on to these but those wouldn't be the main part, what you publish would be. Having less social media-like things would lessen the memetic influences.
Written 2022-12-14 Published 2023-1-1