803ce78aa023ddd2685a019f3aa941e6
Lessening Free Speech Is Not Ethics
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: In the name of "protecting us" the folks at Microsoft Canonical herald a new era of censorship and self-censorship
THE INTERNET is becoming more oppressive a space over time. I'm not so old -- nor a "traditionalist" -- but I think the way things are going is truly Orwellian. It's further magnified by centralised platforms such as social control media and corporations that control Free software communities -- to the point of policing speech. Of course they call that "Open Source" and speak of "conduct" (code word for control by those corporations).
"Are we mandating tolerance of corruption?"This issue isn't a cross-generational thing. It's not even about age. It's about corporate interests and a divide-and-rule strategy, akin to trolling by the most hypocritical companies out there. A few months ago I turned 40 and my site has just turned 20 (I'm hardly new to the Web; I've made sites since I was 15 and I've used IRC since I was about 13; it was prior to that when I had practised some simple programming). The actual technical progress made since then is nearly zero. We've had technology turned against its users, using misleading doublespeak like "smart" and "clown computing". At the same time there was a watering down of language -- to the point where condemning a criminal company like Microsoft is considered "hateful". You know we've gone too far when criminals are protected from "offence". Are we mandating tolerance of corruption? ⬆
Note/clarification regarding meme: When you ban someone or ban whole groups (e.g. IP addresses from China) there's no "polite" term/way to put it. It's a never-ending or circular game of word-shuffle. It'll appease nobody but xenophobic corporations which abhor speech (except their own), and that appeasement will only be temporary anyway. It's a pretext or excuse for 'agenda creep', governed by corporations, not communities.