[Meme] What Free Speech Ought to Mean
The rude people who attack Richard M. Stallman (RMS) do not believe in Free Speech, except perhaps their own. That's a gross distortion of the concept.
In his political notes RMS said that "Zuckerberg announced that Facebook and Instagram will replace fact-checking with a system of not-really-checking similar to what ex-Twitter does. The announcement was made in ways that signaled the intent to become a loyal part of the corrupter's tame media organizations."
He had previously said: "Zuckerberg has found a way to make a deal with the corrupter, by reducing moderation on his platforms. That means more of the things that many useds actively dislike about Facebook — those useds who don't recognize its fundamental wrongs which may not always be evident."
Last month he also said: "Facebook donated a million dollars to the corrupter's inauguration. I suppose this is not a crime, but it is in effect a bribe."
It does not sound like RMS suggests anything other than quitting social control media in general. He said some things to that effect. Yet there seems to be some semi-official account in https://mastodon.xyz/@rms.
The main issue with social control media is that usually the users aren't paying clients, so there's no incentive to respect what they have to do/say/upload and generally speaking it's a bit like some shared toilets. It's odorous and unpleasant. The bigger, the worse. A lot of conflicts. Gross!
RMS has long used his own site to 'microblog' and rightly so... it seems to have aged well (the decision not to "meet people where they are" but instead invite them to his site, which is hosted separately from GNU and the FSF).
Freedom of speech is somehow or somewhat of a relative thing; the old saying "Your Liberty To Swing Your Fist Ends Just Where My Nose Begins" comes in handy as an analogy. People saying out loud anything they want is metaphorically similar to exercising violence without expecting a response/challenge. Some people went further and asserted that Free Speech means you can say what you want without anyone responding to it (or even the right to an audience!). As if to say, "I lost my free speech" because someone said my speech was "crap" or "didn't accept my views". Or "nobody listens to me", so "I lack free speech".
A culture of healthy and polite dialogue is metaphorically the same as respecting national borders and responding to violent actions in a proportionate way.
We've long been of the opinion that free speech-dom means everyone can say a bunch of crap - even really dumb and offensive crap - but we in turn deserve and reserve to right to freely and bluntly respond to that crap. This way everyone has a say and hopefully at the end better ideas will triumph (not by just muzzling/banning people). █