So we’re going back to silencing them, except instead of going after these people themselves you want to go after the channels they use to spread their words. This is what I meant when I said “creative limitation”. Instead of treating the principle of the freedom of speech as the broad imperative protecting the spread of ideas - even ideas you don’t like, especially ideas you don’t like - you interpret it in a narrow technical fashion so that you can find ways around it.

Never skip wheel day

I think you’ve misinterpreted the picture. These are supposed to be domino bricks. “trans rights” isn’t the first brick because it is the most important - it’s the first brick because it’s the first that’s going to fall.

I’m anti-imperialist and pro-metricist.

but we shouldn’t be giving all ideas privileged platforms

These platforms are not owned by the government or by some other representative organization. Fox, for example, is owned by Rupert Murdoch - it’s his platform to give voice to whatever ideas he wants to.

Most you can do (without outright censorship) is restrict them from using the word “news”. Which… I don’t think is going to be very effective. They’ll just do this whole “we can’t call ourselves news because the government doesn’t want you to know what we are going to tell you” shtick and their audience will believe them even more for that.

How did you manage to mix Putin into this one?

It’s PHP - no matter how you’d learn it, the code would still be awful.

You want to silence certain voices (the one telling lies) but can’t/won’t use proper government sanctions, so instead you coordinate the community to keep distance from these voices, hoping to deter people from voicing them and preventing the ones too determined to be deterred from getting any reach. This is excommunication.

My problem is not with the exact way you are trying to censor your political opponents - it’s in the very fact you are set out to censor them. You don’t have to listen to them, you don’t have to give them a platform, but if you try to establish a wide system to prevent other people from hearing these voices - that’s censoring.

You can’t use the full power of government sanctions and criminal charges to silence the people you disagree with (for whatever reason. Even if they are valid reasons) so you try to find creative ways to punish them. Well… not really “creative”, since the idea of excommunication is not new. But my point is that this is still about using power to silence voices you don’t like - you just use a slightly different power in a slightly different way.

Please don’t treat the freedom of speech (or any other important democratic right) as a creative limitation…

Maybe you haven’t met the right cream yet?

No. You love cream. That’s a different thing.

These are not good boys

There is a big difference between voting/supporting them and following them on social media. I encourage everyone, Left as well as Right, to follow people, pages and communities of the other side. You should know the story the other side tells itself. Even if you don’t agree with it - it’s better to not agree with the real thing than to fight straw men in echo chambers.

You are being excommunicated for resisting excommunication!

That’s the beauty of religion - if our gods and prophets did not materialize to contradict what we are saying in their name, that means they approve.

Placing exceptions on the freedom of speech does not mean that lies will get silenced. It means that whatever the government wants to censor will get silenced. Because the government will be the one who does the censoring. Or, if the censoring is not done by the government directly - the government will still be the one appointing the organization who does the censoring.

The freedom of speech must be protected - even if it means letting bad agents spread their lies uncensored. Because if you try to give the government the power to censor them, you’ll end up with a new Department of Truth led by Alex Jones (who is now unoccupied)

This is a terrible, horrible idea. It would give the government the power to censor anyone and anything, and all they have to do is claim that the thing they are censoring is a lie.

I see you take after your dad.

Downvoting in order to bring it below @whynot’s comment.