Probably the era when the entire history of any and all activity you've ever done is logged, photographed and held to standards of when it is viewed, not when it was said or done.

Some time up until people started getting the internet on their phones, roughly. Of course, no definition is perfect.

Before then we had control of most media by a small set of companies (with many fun documented examples of people being blacklisted for going against the owners). Before that we had the Television Code, Comic Code, and so on. Before that we had McCarthyism.

Public and media speech was always moderated. In the past it was simply harder to notice since there were fewer un-moderated channels.

The FCC is an unelected, mostly unaccountable entity. I think George Carlin had some things to say about them. That they have any control over transmission of anything outside of a technical, practical scope is a travesty, imo.

Beyond the hardened strawmen of actual written law, we have a shifting sense of what is publicly acceptable. Given that most people do what everyone else around them is doing, or at least what they believe others are doing, there exists a powerful tool in that to control the public discourse. We've gone from "I disagree with what you say, but I will die to protect your ability to say it," to "I think someone will find this offensive, so I will also find this offensive, despite my not knowing anyone who'd actually be offended by it."

The laws are a harder target, so those who would wish to stifle inconvenient discourse likely would find it easier to convince a mostly pliable, trusting public to not say the things they don't want said. That there still are a small number of companies controlling what a majority of people consume might be convenient to this.

All conjecture, of course. More of the Paul Harvey "If I Were The Devil" kind of thing.

Before people had internet it was ~5 media companies that decided what could be said in public and who could say it. It was hardly as "free" as people imagine.

This was never true. Anyone could stand on the street corner and say anything. Anyone with some spare cash could print up political booklets or flyers and hand them out, and many did.

And you can't do that today?

You can't. Lockdowns.

To be clear, because sports aren't open in most places and a video game streaming website changed their terms of service, there is no longer free speech?

Can you help make sense of your comment, because it seems to be closer to a cult chant than a connected chain of thoughts.

You lost me.

That's a coherent issue if you think that free speech is a purely negative right, which is the traditional liberal position.

However, if you admit this, then you must also admit that Twitch is fully within their rights.

Personally, I believe that the positive right to free speech (subject to exceptions, of course) is much more important, and not up to FAANG to decide.

And when they had internet but before they had it on their phones, you could work around those media companies by saying things online. I believe parent was referring to that period.

And very few people, relatively, were online so you could reach only a small number of people. You can probably still reach just as many people online in unmoderated channels as you could back then.

He did not say "before internet".

Probably the eras when it was feasible to regularly communicate with small groups of people outside of a few highly-centralized platforms.

At this point, there's a credible argument to be made that the Facebook empire is a sort of natural monopoly, like our public utilities. They need to be heavily regulated, split up into regional operators, and/or legislated out of existence.

You can communicate with small groups outside of a few central platforms. Stormfront remains alive. The incels have their own site as well.

You want the ability to communicate with everyone (tweeting is a message to the world) or if you aren't allowed to do that, for nobody to have that ability.

Those are fringe global communities.

I'm talking about how you cannot effectively stay in touch with your neighbors and local community without using Facebook's platforms. People who you see every day, but who may not share all of your views; keeping up with those people is important if we want to heal our society's deep divides.

I've tried, but very few shared interest/volunteer/neighborhood groups will go out of their way to contact the one or two people who don't join their Facebook groups about scheduling or events.

It has nothing to do with racist or misogynist strawmen, but since you mention them, Facebook has done a lot to inflate those groups' ranks.

1984-2001.

From what I can work out, that era ended shortly after the Fairness Doctrine was removed.

Any day before today. Since the US is sliding down the freedom and freedom of the press index's every time they are updated you can always look back at More Freedom.