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Re:Why conservatives won't save freedom of speech by sneak on Sunday March 27, 2022 @12:19PM (#30821468)
Cancel culture itself, paradoxically, being exercise of free expression (vocal disapproval of socially repugnant things), suggests that perhaps claiming persecution is an authoritarian, anti-free-speech position.

Ultimately most people are anti-free expression of some kind. Very few are actually ideologically opposed to censorship (public or private) of things they find unconscionable.

Re:Why conservatives won't save freedom of speech by PaulHoule on Sunday March 27, 2022 @12:26PM (#30821528)
Free-expression cultism expands like a gas.

It's one thing to have a constitutional amendment that forbids jailing somebody because the government doesn't like what they say.

It's another thing to say that somebody has to provide you with a free printing press, that people have to read it, that communities can't protect themselves from harmful communications, etc.

Where does it stop?

Several times a week I flag a discussion on HN where somebody leads with how grievously wounded they feel because somebody downvoted their post. Free speech fetishism turns into a sense of entitlement that people are forced to not just read their dreck but we can't express disapproval of it. When are we going to be forced to grin and clap like idiots to appease their narcissism?

Re:Why conservatives won't save freedom of speech by sneak on Sunday March 27, 2022 @01:14PM (#30821946)
I think it is now safe to assume knowledge of xkcd 1357 at this point.

Private censorship is still censorship and it is still powerful, otherwise Google and Facebook wouldn't wield it as often as they do (often at the explicit legal behest of the states in which they operate).