Well... not exactly.

I mean it is true they did it. But they got help.

Because I remember when all this was starting up two decades ago there were a lot of pressures to block this or that. Maybe hate speech, or maybe you crossed RIAA, or maybe you were of dark complexion and Middle East descent and nobody could tell what your arabic said but it defenitely had to be dangerous.

So it became pretty customary to have corporations bring content down when asked to do so and this recent wave of deplatforming is just extension.

Basically, that's what happens when you start to compromise on principles and choose the easy path.

Instead of letting people exercise their free speech and using existing laws to chase people for when they are impinging on somebody elses rights, we chose to compromise and asked companies to do this without due process.

And that was beginning of the slippery slope which now suddenly got much steeper than before.

While the RIAA is problematic, it was done under plausible cover of law. So, I understand following criminal laws and such.

As for foreign locales, I think the solution is to operate locally like a Mazda or a PepsiCo has to do. Have locals manage your local ops, of course reporting to HQ.

But now they decided to enter the unwieldily realm of figuring out intent of speech and whether it’s crossed moral lines or ethical lines or political lines.

That’s just impossible and sets them up for failure.

They deserve this failure.

They want to dictate TO THE WORLD right and wrong speech UNIFORMLY. That’s utterly ridiculous.

So China or Venezuela or Iran said mean things. So what! At least we know what they’re thinking and if serious enough take proper measures. It should not be FB or TWTTR who decide these things.

> feel they have the power and self imprimatur to manage speech

Well they shut down the former president of the USA. They clearly have nothing to fear.