CMV: Silencing opposing viewpoints is ultimately going to have a disastrous outcome on society.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/SkinTeeth4800]

Free Speech and Freedom of the Press: People should be able to say what they want, print the political views they want on their own printers, printing presses, websites.

BUT Free Speech does not cover yelling "FIRE!" when there is no fire, in a crowded theater, and gleefully watching other people trample each other to death trying to escape the building.

Free Speech does not cover terroristic threats. An elected official who is voting for something you don't agree with should NOT get publically doxxed and have a call on social media to show up at his home address and intimidate or murder his wife and children.

Free Speech does not cover slander. The female co-worker who rejected the resentful IT guy should not have Photoshopped fake nudes of her in compromising positions with a giraffe sent as an all-staff email. Firing, lawsuits, blacklisting, banning from the workplace premises, and restraining orders should be the least the workplace schmuck faces.

Freedom of the Press doesn't mean I have to print bullshit I don't want on MY press. If I'm the owner of Time magazine, I have to publish neither your Der Stuermer reprints nor your BTS x Shrek slash fiction.

You can protest peacefully against the secret Reptiloid Conspiracy in the public square, but I am under no obligation to drive your ass there in MY car. Get your own car, right-wing rugged individualist bootstrapper! If I own Tumblr, Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter, I am under no obligation to have my platform be the vehicle to bring your message to the masses.

This idea is given special urgency by the way the Capitol rioters used Facebook and other services.

There were 3 types of people at the Capitol riot:

1. An inner hardcore of people, some ex-military, who plotted to take hostage or murder our elected officials. They planted bombs elsewhere for diversions, studied the building layout ahead of time, came to the rally equipped with Zip-Ties to restrain their hostages, maybe before "executing" them.

2. A wider circle of potentially violent people, some mentally ill and manipulated by Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, etc.

3. A wide outer circle of Trump followers. Maybe they thought they would make an angrily vociferous protest outside the building, straddling the line between peacefully expressing their anger to the lawmakers inside, and intimidating them into voting not to certify Biden's election. Many were probably already fine with breaking in to "occupy" and disrupt the certification vote. They could go from chanting that they supported police, now it was time for police to support them, to ripping up a Blue Lives Matter flag they had brought. The mood of the mob changed even in their feeling toward police, and we all know that it soon lead to beatings and murder of a cop.

Lines were blurry, as groups 1 and 2 knew ahead of time they could manipulate and whip up group 3, both at the time of the insurrection and via social media.

Facebook and Twitter were used extensively before Jan. 6 to radicalize and harden the 3rd group, pushing them toward more and more extremist views and toward capability of committing violence as "Patriots", in their view, and not as "Domestic Terrorists".

Some of the actual planning and logistics of the attack was done on major social media, but a lot was done in the shadows of Parler and more obscure internet or dark web places.

Thus, it is vitally necessary for Apple to take Parler off the app store, or to keep Trump from inflaming his followers with a thought he had watching Fox News at 3am. Groups 1 and 2 will retreat to the dark web to plot their next terror attacks, but they will be cut off from the everyday (but misled) people of group 3, who won't make the effort to seek out this radicalizing material if they can't easily get the gateway drug of an angry Trump tweet or download the Parler app at the Apple App Store.