A quick bonus entry for the day, sparked up by a conversation at TDV's post's comments section.

Freedom of Speech

I've run into a lot of confusion about the concept of freedom of speech, so I want to give my perspective on it.

Freedom of speech means that the government can not ban your speech and opinions, under the threat of violence, fines or jail time. So, in front of the law, all opinions and speech are equal.

What freedom of speech doesn't mean that you should be given the power to force me to listen to you calling me names. You are entitled to free speech, but that does not mean other people are obligated to listen to you, and they need to have the ability to block your speech from their lives - on an individual level.

In its essence, freedom of speech is meant to protect people like Julian Assange, who hold legitimitately hazardous opinions and information that can put them in danger.

People can also control what speech they allow on their property, publications and things like internet platforms.

If I own a newspaper, and let's say I'm a super biased right winger, and you send me a column to publish that is left leaning, I am completely free to choose not to publish it on a newspaper that I own. It could be a stupid decision, it's entirely possible that your column includes valuable insight on things that could make my newspaper better, but nothing in freedom of speech enables you to force me to publish what I don't want to publish.

Just like your right to free speech doesn't give you the right to enter my living room without my permission to insult me. You are, of course, allowed to say whatever you want about me in your living room. You re also free to start your own website, newspaper, or whatever that is entitled @schattenjaeger is a Stupid Idiot.

The same goes for platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

A lot of us don't agree with the decisions that platforms like that make, but the fact is that the owners of the platform will always decide what happens on the platforms that they own. If they feel that nazi propaganda goes against the guidelines of what they want the platform to represent, they will censor it.

We don't have to like, but there's really no other way to look at it, in my opinion.

Also, when I block you, I am not restricting your right to free speech, I am enforcing my right to avoid listening to you. It's so weird to see people cry "free speech" whenever they get blocked on social media.

What we can do, however, is build and participate in alternative platforms, such as Steemit right here. It's a lot more effective than complaining about how Facebook sucks, but continuing to use without experiencing with other alternatives.

That brings me to the second topic which has to do with flagging

I like the flagging feature, and I feel that it's necessary for things like spamming and downright bullying, and there are benefits to it, since it disincentivizes said bad and trollish behavior. I also think that an internet platform that has such strong disincentives for trolling is worthy of Nobel peace prize consideration, especially considering that Obama got one.

But anyway.

There are drawbacks to the flagging feature, as well. I've noticed cases where people have decided that they don't like someone, and continuously ganged up on them, no matter what they post. In my opinion, this goes against what the feature is for.

If you don't like what someone has to say, the Mute button is a lot better tool for it. Just like blocking on Facebook, you can free yourself from being exposed to whatever annoys you, but leave it to other people to decide for themselves how they feel about the person's content.

And I'm a huge fan of blocking on Facebook, personally! I used to be so much more frustrated, but after discovering the block button, I never looked back.

An example of flag bullying are The Dollar Vigilantes's posts. I know very little of TDV, I don't have an opinion one way or another, but it's clear that there are people who are not a fan of him as a person. And that's fine. But it seems like said people have decided to showcase their contempt by automatically flagging whatever TDV posts.

The problem I have with this is the fact that when users don't like the person, they flag his posts, even though the dislike is aimed at the person making the post. It almost becomes a form of an ad hominem, where you attack the indivual, eventhough the target of the flag is the post, not the person writing it.

A flag is supposed to be a signal for the community that a post is not worth reading, it includes plagiarism, is spam, things of that nature. If it's used as a bullying mechanism just because you don't like the person, or his opinions annoy you on a personal level, it sends the wrong signal for the rest of the community.

I'm not saying get rid of the flag feature - like I said, it has its benefits and I wish to keep it - and I'm not even advocating any kind of "interventionism" to solve the "issue". I'm simply appealing to the community to use the flag feature for its intended purpose, instead of as a way of bullying without even reading the contents of the post.

Just mute whoever you don't personally like and flag things like spamming and plagiarism.

I will personally not flag you for disagreeing with me, but if you sink into personal attacks, I will probably mute you.

@schattenjaeger