I don’t disagree with Mozilla on this, I just feel conflicted, mostly because of “we need more then deplatforming”.
Agree. From an organization that advocates for aggressive censorship I don’t feel they can be trusted on this topic. Plus net neutrality is just a give away to big tech so they don’t have to pay for their bandwidth use, they get subsidized
Mozilla does not advocate for aggressive censorship, they are very much against it. Their position is that free speech benefits from moderation of hateful messages, because those have a chilling effect and ultimately limit what people will discuss.
So, they are on the side of free speech. You do not need to oppose anyone that slightly deviates from limitless free speech, unless you actually want to write those hateful messages.
Hate speech is a term made to silence others and their thought. Anyone who believes that they alone can determine what words can be spoken is not in favor of free speech. This is one topic where there is no grey. Advocates of silencing others in the name of “hate speech” are themselves practitioners of hate, pure and simple. They have hate for the free thought of others.
Mozilla saying that people should be silenced is the greatest act of hate there is. They themselves are guilty of hate speech.
Well, I disagree.
For example, no one needs to have, let alone express, the free thought that all Jews should be killed. That’s mental diarrhea with no worth whatsoever.
People will express shit like that anyways to bond with others. Having a common enemy is something that humans will bond over, even if that enemy is completely made up.And well, there are other ways to bond with people. Ways that 1) don’t exclude a given group of people from the discussion, 2) don’t actively cause harm, and 3) actually have value in themselves.
And I do feel like moderation helps in keeping groups from going down the mental diarrhea spiral. I also feel like it helps enough with that, that it’s worth treading that slippery slope of potential censorship.
Maybe there is a way to prevent mental diarrhea without moderation. Maybe there is some utopian future where people are self-aware enough to self-moderate.
But I don’t see that yet, and I’d rather have a non-government organization like Mozilla in the discussion about our current reality, rather than them not acknowledging the topic at all and leaving it entirely to governments.