this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
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It seems to me a repeating pattern that once freedom of thought, speech and expression is limited for essentially any reason, it will have unintended consequences.

Once the tools are in place, they will be used, abused and inevitably end up in the hands of someone you disagree with, regardless of whether the original implementer had good intentions.

As such I'm personally very averse to restrictions. I've thought about the question a fair bit โ€“ there isn't a clear cut or obvious line to draw.

Please elaborate and motivate your answer. I'm genuinely curious about getting some fresh perspectives.

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[โ€“] Nibodhika@lemmy.world -1 points 5 days ago

Everyone who claims this is a hypocrite, you absolutely have limits on the freedom of speech and expression, and no one can limit your thoughts with the current technology so that's irrelevant to the discussion. You don't believe me? Ok, in that case I think you should be okay with my freedom to express myself by dismembering you slowly while streaming it online, oh, I shouldn't be allowed to legally do that? How DARE you limit my freedom of expression.

So, now that we've established freedom of expression is already limited by other laws we should focus on which laws should be allowed to surpass the freedom of expression, and the answer is essentially all of them, otherwise "I was expressing myself" would be a valid legal defense. The whole point of a law is to prevent people from expressing something, be it murder intent or unwillingness to pay taxes. We must watch our government so that laws are not oppressive and that they're used to protect the people and not to abuse power. But laws against racism and homofobia are not abuse of power and serve to protect people from other people.