Free speech in the 21st century

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I've been thinking a lot lately about the place the internet has in people's lives in 2017 and this topic of free speech has been in the news lately when it occurred to me that to people who don't remember a time without the internet which is a significant amount of people at this point have existed in a world where the main means of communication is censored. I've use the internet pretty much all my life, I was on it before the phenomena of social media and it's encroachment to every inch of our existence and I've definitely think it has changed society in some good ways but also bad. Is more good than bad? I think there's probably more of a debate on the subject than there was 10 years ago.

2016 was a year where it seemed like the lines between internet life and real life were blurred beyond all recognition, internet culture seems to becoming more dominant in the overall culture much to the confusion to those not initiated towards it. So many of these underlying issues were foreshadowed in the years before like with Gamergate and whole bunch of other -gates. If you're not an internet person then you would probably be pretty confused by the extent of extremism and how tense the discourse is. With social media the amount of dissatisfaction people have is not something that can hidden but someone owns a website and the people on it must listen to their dictations. There are places on the internet were there is free speech but those places are held in ill repute to say the least, these of differing parts of the internet are seemingly at war with each other at any given time.

Is there is more tolerance for censorship and authoritarian decision making due in "real life" due to conditioning of their social interactions thru the internet? When somebody is violates the norms of communities online they can be made to disappear whereas in real life you can't kill your or exile your neighbor simply because they said something that offends you or were a jerk. You don't have to ever hear anything you don't like and you don't even have to acknowledge the view points of other people, you can withdraw and segregate yourself totally in insular 'safe spaces'. The mob mentality on internet has weaponized shame, trolling, and will ruin anybody and any reason. When somebody upsets the collective on the internet that collective often in anonymity granted by the internet holds no mercy.

People refuse to speak to people they don't like in real life too. And safe spaces in real life? Oh yeah. Say something people don't like in real life and you'll get the cold shoulder pretty quickly. That's human nature.

The bullying aspect of it is a real issue. In real life you can choose your friends. Online, people come to you. Sometimes they'll deliberately seek you out. Check out the replies to the tweets or videos of any left-leaning politician - it will be full of people with avatars of Trump and Farage and Hitler saying they should shut up. Equally I'm sure many on the right feel overwhelmed by people attacking them at times (personally, as a liberal, I probably get more "enemy of the people" stuff from the left than the right, but it's probably a different shade to what conservatives get, and WrongPlanet aside the sites I use are left-leaning). I think effective "block" functions are not only healthy, they're necessary for free speech.

Anarchy is not free speech, not really. True free speech allows people to express their views without fear. Those views can be criticised, sometimes strongly, but always respectfully.

(Saying that, I have sympathy for the notion that some views undermine democracy and free speech so badly that even respectful disagreement grants them too much power. Anyone who advocates genocide should really just be told where to stick it.)

But there are other places like here in Turkey where anonymously on the internet is the ONLY truly safe place to discuss local politics. It is not unsafe in that you can get your feelings hurt. It is unsafe as in people can literally get you arrested for saying the wrong thing! Both sides abuse draconian Turkish laws and try to get people in trouble by snitching to police. It's ridiculous. You think American politics is uncivil. Anonymous internet debates of Turkish politics regularly devolve into people screaming death threats at each other. Yes, it can be much worse.

The worst consequence most people on the internet will get for bieng total offensive a-hole is being banned from a site which can be remedied by creating a new account. Prior to the internet the consequences were a lot more painful. So the misuse of free speech increased, increasing demands for curtailing it.

The internet and devices have shortened attention spans. Shorter attention spans probably makes it easier to fool people and incrementally limit free speech.