Freedom of speech is not freedom of abuse !

in Deep Dives3 years ago (edited)

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Most of us think that freedom of speech is very important, but does it mean the freedom of abuse as well ? I don't think so !

Of course having a platform where the freedom of speech is protected is good. And we see that by no having the ability to delete accounts or content. It could be always found on the blockchain. So, technically we have full freedom of speech here and our content will always be found. Even if an application decide to remove it, we can find it on the explorer anyway. And that's awesome.

But what if someone will use the ability to freely write what ever he/she wants for abusing others. We all know how many trolls are there on the web. There are even those who can affect so badly content creators, especially those new content creators who just started to improve and grow their audience a bit. Creating content on the web for more than 6 years, I would say that I have some experience to deal with those trolls. But what about those who just started their journey in creating content. We usually invite our friends here, and maybe even relative, we wouldn't like to see them abused. Of course, we would defend such people and prefer to not see them abused.

Some people may think, that if we are supporting freedom of speech, that means we have to allow the abuse to happen. But that's not correct in my opinion. Should we allow plagiarism to happen ? Should we allow spam to happen ? Should we allow bullies to happen ? About plagiarism, I would say that's not fair to see someone stealing content earning, while the original content creator may struggle to get somewhere. About spam, I would say that we all hate it, instead of having a well organized platform of valuable content, we may see a platform with some comments, or full of links that may lead to fishing or any other type of scumming websites. And the last and not the lease is of course bullies. Maybe allowing them if also a kind of freedom of speech, but it doesn't mean that such people have the right to do what ever they want with others. Just like they may have the right to write what they want about others, we may have the right to treat them with the same way.

How many times we heard about people committing suicide because they get bullied. How many times we've seen people attacking someone because she or he does what's not accepted by others. I'm not talking about big crimes, or very bad behavior, but just something little, like not wearing the clothes their audience didn't like, or going to the place his/her audience don't like. I mean when the content creator is attacked psychologically for something really not that important. Or something without any real evidences, but just a fake about him/her. We should think about how such content creator felt at that time. Especially if the claim against him/her is not proven.

I'm not proposing to censor at all those who like to make fun of others, or to troll them. I just think that behavior shouldn't be appreciated by the community. We should do our best to create a friendly community. A community that welcome everyone building a brand and bring more value to all of us. I don't see any reason to appreciate the abuse. The more abuse we will allow on the platform, the more of it we will see.

I'm glad we have the mute button, and we can just ignore those who troll us.

Because it's better to spend time creating rather than wasting it on educating someone who are not looking to be educated, but just joined to waste the time of others.


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I think freedom of speech is very overlooked in social media, especially with the recent development of 'cancel culture'. Although there is obviously a line between freedom of speech and targeted abuse, I feel like people must learn to accept the opinions of others on social media.

Of course, accepting the opinions is better than just attacking someone and taking it personally. Especially when they attack someone based on his/her location, or race, or religion, or nationality or any things that deffers such person from others.

Maybe it can be hidden somehow, but those who do their own research but not trust blindly the mass media and propaganda, they will find it anyway.

Truth is always valuable.

When someone has no time to reply to a troll, it's better to ignore. If those with millions of subscribers wasted time reacting on all of them, they will not have time to create content at all.

I don't understand what you want.