Freedom of speech: business/social media vs personal liabilities

This thought vomiting, grammar/spelling nightmare of a post brought to you by a poorly traveled, often ignorant, way too opinionated, big mouthed, perfectionist as a fault, AlAnon attending, list making eldest child, rare and chronic disease fighting, 30something, research obsessed, animal and rare disease activist, crafting, tin foil hat wearing, kinda Christian, kinda spiritual, kinda hippie, kinda liberal but registered independent, partial wheelchair using, public disability aid needing, peace and love with a side of f-you, fintech loving, white, disabled, female, American living in the affluent, opioid overrun,fear driven, ‘live free or die”, cold AF state of New Hampshire in the USA.

Whew....did I miss any identity boxes there?🙄

In the US, Free speech is a right. What does that really mean? What is hate speech? What is censorship? What is personal responsibility and what is a businesses responsibility? I don’t really know. This is where my understanding lies...what do you think?

Free speech does not mean free of consequences for hateful or damaging speech regarding any involvement with businesses, minors, etc
Hate speech does not mean civilized, conversation and debate of which someone does not agree with someone else or speaks from Prejudice, ignorant or outdated ideas.

All political parties are to blame for the state of the US government now and in the past.

Our only true power is to respond not react, walk away, find an empathetic understanding of why we people are divided...macro and micro. Regardless of what category we each fall into, human motivation holds common threads. We can heal as a nation if we try to focus on those threads above all.
Race, gender, physical ability, mental ability, age, political affiliation, opinions, socioeconomic status, religion, sexual preference and so on are the cover, forward or preface surrounding the deeper text of our humanity.

And I say this knowing at this stage, that’s an idealistic, irrational view. However if humanity looked at the moon without thinking we could reach out into space and touch it, we wouldn’t have Tempur-pedic beds ...or space ice cream...
or moon landing conspiracy debates...or the international space station...and some other useful stuff. 😉

Can people make demands to a business if they take their child into a grocery store and that child gets ahold of a nude magazine? What if another shopper gave the kid the magazine? Do we have recourse on them? Can we demand the store to ban that shopper? Can we ask that store to spend it’s own resources to ban that shopper? Was it not the child’s guardians responsibility to keep eye on the child or shop else where?

Can I blame The gym for the guy laughing at me and calling me a cripple while I’m rehabbing ? No.

Why than can we ask Twitter, Facebook and other social media to do the same? Because we are it’s consumers?

The US government cannot ask a church to censor itself however the community can. Or the community can leave.

None of us need to use social media. However without it we miss out on revenue, engagement, and much more in today’s world. We don’t need to allow children on Twitter and Facebook. We may feel like we need it for business or communication or because we are bed bound....but it’s still our choice. We can choose to take the bad with the good or we can choose to stop using it. Just as we can choose to go to a certain church. Yet, Where does this leave public schools? State or private colleges? The US government? Is social media different? Is business?

We’re on a slippery slope of media censorship in America. More and more we give away our own responsibilities for ourselves, our families, our health, our finances...etc. We are giving away the very freedom we say makes us, US. Oh and fake news has always been a thing, has the national enquirer not proved that! ;) In the past, accuracy was important as there were only a few prestigious publications and those publications relied on hiring well and researching the information they presented. Nowadays anyone can be a writer, anyone can report the news. Thus Even most of the remaining large news providers in the US Have become more focused on breaking information quickly than providing quality information.

I want equality and access. I want to not be abused just for being a woman or disabled. However, I want the freedom to hold total responsibility for my life. I want the freedom to keep or give away that responsibility as I choose.

Freedom is the ability to choose to whom we put our trust in and to whom we wish to share the responsibility of our own life with.

Steemit gets a rose from me...well a carnation...It’s not exactly a gold mine on here anymore! 🤪

Stay free and loud my crypto, decentralized loving friends! Thank you for reading, Stephanie