deplatforming

We've really got to raise the bar in talking about issues of free speech in small web spaces, myself included.

In my post yesterday I barely alluded to "censorship" being a misnomer for what happened on Antenna (simply with the quotes in the title) but neglected to point it out properly in the post body.

Others have now pointed this out, but if someone makes a post on their own gemini server, and that post remains on their own gemini server, censorship has not occurred. Instead, a *different* gemini server declined to host links to that post. In it's capacity as a link aggregator you could stretch to call Antenna a "platform", and thus we get to the more appropriate description of what happened here: deplatforming.

gemini://oberdada.pollux.casa/gemlog/2024-01-04_censorship.gmi

gemini://lesogorov.site/glogs/2401/Censorship.gmi

Happily there seems to be agreement that the operator of Antenna has the right to do whatever they want with their own site. Yet somehow there also seems to be a strong streak of what appears pretty close to free speech absolutism. The notion is that free speech implies that you have to hear all kinds of things you don't like, and the converse would imply that you wouldn't be able to express any ideas that others don't like.

But there is a massive gulf between "I don't like this" and "this is dangerous". It's 2024 and we have a pretty solid understanding of where the natural echo chambers of our self-selected online communities lead. There's no need to chalk up this ban action to "the mod doesn't like this speech" when an equal or better explanation is "the mod doesn't want their platform to be a place where people can be radicalized".

Free speech must have limits. If calls for genocide (explicit or implied) don't reach your limit, I submit that your position is intellectually lazy.

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