Why does society seem to be falling apart, even though it's not?
Over on Andy Ducker's Links I linked to a story about Robin Williams' daughter leaving social networks because she was receiving abuse after her father died
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I was considering things like Livejournal cracking down on nipples in icons, or driving away all of the fanfic people, or the way that Facebook was with breastfeeding pictures until their recent announcement.
Because a fair chunk of people was in favour of all of those things, and without a robust "Even if we think that pictures of breastfeeding are icky, we think you should be allowed to post photos of it, because we believe in freedom of speech" protection, things go very wrong, very quickly.
I'm not prepared to make anyone the arbiter of "What's ok to talk about". Not me. Not you. Not the owners or Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, or any other networking site. Or the government. Beccause history shows that they get it wrong. All the time.
When it's neceesary to stand up is when it's used to deliberately hurt people - when things are used for harrassment and bullying. Because that's people deliberately having their ability to talk halted. And that's why I believe that we have to have the tools to let communities moderate themselves, and to prevent individuals disrupting everyone. But I do not want to be taken as someone who is against free speech, because it means a vast amount to me.
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