Free speech for the individuals is needed, in terms of people should not be punished for what they say. But social media platforms owned by foreign countries is a danger for any democracy. There's a reason the US wants to capture Tiktok, Iran is shutting down the internet, and China has The Great Firewall.

Since the US is turning away from Europe's interests, it's just logical that American platforms will be restricted in one way or another. I don't see any way around it.

But let's be honest, right now it's big tech with their algorithm that's deciding for you. Of course you are still free to find the content you want (unlike what would happen with banning) but most people minds can be influenced by the political view of who owns the platform if they wish to do so.

Maybe a bit of this is already happening (obvious suspect being X) or maybe not, I guess we'll never know for sure, but there is clearly an huge issue here that needs fixing as soon as possible.

> I'm an adult, and I can decide for myself.

No you can't, all of this stuff is designed to influence you without you knowing it, or you would not be influenced. This is like thinking advertisements have no effect on you.

People pay good money because they know it is effective, it is influencing you, you cannot decide for yourself.

What about spam? Spam is absolutely protected free speech. Nobody bats an eye at aggressive censorship of spam. We've had the US Congress pass bills restricting spam. Should we overturn all of that and let the spammers have absolute freedom?

The current methods of subverting speech involve the opposite of control.

They involve overwhelming the channels.

The play is to influence at m scale, millions of individual choices, just like yours.

Your position is no longer the entirety of the defense we need for free speech online.

> I don't want my politicians deciding what is good or bad on the internet. I'm an adult, and I can decide for myself.

The issue isn't whether politicians are deciding what's good or bad.

The issue is that, in Europe, foreign actors with explicit ill intent are deciding a ton of the content your neighbours are watching/reading, day in day out, on the internet. AI has made this easier and even more scalable than before. This content is being used to influence or outright decide elections. Elections of more politicians that are "deciding what's good or bad", eh. Such as politicians deciding that Russia is good.

What the actual fuck do we do to defend ourselves, pray tell? The whole "let them have critical thinking" doesn't work, we are under active war and citizens who don't know better are specifically targeted. And besides, we are not gonna take lessons from the country that yelled high and mighty for years they're the land of the free, and let itself fall into complete autocracy & dictatorship. In the US, those same citizens are the useful tools repeating state propaganda, two steps removed from "Just Following Orders".

And full context: I agree with Matt and support Cloudflare's stance here. But people can quit it with cheap retorts like "Freedom of speech for me, not for thee". It's not that simple.

Because freedom of speech was always a misguided creed at best.

The speech of the manipulator is not the same as the speech of the expert and they shouldn't be given the same treatment, lest you want psychological warfare waged on your nation.

American free speech extremists like these tech CEOs are either willing patsies or useful idiots in the hybrid warfare against Europe.

> Well, we cry "freedom of speech" when Russia/China/adversary shuts our propaganda-pushing media or tools out.

That "cyring" must have been awfully quiet, I didn't hear anything at least.

> I don't want my politicians deciding

The whole concept of democracy is based on this: you elect politicians, they decide. If you don't like that, you don't like democracy. Which is fine, but then you don't get to defend it either as the best system under the sun, etc.