#anyway. if you read this and disagree then I probably won't respond? online arguments don't really help anyone

[praise-the-lord-im-dead]

I'm gonna be political for one second, so please feel free to scroll past this/ignore me. The last thing I wanna do is stress people out right now, but I do have some opinions, so here we go:

Rights are only as good as what you use them for.

I'm hearing a lot of people, largely either conservative or libertarian, yelling about free speech right now, largely in reference to social media platforms blocking users and in reference to app-selling platforms dropping apps like Parler. The worry seems to be that if apps and app stores will do those things to people who actively participated in an insurrection, they will also do those things to anyone who happens to be right-leaning, or anyone who's in a political minority.

And the only answer to that that I've got is, like...maybe don't post stuff inciting violence on social media?

We all had a similar conversation a while back about the rules that PornHub introduced requiring content creators to be verified. Those rules were put in place to avoid things like actual rape videos being put up online, but everyone was upset about their rights. Their right, apparently, to see people get hurt and to enjoy it.

Our freedom is always, always, limited by other people's rights. We can't hurt others and call it freedom; that's anarchy. Society operates by making it the job of those in authority to decide where the line is between freedom and safety. It's not an easy job, and it's an easy thing to make mistakes about, or to use badly.

The thing is, it's our job as citizens to NOT USE OUR FREEDOMS TO HURT PEOPLE, because at that point, you are giving the authority figures reason to take those freedoms away.

I don't like seeing powerful corporations decide who gets a platform and who doesn't. I don't like the government promising to put more anti-terror laws in place. But I also don't like seeing people talk about these things like they're unreasonable actions, given the things we've seen, because guess what? They're not.

It's like complaining that the government goes around putting people in prison, as if the criminal justice system was a sin in and of itself. It's like punching someone and then complaining that you're not allowed in their house anymore. It's like abusing your kid and then getting mad when your lose your right to be in that kid's life.

Rights are only as good as what we use them for. Always. To argue that someone had a right to do something is to say that they were, if not right in doing it, at least not wrong enough to be penalized. It's to say that their actions weren't dangerous, and it's to say that they didn't stand a chance of significantly hurting anyone.

I get people being worried. Power in human hands is a dangerous, scary, largely immoral thing. But it's also a necessary thing to have unless you give up living in any kind of society whatsoever. We're here to watch and protest and object when we see power being used *wrongly*. Not just when we see it being used in the way it was intended.