alt Hacker NewsMost people prefer censored internet as long as it aligns with their political leaning. Maybe that wasn't the case 15 years ago but it's pretty much true nowadays. I myself consider this as a fact.
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I think it's more of a problem that the dividing lines in politics have shifted from left vs right within a liberal democratic framework, to liberal democracy vs populism. 15 years ago everyone was arguing within a democratic framework, partly by social norm and partly because before the internet became so ubiquitous there were many more gatekeepers to the spread of information making circulating disingenuous arguments harder. So if hardly anyone was breaking the rules you didn't need to debate who was breaking the rules of democracy or even what the rules were. E.g. JS Mill said 175 years ago that you couldn't have freedom of speech if you allowed harassment or bad faith arguments, but plenty of populists these days would define freedom of speech precisely in the terms of allowing harassment and by extension whatever the consequences of allowing harassment were are just what freedom looks like, and would then gaslight John Stuart Mill into believing he's the real authoritarian for not agreeing with them.
Most people prefer the status quo whatever status quo currently is. It is the most powerful religion in the world and has always been.
I agree. Interesting you’re being downvoted. I’ve been using Reddit for 16+ years and have watched it morph from a libertarian, centrist community dominated by developers and geeks, into a very left wing, violent, vehicle to export American political activism to the world. Redditors used to abhor censorship. People would practise debating all kinds of taboo topics because this is how we become wiser. Now just commenting on the wrong community will see you automatically banned from 30 of the largest subreddits.
They study this. [Gen Z is 10x more accepting of violence to suppress speech they object to compared to Boomers.](https://expression.fire.org/p/gen-z-is-10-times-more-accepti...) It seems history really does repeat. People are going to need to experience some authoritarianism to remember why we care so much about free speech.
> Most people prefer
I would expect most people to not have much of an opinion on what other people are allowed to talk about when they're not around.