 And to stop Congress from threatening. So in the chat, Z400H37 says, let's trade pseudo censorship with actual censorship. Exactly. I mean, I don't know if it's pseudo censorship with the right term, but let's, let's, let's exchange indirect attempts at censorship, whether they succeed or not is a different question. With actual censorship, let's take them into the real power. I mean, it's nuts to me. It's not. I mean, to, to bring up another very, very controversial topic. It's the same as people who say, we want limited government. We want to shrink the role of government. We're really worried about the militarization of the police. We're really worried about government becoming more and more powerful and intervening in more and more of our lives. But we need to build a wall. We need to militarize the border. We need to, we need to give government as much power as it needs and grow it as big as it needs to be in order to protect us from people coming to work in America. Anyway, that's a side issue, just upset some of you know, if you consistently believe that the government is too big, too intrusive, two rights violating you, the last thing you want to do is give them more power to violate rights. The solution is to fight any attempt, any attempt by government to influence directly or indirectly what social media does. Now the exact opposite is happening around the world. In Australia, Britain, and Canada, and assuming other places as well, government is considering bills that would seriously restrain what social media can do. It will, you know, government there wants to protect us from offensive speech. Who the hell needs government to protect me from offensive speech? I don't want offensive speech, I can turn it off. It, it, it so reminds me of, of the discussions years ago about offensive music. Do you remember when Al Gore's wife got into this tizzy about offensive music and I think a law was passed that all albums have to have, like a waiting to tell us how offensive the language being expressed on the music is so we don't get offended? Government's job is to protect my rights. My rights are not violated when I'm offended. My rights are not violated when I hear something I don't like. When I hear something I don't agree. Offensive to who by what standard? So, so in Britain, for example, the government has a bill that they say they hope to stamp down on, among other things, this is on social media, death threats. Death threats are illegal. Yeah, that's the one thing government should do is stop death threats. You know, investigate and prosecute people who threaten death, particularly the extent that they're serious about it. Knife sales, I guess in Britain, there are a lot of stabbings. But I think knife sales are legal. Assisting people to commit suicide, the glamourization of anorexia, vaccine skepticism, fraudulent advertising and racist abuse directed at England's football team. Racist abuse generally is OK. But if it's directed at the football team, that's unacceptable. It's bizarre. I'm reading from an article written about this bill in The Economist. Now, some of these things are already illegal. Too many of them are already illegal. England and almost all of Europe have serious limitations on free speech in a variety of different hate speech bills, as does Canada. But this is ridiculous. What they want to do is they want to force tech companies to announce explicitly which one of these they allow and which one of these they don't. So the tech company would have a list saying racist abuse directed at England's football player. We approve that. Racist abuse attacking a Manchester United football team. Now, we're against that. We don't allow that. Vaccine skepticism, we're OK with that. Fraudulent advertising, we're not sure. Glamourizing anorexia, we're definitely for that. And assisting people with suicide, no, we ban that. I mean, this is absurd. And how long is this going to be? Is there an end to it? Is there an end to the number of things you can imagine? People can abuse one another through speech. And these companies should have a list. Thumbs up. I mean, I think they should have terms of service that are clear and articulate and objective and make it clear so that when I post something on Twitter, I can say, yeah, I'm not violating those terms of service. I'm pretty sure that this is OK. I'm not sure the terms of service are very clear and objective. I'm all for that. But this is absurd. And Rob says this is secularizing blasphemy laws. Yeah, but it's random blasphemy. It's like blasphemy by whose standards? Well, by the whim of the moment. And how are they going to enforce this? And if the social platform violates this, oh, they're going to be huge fines. And who's going to decide? And how many court cases are going to be filed? I mean, think about this. How many posts they are on social media every day, every second? And of course, they know that human beings are not going to be able to screen these things. So we're going to have algorithms. Well, but what if the algorithm is imperfect? Is it the company's fault that they made a mistake? Are they going to be sued? I mean, how bad of a? It's just. And this is clearly a violation of the property rights of the business, the ability of the business to run its business the way it sees fit. And a violation of the property rights. Sorry, the free speech of the business. What if the business wants Lenny Bruce to perform? And Lenny Bruce has some, I don't know, insensitive jokes that violate one of these lists. Then what? They're supposed to block him, but they wanted to perform. So their free speech is being violated. They don't get to hear the speech that they want and have contracted for because the government doesn't allow it. It's going to be arbitrary. It's going to be emotional. It's going to be ever growing, ever growing. So they were going to be limited. You know, not that long ago, the most offensive speech you could make in Britain and a lot of other places was against Muslims. That now is changing. Now, the biggest issue, the biggest offense you can make is to say something negative about trans, particularly in England. England, the trans issue in England is much bigger than it is even in the United States. But there's no end to how many people who gets offended by whom, which intersectional group, which oppressed group next, is going to demand to be treated with the utmost respect. Comedy already, to a large extent, is dead because club owners, particularly at universities, will not bring in certain comedians because you can't offend students. Students are not allowed to hear offensive things. In Australia, under this new act that they want to pass, social media users can make a complaint to Australia's independent regulator for online safety, the E-Safety Commission. If a reasonable person would conclude the material in a post, would cause serious harm to an Australian adult or have a serious effect on an Australian child so anybody can complain about anything. And what's the standard of evaluation? A quote, reasonable person, who's that, thinks that it could cause serious harm. What kind of harm? Nobody's punching. There's no physical damage. So is this emotional harm, spiritual harm, ideological harm? Maybe the guy's being converted to capitalism. Whoa, that is real harm. The acting coverage is proactive action and behavior by establishing a wide range set of basic online safety expectations. Safety. Safety from what? From ideas. Safety from what? From language. Safety from what? From expression. This is exactly what free speech is here to protect us from. The government determined what is harmful speech. The government determining what is acceptable. The government determining what is truth. This is the misinformation. I mean, the government determining what is truth. The government, the source of so much misinformation. But the government is possessing itself as a Catholic church determining what is OK, what is blasphemous, what is not blasphemous, and how private individuals should be able to behave or not behave in their own private spaces. Canada has a similar bill, online proposes to regulate also for safety. It's all about safety, protect people from speech the government doesn't like or a reasonable person. So while many of us don't like what Twitter does or don't like what Facebook does, the thing we should resist more than anything is government involvement. The thing we should resist more than anything is the government getting involved in what can and cannot be said. What is acceptable and what is not. What is harmful and what is not. What should be blocked and what is not. Because that's the end of debate. That is the end of controversy. And that's the end of radicalism. That's the end of changing the world. There's no way to change the world unless we can speak. There's no way to make the world a better place unless we can speak. The whole purpose is to silence opposition. And at the end of the day, just from a selfish perspective, the biggest opposition is us, is capitalists. Thank you for listening or watching The Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. 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