More often than not if I express my unfiltered opinion somewhere, I get warnings or banned. It happens mostly when I go against the cancel culture / SJW nonsense. I know it's because usually people that moderate those internet platforms aren't exactly the people you would want to hang out with in person.
They are the type of people that are fully absorbed in the cancel culture. So you are stepping on their oversensitive toes and they just abuse their "power" and ban you.
Or in other cases because the corporation in control of the platform needs to silence anything controversial to keep advertisers happy.
It makes me just want to unplug from the internet, what's the point even if you are only allowed to express whatever opinion the platform you are on allows you to express?
So, is there any true free speech on the internet?
Not really. Too many people posting on forums want to have some level of control over the conversation.
If you're very opinionated as it is then it's not going to sit well when others have opposite opinions.
Eventually one side has to "win" and has to push the other side out.
Usually with mass banning initially followed by less frequent banning but for less "serious" offenses.
What I have found that no matter where I go on the internet you will always find a handful of users who constantly do things like implying others are racist or sexist and so on. Might be that someone says "I can't wait to play Cyberpunk 2077" and through a series of steps the accusation of "transphobia" appears and suddenly another user gets a ban.
For whatever reason, moderators never seem to see this or acknowledge it. So you have posters who do nothing but bait others into arguments and then go off to the mods to report and report and report. You would think that moderators would notice that every time User X makes a new enemy it's only a matter of time before that person is banned but they never seem to do that.
Maybe the biggest problem is that people you engage with online aren't really your friends and even if you have a nice thing going you can never really just talk openly with each other as it only takes one "off script" comment and that's the relationship or connection over just like that. So you almost feel like you have to walk on eggshells just to keep your access. Especially if you are talking to over people via private chats etc and don't want to just lose all that on a whim.
So not only is there no free speech but people are pushed into being guarded and careful because once you are gone then that's it. Every post becomes a very carefully considered thing that you might even think "I maybe shouldn't even post this, just in case".
People will of course say "don't post anything bad and you won't get banned" but it tends to be the case that those people are the ones going through things with a fine-toothed comb looking for some reason to report and hopefully get a ban.
How many people arrived here because they were banned from ResetEra? How many of those bans were for pretty reasonable posts?
In the end you probably just get a decline in forum use as people feel forced into smaller and smaller splinter groups and forums so that they can just talk to the people they like without worrying about it being shut down suddenly because the community is plagued by a combination of ban baiters and over zealous moderators.
