Apparently BlueSky i̶s̶ ̶was[*] censoring the AI video of the felon catering to the unelected co-president's toes because it was non-consensual explicit material. I wrote some thoughts about this complex matter on someone else's thread, but I'm re-posting them as a top-level post to not distract from other conversation where I originally posted...
[*] UPDATE/EDIT: The censorship was later retracted. I applaud that. I'll let the rest of my remarks on speech stand for reference, as I think some of the points were still worth making.
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There is a lot of other stuff happening our budding dictatorship that is non-consensual. Will the fact of it be tolerated and the speaking of it be an offense?
If this were a matter between private citizens, I would absolutely applaud an action such as this. But rights of people are sometimes in tension. Privacy sometimes comes into conflict with free speech. There is no way to always preserve one person's rights without risking not preserving someone else's. That's just a fact. A balance must be struck on a case-by-case basis, uncomfortable as that is.
The cryingly sad irony is that this specific act is intended to draw attention to and protest the fact that soon no one will care about our rights at all. If the conversion to a totalitarian state (which so far mirrors what happened in Nazi Germany and other places) follows the obvious plan, law will soon be used in a meaningless way as a club to beat up people who are just politically unpopular, regardless of whether there's any offense at all.
The problem is that what's happening as we become a totalitarian dictatorship is shocking. People are seeking to use nonviolent means to wake the public up to the shocking nature of what's going on. In context, that video is mild. I wish as much public discussion came from attempts to cut medicaid, from firing people who maintain our nuclear, aviation or public health operations, or from inciting mob violence.
An unelected billionaire, someone where it's not clear he even works for the government, or whether the government works for him, has access to all of our private data and is acting swiftly in a way that is plainly not consistent with the Constitution, hoping to have severe damage fast enough to disable the various systems that might put him in check in our system of checks and balances.
The felon that our Constitution says should not have been allowed to even run for President is turning a blind eye to what this unelected billionaire is doing. A man who speaks of grabbing women by whatever he likes, and how if you're rich or powerful, they just let you. This is the person whose rights are being protected? We have rights so that the weak are protected from the powerful. Is that what this particular act of censorship has achieved?
Too many people are not seeing and taking seriously that very real issue. That anyone thinks this censorship act will do anything to create justice or preserve freedom is evidence.
I'm sure whoever did the censorship will later say they were "just following orders". But it's important for each of us to understand that the US as we've known it may soon not exist, in part because the people attacking us are not following rules, and the people defending us are thinking somehow if they just do their job in the ordinary way, the system will protect us.
Media operations are taking sides, and an uncomfortable number of them seem to be hoping that if they just "obey in advance" (to use Timothy Snyder's term -- read On Tyranny if you do not know this term), they'll be spared the wrath of the incoming dictator. They seriously need to re-read Niemöller's poem, "First they came".
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