a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
Moralnihilist  ·  3235 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Reddit Finally Deleted This Popular Fat-Shaming Forum

People in general today have this nasty habit of equating "not participating with" or "disagreeing with" to "censoring" or "banning."

A few miles away from me is a Diesel shop where the owner got on the news when he said he would refuse to serve openly gay customers and give people discounts for bringing guns into his store. This, naturally, resulted in quite a backlash from the local public, generating protests and comments expressing disagreement online, particularly in the news website's comment section for the story.

One of the most common complaints from those who took the shop owner's side of things was that he was being "censored" and those who disagreed were being "intolerant" of his Christian beliefs. It seems that people have to constantly be reminded that freedom of speech doesn't obligate everybody to agree with and support what you have to say, and that it also allows them to speak openly in disagreement with you.

When A&E cancelled Duck Dynasty, many were accusing the network of "censoring" the Robertsons, as if A&E doesn't own their own network and doesn't have the freedom to choose which programming it airs based on their own internal standards.

It's getting absolutely ridiculous.