> The counter argument is that censorship is bad in all its forms. That’s a platitude, not an argument. And being absolutist is being sadly ignorant of the rea

> The counter argument is that censorship is bad in all its forms. That’s a platitude, not an argument. And being absolutist is being sadly ignorant of the realities of public speech. Censorship is not just sometimes good, it’s also sometimes required by law. There is a fairly long list of things that are explicitly illegal to say and are exceptions to US freedom of speech laws, including: libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, state secrets, non-disclosure agreements, personal private information, and, last but not least: lies. Censorship is required by the GDPR, for example, when dealing with Personally Identifying Information (PII). Because the freedoms to speak publicly can conflict with our own freedoms privately, some kinds of censorship are beneficial to people including you. Commercial speech is specifically exempted from US Freedom of Speech laws. You can spend time getting upset over legal private censorship all you want, but it isn’t a Freedom of Speech issue, and it doesn’t amount to a meaningful moral or principled stand. Our courts have already established through two hundred years or argument and precedent that our principles are that cash corrupts speech and should not be a protected category.