Comment by observationist
4 months ago
The practical impact is the self censorship and suppression of all sorts of speech because it's too onerous and burdensome to maintain. This effectively centralizes control, in as blatant and evil a way as the Great Firewall. Decades old forums and communities have been destroyed, all for the sake of... what? Things that were already criminal and offenders could be held to account?
Freedom of speech is a binary choice for a society. When you introduce politically motivated discretion and ambiguity, then instead of protecting people, such laws serve only as tools of power and control. With freedom of speech and press, the laws preclude any attempts at control like this. Freedom of expression and press supersede responsibility for the potential of other people doing something bad.
This is why they can't have nice things. It's the equivalent of shutting down businesses because you impose a law that 20 armed guards must attend every building 24x7, just in case some bad guys with guns try to get in.
I think I expressed it clearly. I don't like this legislation. I'm saying that I do understand the underlying tension though, it is real, and hard to legislate, and what can you do. In your first paragraph, you seem to essentially criticize this piece of legislation. I'm not defending it.
I do however reject the notion that it's either absolute freedom of speech or a totalitarian censorship state. Freedom of speech has always had well defined boundaries, well before the Internet - and yes, even in America, just these boundaries are somewhere different to eg. Europe.