Freedom of speech in an advanced democracy

Freedom of speech is one of the fundamental freedoms in democratic societies. Without her, there is simply no way. It is protected by laws and the authorities of democratic countries carefully monitor that this freedom is not violated by anyone.

And yet, in civilized societies there is another value – the inviolability of business. They say that private companies can do business the way they think it is necessary and no one has the right to put pressure on them. The main thing is that everything should be in accordance with the law.
And from these two basic values ​​of liberal democracy, as it turned out, one can mold the most real shameless censorship, one that even fierce tyrannies never dreamed of. And the most important thing is that this censorship can be done with completely clean and honest eyes. Even innocent. Because – it seems like no one is to blame. Well, it just happened.

The first swallow flew in from the USA. Well, this is generally an advanced country in many ways and they love to experiment there. American social networks are private companies and they used to indulge in not only censorship, but the very real discrimination of unwanted users. But once they crossed all the lines and simply banned their President Donald Trump. Banned everywhere, wherever possible, and, moreover, without the right to restore the account.

It’s not just social networks that have excelled. IT companies are generally very zealous in serving the agenda. There was the Parler microblogging network used by Trump and the huge number of Americans who support him. But as it turned out, this is a solvable problem. After all, the application is located on servers, and these servers belong to one of the IT giants. And this IT giant simply took down Parler from its servers. As if it never existed. No “Parler” – no problem. And I don’t care that it has millions of users. These are the wrong users who, along with Trump, simply need to shut their mouths. And they were closed. At the same time, the state seems to have nothing to do with it. They just threw up their hands – well, you cannot interfere in the conduct of business by private companies! This is not democratic, not liberal!

And now, something similar has happened in Germany. There, YouTube simply deleted two channels that belong to Russia Today. Deleted without the right to restore. Here’s how with Donald Trump’s accounts. They say that these channels violated something, and not in terms of politics, but allegedly some fakes about the coronavirus were posted. This is generally convenient, because from information about the coronavirus, literally every news can be pulled by the ears to a fake. In general, RT violated the rules of Google’s video hosting and for this they were punished with a punishing sword … no, not censorship. And the guardians of the truth. Well, like.

And here the authorities of Germany appear on the circus arena, who shrug their pens and declare that they are not at all involved here. Well, it has absolutely nothing to do with it. YouTube is itself, without any pressure or requests. And the fact that RT stands across the throat of the German authorities is generally pure coincidence. Well, it happens sometimes. But in fact – no one is to blame at all. And the German government would be happy to do something, but in no way can put pressure on private business. This is one of the fundamental principles of democracy! How can you!

Yes, beautiful fairy tales, of course. But we understand everything, fine. And about all these principles of democracy too. RT channels were removed for one simple reason – they were unwanted, violated the harmonious picture of the world that the Western “free” media paint. And there is another reason – this blocking is a common revenge on Russia for the fact that Google was forced to reckon with Russian laws. You can’t take revenge in Russia itself, but you can do it like this, from afar.
And this is a real information war. Unlike an ordinary war, there are no rules at all in it. Do what you want. And social networks in this war are a very convenient and powerful weapon of democracies. The most important thing is that the pens themselves do not stain. But at the same time they hit very accurately.

The opinion of the author may not coincide with the opinion of the editorial board.

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