this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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There is a wave of censorship and McCarthyist witch hunting against Pro Palestinian voices happening in the West. It is profoundly disturbing and shows how hollow the West's claims to championing personal liberty is.
This is the sort of thing that freedom of speech is supposed to protect, but that idea has become so completely destroyed by Western people that I don't see any hope for people like that poor influencer.
He'll have to make his own website, or move to PixelFed or something.
No government censored him, capitalism did
Right. This sucks, but it's not an infringement on free speech.
It falls into a place never envisioned by those writing the amendments. When you have defacto monopolization of the public media, or even a major portion of it under your control, then preventing commentary is functionally censorship equal to if the government outright banned it.
On the other end you have the desire to prevent harmful transmissions to the public space as well. Incitements to violence and propagation of blatant lies serves no good purpose.
Balancing the two has been the subject of countless lawsuits. The only justification I could see here, given the visual nature of Instagram, would be the potential for gore and violence content. Sometimes showing the ugly reality is needed to let people know the reality rather than a polished sanitized version. Instagram might not be the place for that though given the audience it has.
By comparison a tame subject, but the case involving George Carlin still holds some sway on matters of what's appropriate for public broadcast.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_v._Pacifica_Foundation