On Free Internet and Hate

I'm in favor of net neutrality so that America can stay online with full, equal access to the same information.  Freedom of access in the land of the free.

Further support reasons can be found here.

While I'm against internet censorship (except for illegal content), I think social media platforms, being private entities, should maintain a lot of latitude in determining their own standards.

For instance, moderators on most discussion boards can delete comments or temporarily or permanently ban members.  Why can't private social media do the same, or factcheck and tag misinformation and propaganda?  They absolutely should, to safeguard the minds of users who, let's face it, might not have the skills or time to do it themselves, and might be vulnerable to those who are trying to take advantage of that.

Those who try to deceive others, by the way, especially in such a nasty way, are sick.  They are psychopaths who crave power.  They need this power taken from them, taught a lesson, and healed so that they do not continue this sickness.

Cyberbullying and hate in general is an unfortunate illness and I'm not really sure how to deal with it.  It's kind of like fighting a fire.  If you try too hard to contain it, the heat just builds up, waiting for a window to burst open, creating a backdraft.

Conversely, you don't want to just let the fires of cyberbullying and hate run wild, either, spreading and consuming everything in it's path.  Instead, I think it takes a two-pronged approach:  

1. Combat fire with water (love and a genuine care for the person beneath the hate)
2. Harm reduction; in this sense, we can compare it to the fire prevention techniques of controlled burns and log thinning.  By controlled burns, I mean pick your battles and accept that you won't eliminate all hate.  By log thinning, I mean kill haters.  Just kidding.  I mean allow social media to censor themselves to at least reduce the amount of fuel available for the spread of hate, and similar types of examples.

Um, that's all I have.  There's no real tidy conclusion.  No, wait.

So in conclusion, I support net neutrality, internet freedom, private social media limited censorship (maybe working in tandem with neutral parties), and multiple responses to try to reduce cyberbullying and hate, while accepting it will never entirely disappear.