"Why in the world would I want my tweets immutable?" - A Case for Censorship Resistant Social Media

This is a statement I heard from a well known Bitcoin influencer when I went to a recent conference in LA. It's one I can relate to.. hell I see no use in most of what I post being immutable. Why in the world would anyone need to ensure what they share on social media can't be removed by some other party? Who the hell cares if no one can ever find that post I wrote about some experience at the fair I had or that rant I did when I was annoyed? Why is this something that is even seen as needed?

I think to understand this you have to look beyond oneself and the way they use social media and instead look at what social media has become to the world - A way to communicate.

Social media has become more than sharing cat photos and bitching about your ex - it's become a way for people all over the world to be informed with recent events and communicate with one another, instantly. It's a way for us to get first hand experience on events happening around us. Do you know where I go to get the most recent information on the uprising in Hong Kong? Twitter. That's right.. I scroll twitter tags to see citizen journalist first hand experiences. I then feel like I am getting information from multiple sources and therefore can get a clearer picture of what is actually happening.

Social Media Has Become A Way To Share Information

So what happens when that information can just be filtered? What happens when we can only see what specific individuals want us to see? What happens when this form of communication and the extremely important right to free speech that goes along with it is censored? Well then we are back to where we were - only seeing a small piece of the puzzle.

For content creators this also means that their ability to share and communicate with their audience is completely in the hands of the companies who hold the rights to that content. They can be shadow banned, silenced and their content can be completely deleted without so much as a warning, it happens everyday.

This morning in my twitter feed I came across an article that @Lukestokes had retweeted-

• A court ordered Facebook to take down a post. The decision could affect social media around the world

The case stems from an Austrian politician who requested specific critical comments made about her be removed from Facebook. Clearly we don't know what these comments were... were they threats? Harassment? Or just disagreements? The articles states that the Austrian court found that the remarks could be harmful to her reputation by insulting and defaming her and therefore they ruled in her favor.

"This judgment raises critical questions around freedom of expression and the role that internet companies should play in monitoring, interpreting and removing speech that might be illegal in any particular country," Facebook said in a statement.

The social network said the decision could force internet companies to proactively monitor all content and then interpret if it is "equivalent" to content that has been found to be illegal by one nation's court.

Now what does this mean? Well we already know that social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc have already removed content they found to go against their TOS or possibly just what they did not agree with. This adds another interesting aspect because now a court, not the site owner, is deciding what can and cannot be communicated on these sites.

I am a big believer in freedom of speech and that also means protecting even what I don't agree with. I feel that when we go into the realm of threats and harassment things get a bit tricky, as while I believe in freedom of speech for all, I don't feel people should have to take being harassed and there should be options to somewhat combat that.. but to me that does not mean silencing anyone who I disagree with. I don't know the specifics of what these comments where but considering Facebook hasn't been known to be much of a protector of speech, I would assume if they were threatening they would have been removed without a court order, but that is just an assumption.

A Case For Steem

While I don't see any reason for my tweets or posts to be immutable specifically, I fully understand that there is absolutely a need for it. We may think our own social media activities are "not important" but can we say that for all information shared across social media? I think this is a huge use case for Steem personally and am glad to see projects like @threespeak targeting this market in such a visual way.

I feel that having the ability to share information across the globe that cannot be censored will become more and more important as we see more cases like this. And while I know you all will tell me _"Well Steemit.com can be censored too." Well of course it can, it's a private company that has laws they need to follow as well as make a user experience that people will actually want to be involved in... But the chain can never be altered.

Even if every single Steem UI that we currently are aware of has to remove some content in the future, another UI can be coded that could easily read that information, as it is fully immutable.

This means that the sharing of information will always be protected, no matter if it's censored everywhere else. This is monumental in this day and age and I believe will continue to be more and more important as we go along.

So while I see absolutely no reason to have my tweets immutable or my posts on Steem.. I see that some of the information shared fully needs this ability and I think we see examples of this every single day.

Anyone who sees the importance of free speech has to recognize that.. even a grumpy bitcoin maximalist. ;)

What are your thoughts?

Much Love and Steem On,

Justine

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