It is sad that in 2025 this needs to be repeated: fiction is not real.
This statement imply that:
* Simulated violence is not violence.
* Simulated sex is not sex.
* Simulated sorcery is not sorcery
replies(5):
It shouldn’t be payment processors doing it unilaterally, I’ll grant that. But I’m not (and I’m sure a great many more of a silent majority) wholly opposed to the outcome.
But, in what way do you think those opposing “extreme” content being consumed by their fellow citizens are silent? State governments across the country are clamoring to censor all sorts of things, presumably to satisfy their constituents.
And those are just explicit limits. Try supporting Palestine on a college campus or mentioning women or gay people in any government funded scientific publication, or finding a book portraying pro-LGBT content in a library or a school curriculum that portrays slavery in a way that "makes white people feel victimized" in the South.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
This is not okay, and we need to take a strong moral stance here. Some views should not be acceptable in a society.
The show itself was losing viewership cause who the F watches late night TV these days?
Actual speech is communicating ideas or opinions, even distasteful or unpopular ones. The fact that university morons throw a riot if anyone disagrees with them (many such cases), does not affect your right to do so.
Denmark passed a law in 2023 that makes public burning, tearing, stepping on, or defiling holy texts illegal. It's informally called the Quran Law, because everyone knows who doesn't tolerate any criticism of their religion at all. This is one of many limits on speech in Denmark. In my view, speech is either free or it isn't, hence my argument that only USA has free speech.
The ruling ethnic group, of course, as is tradition.
There is TONS of speech that is banned, even in America. There isn't a single place on the planet that has no limits on speech.
whats gonna replace that slot that people are gonna watch? a blank screen?
things that lightly annoyed the president is now the decider between legal and illegal speech in the US, and the punishment is death, because nothing the president does that could be part of their regular responsibilities like talking to secret service assasins, can be considered in court proceedings.
the people making a stink about this know this but are pretending that they don't because it would overtly out them as pedophiles.
I totally support this type of pressure being exerted on companies involved in editorializing and providing an audience (e.g. I don't think Valve should be required by law to carry any form of content, just like a publisher can't be forced to print any content it doesn't agree with). But infrastructure, due to being both fundamental to doing business and generally living in a society and very often being at least regionally monopolistic in nature, should be open to anybody that's acting within the law.
And conversely, if something seems ethically or morally unacceptable to a rule-based society, what ought to change is the law.
That's all assuming a functioning democratic and political process, of course, but it generally seems to be possible even in the US, with its strong protections of speech, to limit certain types of speech under obscenity laws, so I don't really get the desire to outsource this inherently political process to private corporations.
I'd wager most "normal" people would recoil at the idea of eating excrement and, for all my open-mindedness, it's probably not something I'd actively endorse. But banning it is on a whole other leaf. Things can and should be allowed to exist on the fringe.
Otherwise we're moving towards the subject of the T.S. Eliot quote where "everything that is not forbidden will be compulsory, and everything not compulsory will be forbidden."
What does that mean?
For example if something can be shown to cause actual harm to innocent individuals, i find it morally unacceptable.
But some people will tell you anything banned by their favorite fairytale or their upbringing is morally unacceptable.
The state is a less bad alternative but bad (unintentionally harmful) and malicious (intentionally harmful) decisions are generally not punished either.
When people set rules which affect others, they should also be held accountable.
And in general, rules limiting a person's behavior should only exist when that behavior can be _proven_ to be harmful.
They should be determined by individuals capable of critical and logical thinking and without anything personal to gain from the rules.
They should not be determined by individuals who have antisocial traits or who are indoctrinated into various belief systems which are founded on preferential treatment (such as religion).