True. Impossible to fully censor. Easy to “censor enough”, force out of app stores, and deem illegal while being cheered on by the left and right because they both somehow think it’s in their interests, having abandoned the idea of free speech somewhere along in their ideological trajectory. Just like with TikTok ban or the Digital Services Act.

They’ll start by saying lemmy is spreading “disinformation” or “foreign influence” or “harming children” or whatever their excuse of the day is. Then legislate lemmy apps out of the app stores and go after lemmy server operators or users.

Not saying lemmy couldn’t survive as a network, the point of the meme is the dangerous precedent set when people support things like a TikTok ban and say the government should be able to regulate speech or access to speech in that manner. The government shouldn’t be able to tell you what you can say or think, who you share those thoughts with, or what media you consume. It’s a human right to think and speak and be able to listen to others speak. And unfortunately, for different reasons, both the left and right are cheering on its erosion.

Except they already made Oracle handle all that and they can easily legislate privacy protections without banning TikTok entirely. And, again, it is my right as a citizen to install whatever app I want even if it is spying on me, just like the rest of my apps do. I could film every second of my life and put it up on Facebook or a personal website and the Chinese government could watch it and there’s not a damned thing the US government can do about it.

Pro tip: The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a non-profit which has been defending your right to privacy for many years. If you shop on Amazon, you can give a portion of the purchase price to EFF. You pay the same amount and daddy bezos gets a few less dollars. Use the affiliate link, not the smile link as smile has been sunsetted: https://www.eff.org/node/58741