Call me crazy, but I think banning an ISP that otherwise isn't breaking any laws from operating in a country because its owner has a certain political view that clashes with that country's government, would be wrong.

Ordering a social media company to censor speech is equally dubious.

When I don't like someone, especially if I think they're a dangerously ignorant fool, I just stop listening. I don't feel threatened by the fact that they exist; I can even challenge their assertions, and I do.

@libreleah I think these are valid views but only in a world where you completely ignore the real-world impact of scaled military disinformation campaigning and abuses designed to purposefully undermine democracy or psychologically manipulate the target (more intrusively than advertising).

The scale introduces a somewhat different problem to one of just the personal choice of a single person.

@libreleah What ISP is this?

@libreleah Uninformed, crazy.

@pavel @libreleah Right. I think this free speech absolutism was very attractive in the 90s - I was a believer myself, back then, when the promise of the Internet was just unfurling.

But since we've learned the hard way that it is only a nice theory. When carried out in practice, it has just made the world a substantially worse place, again & again.

There was a high profile "mea culpa" post years ago, admitting the author had been wrong in holding this view for so many years. I too was wrong.

@tartley @libreleah Yup. Plus... I believe this is about Telegram, which provides essential services for russian army. And working for enemy is not cool (tm).

@tartley @pavel @libreleah free speech absolutism never should be or will be a thing, there has to be practical limits at some point as speech will always when taken too far interfere with other more important rights (you know...like life). There's a reason calls for violence, death threats, and the like are illegal even though they're speech. When a company opens a business and agrees to have a representative for this, then fails to, shutting them down as running illegally is a valid response.