> American individualism so often deflects the responsibility of dealing with such trauma on those who are subjected to this kind of harassment because it's not impacting the vast majority of the population ("not my problem").
It's not individualism, it's constitutional rights. The idea of american individualism is not true. We are a collectivist people - racial, native vs foreign born, protestant vs catholic, confederates vs union, etc.
> but somehow they don't devolve into the Orwellian nightmare that we always fear when we talk about limiting free speech.
Don't they arrest people for their dog's salute or symbols right? Europe is far closer to orwellian nightmare than the US I'd say.
> In fact, has there been another Western democracy more tested and compared to Orwell's 1984 in the last 5 years than the US?
"Last five years". And what happened?
> The worse that harassment gets online, I believe the more segmented and walled off and commercialized the internet will become.
No. As sneaky politically driven people use the death of children to demand censorship, that's when the internet will become more segmented, walled off and commercialized.
People like you are why there is ever more censorship, segmentation and commercialization. Clutching your pearls and screaming about the children while you only care about political censorship. Do you ever clutch your pearls and cry over the millions of children who are killed in wars? Or do you only cry for them when they serve your political agenda? It can't be an accident that in the last few years, a small but vocal contingent has used dead children at every opportunity to push for more censorship.