Schools Report Bomb Threats Following Libs of TikTok Anti-LGBTQ Posts

I did read that article. It was an example of an obvious black-on-white hate crime, not of VICE's hate peddling. I have clarified which of my sources refer to what to remove the ambiguity.

Are you suggesting that an article about veganism and black creators incites the same level of hate that leads to bomb-threats being called to schools because of a pride flag in a classroom?

I fail to see how any of these articles are promoting hate or violence against white people in the same way LibsOfTiktok is accusing LGBTQ+ people of being sexual predators against children.

Having lived in a few countries without freedom of speech and freedom of press, this article looks extremely familiar. The basic line of argument is that a blogger/journalist/gadfly may not have done anything but amplify existing publicly available information without alteration, but this amplification influenced a third party to act illegally. Even if there's no direct incitement to any illegal activity, it becomes implicitly and self-evidently no longer speech but a criminal conspiracy.

The last line of the article is "How much are we going to tolerate?"

This framing seems to muddle concerns between someone's else's speech, policy violations being brought to the attention of someone's employer, and illegal activities. Harassment, defamation, concrete incitements to violence and credible threats of violence which meet well-defined legal standards are already illegal with both civil and criminal penalties.

Now of course TikTok is a private company and legally there's little obstacle to having a content policy which is more restrictive than the law. Even so, advocacy of censorship in the name of public safety because of potential second order effects on third parties is a fundamentally authoritarian principle.

The way I've seen it advanced in other societies is that first the government leans on the private sector, then implements rules in the public sphere broadening the definition of material and moral support for violence until it's so broad as to be totally discretionary. Finally, it becomes both legal and accepted within the mainstream political culture to punish anyone critical of arbitrary censorship as such.

It doesn't matter if it starts on the "right" or the "left." Once this achieves fixation within the political culture, whoever is in power currently and typically whoever takes power next (even if nominally their political opposite) will use this erosion of norms to treat opposition speech as criminal.

Failure to anticipate the shoe being on the other foot one day is extremely short-sighted, regardless of your political views.

You've missed the context that the "shoe" in the metaphor is the act of justifying politically motivated censorship by referencing public safety. Obviously bomb threats aren't protected speech and I've yet to see an instance of anyone of any political persuasion publicly defending them.

> There has to be a will to prosecute. This is nowhere near being followed in each instance where it should.

If a stranger who reads your comment later goes on to make a death threat towards a district attorney who doesn't prosecute, should you be censored or prosecuted for what they interpreted as an implicit call for extra-judicial violence?

Once you legitimize the power to infer hidden incitements to violence in ordinary speech, that power will eventually be captured by your worst enemy and used against you.