YouTube and Reddit roll out new restrictions including channel and sub bans

Yes, I am saying that gun enthusiasts, the millions of normal Americans and people around the world who like guns, or even craft beer, or historical re-enactment, also like to tell jokes. They do not go to reddit to only talk about guns, but to other subreddits. It's quite easy to understand.

I am not saying they are the only people keeping the site alive, that would be silly. I'm saying that people that like to tell jokes will make the alternatives they go to better and more attractive, and make Reddit a bit less attractive.

Your examples of previous banning was about toxic subreddits where the main focus was on toxic "jokes". I'd agree with you, toxic joke tellers are probably going to always joke toxicly. But a gun enthusiast, a craft beer lover, a historical re-enactment, an adult porn star, they are not primarily makers of toxic jokes. I hope you can see the difference here.

Lineage is a good alternative, there's also Sailfish as a fuller Linux system. These have similar advantages and disadvantages, the major issues are the drivers are not great in particular for cameras, and the reliance of some apps on Play Services (which of course has been carefully calculated by Google for that purpose).

"banning the ownership of guns except for members of the militia "

The definition of militia is here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/246

There are two "militias", the national guard, and the unorganized militia...

When I read the Federalist papers, I interrupted it as Hamilton and Jay were trying to describe a defense strategy of the country, which included internal, and external threats. When I read it, I got the feeling they both were very much against the state of affairs we have today. They advocated for a small professional army, and a large reserve of men if needed.

I personally feel this is the right model, today our DoD budget is 600 BILLION dollars! Every social service other first world countries have, we can't afford. That is directly a result of our military spending. If we spent less getting into conflicts we probably don't need to be involved in (I still do not understand what the national interest in Afghanistan and Iraq is), and we had a very large reserve of men. We could maintain the defense readiness we have today, but also have publically funded education, healthcare etc.

I do concede that the requirements of training are much different though. A model like Switzerland's militia might be preferable. In their model, each citizen has 1 year of conscripted service. It's spread out a bit but is an adequate amount of time to train someone properly. It also provides a method for "weeding" out individuals who should not be a part of this reserve. Their gun laws are also far more strict. Gun ownership is more of a privilege there. I don't know how much of that we can do here, but I think it's a good example of how to build a militia in modern times.

Yet another step narrowing the internet towards the same bland and pre-mediated window of thought seen as TV.

It's too bad.

>The same rules of freedom of speech should apply there.

If you want freedom of speech to apply in privately controlled media, you would have to compel them to distribute content they do not agree with, which is itself a violation of freedom of speech.

And this is the problem with a simplistic idea like "Freedom of Speech". It is not possible for everyone to hear everyone else's point of view, so some speech will always be restricted. Therefore, our society inevitably makes decisions about which speech to amplify and which to silence, and just because that decision is not being made directly by government, does not mean it is not being made.

In practice when people complain about censorship, what they mean is that these implicit decisions are not being made in a way that they like. And in saying this, I'm not trying to imply that their criticisms are wrong, or that they're being disingenuous or malicious in trying to change those decisions. I'm saying this to reframe the debate, because framing it as if access to speech can only be controlled by intentional malicious restriction prevents us from questioning the ways in which society already controls access to speech.

The most common way speech is restricted is economic. The rich can afford to amplify their speech, and the poor cannot. We have historically accepted this without question as an economic reality, but then the rise of social media gave us a glimpse of a world where economic restrictions are not as big a factor, and so when these restrictions start to re-assert themselves we question them.

People call it "censorship" and demand "free speech", because this is the most pervasive set of ideas we have to understand this dissonance, but the reality is we are always censored, and speech is never truly free, and unless we accept that, we will not be able to ask real questions about what kind of societal discourse we truly value.