Editorial – March 2025: Free And Suppressed Speech.

Hello everyone,

I usually plan out what I’m going to write in my editorial earlier in the month, so much of the time in the week leading up to the deadline is spent polishing the material to what you are reading here. Frequently, it’s about world problems or things pertinent to science fiction.

What I was going to do was sort of a rehash of an earlier editorial about you-know-who in the White House, likely to have a name change to the Orange House any time soon, but I decided a discussion about free speech might be more appropriate. This is primarily due to the significant distinction that exists between free speech and suppressed expression.

There are some liberties with free speech. You can say what you like, providing you don’t libel or slander someone or provoke a dangerous situation because it infringes on other people’s rights. That’s fair because it protects you as much as anyone else. While it may not be impervious to abuse, it provides ample freedom. You can criticise a system or idea in print, but not directly at the person who came up with it.

This is in contrast to countries that suppress free speech so you can’t comment against government policy or those in power without risking imprisonment or death. There’s no real understanding of the fear unless you live in such countries and stay hidden.

The country across the pond is increasingly curtailing individual freedoms, which are closely linked to freedom of speech. It can be very easily eroded, like removing the rights of women to have an abortion in several states by law with them having no say in the matter. The pro-life people have arguments regarding just when a foetus is seen as a baby, but it also ignores women not in a position to raise children to ‘accidents’ to rape. Removing rights in the ‘free world’ is contradictory and, in this case, removes women’s liberties. Suppressing such rights is the start of a downward plunge to cutting liberties to everyone. The State is running your life with you having little say in the matter.

Additionally, I’m carefully crafting my content to be more mindful of what Google chooses as keywords. If anything, free speech on the Internet is also open to abuse and attacks, simply by having a different opinion. The dividing level on the Net, especially in social media, is which group you belong to, and numbers give clout to hide behind. It doesn’t mean it’s any better, but size doesn’t denote better.

Pre-Internet, any small grouping of any sort was down to who you knew locally and whether or not they could bring together a group, let alone keep them together without infighting or outsiders determined to tear it apart. It could grow countrywide, but that would take time. An Internet sensation could happen overnight…literally.

With the Internet and social media, country distance vanished in an instant. What would have been small interest subjects could still be that, relatively speaking, but you didn’t have to physically meet up, and a small number could become thousands quite easily, happily dividing into the active doers and those lurkers who just want to be informed. Even better, the possibility of ejecting outsiders who might want to upset things exists. Again, this is all subject to the laws in different countries, and many are determining what is legal now. Some things are illegal everywhere, but others depend on religious faith and punishment. I suppose we should be grateful that you can’t drink alcohol on the Internet.

Of course, the downside of all this is the groups covered everything in all manner of subjects, even political and terrorist groups. The Internet has shrunk the world to your house. Other buildings are available. I have belonged to one group whose success was getting the release of a 1970s American TV series, ‘Search,’ onto DVD, and our activities have diminished since, but it proved to Warner’s that it did sell well, and much of our unity went with that success.

Are there any other social media groups that I should consider joining? I’m not really that social in real life, let alone digitally. Agoraphobia will cause that. It’s not so much a fear of people, as it is a desire to socialise for its own intrinsic value. With all the SFC activity, I’m far too busy, and who can beat nearly 400,000 hits a month? We haven’t had any decent SF news since Covid. I think people would have had enough of me by then or not attracted other people to write for me. Are the standard grammar guidelines that scary? Google still puts us in the main category simply because we get that many hits.

The Internet has changed the world’s social output in a way that a world map does not compare to. It still has problems. Not all parts of the world have access, and many countries, including the USA, have servers that limit access to the world, which must give a distorted version of the world. Even scarier, most people aren’t aware of that. We tend to focus on what is present rather than questioning what is absent. That is, until you try to find something and come across exclusions.

If we rely on so-called ‘AI’ to make decisions, all but the strongest will lose free will, and it is too dumb to understand free speech.

We tend to think most of the readers here are SF geeks; we could be strong enough to survive. There is, of course, one drawback: it could give us what we want. Most of us are collectors. This is likely our greatest vulnerability, as it often aligns with our preferences. It doesn’t mean it can control our views; it could be seen as a crack in our defences as it tries to befriend us and break our freedom of speech by suggesting something else we might like and maybe even speak for us.

The reason we don’t tend to come across suppressed speech too much on the Internet is, I hope, because many of you reading here come online on servers that don’t have too many restrictions. Parental guidance is responsible for much of it, but since kids are typically more computer-savvy, they can overcome this. However, it’s crucial to establish a boundary to prevent predatory adults from targeting the younger generation. That definitely needs more work, especially with some of those suicide groups out there. Hiding in plain sight is rather too easy on the Net.

I have always supported the idea that everyone should have one identity or be able to trace alternative names. It acts as its own protection against identity theft and safeguards individual rights. In other words, your freedom of speech belongs solely to you.

The Internet has become too messy, and when social media sites are no longer supervising factual information against false and fake information, what and who are you going to trust for accuracy? It’s bad enough that the likes of Google (other search engines are out there) show alternatives for your query without ever saying what is the most accurate, let alone having the means to do so. Ultimately, that ends up with people taking on board what they think matches their worldview rather than what is actually correct. This isn’t violating freedom of speech but facts as they stand, and, to make it worse, the AIs guiding you won’t be able to tell the difference.

There needs to be some policing for truthful accuracy on the Internet, or we will have chaos instead. Having information at your fingertips that is wrong doesn’t really help anyone. Only the Illuminati knows what kids swotting up online for exams and getting things totally wrong will do—have a messed-up result that ends up with poorer jobs.

There is a need for structure on the Internet, as it protects everyone. If accuracy is dropped by the bigger companies because it is expensive, especially in social media, then there is a lack of responsibility, so why would you trust them?

Thank you, be careful, have a good night, and remember, I should be one of the good guys.

Geoff Willmetts

editor: www.SFCrowsnest.info

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 Observation: Why are there no gamblers anonymous adverts on TV??

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 Feeling Stressed: Are you surprised with the current state of the world.