What good are those campaigns against "hate speech" for?
Just some ten years ago, we could call each other all kinds of names freely. One could easily call someone a faggot or a retard, and not get tons of flak from the so-called "virtue signalling sensible people", or get banned, have their content deleted from the platform either by the site admins or the community moderators.
Now, you've basically got to watch your mouth on nearly any major mainstream platform. Not only calling others niggers or faggots, but even expressing some opinions which can be considered "racist" or "offensive" or "hateful" can lead to both a ban (either from a community or from the platform) and a smear campaign against you (on rare occasions).
One side screams that this is a good thing because, well, people might get offended, so it's in your responsibility to comply with others' whims and personal triggers. After all, if we want to build a society where love and tolerance reigns, we must establish a strict moral and behavioral code, and treat everyone who goes against it with burning hatred! Or, at least, shun and exile them. In the name of inclusivity and diversity!
The other side argues that freedom of speech is a fundamental principle of any free society, and therefore, no matter how offensive or hateful, all speech shall be allowed. Even if someone gets upset, everyone has a right to speak freely; after all, the First Amendment (or any other applicable freedom-of-expression safeguard) wasn't created to protect only the speech that everyone loves - it was created exactly to allow unhindered expression of controversial, and even outright repulsive ideas.
Of course, just as with nearly any issue, it's a complicated one, and therefore it requires a complicated approach. Regardless of one's position on that issue, however, there are some cold, hard facts one just can't ignore by pretending they aren't here, or re-naming them so they don't sound that bad.
Regardless of the intents, it's still called "censorship" because it is censorship
One of the primary reasons why the rampant crusade against "hate speech" got so much support is that those on the supporting sides have, through the use of mental gymnastics, convinced themselves they aren't violating anyone's freedom of expression by censoring people if it's "for kindness/tolerance/respect". After all, it's not like they up and admit, "We do not agree with the principle of free speech. We believe that people's right to express themselves shall be curtailed for whatever we define as the Greater Good."
So regardless of whatever bullshit they come up with, their goal is to stifle freedom of expression. Not unlike any other authoritarian ruler of the past. Except that other authoritarian rulers usually didn't try to BS themselves and the others by pretending that restraints stop being restraints if they're placed on the people for a "good" cause. They were quite open about restraining others' freedoms, and they openly presented these restraints as a "necessary" measure to fight something they call a big issue, or to achieve something they call a "greater good" of sorts.
However, through the 20th century, we have seen that the notion of the "greater good" is always very subjective, the "necessary measures" are often not the only and not the best way to fight the problem and, of course, the "problem" might not be anything bad or might not actually exist. With the previous century being full of authoritarians exploiting these concepts to build dictatorships, and a few of those dictatorships continuing on into 21st century in some form, it is not easy at all to convince the members of a free society to surrender some of their freedoms, especially if it's just so a bunch of people who can't handle rude words and offensive statements by themselves would feel better.
And so, various trickery is being tested on the people to push censorship and stifle their freedom. They all have a very unstable success rate, but for various reasons, major corporations have adopted the anti-hate-speech policies. The primary reason is, of course, that building a platform-wide "safe space" is a better marketing tactic than let all the rude people run around making rude comments and make those hysterical crybabies feel uncomfortable while using their platform.
(You've probably thought of just assigning all the rude people a special NSFW category, just like it is done with all kinds of adult content. Well, about this one...)
There's always a demand for silencing people
Just because the First Amendment guarantees every US citizen unabridged freedom of expression, doesn't mean that all kinds of scummy persons who want to silence others for various reasons have mysteriously disappeared. It's just that they can no longer legally throw you in a cell/kill you for saying something they don't like.
The primary users for silencing techniques are, of course:
- Authoritarians with shitty narratives. These people know well their ideologies suck ass, and they are sure they aren't going to change them because they want them to be that way. The only problem with that is that a better ideology might appear, and if left unchecked, it may spread through the populace, creating all sorts of trouble - political instability, corruption, shadow activities such as secret societies and black markets, and, in extreme cases, public uprising. So the choice lies between 1) Refining their approach to governing the nation, resulting in changes which will be satisfactory for both the rulers and the commoners, and 2) Trying to shut others up to prevent the spread of "unwanted" ideas. For most people, the option number two is more attractive because they don't need to sit down and think about the course of action - the solution is already there: violent repressions.
- People who want to monopolize the use of certain ideas and concepts. In other words, copyright-mongers. Handling information is nothing like handling material goods, because information can be re-produced much, much easier than things like bread or cars. Concepts and other things made of information still require time, effort and resources to produce - but since they're copied cheaply and easily, it seems kinda hard to sell them now that the people can potentially buy a small amount of copies and share them with others, eliminating the need to spend money on the "official" copies. Explaining copyright, the legitimacy and reasoning behind it, as well as exactly how good a measure it is compared to other possible alternatives, will take a separate article's worth of text, so let's leave it at that.
- All sorts of people with secrets. These can range from perfectly justifiable and reasonable attempts to preserve one's own private secrets, to retards who expose their private life on Facebook and now get frustrated because they got doxed, to outright malicious actors who want to do something you won't like. In this article, I won't delve into the privacy question, so they will be addressed from the point of freedom of expression.
And since it isn't too easy to just come out and say boldly, "No, you can't say these things anymore because I say so.", those who want you to shut the fuck up resort to all sorts of trickery. Often indirect, multi-step and non-linear, so it would be harder to infer the true intentions of those who want to silence you. Such as first conditioning you to accept censorship, for any reasons and in any form; and then, when you did, start expanding it in all directions "because, hey, we already have it, we're just adding more things to silence".
These campaigns don't do anything good to actually prevent abusive language towards anyone
What those pathetic, whiny crybabies who can't help being hysterical and unstable after hearing a bunch of words they don't like do not understand, is that language is rich and flexible enough to provide an opportunity to blast them in the most abusive and offensive fashion. Their primitive minds are barely sophisticated enough to allow a primitive, animalistic outrage upon hearing things they do not like - and their lack of cognitive faculties leaves them completely unable to deal with any language they consider "abusive" by themselves. Oh no, "consider" isn't a correct word since it is a part of higher cognitive functioning; since they do not show any signs of intelligence because they have none, it's more like they "feel" abused. You know, like a primitive animal feels pain when get pricked by some thorny plant. They will yelp and get all jumpy and nervous, but unlike those wimpy humans who can't handle abusive language, they usually don't get pricked because they have knowledge of which plants to avoid, gained through experience and evolution. The solution is simple - just don't get near those thorny plants or abusive assholes who say things you don't like. Just keep away from them. Animals considered to be "lower" than humans CAN do that. These wimpy, hysterical humans can't.
See? I can spew venom without utilizing any slurs, or any kind of "offensive" words. To stop me from saying things you don't like, you'll have to ruin the entire language so it will basically become unusable.
Banning words will only lead to emergence of replacement words which will have the exact same meaning the banned words had. And since the attitudes to entities in question remain the same, replacing the word "nigger" with "person of color" will only lead to individuals with prejudice to hate people of color instead of niggers. And if you try to ban facts which someone might find offensive, you'll run in all sorts of problems. Including a growing distrust from the populace, and the inability to handle some issues because you've bullshitted everyone (including people who work for you) into believing the false narrative. Which'll lead to accumulating problems stemming from growing disinformation being used in real-life solutions.
Censors, just like any other authoritarians, never honestly say they're going to oppress and exploit you
At least not in any large society during the last thousand years.
Everyone who practiced censorship have claimed to do it for a good purpose. Fascists claimed to do it for a range of reasons such as "preventing destabilization" or "keeping away dangerous/degenerate ideas". 20th century socialists did it "to prevent anti-communist mindsets" and "to secure themselves from harmful capitalist propaganda". Religious authoritarians, most notably Islamists and medieval Christians, did it "to prevent the god's wrath". Modern nations are no different. Russia practices heavy censorship for a variety of reasons, most notably to "prevent extremism" and "to secure stability". China goes even further, adding extreme repressions of expression for a variety of reasons, from the industry-standard "national security" to "preventing foreign propaganda" and even "just because the State knows best".
But it's never "because we can't honestly compete with a multitude of various potential ideas which might be superior to ours, but we want you to obey us nonetheless". Not openly, that is.
When the existing reasons to shut you up get exhausted, they just start looking for other ones - and, if there are none, they make them up. The process is executed until enough public support is gained; then, the successful narrative gets pushed aggressively, and finally, it either becomes the norm or gets busted, at which point the process begins anew.
On the other hand...
The arguments above disprove the need for any global and uniform censorship, as well any "morality" or "decency" of it.
As much as freedom of expression is fundamental in any free society, there is always the need to reasonably moderate content on a local platform.
First and foremost, we should not forget that most platforms are not hobby projects like this blogging site, which possibly has earning money as a secondary function. All large platforms (and the so-called "alt-tech" sites) are operated by large corporations with profit as one of the main driving goals. It is not too unexpected for them to prioritize their corporate interests over the generic people's freedom of expression. To that end, they might employ platform-wide content moderation (yes, CENSORSHIP) for a variety of reasons, ranging from simple attractiveness to average customers to a full-blown government/corporate conspiracy to socially engineer the population to be docile, unquestioning puppets of the state, and to stifle independent expression.
Then again, some of the people do use these freedoms not as much to express themselves, as to push some product where it is not needed. Or to disrupt existing communities. Or to aggressively push some narrative. Or just to be obnoxious and offensive for the sake of it, because they think they're amazing trolls if they manage to annoy everyone around them.
Banning entire words, or even banning these people from the platform outright, is surely a dumbass idea - not in the least because even these primitives are still a good source of data. However, persons and communities surely should have the freedom to get rid of such people - by blocking them. This is exactly the things we need: moderation tools for private and community pages, so instead of platform-wide censorship, we could give the choice to individual users.
If someone doesn't like some words, they can set up a filter which'll hide the content containing these words from these users' view. There can even be some default filters (for example, for NSFW content; what is perceived to be "offensive" or "abusive"; content perceived as unacceptable for certain minorities) and they would be active for everyone save for those who consciously decide to switch them off.
This way, we can both provide freedom of speech (everyone can say "nigger" and "retard" all they want) but at the same time, this content will be filtered from most everyone's view - save for those people who deliberately disable those filters.
There is also the lasting presence of unsanctioned spammers who abuse the communication media to spam advertisements to users. They're basically doing what the approved advertisers do, but they don't pay social media companies for hosting their ads, that's why every major entity tells you spam is bad and ads are good. That, and spam usually isn't deleted by anti-ad browser plugins. Spammers, unlike most other internet undesirables, aren't usually dealt with easily by blocking them. Unlike internet vandals who just crap up the space with their obnoxious behavior, these are really set on getting your attention. So when you block them instead of just ignoring, they read it as "The manager of this page is active, spam them with increased intensity".
Basically, the best solution for dealing with spammers for now is "Just ignore them completely, and after some significant time passes, get rid of their spam if it's really a bother". There are more potent alternatives (such as using a trained AI to spot spammers, or IP address ratings), but these do not come with a potential to abuse them in a way which turns them into a malicious tool instead. Als, the problem is partially resolved with custom filters; however, it will most likely require users to manually add words and phrases commonly used by spammers, which makes it a limited-usefulness option.
Of course, this list of potential issues is not exhaustive, and I didn't mention the cases of censorship with openly malicious intents (such as: narrative control, prevention of spread of useful knowledge, political trickery, or mass mind-control operations involving censorship as one part of the complex psychological operation). Though these are malicious uses, there is a demand for these, and so they shouldn't be just disregarded without any concern.
Conclusion
For whatever reason, censorship is a crappy solution.
Sure, it does help get rid of the most annoying elements in the community. However, it also can be easily misused to selectively silence those who do provide a good reason to listen to them.
The only real vulnerable minority in humans societies is the Sovereign Individual, and so far, most measures supposedly aimed to "aid the vulnerable minorities" ended up oppressing them. The "hate speech" bullshit is no exception. The Sovereign Individual is being told that there are "oppressed" "minorities" which "deserve" some sort of compensation - and the burden of compensation is ultimately laid on the Sovereign Individual; and when the Sovereign Individual protests, the "minorities" and their sympathizers gang up on them and bash on them until they shut up and comply with their requests. As a result, the Sovereign Individual gets their ability to express themselves restrained, while the "minorities" are thinking about new demands they could make.
With that said, it surely does have its place in major social media platforms run with profit in mind. Getting rid of rude people makes the platform more attractive and friendly for the masses, which stimulates them to spend more time in that comfy-friendly atmosphere - and give more data to the company, as well as consume more targeted ads and propaganda. Additionally, since there is a demand for all sorts of psychological operations, political tricks, and mass consensus engineering, there is little reason for major media enterprises to not take part in this - long as they get some reward as well.
All in all, for every legit-sounding reason, there is more than one solution which is much better than censorship for all interested parties. "Minorities" will have "offensive" content hidden from them so it won't give them a scary psychological shock. Those who want to speak freely, will speak freely. And since no one is being silenced, and there is no better solution so far, the responsibility for (not) seeing some sorts of content will be laid on users - with flexible content filters they can put for their account.
Fuck censorship.