The War on Free Speech is Here

Last week, we discussed the war on free speech that is raging in the UK and Bitcoin’s use as a means of censorship-resistant freedom of transaction. The UK appears to be setting violent criminals free to make room in prisons for “dissidents” who dare to post “offensive” content or otherwise spread “misinformation.”

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Nazi comparisons are thrown around all too flippantly in political discourse these days, but if ever there were a time to use one, this seems to be it.

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And yet, just a few days later, we continue to report new assaults on free speech. Earlier this week, CEO and Founder of private messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France for failing to mediate his platform. Among the 12 charges against him were “complicity” in various crimes, including “organized fraud” and “possessing pornographic images of minors.” I guess Ford, Chevy, and all the others are complicit in drunk driving, too? And I suppose CEOs of pharmaceutical companies, whose products often include an array of side effects like “heart attack,” “stroke,” and “death” should be worried, as well?

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I doubt it.

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Durov’s real crime was allowing free speech that is politically inconvenient to the State to flourish using his platform. Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, is a free man even after admitting that his company, Meta, was pressured by politicians to a suppress certain news stories that proved to be true.

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If this all seems very backwards to you… it’s because you’re onto something.

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We are fortunate, though, to live in an age of technological optionality; new tools have arisen in recent years that make it much harder to censor speech that is undesirable to the establishment.

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Much like Bitcoin allows for freedom of transaction, open source social media protocols like Nostr and peer-to-peer messaging tools like Keet allow for information to proliferate without concern for regulatory capture: no CEO, no headquarters, no geographical or jurisdictional footprint. Just free people, communicating freely… as it should be.

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The sad reality is that the crackdowns - or war - on free speech don’t concern enough people to take action. For Americans, as an example, the UK feels far away and the mainstream media doesn’t cover just how insane the censorship is. For most of the West, frozen banks accounts during the Canadian trucker protest of 2022 seem “unlikely” to happen at home.

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It won’t be until you, or a close friend, or a family member become the target that it will matter more personally. And by then it may be too late.

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It’s time to step up and take ownership of your own life and direction. Buy Bitcoin and self-custody it. Stop banking entirely on the censorship-prone channels in your life, like Facebook, TikTok, Youtube, and yes, even X. If they will so brazenly attack a fundamental right as speech, you can be sure others are to follow.

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Prepare accordingly.

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