After Charlie Kirk's death, teachers and professors nationwide fired or disciplined over social media posts

General News
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It should be obvious why Western governments around the world are in a mad race to tie all social media accounts to your government ID through “age verification” schemes, and to read all your messages via “Chat Control.”

People are regularly punished for sharing thoughts, opinions, and information online today, but you can opt out by using privacy-respecting services and being conscientious about your data. They want to make sure you can’t opt out in the future by attacking privacy at every turn.

It’s always about censorship, never about “the children.”

CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/13/business/charlie-kirk-death-fired-comments

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I’m hoping for a bit of a return to the 90s where people don’t feel they need to oblige with real name policy unless they really want to. As us kids used to be told “there’s a lot of weirdos out there on the internet so don’t use your real name”.

I think free speech is important, but it does seem to depend entirely on the alignment of the incumbent government.

I’m somewhat glad that I’m not in the U.S., where political polarization is at an all-time high. It’s so extreme that the system feels completely dysfunctional, and people feel compelled to disagree with something simply because a red person said it or a blue person did it.

A part of me thinks that might also be benefiting certain individuals that hold most of society’s wealth.

tldr.. Apes together… strong…

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It may be obvious to you, but can you clarify what you mean precisely? Statements like this are often taken for granted by those not in the know, so I would like to do a conceptual analysis of it. That way, we know what we are talking about and what our position is.

When you say that it’s about censorship, we should ask who the censoring benefits (what are the intentions or goals of this particular censorship). In authoritarian governments, it is obvious who benefits from the censorship. So when you say that “they” are censoring, who are you referring to? And can you clarify what the benefit is?

The reason why I want some clarification is because I think we are landing on new territory. These questions can usually be used to historically analyze authortarian governments. But as you say, “Western governments” (liberal democracies) are engaging in censorships too, so their justification for it needs to be examined critically.

It’s a bit difficult to do since we are living in the very time period we want to examine. @dngray frames the issue in terms of wealth inequality, which I presume is supposed to be a class inequality take.

A more distinct identification is necessary. Which society are we saying these certain individuals live in? What is considered a society? Are countries societies? Can Western culture itself (something that extends beyond borders and oceans) also be “society”?

Assuming that we find a satisfactory answer for that, what are the exact mechanisms that those individuals are exploiting in order to benefit from it? Meaning: In what way precisely will censoring lead to them maintaining their privileged and elite position? We can of course come up with abstract and vague answers, like “They can control the narrative if they censor” or whatever, but concrete and empirical answers will allow us to construct better counters and provide insight.

I suppose that this attempt may be in vain. Only historical analysis could give us such insight. Anything said about these events right now are only to be regarded as theory, which is subject to change and hindsight at any time.

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I think in general the upper classes that have the most wealth, everywhere regardless of country want to keep the status quo the same. I think some artifacts we see in reality are things like enshitification, workforces numbers being reduced whilst existing workers are expected to do more in the time they have. I think some believe/believed AI would be a magical solution to extract more labor our of existing workers.

Apes looking at each other instead of those above, basically. I think US politics is an exacerbated example of how that looks. The most obvious one being when a comment starts with “all Republicans this” or “all Democrats that”. “All of our family is this” or “All of our family is that”, like having differing opinions on issues within a family unit is somehow now forbidden.

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So the worldview we have constructed so far is this:

There exists an upper class who wants to maintain their class position, presumably because that class affords them wealth. Are there ways to suss out which particular kinds of people we are looking at? Are these people billionaires? CEOs? It’s difficult to examine this when the people in question are the wealthy upper class of all countries. We also have to tie them back to the issue of privacy and censorship in a concrete way.

So rather than band together, citizens of Western governments instead fight amongst each other, which is facilitated/exploited by the upper class somehow. I think this is an important point of discussion, but I wonder how this relates to censorship? It seems you are saying that in-group/out-group mentality is vital for the upper class to achieve their goal of maintaining their position. But are we saying that censorship is a means to in-group/out-group mentality? or that in-group/out-group mentality is a means to censorship?

I feel that we also have to ask how coordinated of an attack is this from the upper class, assuming that it is in fact the upper class? Is, for example, the political polarization of the US caused by or merely exploited by them?

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Censorship is a distraction. Also I think to some extent it’s a reaction to prevent a certain activity becoming viral, and potentially copied. No doubt something which would be of major concern particularly at time where people feel their right to vote doesn’t really matter anyway. It’s always about pushing the boundaries of what the citizens will peacefully accept without protest. Do actual protests (people holding up signs in public places) achieve things? What if people realize that’s not good enough?

I think another use for censorship is normalizing certain positions to make them seem like the majority of what people think which is often the intent of people behind various internet bot farms. This might sway a conversation because people tend to want to pick the winning side in a debate regardless of their own critical thought.

I think the reason it can be exploited is because there are simply a lot of issues that upper classes never have to confront. While those issues are argued and debated by everyone else things remain the same. I don’t think this particularly is isolated to western countries either.

I do think broadening culture wars is exactly an attempt to divide and distract. I think achieved by giving no-names a platform to preach on and funding them to carry out their activities. Where does all the money TPUSA have even come from? (or other organizations like that).

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The motives of the rich and powerful are a mystery to me, based on their actions I assume they are guided by a general lack of common sense.

I don’t know if it really matters why this is happening for the purposes of this discussion, only that it is. I am not sure how many people really recognize this yet.

I think it is very concerning that age verification systems were suddenly introduced in many supposedly sovereign/independent countries, only as recently as under 2 years ago. I think it is very concerning that there has been a coordinated push to make real name policies the norm on the internet, and to eliminate spaces that don’t allow that.

Most recently, I think it’s very concerning that people feel justified in persecuting others for simple thoughtcrime against Charlie Kirk on the internet, which is why I shared this article. I think this simply highlights the real-world dangers everyday people face when they give up on having personal privacy online.

I am strongly against punishing people for sharing information, because freedom of thought should be an unconditional right. Unfortunately, society will punish people for this in some cases, even if governments don’t. Therefore, privacy and anonymity are unfortunately necessary tools to preserve that right online, and when they are eroded by invasive laws and surveillance or even just the tyranny of the masses, it’s simply a crime against humanity.

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I’ve always suspected the reason for that governments in general a lot of issues particularly related to basic expectations (having a place to live, and food to eat etc) not being addressed.
At some point it is predicted people will take what they need rather than wait for the generosity of government to provide a solution. I think governmental surveillance and apparatus there is about having early warning on that.

With predictions about climate change, resource exhaustion is only likely to become a worse issue in the future. I also think we’re seeing the early stages of that in relation to national territorial conflicts where governments may see a solution or stop-gap solution being that of taking the resources of their neighbor. Wars cost money too and require motivation, so nationalistic propaganda is often employed there to make a group of people’s feel superior, or better than the other group over there, thus providing common enemy and justification.

All in all, I don’t think it’s a single issue or motivation, but I’m certain it has nothing to do with child safety and more about maintaining control.

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It is just kind of a pessimistic viewpoint that the increase in their desire for control is driven by the possibility that we’re ever-closer to the brink of collapse, but it is also certainly plausible :upside_down_face:

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It is unfortunate, I wish everyone would just step outside and cuddle a polar bear, but this is the world we live in.

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After Charlie Kirk’s death, teachers and professors nationwide fired or disciplined over social media posts

Play stupid games, get stupid rewards I guess. Now that people are stupid enough to celebrating it will just be a evil circle to more censorship, less privacy. In the name of safety

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Perhaps we need to look inwards. Freedom of speech does not mean you can yell fire in a crowded theater. We seem to have forgotten this. Have we created an environment where regulation and censorship is necessary? Size and scale matter. “Bullfrog sucks” written on a bathroom stall door at the subway station is one thing. “Bullfrog sucks” written on every bathroom door of every subway station around the world is different.

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Pessimistic? Hardly. I’d say it is an objective observation. Big conflict is coming. Any thinking person has no real means to ignore all the preparations that are currently being made, around the world (US, EU, Russia, China, Japan etc.). Chat control, age verification and in some places the return of mandatory conscription. All the good stuff. Sure it is about privacy but first and foremost it is about control.

I’m an ESL person, so in case of any misunderstanding, please bear with me.

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Celebrating a man’s death is neither a thought, opinion, nor information. It’s evil, vile hatred the likes of which should be shunned by every member of polite society. We ‘win’ by loving life more than they love death, but to deny accountability for their actions is insane.

Especially when taking into account professions involved with…teaching children.

Oh, you know, forgot to point out your misleading headline! Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Murdered even. He did not just die.

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Can you explain why one precludes the other?

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It is evil.

It is human.

The day will come, in every part of the world, weather you live through it, your children, or the children that they have and worry about, that evil will show it’s face in a way that there is no right in which side they (or you) have no choice but to pick.

That has almost nothing to do with what happened to this Kirk guy with the exception that it could be the early beginnings of that day coming. I think people have the right to be evil in how they talk about it, how they feel about it, and that there’s an issue of free speech and freedom of expression to be thought about, the same way you have an equally valid response and reply and that the right to express it should be defended. Maybe we don’t have control over what a privately owned forum does when something we say isn’t liked, or a social media company, or whatever the case… non-government entities. The concern I have is with government censorship and the cultural trend of censorship.

I don’t live in the US, I don’t know who Charlie Kirk is except that my computer is set up English-US and so it comes up in the trending news, but I care a lot about the erosion of the fundamental rights that have happened in the US because it is my home country.

When reading about Charlie Kirk, here on this forum, I can’t help but to be reminded of the culture of censorship that was absolutely imposed upon, and effected, the people there in The United States when Luigi Mangione shot someone. People were censored and businesses were censored to the ends that they lost money. It does not matter what anyone thinks about either of these two incidents when talking about it with respect to the right to have a thought at all. If I want to engage in wrong-think, then I should be able to, and so should you.

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Do you think I work for NBC news?

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Why is this a mystery? Rich and powerful want to stay rich and powerful, and do actions and push for policy that keep them that way. If it so happens to benefit the every day masses, so it may be, but that is absolutely secondary to the former goal.

The US is currently on the tightrope of acceptable free speech and two different sides of the camp. A man who has spouted very abhorrent rhetoric was killed. This hateful speech did not result in immediate safety issues like the manner of a fire in a theater, but rather the longer term cultural acceptance and societal push of said rhetoric.

The freedom of speech to spout racism, sexism, and anti-semitism is the same freedoms that protects those who celebrate death. The one camp celebrates the death of a man who spouted hateful rhetoric, and the other camp says that’s the line they draw that isn’t ok.

Personally I believe celebrating his death fuels the fire of hatred, even if it were justified, and it’s much better to not do that. However the cats out of the bag, and the social media propaganda machine is already latched on and won’t let go until it’s extracted everyone’s vitriol for ad impressions and political momentum.

Businesses don’t want to be involved and will drop those celebrating death of people who haven’t violated the law regardless of how much they may or may not be a blight on humanity (and are popular enough to draw attention like this). I doubt you’ll go to jail for being thankful a mass murderer gets murdered themselves. But this is a guy who was praised by a group of people, ergo assassination and not murder.

I don’t think freedom of speech is even the worst of this. If you make any comparison to the death of Horst Wessel, the reality between his death and Charlie Kirk’s becomes terrifyingly ominous, bleak, and mortifying to the current state of affairs in the US. I was not concerned before to this degree, but I feel a repackaging of history with a fresh coat of orange paint.

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Celebrating a man’s death is neither a thought, opinion, nor information. It’s evil, vile hatred the likes of which should be shunned by every member of polite society. We ‘win’ by loving life more than they love death, but to deny accountability for their actions is insane.

These statements feel hollow because many of the same people who are now loudly condemning others also mocked Pelosi’s husband getting his skull fractured with a hammer and mocked the assassination of a Minnesota politician and her spouse. If one is labeled evil, why weren’t the others? This hypocrisy suggests to me that these words are not sincere, but using the issue to punish dissenters. That is not freedom.

Furthermore, most “left‑wing” commentary I’ve seen doesn’t celebrate Kirk’s death; it notes that he showed no empathy for them while still condemning his murder. Are you suggesting people must praise those they fundamentally oppose after they die? That is not freedom.

I’ve also encountered numerous posts demanding that “leftists” be slaughtered for allegedly mocking Kirk, yet I see no comparable outrage toward these posts. Keep in mind that I think these posts are made by fringe “right-wing” radicals, much like any similar commentary from “the left”. However, this double standard reinforces my belief that the critics aren’t serious in their condemnation. Once again, that is not freedom.

Lastly, it’s impossible to gauge political rhetoric accurately from within our own echo chambers. Determining whether “the left” or “the right” is more politically violent requires statistical analyses with good methodology.

Here is the first study I found, which uses data from 1948-2022 from around the world:

The findings from two studies, characterized by very different scopes and units of analysis, provide substantial support for conclusions about the relationship between ideology and the use of politically motivated violence. First, data on extremists in the United States showed that left-wing radicals were less likely to use violence than right-wing and Islamist radicals. Second, using worldwide data we found that in comparison to right-wing and Islamist groups, attacks motivated by left-wing groups were less deadly. These substantive conclusions were not affected by the inclusion of a set of control variables. Thus, the main findings appear to be robust across levels of analysis (i.e., individuals, groups) and geographical scope of the data.

So once again, I’m troubled by the double standard here that paints “the left” as violent and even evil, especially since we don’t even know the Kirk shooter’s political ideology. It is irresponsible to paint the entirety of “the left” with the brush of whatever comments you’ve seen online, particularly when the “celebration” has been heavily exaggerated, and even moreso when data shows political violence is more prevalent on “the right”.

TL;DR: Murder is always wrong, but caring only when it serves a political agenda suggests you do not care about the crime, only about imposing political views on others.

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Yes, you are not mourning the party leadership to an adequate degree.

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