TL;DR: data about us being collected, saved and published by social media makes us all more risk-averse when it comes to expressing our opinions online.
I tend to agree. I have a twitter account and I try to never get into political discussions there, because I know that expressing the "wrong" opinion could cost me my job, as it has others. Even expressing something that I view as positive and encouraging could be misinterpreted. I feel like around 2000-2005, there wasn't so much pressure to be politically correct. People could discuss ideas more freely. That being said, I was younger too, and less risk-averse.
That being said, I also remember that in the early YouTube days, comment threads were completely filled with hate. There were people posting messages like "you're ugly, you should kill yourself" constantly. You'd look at these people's accounts and you saw all the comments they posted. There were trolls who would just run around and post hate comments, particularly on LGBT videos. I really wished that someone would delete these accounts and all their associated comments, but YouTube did absolutely nothing about it for years. It was pretty depressing.
Many people are OK with it mostly because "the bad people" are targeted (they think, that is, those they disagree with).
If the pendulum swinged conservative in the future and you could get fired for excess "wokeness", the same people would be fuming with rage at the censorship.
Of course the conservative side (which is now all about free speech) did censor others amply when it had the upper hand (from McCarthy to the "parental advisory" stickers and album boycott campaigns from Mrs. Gore - funnily a Democrat, how times change).
Double standards as usual. If you want a free society, defend free speech for those you disagree with and consider "a danger".
The way I see it, the people in power try to suppress ideas they disagree with. It's just more problematic now because with technology, we're going to get to a point where suppressing ideas and the people who hold said ideas can be automated.
It depends on the place. In Japan it is very common for cars, especially before elections, to roam the streets while shouting political stances. Politicians do the same at a road corners using a megaphone.
I tend to agree. I have a twitter account and I try to never get into political discussions there, because I know that expressing the "wrong" opinion could cost me my job, as it has others. Even expressing something that I view as positive and encouraging could be misinterpreted. I feel like around 2000-2005, there wasn't so much pressure to be politically correct. People could discuss ideas more freely. That being said, I was younger too, and less risk-averse.
That being said, I also remember that in the early YouTube days, comment threads were completely filled with hate. There were people posting messages like "you're ugly, you should kill yourself" constantly. You'd look at these people's accounts and you saw all the comments they posted. There were trolls who would just run around and post hate comments, particularly on LGBT videos. I really wished that someone would delete these accounts and all their associated comments, but YouTube did absolutely nothing about it for years. It was pretty depressing.