Now, coming to our specific context in India – as you know it’s a huge country with a lot of religious believes and several cultures. What you get to see on social media like FB these days is a lot of spiteful, mocking, hurting content that take on each other. Even worse is what certain extreme views while taking on the government and not allowing it to operate. This phenomenon is something new – I would say hardly 3-4 years old with the proliferation of social media – and where I have objection is taking on people by their religion, culture, private life etc. There’s a lot of fake news spreading that’s promoted without any verification as well. I would like to see such content screened :)

By the way, you are so right about kids’ upbringing. Fortunately, I am not into any religious activities and could teach my kids not to distinguish people using the wrong attributes such as race, caste, color etc. And I would like to thank my father for bringing me up that way…

First, a clarification. The U.S. government isn’t trying to censor free speech in general. They’re trying to stop illegally obtained secret government files from being publicly shown. That is a significant difference from what you stated.

The issue of trying to block objectionable content is based on who’s making the decision as to what’s objectionable. You mentioned religion so I’ll use that as an example. You find it objectionable that people will say bad things about it. I find it objectionable that people promote it to begin with. So, do we ban all discussions of religion because we both have an objection in some fashion about it? If not, then do you or I get to decide which way it goes based on which of us has the power at that moment?

As adults, we should be able to discern for ourselves and our children what we’re subjected to without the government getting into it. Oppression comes when we allow others to dictate these types of things to us. We also need to always be prepared for the consequences of our free speech, but that’s a much different matter.