The past year was marred with examples of people being questionably removed from social media platforms and other services. The mechanism used to justify the removals were the terms of service agreements we accept on a regular basis. These agreements cover the usual topics of data usage, privacy, liability and so on, but a noticeable trend has reared its head in recent years.

While it's common for terms of service agreements to include a section dealing with the general idea of harassment, there has been a new focus on so-called "hate speech." The current iteration of TOS agreements play fast and loose with the understanding of free expression, often shifting the idea of context into the realm of personal perception and bias. At first glance these changes could be seen as a reasonable response to an actual threat but the numbers don't add up. The metrics of hate crimes and similar events aren't proportional to the amount of media outrage or the response by companies. In many cases these headline worthy crimes are quickly sent down the memory hole once it is revealed that once again, they are fake. This leads one to question why these companies are attempting to curtail something so subjective, something they can only define in the vaguest of terms as well as being grounded on data that is clearly flawed.

The generally accepted definition of a hate crime is a "criminal offense which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender's bias(es) against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity." While the FBI definition acts as a starting point for crafting a "hate speech" policy, it runs into the issue of enforcement. The above items are left to the interpretation of whomever is tasked with verifying content and soon the clear-cut definition crumbles under the weight of individual biases. A string of text or segment of video can have its meaning and intent willfully ignored to suit the ambitions of the reviewer or company. This leads to a situation where the rules are not consistently applied to the userbase, creating distrust and a lack of faith in the neutrality of the platform.

Weaponization of the ill-conceived "hate speech" rules has turned into a go-to tool in the activist toolkit. Its the ace up their sleeve which allows them to outright remove the opposition from public discourse or to inflict social and financial damage upon their "enemies." The same way the idea of "social justice" has been tarnished by zealots, the potentially well intentioned TOS agreements have been twisted into something sinister and ugly. If we move beyond the surface level issues that have unfortunately become the norm for the culture war and take a tiny step through the veil of conspiracy, there might be a deeper game being played in the background.

As the saying goes, when you give an inch, they take a mile. In the fight to maintain some semblance free expression the act of self-censorship is that inch. The attempt to stay in the good graces of our tech overlords by adopting their standards of acceptability is the death of free speech by a thousand cuts. You remove one word here, one word there. You avoid talking about certain subjects that are "offensive" and pretty soon you have surrendered to their game of fashionable values. Without firing a single shot they are able to take control, able to mold you in their image by playing the long game of "slowly but surely." The loss of ones self results from the willingness to compromise your individuality and freedoms for the privilege of making a tweet.