I started feeling that way around the time ICE illegally broke, entered and ransacked a low-income housing building in Chicago, terrorizing residents regardless of citizenship or immigration status. Once I realized that fear of reprisal was preventing me from expressing how I felt about it online, I resolved instead to get louder and more strident in my public speech than I had been in years.
I lived in China for a while, and my wife is from China. We moved out almost 5 years ago, and she still was a bit freaked out about a picture of Xi Jinping's book next to Winnie Pooh book I took at a Book Expo here in Germany. Once you lived 1-2 generations with censorship, this gets from "chilling" (as in, you're aware of the thought but suppress it) to "not even thinking about it".
I don't know if it's a net negative on society, in the end in China people are very apathetic towards all of this, their lives are fine, they can get food delivered in 5 minutes, trains run on time, flying cars, and all that. Bread and circuses, bread and circuses.
being a third generation myself (parents and grandparents lived under a "regime"), as long as you tell them how it was for you, the kids might be the ones who will stop eating the poison bread and tell the clowns to take off their makeup
I think as I've gotten older, the fear of expressing myself has increasingly turned into a sense of duty to do it anyway. The more people feel pressured into silence, the more important it seems not to be.
Mostly with how easy it has become in a corporate setting.
Before they had an easy access to the data but the barrier was their capacity to go through it. Nowadays any middle manager with data access and an OpenAI subscription can potentially get a sentiment and summary of your public (or even private with some saas plans) conversations.
I've always used a pseudonym. I have never felt free to speak my mind on the internet under my own name, the cancel mobs scared me away long before the state did
Very much this. I also chose a different pseudonym from place to place. However, a bigger chill to my online speech is fatigue and ack of joy in participating online. I think the last place I felt community online was on Usenet.
Hmm, probably a little. I am a fairly public person but I wouldn't want to be one of the characters in So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson. It's nice to see that Sacco got her job back eventually, but that grade of internet mob cancellation goes after some random person and then that's the end of it. Sometimes it works out like in the Brendan Eich case but other times it doesn't.
From the government, a little, but I think as a non-American in the US I was always a bit careful on that front. Better not to get in any trouble you know.
So many platforms banning people for not having the site’s chosen position was a bigger impact than anything that’s happened in the last 5 years. I think online speech was dead well before that. It’s just a bunch of people agreeing with each other, because everyone else has been banned or is afraid of being banned.
State by state, but that was massively blown out of proportion by the media. You were never at risk for saying boo about the lockdowns on social media.
But obviously if you tried to organise protests during lockdowns, that's a different kettle of fish.
But if you start making some big posts about Woodside etc, you can have AFP knocking at your door.
I do wonder if I could automate the expression of uncontroversial opinions in the public sphere though. For example things about movies, music, or sporting events. These are valid interests that I simply don't have. I have at times been regarded with (I think) unfair suspicion for not engaging with social media to a meaningful degree.
There are things I'd like to say on the web but which I haven't because I fear I could be arrested in some countries I am likely to visit in the future.
The risk of being denied entry to US and my lack of interest in visiting US share a reason. That's the only change vs 5 years ago as far as governments are concerned.
As for corporate I've always assumed no internal communication was private.
There are things I don't say online anymore, not because I don't think they're correct, but because my opinion could be deemed offensive.
Whenever I say something I think could risk being seen as offensive, I tend to add a lot of footnotes explaining my reasoning for the things I'm saying and why I'm not trying to offend.
I also never share remotely offensive humour to friends over social media or messaging apps anymore, which used to be fun. Lots of people have been arrested for jokes so just not worth it tbh. Even if I don't think it's that offensive the law is too subjective to take the risk.
I've been under surveillance since I was 15 mainly because people made money off of me saying funny stuff. I'm used to it after 17 years. Personal computing was a mistake.
Not really, at least in the UK ( where "apparently" everyone is being jailed for free speech violations). I've moved to the position where I wouldn't post anything online that I wouldn't say in person, and I very rarely post anything work related.
Absolutely. People have already gotten in trouble with US immigration just for posting negative opinions on social media, or simply speech that the government doesn't like (see all the recent pro-Palestine protestors whose visas were cancelled). The state department/homeland/etc. can choose or not choose to let people in based on just about any criteria they want. If they find out I said something critical of the government, I could either be denied entry, or kicked out, and both have already been happening to people in the last year and a half.
Even if what they're doing isn't legal, that doesn't stop them from potentially ruining your life in the process, maybe even getting away with it.
Yes. AI makes it more trivial than ever to extract your sentiments, and when you combine that with a government that's eager to crush dissent then things get tricky.
We live in the USA. I had a friend tell me they won't use Chinese models because models like K3 only have moonshot as the provider which is in China. They were afraid of surveillance. My rebuttal was that the Chinese can't send police to our door based on the conversation you have with their models while US companies can.
I'd rather the Chinese have my data over a US company because... what could they do? I live here, not China.
I semi-frequently discuss my opinions about government officials who should be sent to prison for their crimes, agencies who everyone should boycott, and laws that I no longer consider legitimate. I've never had anyone from the government talk to me about this or been punished in any other way. Perhaps I've gotten lucky, but I really do think that free speech protections remain strong in the US, despite the attempts from the aforementioned criminals to change that.
In general, no. But I'd never make anything but anonymous throwaway posts here because this is the one place that doesn't let me delete my posts. (I know you can make manual requests, but if it's not self-service I can't rely on it.)
Surveillance no, but potentially being banned, yes. Reddit is Exhibit A for this for me when I think about how I used to use it versus how I use it today. I wish Musk was actually serious about that whole free speech absolutist shit because the straight jacket gets tighter every day on every platform.
Not exactly. I don't really have much interesting to say. I'm trying to use the internet less in general not because of surveillance, but because of overall enshittification. Reddit has become a normie platform at this point and there's no point using it. 4chan still allows free speech but truth is, I'm not an interesting person and nobody cares about my personal issues. There are quite a few intelligent people on HN but the culture here promotes staying on topic and being civil, which is good for productive debate, but not really fun.
Anyone else notice that the things certain people claim to be "not allowed to say" are somehow wedged into every single thread, post, or forum on the internet? If you were actually forbidden from saying it, then I wouldn't have to read it 20 times a day.
Quote from the NSPM-7:
> There are common recurrent motivations and indicia uniting this pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described “anti-fascism.” These movements portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as “fascist” to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution. This “anti-fascist” lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality. As described in the Order of September 22, 2025 (Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization)
The "less likely to express" isn't from surveillance, but from the professional shills that moderate every site which makes it worthless to put any effort into posting anything because it will just be removed with no justification.
"do you find yourself expressing yourself less freely on the internet than you did five years ago?"
No, because five years ago was probably the high point of online speech restriction. A time where people were banned from platforms like Twitter and Facebook for expressing political opinions or stating scientific facts
I don't know if it's a net negative on society, in the end in China people are very apathetic towards all of this, their lives are fine, they can get food delivered in 5 minutes, trains run on time, flying cars, and all that. Bread and circuses, bread and circuses.
I think it's very important to show the true American spirit of telling those, who think they are out betters, to just go fuck off.
We're ALL Kings here in the USA.
Calling out bullshit, praising hard work and artistic expression, and enjoying life all need to be balanced.
Sharing things I've learned, the Beauty I've seen, and admitting my mistakes are core to the way I operate these days.
Before they had an easy access to the data but the barrier was their capacity to go through it. Nowadays any middle manager with data access and an OpenAI subscription can potentially get a sentiment and summary of your public (or even private with some saas plans) conversations.
I’m more careful with my words than I ever was.
(This joke would be funnier if HN allowed unicode Full Block characters)
This is a deep topic which I’ve not given its due attention. But I have wondered about my likes and saves and chats on platforms such as Reddit.
This title of a webpage about says it all, “Read our full archive of Graham Platner’s deleted Reddit comments”.
Whatever you think about the former Maine US Senate Candidate, this type of published outrage goes hand-in-hand with his sibling “surveillance”.
From the government, a little, but I think as a non-American in the US I was always a bit careful on that front. Better not to get in any trouble you know.
And for things that might seriously attract the ire of people who consider political violence a positive good, there's always TOR.
OR. You want to say something about US oil and gas companies, or Israel. Those two things will get you scrutinised.
But obviously if you tried to organise protests during lockdowns, that's a different kettle of fish.
But if you start making some big posts about Woodside etc, you can have AFP knocking at your door.
I do wonder if I could automate the expression of uncontroversial opinions in the public sphere though. For example things about movies, music, or sporting events. These are valid interests that I simply don't have. I have at times been regarded with (I think) unfair suspicion for not engaging with social media to a meaningful degree.
The risk of being denied entry to US and my lack of interest in visiting US share a reason. That's the only change vs 5 years ago as far as governments are concerned.
As for corporate I've always assumed no internal communication was private.
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There are things I don't say online anymore, not because I don't think they're correct, but because my opinion could be deemed offensive.
Whenever I say something I think could risk being seen as offensive, I tend to add a lot of footnotes explaining my reasoning for the things I'm saying and why I'm not trying to offend.
I also never share remotely offensive humour to friends over social media or messaging apps anymore, which used to be fun. Lots of people have been arrested for jokes so just not worth it tbh. Even if I don't think it's that offensive the law is too subjective to take the risk.
Even if what they're doing isn't legal, that doesn't stop them from potentially ruining your life in the process, maybe even getting away with it.
I'd rather the Chinese have my data over a US company because... what could they do? I live here, not China.
Imagine if every email provider had an option to "publicize" next to the ability to star an email or email thread.
It's the private, anti-free speech stuff that would be interesting to see up close. And I'm just talking about email communications.
Are you referring to anything in particular?
If anything, you're more free to "express yourself" now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSPM-7
Quote from the NSPM-7: > There are common recurrent motivations and indicia uniting this pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described “anti-fascism.” These movements portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as “fascist” to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution. This “anti-fascist” lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality. As described in the Order of September 22, 2025 (Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization)
now that trump is president and X is a thing, i do feel much more free to express myself without worries
No, because five years ago was probably the high point of online speech restriction. A time where people were banned from platforms like Twitter and Facebook for expressing political opinions or stating scientific facts