Free speech or something else?

I am wondering whether I will get kicked off X for posting this. Will there be a knock at the door because the government has decided I am a danger to society and need to be put away?

More seriously, is social media really out of control? I doubt it can be stopped now. The lid is well and truly off the container and the contents are spilling out. We can now comment to everyone on things we could just mention only to people we actually saw during the day. Is it any wonder Elon Musk is ignoring the government's attempt to make him take down what is considered to be "violent" footage of the stabbing of a priest.

It was vile. It should be taken down. The problem however is a little bit more complex than the media and the government have been suggesting. Yes, you could try and take it down - but by the time those responsible for taking such material down it has already been seen. It has been seen and shared again...and again...and again. It will also be shared in slightly different ways which makes it even harder to ensure it gets removed. I am not sure it can even be removed completely. I doubt it is a simple matter of just pressing a "delete" button. If it was we could have an army of volunteers removing such material...or could we? 

You see it is my opinion (and undoubtedly the opinion of almost anyone who reads this) that we do not need to see little video clips of priests being attacked.  Someone else obviously felt differently. They filmed the event and then posted it...and it spread from there. They may even have manipulated the images they posted. I will never know. Other people obviously thought the clip was worth "reposting" and suddenly the whole thing was out of hand. 

Is there software which would prevent such actions or do people somewhere have to go through the millions of posts and remove the images? Can you just remove the first post and thereby make it impossible to keep passing it on? I don't know.

Even if it is possible I doubt that removing such material is easy. Yes, we need to try. If we do however then we also need to ensure that mainstream media cannot post such material either....and there we start to have a problem. It is called "censorship" because it is a very, very small step from demanding that something actually harmful is taken down to demanding something be taken down because it harms the government of the day. 

We need to do something about the problem but it is going to be much harder than demanding Mr Musk and others simply use the delete button.