How Free is Freedom?

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Every one of us seek freedom. I wish I could say we need it in one area or another of our life but for most of us, we seek to have it in all areas of our lives. For some of us, we want freedom to be who we want to be, freedom of religion, freedom of association, financial freedom (a category I believe most of us belong to), freedom of speech (a fundamental human right), to mention but a few.

The definition of freedom can be from “not being enslaved or imprisoned” to “the power to think, act, or say whatever one wants”. While this doesn’t exhaustively cover the subject “freedom”, it at least provides us an idea of what it entails; liberty — being able to do as you please without restraint, censorship, or fear of retaliation/harm.

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This probably sounds like something that should be easy, fundamental and accessible to all. Yes, it does and it is very true. Every human being has a right to all of these but sometimes, we are forced to believe otherwise because of the situations we find ourselves in sometimes. From the previous paragraph, I have been able to establish that “freedom” has nothing to do with “restraint”. If I tell you “You’re free to do whatever you like except taking a sit”, it means you can do anything that does not include sitting down even if that’s the only thing you ever want to do. I wish I could say something like “partial freedom” but it’s just a mild way of saying that you’re not free. Like it or not, “partial freedom” is no freedom at all.

That being said, I believe you’ll agree with me that one of the myths in our society now is freedom of speech. As fundamental as it may seem, we really do not have it. Yes, everyone says it’s a constitutional right and you can say whatever you like. Yes, that is true as long as you don’t say it to influential people (not necessarily government officials). Again, real freedom knows no bounds. Of course, that’s not to say you can go on to concoct lies to say about people, that’s not only wrong but it can also get you a day in court for slander if not more.

I can’t help but wonder why we are told that we have freedom of speech when we’ll be censored or be put in trouble for exercising the right/power that they said is ours to keep in the first place. I mean, why tell us it’s ours when you never intended it to be ours? You could say it’s to protect people’s right by preventing one from making derogatory, defaming and slanderous comments about another; that’s from one end of the spectrum anyway. Twitter, I believe sees things from this end of the spectrum. You are free to say whatever you want but they give you a set of guidelines to follow. This is freedom of speech with censorship in place which is no freedom at all as I earlier stated. It’s like they are faced with a dilemma of choosing between your fundamental rights and their customers and they chose their customers. Not finding faults as this is normal for conventional companies. How would you love to know about one that is unconventional and sees things from the other spectrum? Yes, I know of one that is unconventional and would actually pick your “freedom of speech” first and even every other thing that upholds your rights as a human. Status is saying “hello” to you.

What is Status?

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Status is a secure messaging app, crypto wallet and web3 browser — one that allows you send your favourite ERC20 and ERC721 even in chats and also allows you make public posts for all the people you’ve connected with to see. Status, for the past four years has been committed to building tools and infrastructure to uphold human rights. Status cares less about what they have to gain and much more about upholding your rights as a human. They are able to do this because it’s the major reason they came to life in the first place. Even with that in mind, it’s not as easy as it sounds, they could easily be swayed but their set of principles have ensured that they are right on track, wavering not on their foremost obligation. Let’s see these principles.

Principles

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As shown above, there are about ten of them but I will be talking about the two most relevant to this topic — “Liberty” and “censorship resistance”.

Liberty

Status believes in sovereignty of individuals, they aim to maximize political, economic and social liberty. Let’s just say that Liberty is status’ way of saying freedom. The freedom Status Network offers is undiluted as it is also coercion-resistant. People are free to do as they please on the platform without a scare.

Censorship Resistance

Status enables free flow of information on the platform. They can't take your posts down for any reason; they believe they would be violating your human rights by doing that, and that's against everything status stands for.

About two years ago, when my countrymen took to the streets of the country to protest against bad governance and got executed on the streets, some people recorded and posted the videos on their social media pages only to be deleted by some of the major platform for being false and not meeting their guidelines. Of the platforms I know, Twitter was the only one at the time that didn’t delete the posts. Let’s assume for a moment that they did, it would have been easy for the perpetrators to deny the occurrence of that unforgettable homicidal act just like that.

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This Friday, I and another of my friend will be live on a twitter space hosted by Status NG to talk about freedom of speech in a censored world. We’ll be taking you through what it is like to not have freedom and how much you can have with Status. In the meantime, you can try to explore freedom in its purest of forms on Status.

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