Oldal 346 [346]
ANDRÁS SAJÓ
be provided), and, of course, there is (to some extent) reasonable disagreement??
surrounding the values and rights that are important or relevant for harm, as
well as the reasons for inflicting harm (e.g. an epidemic reguires restrictions,
although the risk of harm may be speculative (statistical) and the victims cannot
be identified ex ante). A growing sensitivity to dignity interests prevails.
Thanks to a cultural shift towards demands for an unconditional recognition
of identity, i.e. to be what one believes himself to be, without consideration of
merit, a slow and hardly visible erosion was already underway when the coming
of the internet and social media suddenly challenged the freedom of expression
paradigm in a fundamental way. It is asserted that the shift originates in the new
structure of internet-based communication, and social media in particular, where
many more speakers reach larger and larger, somewhat random audiences, without
the built-in social control that managed past forms of communication, the values,
rights and interests elevated to rights included, at least partly, to the already
canonized list. However, the cultural and personal sensitivity that was already at
work is equally important and the social media merely reinforces this narcissistic
change. Sensitivity dictates the subjective understanding of harm because the
vulnerability-centred, anti-meritocratic world of sensitivity is comfortable and
hence, attractive. Consider the example of the wife of the actor Alec Baldwin
who became a celebrity for inviting “social media followers into her home life
with Alec Baldwin and their five fair-haired young children by routinely sharing
images like her underwear-clad workout routines, innumerable pregnancy selfies
and the sponsored diaper-ad videos of her infant son.”** Her Instagram followers
felt offended by the fact that her body looked too good for her age and she rumbled
that she became a victim of body shaming, while her followers started an anti¬
Baldwin campaign digging into her (alleged) Spanish origins, a matter that earned
her innumerable attacks and further publicity. The arguments in the competition
of being harmed are not exactly a matter of freedom of expression nor of privacy,
dignity or anything worth the ink and interest spent on it — but this is the basis for
the restriction of speech (here, primarily in the non-legal sphere, but who knows
who will sue whom?)
What is happening here is the censorial victory of increased social sensitivity:
in the world of the internet everybody feels offended (with being offended
providing a cheap moral high ground). This generalized sense of offense pushes
23 See John Rawls, Political Liberalism, The burdens of judgment, New York, NY, Columbia
University Press, 1993, 56-57.
24 Katherine Rosman, Hilaria Baldwin: The strange story of Alec Baldwin’s wife and her ‘fake
Spanish roots’, The Irish Times (4 January 2021), https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/
people/hilaria-baldwin-the-strange-story-of-alec-baldwin-s-wife-and-her-fake-spanish¬
roots-1.4449271, accessed 14 May 2021.
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