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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 antiBaldwin 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-spanishroots-1.4449271, accessed 14 May 2021. + 344 «
