If you want to claim he’s going down a different path you or they could make that argument, and I am going to tell you that if you want to make a claim using the beginning of a well worn argument and not include information on why your position is materially different, then you don’t get to be upset when people make assumptions

I know this because they paid me the legal minimum and only provided workplace safety as much as they felt compelled to by the government.

The corporate boot tastes no better than the federal one

To keep this on topic: the GP is suggesting that Meta/X put checks on what the Thai government is able to do on their platforms. This feels like a thin appeal to some higher authority that hopefully GP agrees with more, and definitely doesn't feel like a less totalitarian approach.

There are many others who want them to just “enable” society—perhaps because of their own financial incentives.

Who actually believes this except for liberations who aren't just right wing hiding their true views.

Well for jurisdictions where the government weaponizes the justice system that means the company either has to choose not to do business there or to bend the knee..

Unless you are making the claim that the Thai government is giving special privilege to Meta/X or vice versa, then it already is this way. Since the doxxing/bullying happened anyways, this is irrelevant.

I think we both agree that what is happening in this article is bad. You made some assertion that “lack of oversight…is incompetence at best, and complicity at worst“, so who is supposed to provide this oversight? You are clearly saying “not a government”, but I think that social networks doing this “oversight” of what governments are doing is equally dangerous.

As far as I can tell this is just far-right propaganda to disguise what actually happened -- which is the UK imprisoning people for conspiracies to burn down hotels with immigrants in them; or participating in on-going violent riots by calling for various buildings to be attacked or people to be murdered.

This speech isnt covered by free expression, and is a crime in all countries, including the US.

It is weird even on a pragmatic basis. I accept as a concept that it may have been effective when we were a little less connected, but these days it seems like it is actively asking for a wrong kind of reaction from the population. Not to mention, the people you imprison for typing the wrong stuff online are likely now going to be way more radicalized than when they went there. Honestly, I just do not get that approach.

They revere Bhumibol, not his philandering, mercurial, and ripped son Vajiralongkorn who is de facto in exile in Germany. Everything in Thailand is de facto run by the military junta and aligned oligarchs like the Chearavanont and Shinawatra families.

And the younger generation (Gen Z) doesn't have much affinity for Bhumibol either, because they grew up in the midst of a middle income trap - their lives are better than their neighbors in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, or Vietnam, but CoL and the employment market is hellish, oligarchy and relations matter so if you didn't attend the right schools you're screwed, and abuses of power like the RedBull Heir running over a cop and all the extravagance around the royal family and their extended retinue grew more unpopular.

Tbf, I assume your frame of reference was the 1990s, and until the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 Thailand went through a massive economic boom so satisfaction with Bhumibol was high. Bhumibol also at least tried to appear like he cared about normal Thai people.

Rights are not given to you by your government, your rights are your rights by virtue of you being a human being.

Thinking freedom of speech is even remotely ethnocentric just proves that something is broken in that person's head that they don't even understand the basic concept.

Thai people generally love the idea of democracy. But they’ve been under so many dictators for so long they’ve become jaded. Every Thai person has a strong political view more or less and people absolutely criticize the government, military, and even gossip about the royal family extensively - behind closed doors and with friends. Graft is rampant though, and the powerful with big last names can literally do anything they want and get away with it, the police don’t serve the people, and the individual is generally disenfranchised.

There however have been and continue to be powerful democracy movements and political dissent - see the yellow shirt / red shirt riots, the democracy protests and mass killings by the military over the last 60 years, add in it the king Rama the ix personally advocating against the power of the government over its people and the importance of basic human rights.

I’d note that human rights isn’t an American concept but a basis in liberal humanism, which has been a conceptual framework evolved over thousands of years. Most my experience talking to people about liberal humanism and the status quo in South and Southeast Asia is “yes of course it’s self evident, but” where the but is effectively a powerlessness over the social structure of society. I’d note further that Theravada Buddhism is at its core liberal humanist as well, which is specifically relevant in Thailand. This is why ultimately with the Thai people the liberal humanist movement is quite popular and there continues to be considerable internal political problems - because the eightfold path dictates a liberal humanist philosophy and the people in power prefer the prior slavery based society before Chulalongkorn.