Banned flag meme debate started by a cashier in Ohio

Last month I was at a grocery store in Cincinnati and this cashier noticed my phone wallpaper, a meme about a certain country's flag getting pulled from a platform. She said 'you know that flag offends people, right?' and I said 'so does half the stuff on the internet, we still let it slide.' It got me thinking, where's the line between protecting feelings and just blocking speech we don't like. Some people say private companies can do what they want, sure, but when every big site bans the same thing at once, that's not a choice anymore. She didn't have an answer, just shrugged and handed me my receipt. I keep replaying that moment because it shows how casual we've gotten about accepting bans without asking who decides. Does a platform's ban count as free speech loss if you can still post the meme elsewhere, or is the reach what matters?

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