Married At First Sight star Dean Wells has attacked the dating app Bumble for a new anti-body shaming policy in an explosive new rant.
For context, Bumble recently announced a new policy (not a *law*, just a policy on a private platform) to ban people for body shaming. It’s not particularly surprising that the app that prides itself on “kindness, accountability, equality, respect and growth” would introduce this sort of measure, and it’s actually a good thing for all gendered people on the platform.
But hoo boy, Deano was not having a bar of it.
“Aaand yet another example of our freedoms being taken away one by one,” he wrote.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CKlhWBhB_uz/
“Little by little our right to say, think and do whatever we want is being eroded.”
Before we go any further, it is important to note that although Australians have a right to freedom of opinion and expression, that doesn’t mean you have a right to say whatever the hell you want.
“The right is not absolute. It carries with it special responsibilities, and may be restricted on several grounds,” the definition on the Australian Government website reads.
Additionally, private platforms – like Bumble – have their own set of terms and conditions that we all agree to when we sign up. Regardless of what you’re allowed to say in the street, when you’re on their platform, you have to abide by their rules.
This has nothing to do with the law, or anyone’s freedom of speech being eroded.
Naturally, Wells was ripped to shreds on social media for the post, which prompted him to discuss his reasoning in further Instagram stories.
“Of course I don’t condone fat shaming, name-calling, body shaming and all that kind of stuff. If you do that on a dating app or online you’re a loser, you’re an idiot,” he said, ironically still name-calling.
He then proceeded to assert that regulating online behaviour, such as de-platforming people like Donald Trump and Pete Evans for sharing dangerous misinformation, is somehow eroding our freedoms as Australians.
“We’ve just had movies, tv shows censored, people kicked off Twitter, people kicked off all kinds of platforms for saying the wrong thing.”
“You can’t have free speech but then decide which things people are allowed to be free to speak about,” he said.
Like I said earlier, by definition, the government already decides the limitations of freedom of speech. This isn’t some ~crazy~ woke thing that was only introduced last week, it’s just the basic premise of what our freedom of speech is and always has been.
So yes, actually, the government can decide what is considered your right to free speech and what is hate speech/inciting violence/other things that are very much *not* free speech.
“You have to have free speech for all and for everything and to suck it up. It’s just words. Yeah it sucks but just block the person and kick them off,” Wells said, seemingly proving my theory that he probably hasn’t read what freedom of speech actually entails.
But this is all beside the point because just because you have a right to say what you want, doesn’t mean that platforms like Bumble, Facebook, Twitter or the like have the responsibility to broadcast it.
“We don’t need more restrictions on what we can and can’t say,” he said.“This is not China, this is a free country. You should be able to say whatever the hell you want.”
“You need to realise that our freedoms are slowly but surely being taken away.”
For anyone who would like to brush up on exactly what your right to freedom of opinion and expression entails, and where that right ends, you can check out the Attorney General’s website here.
