Imagine a world where social justice warriors and internet trolls run rampant throughout social media. You might say it’s already happening. We say it hasn’t happened enough.

The world has become coddled. People are quick to report social media accounts they don’t agree with. It’s not entirely their fault, however. We have been raised in a sensitive culture, and social media does nothing but enable that sensitivity. With just a few clicks of a mouse, you can take down Facebook groups and Twitter-famous profiles that make you upset. Oftentimes you don’t even have to give a reason why.

Some social media platforms have now taken this matter into their own hands. YouTube has recently become entangled in a scandal due to their new policy of de-monetizing videos which go against their definition of “advertiser friendly” content.

So how does YouTube decide if the videos are appropriate enough for a paycheck? They’ve created a set of seven rules that all videos must abide by. These rules range from topics like profanity and vulgar language to “controversial” opinions.

The main problem with the rules is the fact that they’re remarkably vague. There is no one box that a video can fall into to rule it “ad-unfriendly”, and thus it is the company itself making a biased decision.

Many of these sites have become excessive with their banning policies, and in turn, they are affecting our basic human right to free speech.

Free speech on the internet is a tricky thing, namely because many countries that have access to the internet do not have such a freedom. Therefore it is up to websites to create different policies for different countries. The problem is, this has begun to infringe on our rights, as many websites just end up settling for the same rules for all countries.

We believe websites, especially social media sites, must open up the floodgates for internet-based free speech in the U.S. They need to make their banning rule a simple one: you are banned if you incite violence. Otherwise, it’s a free for all.

We realize how insane this sounds. None of us enjoy the hateful speech that is easily found online. But after a long discussion, we came to the conclusion that by allowing the freedom that enables such cruel words, it would eventually lead to its demise.

Granted, for quite a while things would be pretty nasty. Political correctness and incorrectness would collide and cause discourse, unlike anything we’ve ever seen. It would cause mayhem online.

However, through this insanity, we would witness the birth of a new era. One where people actually listen to each other’s arguments and even the nastiest of online fights would be more of a debate than a personal attack. This would mirror itself in our in-person and day-to-day relations. By opening up the channels of free speech online, we would have a happier, more loving and far more accepting society than we do today.

So how exactly would this occur? A huge factor in this equation is simply the internet population as a whole. In other words: subscribers or followers.

If you are on a social media platform, you rely on your audience to get your message across through re-sharing the information. Therefore, the bigger your audience is, the bigger the impact.

If you were to go to Twitter, for example, you could find a neo-nazi posting truly awful content in about 10 seconds. However, if you look at their follower count, chances are this person would only have a few hundred followers, if that. This is because, thankfully, most people on the internet don’t agree with these views. If you were to look at a popular Twitter user’s account, they’re most likely sharing progressive and inclusive content to millions of people.

With our idea of complete freedom of speech online, this situation would only increase tenfold. Furthermore, it would make your average user feel more comfortable with calling out the neo-nazi, as there is no chance of being banned unreasonably.

By opening up communication, we could learn ways to express our opinions in a way that actually contributes to the conversation. Instead of calling someone something profane because we disagree with their beliefs, we could learn to explain our side and know that the other person would most likely listen and respond effectively.

While these positive and helpful responses would initially be done because of the threat of people reacting negatively to them if they did otherwise, we hope that over time people would figure out it is the best way to go about disagreements and debates. Learning this through experience could better the world.

We understand the prospect of completely free speech can be nerve wracking. It’s no secret that for a few years, people would be downright nasty. The trick is, we would have to remind ourselves that we are transitioning. Every great social change has a rough start. If we were to just embrace it, we believe it could lead to the progression of society and communication as a whole.