Freedom of Speech and ATA What is freedom of speech? Freedom of speech is a right given to individuals that protects you from governmental censorship. However, based on where you live the government has the right to restrict your freedom of speech if it interferes with the restrictions of freedom of speech in that area of jurisdiction. How does freedom of speech play a role on PIMD? ATA has given us some rules and restrictions when it comes to freedom of speech, they are as follows What this basically means is, while ATA is giving us a right that usually only protects you from governmental censorship, they also have the ability (just like your government does) to censor you or figuratively put you in jail (banning and silencing). How is this relevant on forums or outside of forums? Of course the RoC, Forum code of conduct, and the ToU will describe this in more depth but here's the basics of what ATA holds the right to censor and remove. They have the right to remove any post attacking their staff or moderators. They have the right to remove any posts that publishes others personal or your own information such as age, phone number, address and such. They also have the right to remove any posts by an individual made that are humiliating, demeaning or fallacious towards another individual. These are also prohibited Any of these behaviors can result in a forum ban, outside of forums these actions can result in a silence. And regardless of on forums or off forums if any of those offenses are deemed extreme enough they can result in a ban from the game entirely. I recommend reading RoC and ToU as they go fully into explanations. If you cannot find ToU it is located under the help button, if you scroll you will see a section labeled, terms of use. It is located there, there's also another section labeled posting rules which I also recommend reading. Brief overview of bypassing As this is a common complaint and people don't seem to understand what bypassing is, here's a brief overview. Bypassing is a breach of the filter ATA uses, you may have realized that when you say a "naughty" word, it appears as asterisks or "stars". That's the filter working, and ATA has it there for a reason. So a bypass is a breach of those stars and people do it in multiple ways, none of which are acceptable on public channels and can result in a silence or forum ban. Can a creator of a thread silence your freedom of speech in regards to PIMD? Yes they can. Here's RoC describing it better then I can since well, it's the actual rules. Here's a article about freedom of speech that inspired this thread. If you have been silenced or forum banned please contact support@athinkingape.com.