Learning the Limits to "Freedom of Speech"

Today, I received an email message from TripAdvisor, where I often posted reviews of places, local and distant, as a reference for other travelers and visitors to San Diego.  I am (or at least I was, when I'd received this missive from them) one of their "Top Contributors."  This was the first time I'd ever been requested to rewrite a review.  Here is the original review in its entirety:

"We went to SeaWorld because my friend had free passes from another friend. We went there early, and walked around quite a bit, making a spiral to cover all the exhibits. We did not see any performing animals, though, even though that seems to be what a lot of people go to SeaWorld for. We visited the porpoises in their holding tank, touched some rays in the touch pool, ate lunch at one of the eateries, and rode the roller coaster a couple of times because I'd not been on a roller coaster in years.  "It was not an unpleasant visit; I hope that the basic premise of the organization changes its focus to the well-being of the animals, rather than "sacrificing" the few to "help" the overall population, as it seems to be. SeaWorld calls a lot of attention to its conservation efforts around San Diego, as I'm sure SeaWorlds in other locations do, but as long as they're holding intelligent, sentient captives in pools, I'd recommend against patronizing them." I'm sure that the lawyers at TripAdvisor took one look at this and thought, "This is a lawsuit waiting to happen (if we publish this review)..."  so they sent me a request for a rewrite.  I am not going to rewrite it, because anything else I'd write could only be (even more) scathing, not only of SeaWorld, but of TripAdvisor itself for not having the balls to publish anything that can be construed as "controversial," perhaps esp. after SeaWorld already caught flak over the movie "Blackfish."  I hadn't seen "Blackfish" until after our visit to SeaWorld, so was not aware of any mistreatment prior to our visit.  Call me naive;  I pretty much was, though I'd always had a sinking feeling about SeaWorld in general, and never had the desire to see one of their performing animal shows.  "Blackfish" called perfect attention to it for me. I was going to write about something else today, but that has flown out of my mind now that I'm on this topic.  Censorship is practiced everywhere, I've learned.  Too many ambulance-chasing lawyers and suit-happy, overly-sensitive to criticism organizations out there...  A lot of self-censorship, I believe.  Even in a forum as this, my own blog, someone might tell me to be careful, because SeaWorld might come after me for defamation.  Well, SeaWorld can try, but they're trying to get blood from a stone if they sue my ass, because I don't have sufficient assets to make it worth their while.  And it's bad publicity for them to go after some random blogger for insulting their collective ego. I would be surprised if Blogger were to delete this post.  We'll see how many eyes see it before that happens...