This really gives the game away, if you think for five minutes. Nowadays “left” opposition to free speech in principle is more or less explicit, though not coherent. As I’ve documented before, a core dynamic in left-of-center American politics is the transition from “lol that’s not happening” to “lol of course that’s happening and it’s good.” Extreme social justice ideals from cultural studies departments were never going to spread outside of campus, you dumb idiot, and then they did, and suddenly they always knew that would happen and were in favor of it. Free speech is in the awkward zone in between, where lots of liberals will dutifully argue that they’re the ones fighting for free speech while many of their fellow travelers are insisting that free speech is an inherently reactionary concept. The cool thing now is to put free speech in sneer quotes, which ensures that other left-of-center people know you’re one of the good ones. It does not, I’m afraid, represent clarity about what they actually believe the correct perspective on speech should be.
I don't really have a bone to pick in the censorship battle but fuck man, twitter during the Trump era was really not fun and that sucked because twitter used to be a lot of fun in the pre-Trump era. I was happy when he was booted off just so I didn't have to see journalists talking non-stop about whatever dumbass thing he said.
"You know how that movie goes: what they consider literal fascism just grew over time, so that things that were perfectly common conservative positions 10 years ago now fall under that umbrella, and whatever simplicity and limitation that rule contained is gone."
Did anyone see that horrific Jon Stewart panel? Andrew Sullivan was accused of white supremacy for fairly moderate positions you'd hear from John McWhorter.
"Do you think people are going to go to Twitter to treat it like Stormfront, find themselves censored, and just give up?"
I've said it elsewhere in discussion threads on this topic, but I really think there's an entire generation of activists/commentators who lack object permanence, like they all missed a crucial developmental milestone in infancy. The level of thinking here really is that if they make the bad thing unseeable that it will, in some real way, cease to exist.
Great post. I always loved how the ACLU fought for the Nazis to have free speech. I don't need Nazis speaking near me or near Holocaust survivors, but it is better for our society than silencing them
I don't know who Collins is, so I can't speak to the rest of his body of work, but from this thread alone it doesn't seem like he's talking about simply silencing voice of the right. The first tweet makes it seem like that's where he's going, but his stated concerns after that are:
- "death threats, racial slurs and fake recipes for play doh that produce napalm"
- more ads
- selling user data
- prevalence of botnets.
Those all sound like legitimate concerns to me, none of which involve censorship. (I suppose if one is a true free speech maximalist you would permit the threats and napalm, but I wouldn't.). These things are not necessarily unique to a far-right extremist site, of course. You could prevent those things from happening while also permitting far right participants.
It’s amusing that some people are freaking out about the potential downfall of Twitter when I haven’t participated in it at all, ever. My life has remained unaffected.
It's amazing how much people care about Twitter considering it isn't even real. "Omg what if Elon Musk, like... lets Trump back on?" I don't know, maybe don't follow Trump and move on with your life? Go take your dog for a walk? Delete your Twitter account and take up leatherworking instead? The Atlantic is already churning out disaster porn about "the future of Twitter" (complete with references to "the darkest timeline", which is pretty rich considering this is also the timeline with Krispy Kreme), as though Elon is going to personally send secret police to your house to take you to a camp if you retweet Bernie Sanders instead of just be a pain-in-the-ass troll for two weeks until he gets bored. I guess if Twitter is how you get all of your precious social clout then you'd be pretty concerned about it, though.
Most of these folks mistook their participation trophies for an accomplishment. The others realize it was a joke, but are terrified if they loosen their grip, reality will leap up and take a big bite.
What is the difference between content moderation on a space like twitter and say, locking a comment section? I don't remember the thread, but I do remember some of that happening here. This isn't to point you out as some kind of hypocrite - I don't care, this is your place - but only to pose a question about discourse in private spaces.
Exposure to new and challenging ideas is important, but is that what twitter really does? My exposure to challenging ideas has typically been the result of a search, I've rarely had something new and different hit me as if stepping on a divine rake.
People demanding the government and business combine forces to ensure only one political mindset is allowed to be aired in polite company. Because they oppose fascism. The mind reels.
This is one of the best pieces on the current moral panic about free speech online I've ever read. Every single paragraph is spot on.
I don't really have a bone to pick in the censorship battle but fuck man, twitter during the Trump era was really not fun and that sucked because twitter used to be a lot of fun in the pre-Trump era. I was happy when he was booted off just so I didn't have to see journalists talking non-stop about whatever dumbass thing he said.
The law of merited impossibility: "It can't happen and when it does happen you'll deserve it!"
"You know how that movie goes: what they consider literal fascism just grew over time, so that things that were perfectly common conservative positions 10 years ago now fall under that umbrella, and whatever simplicity and limitation that rule contained is gone."
Did anyone see that horrific Jon Stewart panel? Andrew Sullivan was accused of white supremacy for fairly moderate positions you'd hear from John McWhorter.
"Do you think people are going to go to Twitter to treat it like Stormfront, find themselves censored, and just give up?"
I've said it elsewhere in discussion threads on this topic, but I really think there's an entire generation of activists/commentators who lack object permanence, like they all missed a crucial developmental milestone in infancy. The level of thinking here really is that if they make the bad thing unseeable that it will, in some real way, cease to exist.
It's the logic of literal babies.
Great post. I always loved how the ACLU fought for the Nazis to have free speech. I don't need Nazis speaking near me or near Holocaust survivors, but it is better for our society than silencing them
I don't know who Collins is, so I can't speak to the rest of his body of work, but from this thread alone it doesn't seem like he's talking about simply silencing voice of the right. The first tweet makes it seem like that's where he's going, but his stated concerns after that are:
- "death threats, racial slurs and fake recipes for play doh that produce napalm"
- more ads
- selling user data
- prevalence of botnets.
Those all sound like legitimate concerns to me, none of which involve censorship. (I suppose if one is a true free speech maximalist you would permit the threats and napalm, but I wouldn't.). These things are not necessarily unique to a far-right extremist site, of course. You could prevent those things from happening while also permitting far right participants.
It’s amusing that some people are freaking out about the potential downfall of Twitter when I haven’t participated in it at all, ever. My life has remained unaffected.
It's amazing how much people care about Twitter considering it isn't even real. "Omg what if Elon Musk, like... lets Trump back on?" I don't know, maybe don't follow Trump and move on with your life? Go take your dog for a walk? Delete your Twitter account and take up leatherworking instead? The Atlantic is already churning out disaster porn about "the future of Twitter" (complete with references to "the darkest timeline", which is pretty rich considering this is also the timeline with Krispy Kreme), as though Elon is going to personally send secret police to your house to take you to a camp if you retweet Bernie Sanders instead of just be a pain-in-the-ass troll for two weeks until he gets bored. I guess if Twitter is how you get all of your precious social clout then you'd be pretty concerned about it, though.
Most of these folks mistook their participation trophies for an accomplishment. The others realize it was a joke, but are terrified if they loosen their grip, reality will leap up and take a big bite.
What is the difference between content moderation on a space like twitter and say, locking a comment section? I don't remember the thread, but I do remember some of that happening here. This isn't to point you out as some kind of hypocrite - I don't care, this is your place - but only to pose a question about discourse in private spaces.
Exposure to new and challenging ideas is important, but is that what twitter really does? My exposure to challenging ideas has typically been the result of a search, I've rarely had something new and different hit me as if stepping on a divine rake.
A war that killed 4% of the world’s population! Say what? That’s about 320 million people. What war is that?
The issues of content moderation are a little more complex than Freddies lets on.
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/15/elon-musk-demonstrates-how-little-he-understands-about-content-moderation/
People demanding the government and business combine forces to ensure only one political mindset is allowed to be aired in polite company. Because they oppose fascism. The mind reels.