Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about “free speech.” With news that petulant man-child and richest man on the planet Elon Musk is planning to purchase Twitter, take the company private, and turn it into a haven for “free speech.” Sounds good, right? We all love free speech, yeah? Yeah.
I did not have any idea that the Times editorial board, of all people, said that free speech is the right of people “to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned". That's actually the exact opposite of free speech.
All of us who used the internet pre-2000 should remember what unmoderated forums looked like. It was godawful--a relatively small number of awful people could pretty quickly drive out the "good" users and ruin an otherwise useful forum. It wasn't even that long ago, so I'm not sure why the techbros need to relearn that lesson.
The irony of conservatives complaining about free speech while every conservative site will ban you for the slightest deviance from orthodoxy isn't a bug, it's a feature.
And this isn’t even the worst stuff.... For many (usually white men) free speech means the ability and license to attack, demean, shame and destroy those who are weaker or have less influence than they do. In other words, women, trans, minorities.
I just wanted to say I'm sending positive thoughts and hope you are able to find some relaxation to purge the garbage you had to consume to write this. I think it's important people know what that the Internet gets much worse than facebook.
No, you don't want complete and total free speech. Trust me.
I did not have any idea that the Times editorial board, of all people, said that free speech is the right of people “to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned". That's actually the exact opposite of free speech.
All of us who used the internet pre-2000 should remember what unmoderated forums looked like. It was godawful--a relatively small number of awful people could pretty quickly drive out the "good" users and ruin an otherwise useful forum. It wasn't even that long ago, so I'm not sure why the techbros need to relearn that lesson.
The irony of conservatives complaining about free speech while every conservative site will ban you for the slightest deviance from orthodoxy isn't a bug, it's a feature.
And this isn’t even the worst stuff.... For many (usually white men) free speech means the ability and license to attack, demean, shame and destroy those who are weaker or have less influence than they do. In other words, women, trans, minorities.
Le sigh…not looking forward to where things are going
I wonder if 4chan Musk is doing this to get right-wingers to buy his cars and stop with the “rolling coal” and “ICE-ing” protests.
I just wanted to say I'm sending positive thoughts and hope you are able to find some relaxation to purge the garbage you had to consume to write this. I think it's important people know what that the Internet gets much worse than facebook.