From Pine View Farm

Freedom of Screech 0

At AL.com, Kyle Whitmire argues forcefully that unfettered freedom of speech, of the sort espoused by Elon Musk and others of his ilk, can quickly become corrosive. He makes a comparison to a bar owner of his acquaintance, who did not hesitate to eject troublemakers. Here’s a bit of the article; follow the link for the whole delightful article (emphasis added).

For years, the major platforms have been fighting the same battles, scrubbing misinformation off the bathroom walls and kicking racists, misogynists, homophobes and other assorted belligerents out the door.

Only now they’re giving up.

At Twitter, King Troll has opened the gates of hell, letting back in all the riffraff the previous owners kicked out.

At Facebook, the platform seems to have decided the easiest way to suppress fake news is to suppress news altogether.*

This isn’t a free speech crisis. It’s a crisis of mutual civility. And without it, real speech dies.

And, remember, “social” media isn’t.

And it’s becoming less so.

__________________________

*Given that I spend about five minutes a month on the Zuckerborg, I don’t know what he’s talking about, but this may provide some context.

Share

Comments are closed.

From Pine View Farm
Privacy Policy

This website does not track you.

It contains no private information. It does not drop persistent cookies, does not collect data other than incoming ip addresses and page views (the internet is a public place), and certainly does not collect and sell your information to others.

Some sites that I link to may try to track you, but that's between you and them, not you and me.

I do collect statistics, but I use a simple stand-alone Wordpress plugin, not third-party services such as Google Analitics over which I have no control.

Finally, this is website is a hobby. It's a hobby in which I am deeply invested, about which I care deeply, and which has enabled me to learn a lot about computers and computing, but it is still ultimately an avocation, not a vocation; it is certainly not a money-making enterprise (unless you click the "Donate" button--go ahead, you can be the first!).

I appreciate your visiting this site, and I desire not to violate your trust.