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.

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*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.

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