Twitter is not a bastion of free speech though, because a huge fraction of it is simply propaganda posing as free speech. On the day of the 2016 election, one of the top ten most re-tweeted accounts was a fake Russian account posing as an American conservative organization.
Covid-56 and flat earthers are some of the most outlandish examples, but the vast majority of misinformation is more subtle, and therefore more insidious. I'm not suggesting what the solution should be, but it's clear that complete un-regulation has lead to a completely broken information space.
I am worried that ultimately this means that the twitter of the future will be something where people can't be deplatformed. It's been pretty effective in the past to deplatform some outrageous individuals who have stoked racial hatred and violence. They get deplatformed, and their audience disappears. There are a lot of places where hate speech is illegal. And I know that Twitter has had huge problems when called to censor things and making it completely decentralized would allow them not have to.
Twitter seems to be the epicenter of echo chambers for every different combating ideology in the world. Probably best for the world for them to just shut down.
I have the exact opposite problem with Twitter. They need to get out of the business of trying to police speech. As you point out they completely failed to do it effectively but I think it is an impossible task for a global communications network in a still highly heterogeneous world.
> Twitter in it's current form is a dead end, and there's no way "more free speech" is going increase either revenue or users.
I think this is failing to imagine how bad things could get societally. Imagine if more consumers and advertisers start enjoying consuming and being associated with malevolent, hateful, and violence-inducing speech.
Many in the 1930s-40s enjoyed the hateful caricatures of Jews that the Nazis produced in their propaganda, and hateful people also buy refrigerators and sneakers today.
Yes, that would mean a majority of people would have to adopt those perspectives - to the detriment of society at large - but it's happened before in many parts of the world, and could happen again. That is a long-term goal of fascists anyways - to re-normalize that kind of thing, and to re-combine industry and media with a religious ethnostate.
At the very least, the previously quiet pre-existing enjoyment of malevolent speech has been exposed for all to see over the last several years. The question is whether it has a growing audience.
I'm not saying that's Elon's goal, but accelerationism seems to be something he is aligned with as long as it doesn't come at a cost to him.
I'm amazed at how certain people seem on either side of this debate. This seems to me like an incredibly difficult problem, and I can't see a solution that doesn't involve significant trade offs.
On one hand, silencing people for "inciting unrest" does sound like something a dystopian judge would say before passing sentence. On the other, there is a philosophical argument—and economic incentive—for Twitter to protect its users from harassment and targeted manipulation, especially when it is state-sponsored.
Where the line gets drawn for these definitions seems to be the hardest part.
Twitter is in an interesting position as a business. They can buy new platforms all they like but I, and many others, will never consider them because they have already poisoned the well when it comes to censorship. I would never consider them a useful platform for publishing, whether long-form or short. They're destined to be a home for partisans that agree with their orthodoxy and perhaps people with nothing vaguely controversial to say.
I fear the internet will bifurcate due to problems like this.
The reason people are complaining is we have found ourselves in a situation where Twitter is arguably already or indisputably will become what amounts to a global public square.
The early philosophical developments around freedom of speech didn’t foresee this but now that it is here, we have to ask the question of what ought we want if we are to uphold the principle that people should be free to speak unpopular ideas without censorship or fear of excommunication, given that a key ingredient in progress, revelation of the truth, and finding compromise to avoid violence.
Twitter is of course a private company, and can do what they want. But what those who wish to see free speech principles upheld say is we ought to want those in twitters position to be as lenient as possible so as to not stifle the free exchange of ideas. And, perhaps failing that, we ought to want to see another mechanism that is less susceptible to widespread censorship and overreach. Too many people seem counter someone explaining that they feel the status quo is undesirable with an is/ought fallacy - it’s our job in liberal democracies to continually raise and debate issues regarding basic freedoms and the ability for our society to continue to evolve according to shared principles.
Twitter should continue to respect free speech, as long as it doesn't involve directly threatening tweets. Without it, Twitter wouldn't be as popular as it is.
People respect being able to directly confront prominent people in the world on an equal footing, without instantly being shut down if their comment is deemed too controversial.
Censoring these ideas doesn't make them go away. Leaving them up and allowing the community to debate might even change a person's mind for the better.
I really sometimes wonder if it would be a net negative or net benefit to humanity if we could just shut down Twitter. I don't use it but I can't remember the last time I heard something positive happening on there. From my standpoint it's all just trolls, hate, arguments, trump, drama and angry mobs using the platform for censorship.
My sense is that lots of divided people (mainly fringe) have basically been silenced for years. Twitter has made it possible for those people to have a voice and more problematic made it super easy for malicious actors to mimic those people's ideas to make the situation worse than it really is.
My (probably unpopular) opinion is that they simply shouldn't have a voice. Twitter is bad for society period.
Twitter is already about as politically biased as they come. Removing its current censorship would improve the platform as an outlet for oppressed people.
If Twitter starts censoring mainstream political speech by even the POTUS, I think that'd draw more attention than they want.
Right now and in the future they can censor people that few people care about and probably have a much bigger impact without any outrage outside of niche communities.
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