We’ve been hearing bad-faith censorship debates long enough to know how this song and dance goes, haven’t we? “If I say something, no matter how vacuous and offensive, that’s free speech. But if you criticize it or otherwise say something I disagree with, that’s censorship.”
Beyond that, the idea of a totally unfettered Twitter is not really desirable. Such forums fill up with porn, gore, racism, and various other forms of shock content nobody actually wants on their feeds.
I've seen no advocates of saying that individuals shouldn't be able to curate their own feeds, only that social media platforms shouldn't be restricting those feeds for them.
For instance, if you decide that you want a Twitter feed that excludes porn, gore, racism, and other objectionable content, then you absolutely should be able to exclude those (I'd reckon that that'd be a very sensible default). If I want to go observe the crazy bigoted things that fringe groups are spewing, or if I want to use Twitter just as an endless feed of porn, then that doesn't affect your ability to not see those things.
Likewise, I've not heard Musk propose banning any of his critics or opposing viewpoints (though I don't really follow his actions, so it's possible I've just missed them).
He has pursued aggressive union-busting, sued whistleblowers, sued people for posting videos that made telsa's """autopilot""" look bad. It's clear he doesn't give two shits about free speech, except when it costs him nothing to do so and therefore amounts to free virtue-signalling.
> “If I say something, no matter how vacuous and offensive, that’s free speech. But if you criticize it or otherwise say something I disagree with, that’s censorship.”
What an embarrassingly dishonest characterization of the problem. Nobody sane is arguing that "criticism is censorship".
The problem with Twitter is that they are censoring popular narratives critical of the ruling elite. If you can't distinguish between the concept of banning accounts and posts vs not doing so, and allowing criticism, you are simply too misinformed or low IQ to have any worthwhile input.
(Though I defend to the death your right to babble incoherently)
> What an embarrassingly dishonest characterization of the problem. Nobody sane is arguing that "criticism is censorship".
Is that so? Why do the same people who claim they’re all about free speech get all wound up about “cancel culture” then? There are clearly rules in their head about who should actually have the right to say whatever they want. I quite confident that I am not “low-IQ.”
“Cancel culture” is about people losing their jobs and being censored from platforms like Twitter for making arguments or jokes that rub the politically powerful the wrong way. Again, it’s the active removal of the practical ability of expression that rational adults are concerned with, not the fact that others have contrary opinions to them. Again, you are exposing your ignorance.
Being "lame" doesn't make it untrue. People use the term to refer to "shaming" (i.e., vocally disagreeing with) celebrities for their political stances, or refusing to patronize businesses that take political stances, for instance.
I truly don't understand this business of thinking everything shitty needs to be banned and denied as a right. Like, I take a pretty dim view of hookup culture, but I'm still going to denounce any attempt to make it illegal or deprive people of the right to fuck N different people per week. Because I'm more interested in freedom than agitating to hammer the world's people into a min/maxed social utilitarian dystopia. I'm trying to understand when and how America started pining for its own Soviet Union so hard. Or is this just a Liberal Technologist thing? Just want the government to do the AI Genie's job until the AI Genie wakes up? Like children trying to birth their own parents.
Cancel culture is NEET busybodies making it their day job to hunt for le problematique like bounty hunters (paid in retweets) organizing mobs to campaign to ruin people's lives (for great justice!) Yes, it's free speech! Yes, it's free association! Yes, it has precedents, you savvy insightful geniuses! Most things do, we call that history, and it's full of terrible things we should probably stop doing.
But this modern manifestation of a thing that has precedents and conservatives do too sometimes also has interesting features that are probably worth talking about on their own terms. I repeat: Cancel culture is NEET busybodies making it their day job to hunt for le problematique like bounty hunters, organizing mobs to campaign to ruin people's lives. It's legal, they have every right, and it's shitty, shitty behavior. Please stop denying it's a thing, or alternately trying to whatabout it to death.
What's at work is the recognition that "free speech" is a nice bumper sticker but doesn't go that far beyond that -- there are many policies one could pursue and plausibly call free speech. For instance, one could easily argue that we don't have free speech because money buys access. Somehow the right has been successful in claiming the mantle of "free speech" to mean something specific (basically that anyone can broadcast right-wing views without consequence) but that's not the only way the term could be conceived. There is also growing recognition that some things are outright harmful. Social media has already been implicated in pogroms; platitudes about the power of free speech seem to ring a bit hollow in that light.
On the cancel culture front, I don't agree. It actually refers to an incredibly broad segment of actions which almost nobody actually has much of a consistent line on. Often simply criticizing or refusing to patronize someone's business is called "canceling." Even if we narrowly refer to people losing their jobs, nobody actually believes there are NO circumstances whatsoever where losing your job might be an appropriate response to something you said. If you're a special ed teacher and post on Facebook that people with intellectual disabilities are less than human, one could reasonably doubt that you have any business having charge of special ed kids. If you want a more conservative flavored example, you could probably find conservatives endorsing cops losing their job if they bragged about not enforcing immigration laws. Or if you want an extremely uncontroversial example, you must at least believe it's appropriate not to VOTE for someone because you didn't like what they said. I don't think it's an accident. I think this term is so slippery and amorphous precisely because it obscures the hypocrisy at work.
Beyond that, the idea of a totally unfettered Twitter is not really desirable. Such forums fill up with porn, gore, racism, and various other forms of shock content nobody actually wants on their feeds.