1. PEG is correct in this thread. Something I recognized a long time ago is that “free speech” is an idea that sounds nice but actually cannot be instantiated. There are always unspoken rule about what can and cannot be said. “People don’t talk like that in polite company.”
2. There are different rules for conversion between women and men. It’s why for a church ministry for boys, when a single mom wanted to come on the father-son camping weekend we told her no, because it just messes up the dynamic. Men can’t talk properly with a woman around.
3. In a unified and local culture, like the San Fransisco situation that PEG mentions, it is perfectly feasible in the context of localized liberal circles that everyone implicitly understands and knows and respects all the speech rules and in that context there is free speech.
4. Once you start mixing these groups with all their different rules is when the problems start. People like me who like to say shocking things to get a reaction out of people can have a hay day. My wife will often play content moderator, and I get a “pre-crime” conviction.
5. Everyone, if they are honest with themselves, knows that you really cannot allow a true anything goes environment. But the opportunity with Twitter for those outside regime power to challenge, mock and humiliate regime notables is too sweet to pass up.
6. So regime toadies do what they do, do the only thing that really can be done, is they enlist power to regulate speech so as to simulate that safe localized environment where everyone knows the rules and people like them feel free to speak.
7. In a local community, those rules are enforced subtly. You may find yourself alone at the party, people avoiding you. Someone may pull you aside and give you a word of advice that Bill didn’t appreciate the way you challenged him back there, and so forth.
8. But once you move out of these localized environments, outside of community, or when community has been undermined or destroyed, what replaces the local systems of speech control and morality is the state of state adjacent powers.
9. Thus content moderation at Twitter. And the powerful don’t want underlings or the little people speaking to them “that way.” They are “Bill the boss” and one of things about being the boss is that you get to have a day in how people speak to you.
10. It may be healthy for the company for Bill to be challenged by underlings, but hey, he is the boss.
But the problem remains. Free speech is an ideal that really cannot be instantiated in real life. Speech is only free when everyone knows the rules and lives within them.
But the problem remains. Free speech is an ideal that really cannot be instantiated in real life. Speech is only free when everyone knows the rules and lives within them.
11. Outside of contexts where that is possible, the one who must invariably police speech and make all the implicit rules explicit is the state, or a state adjacent power like Twitter, especially on a platform that is a speech platform.
12. There is just no way around it. There is never anywhere an environment where you can just say whatever you want. What is interesting, though, is that the better behaved you are, the more freely you will be able to speak “truth to power” as the kids say.
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