I have been listening to these three great minds (below) for quite some time. These are three advocates of free speech and three self-proclaimed journalists, who think that Twitter is a cesspool and *needs to close, and Redditt needs to grow up and trash the “bad” subreddits. Facebook is fine because Zuckerberg, a man obsessed with profit, already unilaterally decided that on his site, home to billions of people, a kid in flip flops, all alone will decide what you can say.
In 1980 you would be shunned if you said gays should be allowed to marry. In 1960 you could be lynched if you screamed blacks should use the same toilet as whites. In 1940 Germany you could be shot for advocating hiding a Jew in your home. In 1520 you went to jail for proposing that the Earth is flat.
Sometimes the majority is wrong: true that.
Maybe free speech has some draw backs, like trolling, but it is still kinda important, heck it’s even in some documents in famous museums.
We can either let hipsters with beards running websites determine what is allowed and what isn’t, or we can just like, sorta allow all free speech, like how the founding patriarchs of America intended. Jeff Jarvis or Thomas Jefferson? Lance Ullanoff or John Adams? Sometimes, once in while, here and there, the unpopular opinions are even right. Some of those opinions even change the world. (Albeit, not the ones about the TWiT CEO)
I can cut them some slack when curtailing opinions on a small medium like an irc, but don’t these intellectuals realize that if the pillars of the internet, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, disallow free speech, it sorta creates a problem. Kinda like if all the TV stations refused to air what they don’t like. Yea, I kinda sorta make sense sorta.
Just to be clear douche-bags; having the pillars of the internet prohibit free speech is effectively prohibiting free speech.
Perhaps Jeff Jarvis should have to deal with someone calling him a shill on Twitter and Leo should have to deal with someone calling him fat. There is a reason lady justice holds a scale, some issues are more important than others. Lastly, whenever you take “haters” and put them in a ghetto away from normal people you excasserbate the problem. If you’re a lone racist in a crowd of normal people you will be quieted. If you are a racist amongst racists you create peer pressure to be even racist-ier.
Full disclosure I could not care less about Free Speech, it’s just the hypocrisy I can’t stomach.
UPDATE: This is in response to a comment: I am well aware that these are public companies and they are not bound by law to comply with any Free Speech doctrines. Yet, I feel that companies of their size should voluntarily adhere to these Free Speech principals in order to retain credibility as a platform.
* Per Jason Cortez – they never said “it needs to close” that was an assumption by the author regarding the critique of these sites for allowing trolls
**Please alert me in comments for spelling and grammar mistakes
***Sorry for America centric notions but that’s my hometown. And all you other countries like California copied us anyway.