So, Elon Musk's takeover of twitter is complete, and with it, standards are potentially being more relaxed. And to some extent, despite not liking Elon much myself (I think he's an arrogant rich jerk), I have to support the move, at least in principle. The fact is, I would like to see social media be less restricted. As someone who grew up more in the wild west days of the internet, I miss that world somewhat, and I hate how the left are some of the biggest moral policers now. But sadly, they're complaining because they're losing their ability to morally police. I've seen them complaining over an increase of hate speech on the platform, and also spreading conspiracy theories.Now, it should be noted I generally don't agree with either hate speech or conspiracy theories, but I tend to have that first amendment absolutism in my views where I think people should be able to say such things. I've never been on board with policing peoples' behavior online, and I really detest the elements of the left that do it. As far as I'm concerned, we lose far more with overactive moderation than we do with people being allowed to say what they want. If people are offended by slurs, that's on them, but I generally ain't opposed to taking away peoples' ability to use them. Yes yes, I've seen people snarkily refer to my free speech ethics as that of a mid-late 2000s xbox live lobby, but that's precisely the kind of environment that I am nostalgic about. I dont care if people say no no words. Are they immature at times? Yes, but people are people, and I dont care if people use bad language. In my eyes, no one is truly harmed by bad language, and people today are getting too snowflakey on that stuff. And if you dont like bad language well, you're free to block whomever you want or even turn off chat. If anything in video games I find turning off voice chat normally good because 99% of the time people are using it in game, it comes off as grating and annoying. But you know what? Give ME the tools to filter stuff as I want while preserving their freedom. Don't police the entire environment to control what people say. I see that as very big brotherish and authoritarian.
As far as conspiracy theories, I tend to be a little more sympathetic here, but once again, I see censorship as authoritarian. The real question is, who decides what the truth is here? Often times, I see those who want to censor others as wanting to promote their own ideology over others. For example, the people I saw crying crocodile tears over this today were...CNN. You know, the network that ruthlessly suppressed all coverage of Bernie and has a clear centrist democratic party agenda? The people who propped up Andrew Cuomo and even made his brother a host? That CNN? Complaining that Twitter is allowing "misinformation"? Ya know, maybe CNN isn't the best arbiter of what the truth should be. And I'd blame CNN being such biased hacks on contributing to the problem of misinformation in the first place. When "authoritative" sources are clearly pushing certain ideological viewpoints to the exclusion of others, maybe that's why people seek our alternative sources of information in the first place?
Anyway, once again, I grew up in the wild west days of the internet. And I was actually brainwashed with misinformation offline at the time and the internet actually helped me understand the world better. While college does have a huge role in influencing my political views, the religion arguably has equally as large of a role. It has given me access to information I never would have had otherwise, causing me to go in different directions I never would have if I had been raised a boomer. Pre 2016, I considered the internet the modern printing press, acting to enlighten people, not make them stupid. Meanwhile what's CNN? An old guard of the last generation's means of consuming media. We are fighting a culture war here, and sadly the left has gone full authoritarian, not willing to trust people to make their own decisions, but deciding they need to teach people "the truth" (ie, their version of it, and only their version)..
I'm not saying that we dont have a problem with misinformation. But ya know what? I powered through it. I was literally a fundamentalist christian who believed in literal creationism in my high school years. And discussing this stuff online, I came across my fair share of BS, some of which I believed when I was young. I remember reading stuff about how Russians dug into the center of the earth and they discovered hell and believing that stuff. I also remember reading Chick tracks. But on spirituality, I also ended up finding near death experience accounts that better reflect my current spirituality than my spirituality back then. I remember coming across stuff like the flat earth society, and i actually thought it was a joke at the time, something that some people engaged in to hone their debating skills by defending a clearly indefensible position. I didn't think people actually believed that stuff.
And of course, I came across ideas that mattered a lot more to me later on. The internet is what allowed me to become an atheist during my "change". It also was what helped me acquire access to information I needed once I realized perhaps there was more to this world than the natural. The internet has also exposed me to concepts that have forever changed my political ideology like UBI. Seriously, I never heard of the concept before discovering it online.
Pre 2016, the internet was a grand place. And while yes, sometimes we had to sift through a bunch of BS to get to the good stuff, the point is, sometimes you got to trust peoples' judgment. Younger people are a much more liberal, and in touch generation than older people, because of the internet. The left was ironically winning the culture war because of the internet. It allowed us to break free of all of that programming the boomers and older generations foisted onto us. But since the left has gone full moral policer, they've been suddenly losing. Gee, I wonder why. Now the right comes off as more libertarian on speech (they're not, really...), and they tend to be outmaneuvering the left on the culture war as a result.
Really, I feel like the left's stance on speech post 2016 is a mistake, it's all of this postmodernism and social justice ideology in which they've suddenly turned into another version of the religious right with all of their moral panics and authoritarianism. I don't care if you're left or right, any ideology that insists we need to be limited access to information for our own good is bad.
So yeah. For this time, and perhaps this time only, I actually will side with Musk, at least tentatively until he screws it up somehow. After all, I am a proponent of free speech, and do believe social media platforms should be significantly less regulated than they are. I miss the wild west days of the internet, and feel like, after all the internet and its freedom has helped me, that it would be hypocritical to slam the door in the first to future generations. Let people discuss and trade ideas as they want. let them trash talk as they want. Let them do just about anything they want other than threatening another person in a credible way, or distributing CP or something like that. Ideas should be allowed on the internet, even bad ones. Authorities should not socially police people in certain ways. If you want to worry about misinformation, then educate people properly. Heck, why do you think im so hardcore on free college. it isn't all about jobs and economic mobility. It's so that people can understand how to properly find out what's true or not. That comes with education, and that should be fixed via educating people to reach their own conclusions, not limiting what information people are exposed to.
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