In America, your speech is free to be wrong, free to be hateful, free to insult religions and celebrities alike. The European mind desperately wants to believe it has the same kind of free speech as the US, despite endless evidence to the contrary. It's illegal to insult elected officials, and if you say the wrong thing, or post the wrong meme, you may well find yourself the subject of a raid at dawn. It's the lack of free speech, and a catastrophically narrow Overton window, which has led Europe into such a mess in the first place. Whether the current politicians of Europe wants to hear it or not, I'm convinced that average Europeans actually are listening.
David Heinemeier HanssonMisinformation doesn’t change minds that much. The average person consumes very little misinformation on the internet, especially when contrasted with information from mainstream sources. People seek out narrow misinformation because they distrust institutions, not vice versa. Paranoid partisans actively seek out unreliable news sources to confirm their biases. A cynical populace is willing to tolerate or maybe even support cynical leaders. Trying to control the flow of information to a deeply cynical public, and thereby hoping to reduce their cynicism, is like treating a brain tumor with painkillers to manage the headaches: it masks the symptom but doesn’t address the cause. The battle against misinformation isn’t won by gatekeeping online speech, it requires addressing the deeper reasons people lose faith in democratic norms and institutions in the first place.
Rob HendersonPlatforms made woke their core target, now they target the opposite. Anger is the most engaging, hence its presence everywhere online. What matters is that you consume their product instead of others. Freedom of speech is a pretext to push you to consume in capitalism. If you spit your hate online then you are not free, the more you engage the thicker your leash. Freedom is not saying what you want but thinking and doing what you want. Social media advocate for more freedom of speech are doing so only to increase user engagement time with the platform. Non-woke will be used the same way that woke were. Physical violence is easier to see than psychological violence, the riches want you constrained. Populism means giving authority to people without caring about their relevance. Should the voice of low IQ matter as much an industry expert?
Infame