Member-only story
The Thorniest Problem With Curbing Problematic Speech
Hello, religious beliefs.
Back in the olden days, when the internet was still new, the finest minds in Silicon Valley had a collective brainwave: Social media.
Part chat-room, part photo gallery, all novelty; who could have predicted this harmless new medium would eventually become such a major bone of contention for the powerful and influential.
We should have guessed it: With humanity, everything’s an arms race.
Who is allowed to say what; what messages are allowed to propagate and which ones are shadow banned; who’s got a billion followers and who needs to delete their account: The newest powerbrokers in American society are, unexpectedly, the people choosing who gets to sit at the cool table in the school cafeteria lunchroom.
They should needlepoint it onto a pillow at Twitter headquarters: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, please say it in 280 characters or less.”
“I thought once people could freely express their ideas, the world would automatically become a better place,” one idealistic Twitter founder wistfully told the New York Times some years ago, Dr. Frankenstein lamenting the destruction wrought by his hideous creation: “I was wrong about that.”