The left has, for some time now, made a concerted effort to punish standard issue conservative political or traditional religious speech. It started by labeling it harassment and then "hate" and now it outright pretends it is violence. It has done this in service to its political agenda which doesn't tolerate dissent mostly because its ideas are bad and can't survive competition.
The left, disingenuously for the most part, claims the right just wants to use the n-word on Twitter, whereas the right mostly wants the right to speak freely about our society without being barred. The censors can't, or refuse to, distinguish between those two things. Again, many of the left act as if standard political speech it dislikes is the equivalent of the n-word. Have any mainstream conservative folks been kicked off of social media for excessive use of the n-word? I can't think of any.
The Babylon Bee was suspended from Twitter for political satire. @libsoftiktok suspended for showing leftists saying what they really believe. Was PraegerU demonetized on Youtube for repeatedly using the n-word? Why was the NY Post suspended for sharing the Hunter Biden laptop story that is now admittedly true? How many people were kicked off Facebook for saying Covid started in a lab? We're not talking about spam. We're not talking about harassment or bullying or true threats or obscenity.
Musk is talking about folks who just want to participate in the public discourse - to have opinions about Covid that the government hasn't sanctioned, state basic biological facts, or simply make political arguments against political opponents, even if they don't want to hear it. We want to be able to criticize people or satirize institutions or events. The left wants to operate without criticism, so it labels it hate speech or misinformation. Criticism isn't hate. Is repeatedly labeling inconvenient facts as "misinformation" any different than Trump calling something he dislikes "Fake News?" Not really.
The "experts" cited in this article are not talking about moderation. They're talking about censorship. They're worried if Twitter lets people say things our Ivy League betters don't like, bad things will happen, like Trump may get elected. Most of their examples have serious causation problems, too. It's also clear they're on one side and the great unwashed is on the other. Better keep THOSE PEOPLE at bay. THOSE PEOPLE aren't smart enough to discern truth from make belief. THOSE PEOPLE may drink fish bowl cleaner if we don't protect them from themselves. These censors are just bullies trying to protect their turf.
The answer to speech you don't like is speech you do like. That "times have changed" doesn't change that universal truth. There's a lot of "this time is different" in that argument that has no logical stopping point. IT justifies anything. It's amazing how often the "this time is different" excuse to used to doing things that shouldn't be done, like destroying the village to save it.
Free speech proponents understand that we cannot get closer to truth without a back and forth debate on particular subjects even if that means some wrong or bad ideas get distributed in the public square. It's worth it, even if some people go too far. Freedom of thought, if it means anything, means the right to be wrong about things. Make your best argument and let's see who prevails.
