Clay Travis said that the typical Twitter user votes D+15, which is about as liberal as Vermont. The typical blue checkmark Twitter user (who puts out about 90% of all content) leans something like D+40, which is about as liberal as Brooklyn. Or Brooklyn Dad Defiant.
Twitter has basically become the mechanism for our enforced consensus that really does give the marching orders to culture, media and the Democratic Party.
Any pushback against this enforced orthodoxy is labeled as "hate speech." Things like disagreeing that the patriarchy exists is labeled as misogynistic and therefore is out of bounds.
On the right side of the Overton Window, the scope of acceptable discussion is narrowing, while on the left side of the window, it is widening.
The left is petrified of losing this ability to dictate which arguments are socially acceptable and which ones are not. Which is what the ululating about Musk on the left is all about.
The left isn't really worried about hate speech. It is worried that it will lose the ability to apply that label as a weapon to define the acceptable boundaries of social discourse.
> On the right side of the Overton Window, the scope of acceptable discussion is narrowing, while on the left side of the window, it is widening.
The right side of the Overton Window spent last month throwing loud tantrums about LGBT+ people and their supporters being "groomers" while the left side was targeted with Republican bills attacking LGBT+ rights and pro-LGBT+ speech.
It’s hard to state enough how much the censorious nature of the left since about 2010 has emboldened republicans to use the exact same tactics. Which is why freedom of expression is so important as a cultural concept.
For a while. I’d say starting in the mid to late 80s until about 2010 the idea was that we “shouldn’t censor anything”. Then the left were like. “No we should censor things that subjectively offend us.” This lead the right to say “wait. We can just go around censoring things that subjectively offend us? Hold our beer!”
The left falls in and out of love with censorship based on whether it is in charge or not. The left's love of free speech is conditional on whether they are attacking the power structure or they are the power structure.
Woodrow Wilson threw journalists in jail. FDR forbade the US Mail from delivering periodicals he didn't like. This goes back a long way
Nah, that's ahistorical. Pre-2010, Republicans opposed same-sex marriage and adoption, the Bush administration pushed abstinence-only sex education in schools and stuck the Boy Scouts of America Equal Access Act inside the No Child Left Behind Act (to punish schools that pulled away from the Boy Scouts and military recruiters because of their anti-LGBT stances), and the McCain-Palin campaign ran an ad that called Barack Obama "wrong for your family" because he (allegedly) backed "comprehensive sex education...to kindergartners" so that kids were "learning about sex before learning to read" — basically a more genteel version of last month's "groomer" slur.
I want to be clear. I am not defending Republicans. Fuck republicans they're boring and they never have the fun drugs at parties. But no it's not ahistorical. Of course they opposed it. That's they're base. But the tactics are what's new. We had republicans firmly in a box. We said "you can bitch and moan all you want but we are going to drag you kicking and screaming into a brighter future using free speech to smother you." AND IT WAS WORKING! Then all of the sudden as we were flying close to the sun a whole lot of young people who didn't live through the culture wars of the 80s and 90s decided "you know what, we could really use social media and our 'privilege' to go after things we don't like. Digging through decades of old material and going full Fahrenheit 451 on society. Comedians were the canaries in the coal mine for this one. We were warned. We ignored the warning.
The problem isn't republicans. The problem is "censorship" Always has been. Democrats said "of course censorship is a political weapon we should wield with impunity to enforce a sort of dogmatic social narrative." Politics is an arms race to the bottom. If one side uses a certain type of political weapon you can bet the other side will use it too!
When your normalize censorship as an option you do move the window. Since it's now an option the only discussion is where the line should be. Not whether there should be a line in the first place.
And I'm not in the tank for Democrats. The point is that Brent Nyitray wrote that the right side of the Overton Window was shrinking while the left side was expanding, and I had a counterexample to that: last month's anti-queer moral panic.
You suggested that the moral panic was really an outgrowth of 2010s-era left/Democrat censoriousness, since people pre-2010 supposedly agreed that censorship was bad — so I presented more counterexamples showing that, no, right/Republican politicians used similar censorious tactics on similar issues before 2010.
As far as I can tell you're not actually disputing those counterexamples, just rambling about how, like, Republicans learned about book bans from young people "going full Fahrenheit 451" — never mind that Fahrenheit 451 was already being censored as early as 1967 (https://bannedbooks.library.cmu.edu/ray-bradburys-fahrenheit-451/).
again you hear what you want out of my arguments and that's fine. My point is that the censorious left has 100% emboldened. the right to get away with things like this.
Of course they were terrible before but I'm just seeing the forest for the trees. Not just hung up on a few particular trees.
I'm also well aware (more aware) of the history of censorship than you are. Where it comes from and the people who do it and why. The point of "free speech" is that NOTHING should be censored.
It's interesting that the example of book banning comes 2 years before one of the most important free speech cases in American history in Brandenburg v Ohio that pretty much opened the flood gates for free speech and ushered in a pretty good 40 years on the subject.
Arguments over what "should" be censored are what happens when no major party is completely AGAINST censorship. If democrats were actually anti censorship none of the rights ploys would be working in the least.
There's also an incredibly difference between republicans "trying" to censor something and actually censoring it.
Ah well, here with my popcorn watching the left make every mistake possible while the right trolls them into making even more while making their own stupid mistakes.
The FL issue has nothing to do with the overton window. We didn't narrow the acceptable conversation on trans issues. We weren't even talking about trans issues 20 years ago. Heck, they only added the "T" to the acronym about then.
Democrats opposed SSM before 2010 too. And democrats were the aggressors in the push to foist trans issues on everyone. Nobody even thought about trans issues until the left made it an issue.
Given that Republicans/right-wingers opposed LGBT+ rights/supporters both when Democrats/left-wingers agreed with them (as in your example of SSM before 2010) AND when Democrats/left-wingers DISagreed with them, the behavior of Ds/lefts doesn't really seem to be the determining factor in Rs/rights' behavior. It rather suggests Rs/rights are prone to targeting LGBT+ people and their supporters whatever Ds/lefts do!
Picture this: Little Johnny doesn't fit in at school. He is crappy at sports and doesn't get a lot of respect from his peers. He is depressed.
The teacher suggests that maybe he is a girl instead. Johnny takes the bait. Suddenly, Johnny is a rockstar as every teacher bends over backwards to validate Johnny in order to prove their woke bona fides. But it isn't because Johnny is really a girl - it is because Johnny became special.
Little Johnny comes home and tells his family at dinner and asks if he can get some puberty blockers. Mom and Dad flip out. Dad calls the school and asks what the fuck are you people telling my kid? The school says it is none of his business.
Let's face it - this issue is more about adults validating their lifestyle and worldview than it is about the kids. And yes, that is going to rub people the wrong way.
At the end of the day, the left is mad because it can't preach LGBT theory to kids under 10. That is it.
My point is that there's a clear, recent counterexample — last month's anti-queer moral panic — to what you wrote about the Overton Window. Which your reply doesn't dispute. Instead it just rationalizes the moral panic.
It isn't a moral panic to object to teaching LBGT theory to 9 year olds without parental involvement. It is common sense.
If FL was banning it from all schools, you might have a point.
But regardless, concerning the Overton Window, it wasn't normal to tell kids that men can get pregnant 20 years ago. So there is nothing to narrow. None of this was an issue until the left made it one.
"It isn't a moral panic [...] It is common sense" is the kind of thing people say when they're engaging in a moral panic. I expect Congresspeople said similar things when they held hearings about rap music.
And it's interesting that you want to narrow the field to the state of Florida and the topic of "tell[ing] kids that men can get pregnant" when the anti-queer moral panic was far broader conceptually and geographically. My counterexample stands.
It's bizarre to me the coverage of this. One month ago Twitter was a cesspool! Now everyone's freaking out like it was some sort of perfectly moderated paradise.
1. People are blinded by their hate of billionaires. Most of them conspiracy theorists. The only difference between the left and right conspiracists is that on the right side the Evil Billionaire overlords secretly running everything happen to be Jews. The left just see them as secular. So progress?
2. People don't like change.
Also a certain number of people thought they were winning by banning people from twitter. Let's walk through that. If you think ideas that are that bad are that contagious then you also have to hold the opinion that your average human being is a dimwitted animal not capable of holding an original thought in their own heads. You can't see people as both rational individuals and be against expansive free speech! Heaton has talked about this some. Making bad ideas go away from twitter doesn't make bad ideas go away. It just means those bad ideas are now in a place where you can't keep an eye on them.
As for Twitter. I hope that Musk comes through with making the algorithm open source. Not sure how much you or your readers are into PC gaming. If not you should be. Because of one thing... MODS! When you make code open and available (or even when you don't) really creative people get to doing really fun things... for free! Or at a low cost. Making the algorithm open source and then hackable opens up an insane amount of creativity when it comes to your own personal curation. Which is how curation should work in this space. Twitter should be mod-able. People should have complete control over their own feeds. Not just a mute or block buttons but a whole suite of "if-thens". Following Andrew Heaton on Twitter shouldn't fill my feed with Ben Shapiro, and Marjory taylor green (or whatever her name is. I'm not bothering to look it up).
A lot of people don't like that though because they've already figured out how to trick twitter. That's the REAL fear. the Real fear is that the last decade of study in SEO and social media optimization through keyword usage and cunning copywriting might become a lot more complicated. That sounds like a lot more work for those people that rely on the algorithm to do their work for them. They'd actually have to go back to relying on the quality of their content to get shares! The HORROR!
Just one thing - I don't believe that user verification would have any meaningful outputs. At first - it doesn't work - in my home country (Czech republic - basically working democratic central european country) many newspapers webs started requiring verification of users (either by slow mail or by text message) to allow them commenting on their articles. The result is that moderate people mostly stopped commenting because they don't want to either go through this verification process or they just find it too complicated for just adding a comment in "great article" style, while idiots are willing to go through this and are even proud of their name being associated with a bullsh*t comment (and some of the newspapers also show the town you are from, so it's more clear that it's you and not some other guy with the same name from different part of the country).
And - I'm not talking about privacy issues - it's no accident that authoritarian countries like Russia are doing the same thing for really one reason - and while now we can feel that everything is so so (except the pitchfork-and-torches-type mobs on tw), no one says that these verified comments won't become handy later.
This is right to me, "Users should have to verify their identity before they can share content and have their content shared." Or else it would be right if not for a couple of factors.
The first is that the Democratic Party at the hands of the "new left" (Evergreen College takes over the country) has become not just completely broken with nothing to sell but fear, but a dehumanizing, censorious, authoritarian force. I am much more worried about what they're going to do in power right now than I am whatever Musk plans to do.
I am an early internet adopter. I was here in 1994, probably before you were born. I was here before there was even a working web. I was here before blogs wrecked newspapers. And yes, before Facebook and Twitter wrecked everything else. The internet used to be a great place. I'm not so sure connecting this many people at once at a time when there are more people on the planet than there ever has been is a good thing.
But here's what I know about Twitter as a user since 2007 - it was already ruined when they banned Trump. It isn't that I support Trump. It's that the power base in this country showed that even the POTUS isn't really in charge. They are. They are the alliance of social media, big media, big money and now, government. They didn't have government because Trump was essentially a wild card they could not control. They don't like that they can't control Musk either. So whatever they're going to do next is what scares me. People don't care me. Words on a screen are just words.
In the old days you could simply leave a space you didn't like or that was infested with trolls. But Twitter is the defacto thought-police such that it cripples almost everyone and everything that used to feel free. With Trump gone, it gave way too much power to one hive mind and they policed every inch of our culture to ensure compliance. THAT is what has to be broken up so that comedians can tell good jokes again, great movies can be made again. We can't survive this way. America is not designed to be an authoritarian country.
The Democrats or the left are so afraid of letting the "rabble" in. Their fear over his takeover is a reminder of just fragile and fearful they have become of half the country.
One thing that I think helps clarify the debate for me --
We don't tend to view what happened to Justine Saccos* through a free speech lens, but as far as I can tell, that's because the people that criticized her weren't coded as right-wing.
Do you think Twitter should change to make this sort of thing less likely in the future?
Justine did suffer way, way too big of a penalty for a medium-stupid mistake, and I think some of the "add friction" changes would help a bit. Those can reduce pile-ons because information travels less quickly. But beyond that, I'm not sure where the fixes are -- I'm not sure how you have someone sitting in Twitter HQ next to an "okay, kids -- that's enough" button.
I think most of the "fixes" are societal, i.e. recognize that she was piled on and it went too far, and try to strengthen the norm that the punishment should fit the crime.
Part of the problem is the deference towards the offended. People need to start saying "I know that offends you, but chill the fuck out." Of course, I'm a wuss so I won't be doing that
This 100%. See. The way we fought the overly censorious right of the 80s was by, in the 90s saying. Oooooooooh. So that’s what offends you? Here. Have more! Until they calloused up and dealt with it.
Don’t like provocative movies? John waters says hello.
Think animation is just for little kids? Liquid television and South Park would like a word.
Does the n-word offend your sensibilities? Well Dr. Dre and DMX has some material for you.
Is radio your safe pace? Here’s Howard stern.
The 90s were specifically designed to piss off the squares. The squares are always the problem.
Yeah. I mean. This is completely what is happening. Sometime in the early 2010’s for some reason democratic elites decides to publish all over “the 10 things you can say and do that will make me feel terrible.” And republicans said “oh really? Thanks!” And since then we’ve essentially seen a troll war. And yes a lot of it was straight trolling. But instead of ignoring the trolls like we had been doing the left leaned in and started fighting those windmills until they actually became a real dragon.
Instead of listening to people saying “I think you’re going to far” they instead just moved the centrist line so that all of those people were now to the right of it. Well eventually the trolling became real and we got Donald trump. Just to piss off the left. Literally. The whole campaign was a troll on the left for being prudes. This is what happens when moral righteousness becomes moral dogma.
You did have the Florida woman (I know, I know) at the Trump rally who let the mask slip and said "He's not hurting the people he needs to be."
There's a striking difference in team blue and team red. Most of team blue is not woke and does not want to be woke. The modal Democratic voter still thinks like you, Stephen. (BTW, woke is a bullshit comment with no inherent content that is purely derisive and allows all of us to project our feelings onto the term. No one goes around and self-identifies as woke. Like how no one self-identifies as a hipster. Plenty go around and identify as progressive, but that's a different flavor of insufferable.)
On team red, though, the venn diagram of a maga hat and people who believe pro wrestling is real to them, dammit, is almost a perfect circle.
1. Don't get upset. 2. Don't apologize. and 3. Don't let that slip out. I understand sharing your vulnerabilities with your friends and family but why give the entire general public the keys to your mental health well being? Strategy.
I know "ignore them and they go away" is often bad advice, but it's what I did with PZ Myers and as far as I know he doesn't exist any more. No one has mentioned him in years in any place I read.
I know people who regret participating in the Justine Sacco thing. Yet, when I say to them "you are participating in another pile-on right now, take a breath" they get really mad.
No one wants to hear it. A good head of steam is too good a drug to stop.
I don't see how societal fixes would help though. Even if 90% of the country agrees with you, once you hit a critical mass of dedicated cranks, they can do a huge amount of damage. Start posting about you, create videos and brigade you with, etc.
Here here. That's actually one partial solution: We realize that social media lends itself to this type of insanity and employers and college administrators stop being such cowards.
Imagine telling someone "a high school football stadium in Texas is really mad at you or one of your employees. Do you cave to them?" Because that's really how many people are, at most, pretending to give a shit about the issue on Twitter.
You can ignore them.
(This is a McArdle idea, I'm probably butchering it)
I wonder how much the "wokeness is civil rights law" take from Hanania applies here. I doubt your average CEO cares about tasteless AIDS jokes, but they want to appear progressive to avoid future discrimination lawsuits.
They are. Most people don't have their ear to the ground, but there's a lot of lowkey push back or just ignoring a lot of this stuff.
The next 20 years are going to be fun strap in. We're winding kids up. We've done it before. (40s 50s and 70s 80s) and every time we do it creates a really fun expressive generation that goes around sacred-cow tipping for fun. I think that's what is going to happen. The rubber band will snap and the kids who are 12 and under now in 10 years are going to grow up to be absolute firebrands. Performative Vulgarity is going to make a comeback and I for one cannot wait.
Yeah, I mean, agreed, but what can we do about that? This sort of gets to the fact that technology enables that sort of behavior. If people have solutions, I'm all ears, but at present all I've got is "when that happens, stand up and say that it's bad."
1. Obviously, employers/college administrators/etc should get a sense of perspective about this and what they're willing to punish people for.
2. I think that platforms have to choose between a more silo-ed model (Discord, group texts, to a lesser extend Reddit, Facebook Groups, etc), where you can be more hands-off, and the "public square" model like Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, etc. You can be much more hands-off in the second situation.
In the public square model, I think you have to give people much tighter control over how people engage with material, how things are amplified, and so on.
Note that Tiktok manages very strict moderation, so it's clearly possible to do at scale.
3. Look at what your algorithms and platform design encourage, and do more to discourage pile-ons, harassment, etc.
4. Look at how people monetize your platform, and hold those people to a higher standard. Those are users you have the most leverage over.
I'm glad you took another swing at this topic Jeff - this one benefitted from a more nuanced viewpoint. Having said that, I wonder if there was one other aspect that should be considered - the financial incentive of success in this arena. I wouldn't want to let slip any pledged allegiance to Marx or anything but, in a world where the majority of kids want to grow up to be "influencers", and the consequence of one poorly worded tweet can be a literal career, I don't think we can dismiss the role of capitalism in all this. If you could take money (and the power over others it buys) out of the equation, I just think people will still speak freely, but be less motivated to be outrageous. The value of free speech is no longer just democratic, but is very economic now. And surely that must contribute to all the crossed-wire discussions we're having now about what 'free speech' should look like in a free society?
Yep, sadly I'm inclined to agree. I just think it's worth keeping in mind that, even before we factor in its extended reach, the societal purpose of free speech is foundationally different from what it was just 20 years ago
I mean. It’s not exactly what I would call “capitalism”. Though I know that word just means whatever people want it to mean at any given point.
But since most of these giant dinosaurs of companies are literally propped up and stitched together with tax breaks, special zoning, subsidies, and a slew of other affordances directly from governments I have a hard time seeing them as capitalist. Per se.
The problem is markets don’t like when companies get that big. Like dinosaurs. A certain size is an evolutionary dead end. But. Jobs!!!!!!!! So every time one of these companies is close to going belly up a politician will step in and suture up that wound to keep that big company around. Both for “jobs” and for support. Cronyism at its finest.
Yep, I possibly could have been clearer but I was referring to 'capitalism' in the ideology sense - the social compulsion of each individual human to do things that make them more money and capture more resources...That momentum skews how we think of 'free speech', by giving it value beyond just being important for a healthy liberal democracy.
Eh, I still thank that's a touch loaded for a definition. There's certainly an amount of self interest that goes around. I think the Lego Movie (of all things) has the best allegory for a world which is the unholy marriage of capitalism and politics. I still put more blame on those with police power than on people with economic power. The president can send a man with a gun. That's a lot of power. Elon musk can, at best, be a dick to me online. It's when the two work together that we have a problem.
Well articulated. I agree completely. Except for the part about you being the decider with a free parking pass. That job should of course go to me.
But other than that error, you've partially redeemed yourself after leveling deranged and wholly unwarranted insults against Tulsi Gabbard, who possesses more integrity and wisdom than probably any other recent congressperson.
Great piece as usual. Social media is never going to make the aforementioned Philadelphia Eagles fans suddenly morph into the social/intellectual equivalent of Ivy League grads at the latest TED talk-but the Ds act like this is doable and desirable. Trump, otoh, is basically one of the aforementioned Eagles fans-he even owned the USFL NJ Generals, and as such can appeal to them on their level of understanding!
Otherwise, great essay! I actually would love to see Facebook go back to a chronological feed. I don’t get much of the political/provocative crap in my feed, but I also don’t see nearly as much as I used to of what my friends are up to. (Maybe because they’re smarter than me and have walked away from FB.) Instead all I get is stupid ads that are either scarily on point (something I happened to mention out loud on the general vicinity of my phone) or completely off base (no, I do not want to buy myself a burka).
Clay Travis said that the typical Twitter user votes D+15, which is about as liberal as Vermont. The typical blue checkmark Twitter user (who puts out about 90% of all content) leans something like D+40, which is about as liberal as Brooklyn. Or Brooklyn Dad Defiant.
Twitter has basically become the mechanism for our enforced consensus that really does give the marching orders to culture, media and the Democratic Party.
Any pushback against this enforced orthodoxy is labeled as "hate speech." Things like disagreeing that the patriarchy exists is labeled as misogynistic and therefore is out of bounds.
On the right side of the Overton Window, the scope of acceptable discussion is narrowing, while on the left side of the window, it is widening.
The left is petrified of losing this ability to dictate which arguments are socially acceptable and which ones are not. Which is what the ululating about Musk on the left is all about.
The left isn't really worried about hate speech. It is worried that it will lose the ability to apply that label as a weapon to define the acceptable boundaries of social discourse.
Exaggerate much? At least it illustrates the point about the poisonous nature of internet conversation.
How Lorenzian.
The party that tosses out -isms and -phobias like candy suddenly wants nuance now that it has pissed off damn near everybody.
"People think in Language. The best way to control thought is to control Language." -Georg Carlin.
That was the point of 1984. To take away the language to criticize the regime in power.
Yeah it's a pretty old idea in general. The Greeks made some old philosopher drink poison over it.
> On the right side of the Overton Window, the scope of acceptable discussion is narrowing, while on the left side of the window, it is widening.
The right side of the Overton Window spent last month throwing loud tantrums about LGBT+ people and their supporters being "groomers" while the left side was targeted with Republican bills attacking LGBT+ rights and pro-LGBT+ speech.
It’s hard to state enough how much the censorious nature of the left since about 2010 has emboldened republicans to use the exact same tactics. Which is why freedom of expression is so important as a cultural concept.
For a while. I’d say starting in the mid to late 80s until about 2010 the idea was that we “shouldn’t censor anything”. Then the left were like. “No we should censor things that subjectively offend us.” This lead the right to say “wait. We can just go around censoring things that subjectively offend us? Hold our beer!”
Play stupid games win stupid prizes and all that.
The left falls in and out of love with censorship based on whether it is in charge or not. The left's love of free speech is conditional on whether they are attacking the power structure or they are the power structure.
Woodrow Wilson threw journalists in jail. FDR forbade the US Mail from delivering periodicals he didn't like. This goes back a long way
Nah, that's ahistorical. Pre-2010, Republicans opposed same-sex marriage and adoption, the Bush administration pushed abstinence-only sex education in schools and stuck the Boy Scouts of America Equal Access Act inside the No Child Left Behind Act (to punish schools that pulled away from the Boy Scouts and military recruiters because of their anti-LGBT stances), and the McCain-Palin campaign ran an ad that called Barack Obama "wrong for your family" because he (allegedly) backed "comprehensive sex education...to kindergartners" so that kids were "learning about sex before learning to read" — basically a more genteel version of last month's "groomer" slur.
I want to be clear. I am not defending Republicans. Fuck republicans they're boring and they never have the fun drugs at parties. But no it's not ahistorical. Of course they opposed it. That's they're base. But the tactics are what's new. We had republicans firmly in a box. We said "you can bitch and moan all you want but we are going to drag you kicking and screaming into a brighter future using free speech to smother you." AND IT WAS WORKING! Then all of the sudden as we were flying close to the sun a whole lot of young people who didn't live through the culture wars of the 80s and 90s decided "you know what, we could really use social media and our 'privilege' to go after things we don't like. Digging through decades of old material and going full Fahrenheit 451 on society. Comedians were the canaries in the coal mine for this one. We were warned. We ignored the warning.
The problem isn't republicans. The problem is "censorship" Always has been. Democrats said "of course censorship is a political weapon we should wield with impunity to enforce a sort of dogmatic social narrative." Politics is an arms race to the bottom. If one side uses a certain type of political weapon you can bet the other side will use it too!
When your normalize censorship as an option you do move the window. Since it's now an option the only discussion is where the line should be. Not whether there should be a line in the first place.
Book Banning: They learned it from watching you.
And I'm not in the tank for Democrats. The point is that Brent Nyitray wrote that the right side of the Overton Window was shrinking while the left side was expanding, and I had a counterexample to that: last month's anti-queer moral panic.
You suggested that the moral panic was really an outgrowth of 2010s-era left/Democrat censoriousness, since people pre-2010 supposedly agreed that censorship was bad — so I presented more counterexamples showing that, no, right/Republican politicians used similar censorious tactics on similar issues before 2010.
As far as I can tell you're not actually disputing those counterexamples, just rambling about how, like, Republicans learned about book bans from young people "going full Fahrenheit 451" — never mind that Fahrenheit 451 was already being censored as early as 1967 (https://bannedbooks.library.cmu.edu/ray-bradburys-fahrenheit-451/).
again you hear what you want out of my arguments and that's fine. My point is that the censorious left has 100% emboldened. the right to get away with things like this.
Of course they were terrible before but I'm just seeing the forest for the trees. Not just hung up on a few particular trees.
I'm also well aware (more aware) of the history of censorship than you are. Where it comes from and the people who do it and why. The point of "free speech" is that NOTHING should be censored.
It's interesting that the example of book banning comes 2 years before one of the most important free speech cases in American history in Brandenburg v Ohio that pretty much opened the flood gates for free speech and ushered in a pretty good 40 years on the subject.
Arguments over what "should" be censored are what happens when no major party is completely AGAINST censorship. If democrats were actually anti censorship none of the rights ploys would be working in the least.
There's also an incredibly difference between republicans "trying" to censor something and actually censoring it.
Ah well, here with my popcorn watching the left make every mistake possible while the right trolls them into making even more while making their own stupid mistakes.
The FL issue has nothing to do with the overton window. We didn't narrow the acceptable conversation on trans issues. We weren't even talking about trans issues 20 years ago. Heck, they only added the "T" to the acronym about then.
Democrats opposed SSM before 2010 too. And democrats were the aggressors in the push to foist trans issues on everyone. Nobody even thought about trans issues until the left made it an issue.
Well, except for trans people.
Given that Republicans/right-wingers opposed LGBT+ rights/supporters both when Democrats/left-wingers agreed with them (as in your example of SSM before 2010) AND when Democrats/left-wingers DISagreed with them, the behavior of Ds/lefts doesn't really seem to be the determining factor in Rs/rights' behavior. It rather suggests Rs/rights are prone to targeting LGBT+ people and their supporters whatever Ds/lefts do!
Picture this: Little Johnny doesn't fit in at school. He is crappy at sports and doesn't get a lot of respect from his peers. He is depressed.
The teacher suggests that maybe he is a girl instead. Johnny takes the bait. Suddenly, Johnny is a rockstar as every teacher bends over backwards to validate Johnny in order to prove their woke bona fides. But it isn't because Johnny is really a girl - it is because Johnny became special.
Little Johnny comes home and tells his family at dinner and asks if he can get some puberty blockers. Mom and Dad flip out. Dad calls the school and asks what the fuck are you people telling my kid? The school says it is none of his business.
Let's face it - this issue is more about adults validating their lifestyle and worldview than it is about the kids. And yes, that is going to rub people the wrong way.
At the end of the day, the left is mad because it can't preach LGBT theory to kids under 10. That is it.
My point is that there's a clear, recent counterexample — last month's anti-queer moral panic — to what you wrote about the Overton Window. Which your reply doesn't dispute. Instead it just rationalizes the moral panic.
It isn't a moral panic to object to teaching LBGT theory to 9 year olds without parental involvement. It is common sense.
If FL was banning it from all schools, you might have a point.
But regardless, concerning the Overton Window, it wasn't normal to tell kids that men can get pregnant 20 years ago. So there is nothing to narrow. None of this was an issue until the left made it one.
"It isn't a moral panic [...] It is common sense" is the kind of thing people say when they're engaging in a moral panic. I expect Congresspeople said similar things when they held hearings about rap music.
And it's interesting that you want to narrow the field to the state of Florida and the topic of "tell[ing] kids that men can get pregnant" when the anti-queer moral panic was far broader conceptually and geographically. My counterexample stands.
It has nothing to do with narrowing the Overton window.
It's bizarre to me the coverage of this. One month ago Twitter was a cesspool! Now everyone's freaking out like it was some sort of perfectly moderated paradise.
1. People are blinded by their hate of billionaires. Most of them conspiracy theorists. The only difference between the left and right conspiracists is that on the right side the Evil Billionaire overlords secretly running everything happen to be Jews. The left just see them as secular. So progress?
2. People don't like change.
Also a certain number of people thought they were winning by banning people from twitter. Let's walk through that. If you think ideas that are that bad are that contagious then you also have to hold the opinion that your average human being is a dimwitted animal not capable of holding an original thought in their own heads. You can't see people as both rational individuals and be against expansive free speech! Heaton has talked about this some. Making bad ideas go away from twitter doesn't make bad ideas go away. It just means those bad ideas are now in a place where you can't keep an eye on them.
As for Twitter. I hope that Musk comes through with making the algorithm open source. Not sure how much you or your readers are into PC gaming. If not you should be. Because of one thing... MODS! When you make code open and available (or even when you don't) really creative people get to doing really fun things... for free! Or at a low cost. Making the algorithm open source and then hackable opens up an insane amount of creativity when it comes to your own personal curation. Which is how curation should work in this space. Twitter should be mod-able. People should have complete control over their own feeds. Not just a mute or block buttons but a whole suite of "if-thens". Following Andrew Heaton on Twitter shouldn't fill my feed with Ben Shapiro, and Marjory taylor green (or whatever her name is. I'm not bothering to look it up).
A lot of people don't like that though because they've already figured out how to trick twitter. That's the REAL fear. the Real fear is that the last decade of study in SEO and social media optimization through keyword usage and cunning copywriting might become a lot more complicated. That sounds like a lot more work for those people that rely on the algorithm to do their work for them. They'd actually have to go back to relying on the quality of their content to get shares! The HORROR!
Just one thing - I don't believe that user verification would have any meaningful outputs. At first - it doesn't work - in my home country (Czech republic - basically working democratic central european country) many newspapers webs started requiring verification of users (either by slow mail or by text message) to allow them commenting on their articles. The result is that moderate people mostly stopped commenting because they don't want to either go through this verification process or they just find it too complicated for just adding a comment in "great article" style, while idiots are willing to go through this and are even proud of their name being associated with a bullsh*t comment (and some of the newspapers also show the town you are from, so it's more clear that it's you and not some other guy with the same name from different part of the country).
And - I'm not talking about privacy issues - it's no accident that authoritarian countries like Russia are doing the same thing for really one reason - and while now we can feel that everything is so so (except the pitchfork-and-torches-type mobs on tw), no one says that these verified comments won't become handy later.
This is right to me, "Users should have to verify their identity before they can share content and have their content shared." Or else it would be right if not for a couple of factors.
The first is that the Democratic Party at the hands of the "new left" (Evergreen College takes over the country) has become not just completely broken with nothing to sell but fear, but a dehumanizing, censorious, authoritarian force. I am much more worried about what they're going to do in power right now than I am whatever Musk plans to do.
I am an early internet adopter. I was here in 1994, probably before you were born. I was here before there was even a working web. I was here before blogs wrecked newspapers. And yes, before Facebook and Twitter wrecked everything else. The internet used to be a great place. I'm not so sure connecting this many people at once at a time when there are more people on the planet than there ever has been is a good thing.
But here's what I know about Twitter as a user since 2007 - it was already ruined when they banned Trump. It isn't that I support Trump. It's that the power base in this country showed that even the POTUS isn't really in charge. They are. They are the alliance of social media, big media, big money and now, government. They didn't have government because Trump was essentially a wild card they could not control. They don't like that they can't control Musk either. So whatever they're going to do next is what scares me. People don't care me. Words on a screen are just words.
In the old days you could simply leave a space you didn't like or that was infested with trolls. But Twitter is the defacto thought-police such that it cripples almost everyone and everything that used to feel free. With Trump gone, it gave way too much power to one hive mind and they policed every inch of our culture to ensure compliance. THAT is what has to be broken up so that comedians can tell good jokes again, great movies can be made again. We can't survive this way. America is not designed to be an authoritarian country.
The Democrats or the left are so afraid of letting the "rabble" in. Their fear over his takeover is a reminder of just fragile and fearful they have become of half the country.
There is a fantastic essay in Quillette laying out the different between decorum and moderation. https://quillette.com/2022/04/27/musk-and-moderation/
That's interesting. He does into way much detail on the appeal-through-money thing. But "moderate on tone, not topic" is a good strategy.
One thing that I think helps clarify the debate for me --
We don't tend to view what happened to Justine Saccos* through a free speech lens, but as far as I can tell, that's because the people that criticized her weren't coded as right-wing.
Do you think Twitter should change to make this sort of thing less likely in the future?
*
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html
Justine did suffer way, way too big of a penalty for a medium-stupid mistake, and I think some of the "add friction" changes would help a bit. Those can reduce pile-ons because information travels less quickly. But beyond that, I'm not sure where the fixes are -- I'm not sure how you have someone sitting in Twitter HQ next to an "okay, kids -- that's enough" button.
I think most of the "fixes" are societal, i.e. recognize that she was piled on and it went too far, and try to strengthen the norm that the punishment should fit the crime.
Part of the problem is the deference towards the offended. People need to start saying "I know that offends you, but chill the fuck out." Of course, I'm a wuss so I won't be doing that
This 100%. See. The way we fought the overly censorious right of the 80s was by, in the 90s saying. Oooooooooh. So that’s what offends you? Here. Have more! Until they calloused up and dealt with it.
Don’t like provocative movies? John waters says hello.
Think animation is just for little kids? Liquid television and South Park would like a word.
Does the n-word offend your sensibilities? Well Dr. Dre and DMX has some material for you.
Is radio your safe pace? Here’s Howard stern.
The 90s were specifically designed to piss off the squares. The squares are always the problem.
It's fine to be offended, but loudly declaring "this is what you can do to most upset me" is counter-productive.
Yeah. I mean. This is completely what is happening. Sometime in the early 2010’s for some reason democratic elites decides to publish all over “the 10 things you can say and do that will make me feel terrible.” And republicans said “oh really? Thanks!” And since then we’ve essentially seen a troll war. And yes a lot of it was straight trolling. But instead of ignoring the trolls like we had been doing the left leaned in and started fighting those windmills until they actually became a real dragon.
Instead of listening to people saying “I think you’re going to far” they instead just moved the centrist line so that all of those people were now to the right of it. Well eventually the trolling became real and we got Donald trump. Just to piss off the left. Literally. The whole campaign was a troll on the left for being prudes. This is what happens when moral righteousness becomes moral dogma.
You did have the Florida woman (I know, I know) at the Trump rally who let the mask slip and said "He's not hurting the people he needs to be."
There's a striking difference in team blue and team red. Most of team blue is not woke and does not want to be woke. The modal Democratic voter still thinks like you, Stephen. (BTW, woke is a bullshit comment with no inherent content that is purely derisive and allows all of us to project our feelings onto the term. No one goes around and self-identifies as woke. Like how no one self-identifies as a hipster. Plenty go around and identify as progressive, but that's a different flavor of insufferable.)
On team red, though, the venn diagram of a maga hat and people who believe pro wrestling is real to them, dammit, is almost a perfect circle.
So what happens when the squares say "the thing you can do to most upset me is call me a racist"?
1. Don't get upset. 2. Don't apologize. and 3. Don't let that slip out. I understand sharing your vulnerabilities with your friends and family but why give the entire general public the keys to your mental health well being? Strategy.
Exactly. You don't have to give people that power over you (for the general value of "you").
"Yes, I know he posted that Christians are just a bunch of racists that are too stupid to face reality, but you should grow a thicker skin."
I know "ignore them and they go away" is often bad advice, but it's what I did with PZ Myers and as far as I know he doesn't exist any more. No one has mentioned him in years in any place I read.
https://ideasonideas.substack.com/p/its-the-squares-its-always-the-squares?s=w shamelessly plugging that I wrote about this exact thing. We need to stand up to the "squares"
I know people who regret participating in the Justine Sacco thing. Yet, when I say to them "you are participating in another pile-on right now, take a breath" they get really mad.
No one wants to hear it. A good head of steam is too good a drug to stop.
I don't see how societal fixes would help though. Even if 90% of the country agrees with you, once you hit a critical mass of dedicated cranks, they can do a huge amount of damage. Start posting about you, create videos and brigade you with, etc.
Employers should start laughing off internet pile-ons.
Here here. That's actually one partial solution: We realize that social media lends itself to this type of insanity and employers and college administrators stop being such cowards.
Imagine telling someone "a high school football stadium in Texas is really mad at you or one of your employees. Do you cave to them?" Because that's really how many people are, at most, pretending to give a shit about the issue on Twitter.
You can ignore them.
(This is a McArdle idea, I'm probably butchering it)
I wonder how much the "wokeness is civil rights law" take from Hanania applies here. I doubt your average CEO cares about tasteless AIDS jokes, but they want to appear progressive to avoid future discrimination lawsuits.
They are. Most people don't have their ear to the ground, but there's a lot of lowkey push back or just ignoring a lot of this stuff.
The next 20 years are going to be fun strap in. We're winding kids up. We've done it before. (40s 50s and 70s 80s) and every time we do it creates a really fun expressive generation that goes around sacred-cow tipping for fun. I think that's what is going to happen. The rubber band will snap and the kids who are 12 and under now in 10 years are going to grow up to be absolute firebrands. Performative Vulgarity is going to make a comeback and I for one cannot wait.
Yeah, I mean, agreed, but what can we do about that? This sort of gets to the fact that technology enables that sort of behavior. If people have solutions, I'm all ears, but at present all I've got is "when that happens, stand up and say that it's bad."
1. Obviously, employers/college administrators/etc should get a sense of perspective about this and what they're willing to punish people for.
2. I think that platforms have to choose between a more silo-ed model (Discord, group texts, to a lesser extend Reddit, Facebook Groups, etc), where you can be more hands-off, and the "public square" model like Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, etc. You can be much more hands-off in the second situation.
In the public square model, I think you have to give people much tighter control over how people engage with material, how things are amplified, and so on.
Note that Tiktok manages very strict moderation, so it's clearly possible to do at scale.
3. Look at what your algorithms and platform design encourage, and do more to discourage pile-ons, harassment, etc.
4. Look at how people monetize your platform, and hold those people to a higher standard. Those are users you have the most leverage over.
I'm glad you took another swing at this topic Jeff - this one benefitted from a more nuanced viewpoint. Having said that, I wonder if there was one other aspect that should be considered - the financial incentive of success in this arena. I wouldn't want to let slip any pledged allegiance to Marx or anything but, in a world where the majority of kids want to grow up to be "influencers", and the consequence of one poorly worded tweet can be a literal career, I don't think we can dismiss the role of capitalism in all this. If you could take money (and the power over others it buys) out of the equation, I just think people will still speak freely, but be less motivated to be outrageous. The value of free speech is no longer just democratic, but is very economic now. And surely that must contribute to all the crossed-wire discussions we're having now about what 'free speech' should look like in a free society?
Sure, but how do you take money out of the equation? I don't think that's possible.
by giving it to me
Yep, sadly I'm inclined to agree. I just think it's worth keeping in mind that, even before we factor in its extended reach, the societal purpose of free speech is foundationally different from what it was just 20 years ago
I mean. It’s not exactly what I would call “capitalism”. Though I know that word just means whatever people want it to mean at any given point.
But since most of these giant dinosaurs of companies are literally propped up and stitched together with tax breaks, special zoning, subsidies, and a slew of other affordances directly from governments I have a hard time seeing them as capitalist. Per se.
The problem is markets don’t like when companies get that big. Like dinosaurs. A certain size is an evolutionary dead end. But. Jobs!!!!!!!! So every time one of these companies is close to going belly up a politician will step in and suture up that wound to keep that big company around. Both for “jobs” and for support. Cronyism at its finest.
Yep, I possibly could have been clearer but I was referring to 'capitalism' in the ideology sense - the social compulsion of each individual human to do things that make them more money and capture more resources...That momentum skews how we think of 'free speech', by giving it value beyond just being important for a healthy liberal democracy.
Eh, I still thank that's a touch loaded for a definition. There's certainly an amount of self interest that goes around. I think the Lego Movie (of all things) has the best allegory for a world which is the unholy marriage of capitalism and politics. I still put more blame on those with police power than on people with economic power. The president can send a man with a gun. That's a lot of power. Elon musk can, at best, be a dick to me online. It's when the two work together that we have a problem.
Well articulated. I agree completely. Except for the part about you being the decider with a free parking pass. That job should of course go to me.
But other than that error, you've partially redeemed yourself after leveling deranged and wholly unwarranted insults against Tulsi Gabbard, who possesses more integrity and wisdom than probably any other recent congressperson.
I knew the Tulsi Troopers would come after me.
I take it back - Tulsi should be the decider who gets free parking. There. I’ve resolved this whole mess. 100% de-fucked.
Bean Dad *wishes* can opener Tweets didn’t go viral
I want to marry Paula Fox!
Great piece as usual. Social media is never going to make the aforementioned Philadelphia Eagles fans suddenly morph into the social/intellectual equivalent of Ivy League grads at the latest TED talk-but the Ds act like this is doable and desirable. Trump, otoh, is basically one of the aforementioned Eagles fans-he even owned the USFL NJ Generals, and as such can appeal to them on their level of understanding!
Roger Murdoch? Did you mean Rupert?
Otherwise, great essay! I actually would love to see Facebook go back to a chronological feed. I don’t get much of the political/provocative crap in my feed, but I also don’t see nearly as much as I used to of what my friends are up to. (Maybe because they’re smarter than me and have walked away from FB.) Instead all I get is stupid ads that are either scarily on point (something I happened to mention out loud on the general vicinity of my phone) or completely off base (no, I do not want to buy myself a burka).
Thanks, and the Roger/Rupert Murdoch mistake has been corrected! I had "Airplane!" on the brain (as I often do).
What's your vector?