My question to everyone supporting restrictions on speech and supporting privacy violations, even for good reasons, is this: are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands? The same methods used to quickly shut down a dangerous website or to track down a terrorist by their online posts can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.
The US has strong speech protections, somehow when people are wrong in their beliefs about what that means they move the goal post to this mythical “ethical” free speech maxim. I dont believe in what those people imagine free speech means. I believe in the “first amendment” which includes freedom of association including for the non-government people that create venues and platforms. “We have the right to refuse serv…
So it’s more a question of how to maintain fair platforms, than it is of free speech. The free speech debate will likely be the dominant topic of the coming decade yet no one actually wants unmoderated public spaces. We just can’t agree to the terms. If this debate really was just about the rights of a few fringe groups of extremists, rather than perceived bias in moderation, it wouldn’t be popular.
You can solve this conflict simply by setting clear rules that everyone must abide by. Rules you’d assume any rational person would agree to. Let’s say: On public platforms you’re not allowed to target any individual or group with attacks. But then you’d also have to ban people who say that conservatives are evil. Which we both know is never going to happen - as just the suggestion would lead to political deadlock. The utilitarians believe in catharsis through the expression of justified hate and anger; no, we weed rules that censor not any division, but unjustified division. We need not rules that protect personal dignity, but the dignity of some over others. In Reddit’s term of service they ban abuse of minority groups; specifically because they don’t want to ban abuse of majority groups. The ministeries of truth of our time are staffed by blue haired ideological activists with a social engineering agenda who love science but only as longs as it’s produced by a faculty that’s struggling with a falsifiability crisis.
If you’re running the communications platforms at the heart of our modern societies you must either govern it from the center, or accept that your subtle guidance however well intentioned is driving us towards ever increasing conflict. You have to govern from the center even though your personal ideology tells you that everything is relative, that truths are only meaningful in context, and that ethics is a function of cause and effect. Because to people who rather view ethics as a categorical imperative _you_ are the one who’s is driving division and pushing us towards disaster. And regardless of who’s right or wrong; it’s arrogant and dangerous to allow yourself to become dogmatic.