Sorry to nitpick your copy-n-paste skills, Wharfie, but I wanted to repost what you posted with slightly better clarity, since it's a very important statement:
We should also consider how the ‘rules based order’ we’ve devised seems unable to stand up to a bully intent on replacing free access to information with paid disinformation — and how our democratic systems seem so incapable and frozen in the face of confident vandals running around spray-painting ‘freedom’ all over the walls as they burn the library down. First of all, I get suspicious when I see that phrase, "rules-based order." Whose "rules" are we talking about here, and do they actually protect freedom of speech? Or do they only protect speech that they think doesn't fall under the category of "disinformation"?
Second, Twitter was hardly a place where access to information was free or fair. Disinformation was still rampant back before Musk. The "fact-checkers" were notoriously biased, inconsistent, and beyond reproach. Views that didn't conform to the San Francisco norms were regularly censored at a systemic level. Whether or not this is legal is irrelevant, because all of this went against the very free market of ideas.
And third, it's not the job of democratic systems to stop these so-called "vandals" spray-painting "freedom" all over the walls, because that very analogy is just plain wrong. Instead, it's up to each forum to self-moderate as they see fit, not government that values free speech.
Overall, I think that guy just laments that the left lost control over Twitter.
Not that Elon Musk is doing such a great job remaking Twitter in his image, mind you ...
Tenchusatsu |
