I think the problem with the free speech ideals is a combination of engagement farms (i.e. a room full of smart phones where people “like” or view particular content so it artificially becomes more popular on social media) and bots (which, with modern AI, are pretty hard to distinguish from people who know how to write) which make modern online content a lot less organic.
In addition, the outrage culture (because anger increases engagement) went from us being “I disagree with you, but I defend your right to say that” to “What you say is so awful I want to destroy you”. It’s this second issue which has made things difficult for the EFF—their original mission was to allow the racists, misogynists, misandrists, and what not to have their soapbox. But that’s something which just doesn’t work in today’s political climate.
Ironically, I think X in a lot of ways was a beacon of free speech in a world where people advocating certain ideas will just be permanently banned from a given platform without question. Yes, they had issues with going out of their way to discourage people from linking outside of their walled garden [1], but they allowed a lot of content that would instantly get someone banned on Bluesky or Reddit.
Don’t get me started on how Facebook has morphed from being a place where I could see what my old college buddy from 30 years ago (who I parted ways with when I changed colleges) was up to, into a place where I just mainly see slop from content farms and troll farms.
[1] I left Twitter because they marked me as a “spammer” because I would link to Substacks or blogs showing men that, no, women aren’t only sleeping with 10% of men.
In addition, the outrage culture (because anger increases engagement) went from us being “I disagree with you, but I defend your right to say that” to “What you say is so awful I want to destroy you”. It’s this second issue which has made things difficult for the EFF—their original mission was to allow the racists, misogynists, misandrists, and what not to have their soapbox. But that’s something which just doesn’t work in today’s political climate.
Ironically, I think X in a lot of ways was a beacon of free speech in a world where people advocating certain ideas will just be permanently banned from a given platform without question. Yes, they had issues with going out of their way to discourage people from linking outside of their walled garden [1], but they allowed a lot of content that would instantly get someone banned on Bluesky or Reddit.
Don’t get me started on how Facebook has morphed from being a place where I could see what my old college buddy from 30 years ago (who I parted ways with when I changed colleges) was up to, into a place where I just mainly see slop from content farms and troll farms.
[1] I left Twitter because they marked me as a “spammer” because I would link to Substacks or blogs showing men that, no, women aren’t only sleeping with 10% of men.