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Progressives of the past were all about the principle of free speech. Now that they have the power to control the public space, all they seem to care about are

by dave_b 7y ago

Progressives of the past were all about the principle of free speech. Now that they have the power to control the public space, all they seem to care about are the technicalities of the first amendment. Arguments like that in the comic revel in enforcing groupthink because the author thinks it will be used in a way he finds favorable. If you take a step back, it’s obvious that every censorious organization has very strong reasons for silencing badthinkers, and they use the same type of self-righteous language when justifying it. Just look at how The Chinese government talks about Hong Kong. edit: Point being, either you uphold the principle of free speech, as argued in the linked article, or you end up with those who control the platforms dictating their own worldview. They will always come up with some smug justification for why society will fall apart if they don’t, and anyone who’s silenced deserves it anyway.

yourbandsucks 7y ago
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
thundergolfer 7y ago
I’m confused by your first paragraph. In what way do progressives control the public space? Republicans are far more powerful than progressives in all branches of government (and remember Democrat != progressive). Corporations obviously dominate corporate space, which is a large sphere of life in the USA, and not at all “public space”. So what’s left?
- lliamander 7y ago
  Media and entertainment. Leadership at social media companies (which control the current public square).
- dave_b 7y ago
  By “public space,” I meant the predominant avenues for public discourse (maybe not the best choice of words). Mainstream media, tech platforms, and universities are the specific things I had in mind.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    We usually call that whole complex "the Cathedral". It fits with progressives' historical origin in the gradual politicization of new religious movements of all sorts.
    - icebraining 7y ago
      Who's "we"?
      - nixpulvis 7y ago
        Well given the setting, I'd assume it's the royal we: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we
      - concordDance 7y ago
        Probably the Dark Enlightenment. It's a good term though...
  - KozmoNau7 7y ago
    The mainstream media is overwhelmingly owned by the rich elite, with deep connections to conservative politics. The idea that the mainstream media is somehow overwhelmingly progressive is something conservatives like to parrot, but I've never found it to have any basis in truth. The "leftist" big media outlets are really centrist, at best.
    - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
      As long as their politics is total control, their brand doesn't matter.
    - lliamander 7y ago
      > The mainstream media is overwhelmingly owned by the rich elite, with deep connections to conservative politics. I'm going to have to ask for a citation for that. Unless you are suggesting that supporting the interests of the rich elite is an essentially conservative position (a claim which both the rich elite and conservatives would deny). If you look at the politics of all the people (executives and rank-and-file) working in the institutions of media, entertainment, and academia, you'll find that a significant majority are left of center given the generally accepted notions of left and right as they are used in contemporary American politics.
chowells 7y ago
Which "principle" of free speech do you mean? Absolutism: no speech is off-limits. Maximalism: the range of ideas expressed must be maximized. Those two ideals of free speech are incompatible. Variety of expressed views suffers immensely when people show up to attack all groups other than themselves. And somehow, those people always show up.
widowlark 7y ago
We cant have it both ways. On the one hand, Twitter, Facebook, et al. are "basically" town/public squares - they are also private companies. So we either regulate and minimize private companies ability to silence speech as they see fit, which is their right - or we allow them to exercise their own rights, thus bending to the masses and appealing to the lowest common denominator through censorship.
- SllX 7y ago
  Or we move on. Mastodon and the like seem to show promise. Reddit is around for something in between Mastodon and Facebook/Twitter, although it is ultimately susceptible to the same problems as the latter. Snapchat isn’t nothing, and while TikTok has problems stemming from its country of origin, it also isn’t nothing. I would say we have a lot of choices of platforms. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn aren’t the end of all social networks and social platforms, they’re just parts of a larger ecosystem. So maybe we can have it both ways. Maybe social platforms can regulate themselves into being the places they want to be, and we can move on when they don’t serve us anymore. Free markets are actually pretty wonderful in that way insofar as they provide us choices and we can take them or leave them.
  - widowlark 7y ago
    What we have right now is due to a largely unregulated free market.
    - SllX 7y ago
      A large number of choices in how we choose to socialize online? I can post this reply to you as easily as I can text my best friend or mother. The problem I have with these discussions is that we aren’t talking about it in a more nuanced manner. The problem with Facebook and Twitter and their kind isn’t their size, magnitude or shape on the public discourse. If it weren’t them, it would be partisan newspapers and newsletters and cable networks pretending they have integrity and objectivity that they don’t. I’m sure they have some measure of integrity, I’m sure they strive to be objective, but I vastly prefer when people And networks fess up to where their biases lay. Well Facebook and Twitter destroyed what was status quo, fine, I have no problem with that. Have they contributed to negative polarization? That’s much less clear, but I’m leaning towards no. Negative polarization is near as I can tell, an old English tradition and near as I can tell, runs through Catholics, Protestants, Barkers, Quakers, Whigs, Jacobites, Revolutionaries, Loyalists, Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Federalists 1.5, Democratic-Republicans, Democrats, Whigs, Republicans, Unionists, Confederates, Progressives, just to name a few off the top of my head. If there is a problem Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. it’s that they collect enormous amounts of data, not just directly but they buy and sell with data brokers and use that to confirm or reconfirm identities. This by itself wouldn’t even be an issue except that they are bad stewards of our personal data. That’s a problem, and one worth focusing on, but let’s not pretend they are anymore powerful than they are, or that they are a cause of our society’s rifts. The splits in our society are real, but they are older than Silicon Valley. Technology will not fix them. Social media will not fix them. The only thing that will do anything about them, and only then, very slowly, is actual factual dialog between people like you and I, and the fact that you and I are even having this discussion is because we have a choice in how, when, where and with whom we would like to talk. This isn’t Facebook, and this isn’t the Post Office or the Forum in Rome and somehow we’re able to talk anyway. I’d say that’s at least one point in favor of the free market.
raxxorrax 7y ago
Well said. There is certainly a place for the xkcd comic. It can be used to argue for the right of free association as well as corporate censorship. That progressives picked the latter as favourable shows a staunch regression in the quality of thoughts.

by dave_b 7y ago

yourbandsucks 7y ago

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

thundergolfer 7y ago

I’m confused by your first paragraph. In what way do progressives control the public space? Republicans are far more powerful than progressives in all branches of government (and remember Democrat != progressive). Corporations obviously dominate corporate space, which is a large sphere of life in the USA, and not at all “public space”. So what’s left?

lliamander 7y ago
Media and entertainment. Leadership at social media companies (which control the current public square).
dave_b 7y ago
By “public space,” I meant the predominant avenues for public discourse (maybe not the best choice of words). Mainstream media, tech platforms, and universities are the specific things I had in mind.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  We usually call that whole complex "the Cathedral". It fits with progressives' historical origin in the gradual politicization of new religious movements of all sorts.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Who's "we"?
    - nixpulvis 7y ago
      Well given the setting, I'd assume it's the royal we: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we
    - concordDance 7y ago
      Probably the Dark Enlightenment. It's a good term though...
- KozmoNau7 7y ago
  The mainstream media is overwhelmingly owned by the rich elite, with deep connections to conservative politics. The idea that the mainstream media is somehow overwhelmingly progressive is something conservatives like to parrot, but I've never found it to have any basis in truth. The "leftist" big media outlets are really centrist, at best.
  - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
    As long as their politics is total control, their brand doesn't matter.
  - lliamander 7y ago
    > The mainstream media is overwhelmingly owned by the rich elite, with deep connections to conservative politics. I'm going to have to ask for a citation for that. Unless you are suggesting that supporting the interests of the rich elite is an essentially conservative position (a claim which both the rich elite and conservatives would deny). If you look at the politics of all the people (executives and rank-and-file) working in the institutions of media, entertainment, and academia, you'll find that a significant majority are left of center given the generally accepted notions of left and right as they are used in contemporary American politics.

chowells 7y ago

Which "principle" of free speech do you mean? Absolutism: no speech is off-limits. Maximalism: the range of ideas expressed must be maximized. Those two ideals of free speech are incompatible. Variety of expressed views suffers immensely when people show up to attack all groups other than themselves. And somehow, those people always show up.

widowlark 7y ago

We cant have it both ways. On the one hand, Twitter, Facebook, et al. are "basically" town/public squares - they are also private companies. So we either regulate and minimize private companies ability to silence speech as they see fit, which is their right - or we allow them to exercise their own rights, thus bending to the masses and appealing to the lowest common denominator through censorship.

SllX 7y ago
Or we move on. Mastodon and the like seem to show promise. Reddit is around for something in between Mastodon and Facebook/Twitter, although it is ultimately susceptible to the same problems as the latter. Snapchat isn’t nothing, and while TikTok has problems stemming from its country of origin, it also isn’t nothing. I would say we have a lot of choices of platforms. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn aren’t the end of all social networks and social platforms, they’re just parts of a larger ecosystem. So maybe we can have it both ways. Maybe social platforms can regulate themselves into being the places they want to be, and we can move on when they don’t serve us anymore. Free markets are actually pretty wonderful in that way insofar as they provide us choices and we can take them or leave them.
- widowlark 7y ago
  What we have right now is due to a largely unregulated free market.
  - SllX 7y ago
    A large number of choices in how we choose to socialize online? I can post this reply to you as easily as I can text my best friend or mother. The problem I have with these discussions is that we aren’t talking about it in a more nuanced manner. The problem with Facebook and Twitter and their kind isn’t their size, magnitude or shape on the public discourse. If it weren’t them, it would be partisan newspapers and newsletters and cable networks pretending they have integrity and objectivity that they don’t. I’m sure they have some measure of integrity, I’m sure they strive to be objective, but I vastly prefer when people And networks fess up to where their biases lay. Well Facebook and Twitter destroyed what was status quo, fine, I have no problem with that. Have they contributed to negative polarization? That’s much less clear, but I’m leaning towards no. Negative polarization is near as I can tell, an old English tradition and near as I can tell, runs through Catholics, Protestants, Barkers, Quakers, Whigs, Jacobites, Revolutionaries, Loyalists, Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Federalists 1.5, Democratic-Republicans, Democrats, Whigs, Republicans, Unionists, Confederates, Progressives, just to name a few off the top of my head. If there is a problem Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. it’s that they collect enormous amounts of data, not just directly but they buy and sell with data brokers and use that to confirm or reconfirm identities. This by itself wouldn’t even be an issue except that they are bad stewards of our personal data. That’s a problem, and one worth focusing on, but let’s not pretend they are anymore powerful than they are, or that they are a cause of our society’s rifts. The splits in our society are real, but they are older than Silicon Valley. Technology will not fix them. Social media will not fix them. The only thing that will do anything about them, and only then, very slowly, is actual factual dialog between people like you and I, and the fact that you and I are even having this discussion is because we have a choice in how, when, where and with whom we would like to talk. This isn’t Facebook, and this isn’t the Post Office or the Forum in Rome and somehow we’re able to talk anyway. I’d say that’s at least one point in favor of the free market.

raxxorrax 7y ago

Well said. There is certainly a place for the xkcd comic. It can be used to argue for the right of free association as well as corporate censorship. That progressives picked the latter as favourable shows a staunch regression in the quality of thoughts.