Yeah, I think it's necessary and honestly overdue. The problem with these attempted defenses of the race to the bottom we are witnessing in online communication

Yeah, I think it's necessary and honestly overdue. The problem with these attempted defenses of the race to the bottom we are witnessing in online communication is they step back from the direct examination of specific harms to the abstraction of "speech." Once the subject is switched, we can comfortably speak in generalities about the abstract value of speech. It reminds me of what Keats said about a certain way of thinking about economics: "Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again." We're dealing with something that most reasonable people agree is a genuine crisis of democracy, and it's sheltered by a naiive conception of speech that doesn't have anything specific to say directly about Qanon, Covid, the 2020 election. It's a view from 10,000 feet generality that works when the ocean is flat again.