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There are still city / township board meetings. You have the ability to converse with your neighbors. You can write to / contact your local representatives. If

There are still city / township board meetings. You have the ability to converse with your neighbors. You can write to / contact your local representatives. If you feel that being kicked off social media is the same as the removal of your ability to engage in public discourse can you tell me what people did BEFORE social media?

thfuran 4y ago
Are you going to also suggest that being banned from using motor vehicles wouldn't be a restriction on travel because people did without them in the past?
- wizofaus 4y ago
  It's a restriction, but not a particularly punitive or effective one, unless you live in a city that's become so beholden to a single mode of travel that car usage has become some kind of dependency . Even then I'd hardly compare it to being booted from a single platform like Twitter that despite the claims of many here only represents a fraction of "public discourse" (indeed, not even a particularly large percentage of online discourse).
  - thfuran 4y ago
    >unless you live in a city that's become so beholden to a single mode of travel that car usage has become some kind of dependency Then I guess it's a good thing no one in the world lives like that...
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      I'd agree it certainly would be a good thing :-)
Hizonner 4y ago
They went to where the people they wanted to communicate with were, and communicated with them. The people they want to communicate with have all moved to social media. Before the Internet, there were systems in place for public discourse. Most of them have been dismantled. In the 1970s or 1980s, you read or wrote letters to the editor (now nonexistent or ignored), subscribed to specialty publications (all moved to social media), attended physical meetings (now organized mostly over social media if they happen at all). You might even have literally gone down to the public square to see what people had posted or were saying there (but nobody's posting or speaking now, because nobody's listening, because they've all moved to social media). If you build a new public square, and everybody abandons the old one, you don't get to forbid soapboxing in the new one because the old one is "still available". ... and formal "board meetings" and one-to-one communication are NOT what is meant by public discourse.
- techdragon 4y ago
  You have elegantly outlined my major concern with everything related to freedom of speech/expression online. Society, generally speaking, functions by collective agreement. So as corporations begin to control the ways that collective agreement is reached, all the ways that corporations are different from real people (as opposed to being “legally people”) and different from the government begin to make the decades/centuries of legal mechanisms, built up to protect this crucial delicate and completely imperfect balance that underlies the functioning of society, begins to break down. It’s like a corroding bridge. It’s still structurally sound… (a.k.a. “The system works”) … until it doesn’t. I have no idea what the breakdown will be, when it might be, or how it might unfold. I’m not a bridge inspector, or a structural engineer, but I know the bridge didn’t squeak or sway when it was built, and now it does, and that there’s lots of examples from history of how bridges like this eventually fall down when something important gives way.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  Have you actually tried any of these things that you claim are now no longer used? In my experience physical letters are taken more seriously than ever. People receive so few of them it is a treat to even get a personal letter. Emails are often straightup ignored or lost in the fray and social media contacts are, at best, manned by an intern. Most of the people I know are using social media less and less. Facebook is now only for "old people" and chat apps are becoming vastly more popular. Some of these chat apps have features of social media but are not at all in the same realm. More things are meeting physically than before and I do not know of any meetings that are only organized on social media. Only one person complains that I am not on Facebook and that is because they are the ones always starting Facebook groups and meetings exclusive to Facebook. I still find out about all of these events when someone calls, texts, or sends me a message in a chat app. Most people use communication that is cross platform.

thfuran 4y ago

Are you going to also suggest that being banned from using motor vehicles wouldn't be a restriction on travel because people did without them in the past?

wizofaus 4y ago
It's a restriction, but not a particularly punitive or effective one, unless you live in a city that's become so beholden to a single mode of travel that car usage has become some kind of dependency . Even then I'd hardly compare it to being booted from a single platform like Twitter that despite the claims of many here only represents a fraction of "public discourse" (indeed, not even a particularly large percentage of online discourse).
- thfuran 4y ago
  >unless you live in a city that's become so beholden to a single mode of travel that car usage has become some kind of dependency Then I guess it's a good thing no one in the world lives like that...
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    I'd agree it certainly would be a good thing :-)

Hizonner 4y ago

They went to where the people they wanted to communicate with were, and communicated with them. The people they want to communicate with have all moved to social media. Before the Internet, there were systems in place for public discourse. Most of them have been dismantled. In the 1970s or 1980s, you read or wrote letters to the editor (now nonexistent or ignored), subscribed to specialty publications (all moved to social media), attended physical meetings (now organized mostly over social media if they happen at all). You might even have literally gone down to the public square to see what people had posted or were saying there (but nobody's posting or speaking now, because nobody's listening, because they've all moved to social media). If you build a new public square, and everybody abandons the old one, you don't get to forbid soapboxing in the new one because the old one is "still available". ... and formal "board meetings" and one-to-one communication are NOT what is meant by public discourse.

techdragon 4y ago
You have elegantly outlined my major concern with everything related to freedom of speech/expression online. Society, generally speaking, functions by collective agreement. So as corporations begin to control the ways that collective agreement is reached, all the ways that corporations are different from real people (as opposed to being “legally people”) and different from the government begin to make the decades/centuries of legal mechanisms, built up to protect this crucial delicate and completely imperfect balance that underlies the functioning of society, begins to break down. It’s like a corroding bridge. It’s still structurally sound… (a.k.a. “The system works”) … until it doesn’t. I have no idea what the breakdown will be, when it might be, or how it might unfold. I’m not a bridge inspector, or a structural engineer, but I know the bridge didn’t squeak or sway when it was built, and now it does, and that there’s lots of examples from history of how bridges like this eventually fall down when something important gives way.
Melatonic 4y ago
Have you actually tried any of these things that you claim are now no longer used? In my experience physical letters are taken more seriously than ever. People receive so few of them it is a treat to even get a personal letter. Emails are often straightup ignored or lost in the fray and social media contacts are, at best, manned by an intern. Most of the people I know are using social media less and less. Facebook is now only for "old people" and chat apps are becoming vastly more popular. Some of these chat apps have features of social media but are not at all in the same realm. More things are meeting physically than before and I do not know of any meetings that are only organized on social media. Only one person complains that I am not on Facebook and that is because they are the ones always starting Facebook groups and meetings exclusive to Facebook. I still find out about all of these events when someone calls, texts, or sends me a message in a chat app. Most people use communication that is cross platform.