> "...that moderation and deplatforming is a legitimate and effective part of that work..." Didn't work when it was used against the civil rights movement or t

> "...that moderation and deplatforming is a legitimate and effective part of that work..." Didn't work when it was used against the civil rights movement or the LGBTQ rights movement, which society tried to keep in the closet. Doesn't work against media piracy & torrents. Hasn't even worked against the far right, as the Trump presidency or the recent gain of control by Republicans of the House of Representatives shows. I do not buy that it's particularly effective and suspect that it will continue to get less effective as the internet evolves. "The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." as Gilmore said. Now, if Musk's changes to Twitter results in further growth of the far-right, and I mean actual growth of the membership of their movement demonstrably attributable to Twitter, not more nasty tweets, I'll cheerfully admit I'm wrong. But that seems rather unlikely. > "You also likely assume the balance of power between truth and lies, reason and radicalism are equal, when history (as well as the incentives of social media platforms) demonstrate that it tilts very much in favor of lies and radicalism." If we have to curate what the public sees to prevent "lies and radicalism" from taking hold, that's attempting to exert direct influence over their their worldview. That's essentially anti-democratic given that democracy assumes that the electorate is smart enough to sort out the information they are given and make intelligent voting choices. I'd rather believe that people are better than to need someone to ban things for them, even if progress is slower than we would like in getting civil liberties extended to more people. And, if I'm wrong, we're all doomed anyway regardless of how much banning is done. > "...free speech absolutism isn't the safety of marginalized and oppressed groups..." Good thing I'm not a free speech absolutist then. I merely think it's well demonstrated deplatforming has been largely ineffective and has made deradicalization more difficult by amplifying the us-versus-them mentality on all sides. Better to get everything out into the open and fight it in the open.