The only thing that terrifies me more than Trump is the number of my tech industry colleagues who seem to think we can and should abuse our power to shape public discourse.
You already do, don't you? Social Media created an algorithm based add industry that was and is easily highjacked for bad-faith propaganda purposes. A system that at its core is designed to exploit human psychology in ways and scales we never saw before. You cannot create such things, keep them under your control and just ignore the consequences.
The only way Facebook has to not "use its power to shape public discourse" is to turn itself off. Having the platform up shapes the discourse. Algorithmic timelines shape the discourse. Adverts, whether political or not, shape the discourse.
Neutrality is only an option if you limit yourself to making cuckoo clocks.
That was a specific reference to a famous speech of Orson Welles in The Third Man:
> You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
> In Italy under the Borgias, they had thirty years of murder, bloodshed and warfare. And they produced indigestible noodles, boring operas and the FIAT. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The Swiss bank account, the best cheese in the world and Heidi!
Being a free speech advocate when it benefits your own views is an oxymoron. Defending free speech by definition means defending people's right to say things you disagree with. If you only defend people's right to agree with you then you're not a free speech advocate.
I think that's precisely what they're saying: a lot of people talk about "free speech" because free speech benefits them. When you're in a dominant position, free speech doesn't threaten you. Or at least, you think it doesn't.
Few free speech advocates think you should be free to call for violence. That's free speech that does threaten them. Speech that calls for discrimination against groups they don't belong to, however, is perfectly fine -- they know that they're too important to be threatened by it.
So practically all self-described free speech advocates do put limits on free speech, and there aren't any True Scotsmen.
That's a very cynical take. You don't need to have your own speech rights threatened to care about free speech, and many, many people are capable of defending free speech even if their own views aren't being "suppresed".
My political opinions are reasonably mainstream, but I'll happily defend the free speech rights of groups I disagree with (e.g. pro-lifers.)
