[thechao]

I wish the internet was a free speech zone. In practice, legally speaking, the internet has all the downsides (legally) of written communication, and none of the upsides of physical free speech.

The internet simultaneously amplifies speech (this is not new: the printing press did so even more); but, it also concentrates speech. I'm not sure anyone thought about what that latter part would mean.

[kelseyfrog]

I wish we had psycho-social institutions that would allow for vigorous free speech without materially worsening people's lives. We seem to be in the part of the cycle where commtech advances have outpaced soctech.

Like you said, we saw commtech leapfrogging over soctech in the early days of the printing press. But soctech caught up and we got over it. The same exists today - I'm sure we'll develop new soctech to handle it, but I have a desire to hasten that development rather than give up and relying on crumbling/outdated soctech infra in the meantime.