(2022-04-29) Martinez Freeze Peach And The Internet

Antonio Garcia Martinez: Freeze peach and the Internet. This ‘freedom of speech isn’t freedom of reach’ argument, which I’m fairly sure Renee DiResta herself coined back in the heady post-Donald Trump election days of 2016, is the linchpin to this entire worldview. It was then, and is now, utter nonsense. (cf Musk Buys Twitter)

Of course freedom of reach is freedom of speech. Anyone anywhere can say whatever they like in the zero-reach corner of their closets

Not to say that lack of reach necessarily represents an abrogation of the freedom. Surely, many of those on Twitter who complain of their supposed ‘shadowbanning’ simply authored tweets that, well, nobody found very interesting. Twitter isn’t obligated to give you reach

Freedom of speech is now a continuous spectrum, a reach knob adjusted by algorithms and tweaked by the companies where speech happens and the audience is.

In order to defend moderation and assert that it’s absolutely, definitely not a form of censorship, DiResta indulges in a very common form of deflection: alleging that the contrary view is simply absurd and ahistorical

nobody who’s ever been involved directly with moderation inside social media companies has seriously advocated for absolute free speech of the pure 4chan flavor.

Facebook was already doing beyond-the-law content moderation as early as 2011 (and presumably before I arrived on the scene, as the team was already scaled up). That level of ‘moderation’ isn’t really in question by anyone whose opinion matters.

Look: nobody wants dick pics or beheading videos in their feeds; also, such content is pretty unambiguous and easy to discern, thus easy to squelch

Can we all address the real debate now instead of the bullshit one? The real issue that the consensus pro-censorship crowd will never directly address: Do you think freedom of speech includes the right to say and believe obnoxious stupid shit that’s almost certainly false, or do you feel platforms have the responsibility to arbitrate truth and regulate online behavior for the sake of some supposed greater good? That’s the real question here, and everything else is either willfully (or accidentally) naive online posturing.

The position in DiResta’s piece is the consensus MSM take from ‘serious’ people on the topic

It’s squishy and ill-defined enough to be adaptable to future scandals, such that it’ll never seem inconsistent even as it makes contradictory claims around this or that moderated media cycle

It’s not much of a policy roadmap for the platforms either—Twitter still needs to make case-by-case calls subject to howling mob of the moment—but it does give the platforms carte blanche to down-rank and ‘moderate’ at will

I’m not quite sure what ‘democracy dies in’ (pace WaPo’s claim that it’s the darkness resulting from not subscribing to their publication), but it’s pretty clear what conditions our democracy was born in: the most vicious, ribald, scabrous, offensive, and often violent tumult of the Founders’ era, which makes modern Twitter look like a Mormon picnic by comparison.

Benjamin Franklin, when asked about the result of the 1787 constitutional convention, reputedly answered “a republic if you can keep it.” That republic is far more threatened by indulging our collective craving for safety via mass censorship than the opposite approach.