It seems to me a repeating pattern that once freedom of thought, speech and expression is limited for essentially any reason, it will have unintended consequences.
Once the tools are in place, they will be used, abused and inevitably end up in the hands of someone you disagree with, regardless of whether the original implementer had good intentions.
As such I’m personally very averse to restrictions. I’ve thought about the question a fair bit – there isn’t a clear cut or obvious line to draw.
Please elaborate and motivate your answer. I’m genuinely curious about getting some fresh perspectives.
IMO any sufficiently large online platform should constitute a public space for purposes of these freedoms, essentially removing the ability of individual organizations to direct public discourse through platform ownership.
The bigger online platforms get the more I agree with this. It’s hard to put into words because I haven’t thought about it a ton, but basically it’s like public speech is becoming a utility in a way. I don’t know what it should look like and I don’t know where the lines are, but I don’t necessarily believe speech should be banned because corporations who own platforms don’t like it. The hard part is aligning that with my belief that things like nazi rhetoric shouldn’t be allowed.