The World-Wide Safe Space
The stürm-und-drang from our Best-and-Brightest over Elon Musk's plans to reduce censorship at Twitter continues unabated. Solons, high and low, left and lefter, are warning us, with straight faces, that unless Twitter remains a censorious place, free speech itself is imperiled. Much ink has been spilled breaking down the farcicality of their insistence that rampant violence and mass murder are the inevitable outcomes of letting those with non-conforming opinions actually tweet them again. The censors have grown used to controlling the political sand box, and they're extremely not-amused at some uncouth ruffian billionaire (who they used to worship) daring to trespass their restricted club.
That restricted club was their safe space, the place they could share their pearls of wisdom with each other apart from the corrosive effects of challenge or dissent, where they could sneer at the riffraff from afar and without having to suffer their unwashed presence.
It's the equivalent of college safe spaces and 21st century segregated dormitories. It's their Bushwood, no matter that they don't own it, so the impending invasion of the slobs they worked so hard to keep out has them apoplectic.
Were we in a Scanners world, or perhaps one where Slim Whitman's Indian Love Call affected the Twitterati as it did the Martians, we could sit back and enjoy an endless string of champagne-pop sounds of apex apoplexy. We could enjoy countless iterations of Hetty Green's death episode.
Alas, we are not, and the vast majority of those rage-quitters and fabulous flouncers will be back on the blue bird network, feeding their addictions and caterwauling endlessly about how awful it is that the Great Unwashed have ruined their favorite haunt.
Rest assured, the flouncers will be back, spouting some folderol about needing to continue the good fight, about “monitoring” the new Wild West for rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists. There’s also already talk from the Big Guy and his minions about siccing the government on Musk, because those oaths of office blah blah uphold Constitution blah blah liberty blah blah freedom of speech are just lip service intended to bamboozle those eager to be deceived.
We may also, unfortunately, bear witness to other pillars of Big Tech ganging up on Musk's shiny blue toy, because censors, once they've gotten a taste of the power, won't give it up without a fight. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of “Trust and Safety,” blueprinted how Apple and Google could bring Musk to heel:
Failure to adhere to Apple and Google’s guidelines would be catastrophic, risking Twitter’s expulsion from their app stores and making it more difficult for billions of potential users to access Twitter’s services. This gives Apple and Google enormous power to shape the decisions Twitter makes.
Beyond that gatekeeper power, big outfits such as Apple appear ready to squeeze Musk via advertising dollars.
Our censorship-friendly government, rather than using its antitrust powers to warn Big Tech off such moves, will more likely encourage them from behind closed doors and green curtains. Parler got done up that way, so why not again? Though doing that to Twitter would be the wokerati burning down their favorite hangout, and that may not sit so well.
Musk is far from a perfect champion of liberty, and I continue to have reservations about how he leveraged government largesse in building his fortune, but I'll take the win for freedom, cheer him on, and advocate for his way over their way. Since companies are essentially just accretions of people, Musk still has the hardest part of his liberty-crusade ahead of him. Changing the culture, purging the terminally censorious, and getting like-minded people into key positions lies ahead of him.
I wish him luck.
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Peter.
Caddyshack and Blazing Saddles! Fine work!
It's one thing for a private company to decide on its own to censor speech. It's another for taxpayer funded government employees to "advise" these platforms on speech "the government" doesn't like. That crosses a bright line into propaganda, especially when it's done under the guise of "preventing misinformation" but is nothing more than blatant politicking in violation of the Hatch Act. The government should stay out of the information regulating business altogether, if not for the constitutional reason, certainly for the practical reason that attempts by the government to control speech inevitably elevates the very speech they try to suppress. This is the "beachball concept" that the harder you try to push a beachball under water, the more it pushes back to the surface. We're not so stupid we can't figure out what's true - but the media go along with this because it threatens their monopoly on "truth".