I’ve had this feeling that since there are forces that do not want us to have free speech, and that the destruction of Reddit and Twitter does this effectively, creating a chilling effect, destroying social links and communities. Might it not be an intentional effort to stifle the ability of the downtrodden to organize and fight the power?
There are so many other ways things are engineered to benefit the minority and prevent the majority from gaining power, why not this too?
Just a thought rattling around in my head.
I think it’s worth remembering that we never really had ‘free speech’ on either website in the first place. Both sites had rules regarding the kind of content you could post (including against hate speech which is a good thing imo). You can see now that Musk has loosened some of the rules it’s made advertisers wary of associating with it. I would go as far as to say that I don’t think true free speech is possible under a capitalist model. As long as there are shareholders or advertisers to appease, there will be restrictions regarding speech (which may or may not be a good thing).
