Why is this point hard to grasp? It worries me that this isn't clear to many people. It's a thorny problem where we have to balance the right of companies to decide their own T&Cs with the reality of a few forming monopolies & essentially controlling the marketplace of ideas. 1/2 https://twitter.com/ManoDelamonte/status/1348258500149977090

It seems clear to me that the solution to this is cultural. We need to reform a cultural norm that viewpoint diversity is a good thing & that the way to beat bad ideas is by arguing with them. 2/3

In this way, big social media which are essentially profit-making machines (although owners of them may & often do have principled positions) are not incentivised to bow to a dominant orthodoxy that is censorious & authoritarian. 3/4

I'm aware that this essentially entails creating a dominant orthodoxy that is liberal & incentivising big social media companies to value viewpoint diversity, freedom of expression & rigorous debate over censorship, punishment & cancellation. 4/5

But I will argue for this consensus because of the evidence that it works really well for the advance of knowledge and human rights. I challenge anyone to show me a society that is more scientifically advanced & does better with human rights than secular, liberal democracies.

I refer you all again to Jonathan Rauch's "Kindly Inquisitors" which remains the best defence of this process which he calls 'Liberal Science." Also to Adam Gopnik's "Thousand Small Sanities" which we cite in Cynical Theories. (We also cite Rauch a lot).