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I still believe in the right of every individual to freely decide and access what they want to read. I also think we need better and more benevolent curation than current media platforms offer, and every individual should be able to freely decide how their curation should work.
Canceling Trump's social media account does not curtail his right to speak, but it curtails the rights of 88 Million people who want to hear what he has to say. That's incompatible with the principles of an open society.
The open society is a liberal ideal, not a conservative one, it was established and defended against the prevailing idea that most people are not mature or wise enough to be allowed to choose their own thoughts and have responsibility and tools to construct their own world view.
It's an empirical question if humans, when left to their own devices, will have good ideas about how they should live, see and relate. The hypothesis is still rather untested; in most places and times, the majority lives in artificial realities manufactured by a small minority.
Social media have provided a fascinating testbed. Starting with BBSs and then Usenet, they sparked an explosion of knowledge exchange, new ideas and micro cultures. However, the Eternal September changed the dominant mode from cooperative production to consumption.
Now, the majority of internet users no longer relies on an individual exploration of a vast ocean of voices, ideas and aesthetics, but on the curation by a handful of platforms that produce tailored content meeting audience expectations. Most users don't need an open internet.
The majority of even my readers on Twitter don't perceive Twitter as a tool that allows us to talk to each other and develop a deeper, shared understanding of facts, models and purposes together. They see my thoughts as content, not live, truly open ended conversation.
By diminishing the role of traditional media in controlling world views, social media change democracy. Before Twitter and Facebook, people could not have agreed on disliking the DNC candidate more than a bullshit artist without the support of major TV stations and newspapers.
Our establishment agrees that the experiment of free and open social media has run its course, with negative results. What you see is content that is curated, largely not based on what you want to see, hear and read, but based on what you are supposed to think, feel and want.
Perhaps our establishment is right. Also, there is currently no central unified nexus of mind control, as it used to be in the theist and communist societies. In our society, mind control is distributed: to righteous teachers, to passionate activists, to angry social media users.
The time for meaningful discussions about difficult political and ethical questions on Social Media is over. Please acknowledge that everything you say and that you seem to think can and will be used against you, especially when sacred norms are updated to next year's fashion.
I still want us to have a way out, into the sacred space of free thought, free love, and the free search for our purposes and the alliances and paths to follow it. This space and its rules are not hard to discover; lets converge at this place, and maintain and protect it.
