1/ I'm sitting here thinking about freedom this morning.

Specifically, freedom of expression (speech), first amendment rights, etc.

Asking myself whether my knee-jerk absolutist support of it is still justified in the modern world with new communication norms and mechanisms.

2/ This might seem like an odd thing for me to consider but I also think it's important to challenge my own perspective that was picked up from earlier times and think through how and why conditions might have changed.

I can't really call myself fair or flexible if I didn't.

3/ Growing up (esp. growing up with significant gender dysphoria) in a very conservative setting, I've always rankled under attempts to police ideas outside of the norm because they felt literally smothering to me. I internalized a lot of garbage about how I was a bad person.

4/ These are ideas and self-perceptions that I'm still working on unwinding 30 years later. I feel ashamed and guilty about being trans, about bucking norms. Less than I used to, but it's still there. Hard to shed that much programming.

5/ And when I was in my teens, what we discussed at school (and at home) was how special the freedom of expression/speech/religion was--about how that was one of the things that made America good and more free than other places. No one even questioned it. Book bans were mocked.

6/ This was reinforced by highly-esteemed literature I devoured--1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, The Giver, all expressing themes of how suppression and group think were bad. There was also a lot of light and nascent (if clumsy) pro-diversity messaging in TV in the 90s.

7/ The whole idea was that through tolerance and permissiveness of expression, we diverted mechanisms of coercion and control that ultimately made life less pleasant for everyone and ESPECIALLY marginalized groups and religions and ideas outside the mainstream.

8/ But it also seems important to consider the environment at the time: There was no social media. There wasn't nearly the degree of fracturing into online communities we see today. We didn't even have cell phones for texting. TV was still the primary news source for most people.

9/ We talk about echo chambers and algorithms reinforcing bias and online communities where ideas we don't like fester a lot today. Back then, the messaging was all about the internet as a new and exciting way to "find your people." This was Yahoo's ad game for a long time.

10/ In a time where you got pushed into regular interaction with people with very divergent belief systems but your only way to express them was in-person dialog, disagreements tended to be much more polite (or end quickly and not happen again).

11/ For all of our talk about lauding freedom of expression, speech and ideas outside of the Overton window didn't have much outlet to be honest. Sure, you could write a book. You could maybe get on public access TV. You could go on a radio program if you were invited.

12/ But someone still had to publish your book (Amazon self-pub wasn't a thing). What you could say on TV was carefully controlled. Radio wasn't much better. And most people didn't have time or desire to listen to you outside of those mediums anyway.

13/ You'd just be a crazy person ranting on a corner. There wasn't really a way to get unusual ideas out to people even if you felt like they were very important.

I've said before that if Ted Kaczynski could have started a podcast, he might not have killed a bunch of people.

14/ It was very similar for queer literature, which was something I was discussing with a friend last night. There just weren't books about gay people (and especially not trans people) that were discussed or read--especially for teens and young adults.

15/ In fact, I can't think of a single book I read growing up that prominently featured a gay character (and especially not in a positive light).

Finding Orlando by Virginia Woolf was wild for me. I didn't know that people wrote books about transgressing gender boundaries.

16/ And anything more salacious or subversive hung on the periphery--the space of weirdos and artists and whores and sinners, who were in categories and subcultures of their own, away from the light of day and polite society.

17/ So even while we argued about how book burning was evil and freedom of expression and religion were important, the ideas you were allowed to easily consume were still pretty heavily policed and the ones we didn't like got driven underground.

18/ That started shifting in interesting ways when internet subcultures and chat rooms started picking up and people started finding people who liked the same weird ideas they did. Discourse exploded and fractured over the next two decades.

19/ Suddenly you could get information tailored to your beliefs and support from like-minded people regardless of what those beliefs were, and rather than kind of dying down when no one wanted to engage, everyone agreed that MORE people should be okay with their particular views.

20/ In short, the echo chambers we talk about. I'm thrilled with the way the discourse has shifted to be more permissive of LGBT identities in particular, and it's because I'm self-motivated in the same way everyone else is.

21/ But other people, for whom those identities and ways of being felt objectionable, obscene, sinful, or harmful to society, this was perceived (very correctly) as an unraveling of established norms that reflected their values.

22/ I'm often surprised that the modern lines around permitting freedom of expression fall as they do on the political spectrum for this reason.

I would have expected conservatives to be the ones trying more stridently to police language and expression norms.

23/ And I guess, actually, they have been. Church ladies and book burnings are a meme for a reason. There absolutely was an attempt to suppress speech that rankled people all throughout our history.

We just made fun of them and thought they were short-sighted pearl-clutchers.

24/ But uh... I hate to say this, but they were kind of right. If you're not big on homosexuality and transgender people, you are probably not happy with how the boundaries of normality and permissibility have been shifted by the explosion of accessible discussion of these topics

25/ The thing is that cultural suppression of ideas that the majority doesn't like actually works really well at keeping those ideas from flourishing. It definitely doesn't stop people from having opinions. But they're very muted by comparison to open discourse.

26/ And in fact these practices are alive and well even though the boundaries have shifted. There are lots of ways to suppress access to content that people deem objectionable. Tying up businesses related to those ideas is a tried and true one. https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1347365999473958914?s=20

27/ We also have obvious historical precedent for one of the most horrifying regimes in modern history being dismantled by the same tools of suppression of ideas. https://twitter.com/mykola/status/1350112253010472969?s=20

28/ I'm sitting here very torn by all of this. My big issue is that "speech we don't like" is a moving target. History doesn't actually always march in the direction you'd like it to. The Overton window is extremely emotional and influenced by the experiences of each generation.

29/ And on the one hand, freedom to discuss (and create, and sell) content around ideas and literature subversive to the mainstream is EXACTLY what allows me to live my life with a relative degree of freedom and safety.

30/ But on the other, it's how you get runaway movements that can completely destabilize and radicalize and overwhelm society. Of course, what a destabilized and radicalized society looks like depends on your values in the first place. I'm sure fundies feel like we have it now.

31/ The underlying value I was taught to celebrate is given by the first amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;[...]"

32/ We've all read it.

But I don't think I've ever really thought through both sides of it this deeply before.

This was drafted before _radio_ and the _telegram_ existed.

Should this be updated for the times? How and by whom? What does a moral and fair equivalent look like?

33/ It seems prudent and reasonable to ask what sits at the core of this value. For me, it's always been about non-oppression. That's how I interpreted it.

You may not LIKE gays or Muslims or Nazis or Calvinists.

But you're not supposed to overtly oppress them for their ideas.

34/ But also, there's some false equivalency going on there. Because whether you like it or not, some ideas, values, and ways of living are clearly more disruptive and destructive than others.

35/ It would be difficult for most people to argue that they'd be equally okay having someone move in next door who was either a respectful non-violent Buddhist or a nihilistic extremist who felt that destroying your fence was a valid means of protesting your political views.

36/ So the question becomes what ideas get suppressed and what limits do we set and how does this even occur, if we agree it should or can (which I'm not arguing for), in an era where you can't actually control or stop it?

37/ It's a very frustrating situation. Let ideas spiral unmitigated by social censure and you get cults and radicalization and social fraying.

Suppress ideas and you drive them underground, create martyrs, become an oppressor, and do harm to marginalized groups.

38/ The seemingly obvious answer to this is "just suppress the bad and dangerous ideas and ideologies."

Clearly this is easier said than done. When you let the majority pick what's bad, it just becomes a reflection of the social norms of whichever group has the most power.

39/ The thing with power is that it ebbs and flows and establishing norms that allow anyone to seize control of the enforcement mechanisms gets scary fast.

Both sides of this make me uncomfortable as an LGBT person very into her personal freedom to live her life in peace.

40/ Because as the pressure amps, the winner take all dynamics make me feel _REALLY_ twitchy about anyone having my best interest at heart.

As a libertarianish centrist minded person, I just kind of want to be left alone to do my thing.

Increasingly this seems very difficult.

41/ And frankly... I'm left in this place where I just have no idea what the right thing to do is anymore.

It's kind of a frustrating and powerless feeling place to be.

42/ I want to believe that we can maintain our at least surface-level value about respecting one another's humanity and dignity and making room for perspectives outside of our own.

I don't really trust that we'll effectively or judiciously apply tools of moderation with wisdom.

43/ Our government seems incapable of satisfying the bulk of its citizens given how ideologically fractured people are right now.

I'm pretty bummed out about this, and I was thinking about it last night reading @eigenrobot's thread. https://twitter.com/eigenrobot/status/1349875254902964224?s=20

44/ And again, I have no real idea as to how to appropriately respond to this.

How do you find a place of agreement between people with vastly different takes on morality and approaches to governance within a single country?

My gut says more federalism is a possibility, but idk

45/ Does federalism even work in an era where ideas cross regional boundaries at the speed of thought? Idea contagion has no borders and there's no way to make sure it's your preferred flavor of ideas.

I'd love to see suggestions about what to do. I'm kinda spinning.

/fin