Read on Twitter
OK, against my better judgment I want to share a thought about the Free Speech Wars. Tell me why I'm wrong. The standard worry about “cancel culture” is that we are narrowing the zone of permissible speech, which (I agree) is generally not great. You can picture that like this:
But what if that’s not what’s happening? What if in fact the zone of permissible speech (a/k/a the Overton Window) is staying equally large or even increasing, but just *moving*? Like so:
Both scenarios involve new zones of cancellation, which means that people would all of a sudden face social repercussions for things that used to be OK to say. But in one, the range of debate has narrowed, and in the other, it has stayed the same or even broadened.
If, e.g., as a result of demographic changes, a bunch of old ideas about race, gender, etc. are becoming less acceptable… but a bunch of new ideas that weren’t OK to have in public are becoming more so… that’s really different from than the range of acceptable ideas narrowing.
It seems to me that this is a kind of empirical question. Is it in fact the case that “views expressed in public” have become more uniform or narrow in the shift from broadcast media to social? It’s really hard for me to imagine that’s the case, but I’d love to see the data.
TL;DR: It’s really different if the zone of acceptable speech is moving vs. if it’s shrinking. We ought to figure out which is happening. Thoughts?
P.S. None of this addresses the fact that there is no one public square or public discourse, and, uh, "filter bubbles"... which complexities things further and maybe renders the whole debate moot. For another time, I guess.
