Reddit is taking down posts linking to the manifesto of the suspected shooter of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in a move that has angered many users.
We do need to protect people from the wrong opinions clearly. I was a free speech absolutist for most of my life because I was working on the false assumption that most other people thought like me. That people as a group were dumb but an individual person was smart. Or at least, reasonable and compassionate. It’s clear now that the idiots will just shout nonsense and if they do so loud enough and for long enough the ‘normal’ people in the middle listening on the sidelines will adopt it into their core values and be immune to reason or rationale otherwise.
These people can be convinced to think and do anything using logic which is barely coherent. Centralised moderation isn’t going to fix it but we need to figure out how to collectively censor this poisonous mind virus or it’ll tear us to shreds.
We do need to protect people from the wrong opinions clearly. I was a free speech absolutist for most of my life because I was working on the false assumption that most other people thought like me. That people as a group were dumb but an individual person was smart. Or at least, reasonable and compassionate. It’s clear now that the idiots will just shout nonsense and if they do so loud enough and for long enough the ‘normal’ people in the middle listening on the sidelines will adopt it into their core values and be immune to reason or rationale otherwise.
These people can be convinced to think and do anything using logic which is barely coherent. Centralised moderation isn’t going to fix it but we need to figure out how to collectively censor this poisonous mind virus or it’ll tear us to shreds.