TLDR:
> We don’t trust the free market to necessarily preserve racial equality – that’s what anti-discrimination laws are for. We don’t trust the free market to necessarily preserve worker safety – that’s what OSHA and related regulations are for. [...] Whenever we think something is important, we regulate the hell out of it, rights-of-private-companies to-set-their-own-policies be damned. But free speech? If you don’t trust the free market to sort it out, the only possible explanation is that you just don’t understand the literal text of the First Amendment.
Why do we value free speech?
Is it because we would like a variety of ideas to be heard, even if some of them are unsavory in the current social landscape? That we do better when we are open to a more diverse range of influences? If this is the case, I think we can't simply think of free speech in an active sense. I think the case could be made that the language of these accounts is designed to devalue the voices of particular people, thereby limiting their speech.
I don't really have a solution here. I'm made extremely uncomfortable by this, but my current line of thought is that if an actor initiates the limitation on another's right to expression, then they are the one whose speech should be limited. Think of it sort of like free speech self-defense.
Kind of tangential, but this Mark Ames piece on censorship is really good: https://pando.com/2015/02/04/the-geometry-of-censorship-and-...
[edit] just took a closer look and I'm not really familiar with those accts aside from RV, so I can't really speak on harassment here
Because free (i.e. unrestricted) speech is anti-fragile.
When speech is restricted to just the conventional wisdom (or really: what those in power are okay with), arguments no longer win the day and our ideas and beliefs about the world become fragile, vulnerable to catastrophic disruption by those who see reality more clearly.
History has shown that any restriction on speech ("book burning") is a slippery slope, so if we want the anti-fragile properties—and we really, really do—that means accepting some speech that is plainly wrong or offensive.
Does this have the potential for abuse? Sure. In the same way that I think Zimmerman's self-defense argument was a problem, this could be implemented poorly. That doesn't mean I think it isn't an idea worth pursuing if we could adjudicate it justly.
They don't need anyone's help. Let their movement fail and maybe they'll protect yours next time.
I don't agree with conservatives on much, but we can sure agree on this:
Stop giving "participation awards" to people who clearly have lost.
Facebook doesn't have a militarized police force.
If you delete their account they won't learn anything or cease to exist, they'll just be angry at you somewhere else and come back later.
BTW: https://twitter.com/kthorjensen/status/798959676855455744
Communities die when they're overrun by jerks.
Alternatively, others should be able to choose the discussions they wish to participate in, which may involve people you think are jerks.
You can block someone, but that's too late, it's retroactive. If their goal was to insult you, mission accomplished, no obstacles.
In the case of Milo he'd encourage people to go and harass others which meant you'd spend hours and hours blocking people, they'd basically DDOS your Twitter account.
Is this acceptable behaviour? Is this something to be encouraged by not punishing it?
I don't think you realize what a lightning rod some people become through no fault of their own. That you've never been struck is simply a matter of luck or not being one of the common target groups.
Remember: Not having a Twitter account doesn't mean you can't express yourself. You didn't get kicked off the internet. You're not barred from making sites or publishing your thoughts on innumerable other places.
Yes. They should fix that (if these recent changes haven't yet done that). I've had one of the worst mornings of my life in the last year when I criticised a new browser API and the author of the API refused to stop mentioning me for an hour despite being asked repeatedly to stop. Having to turn off your phone because a high profile person is angry at you is awful. Having people threaten you or publish your contact details is much worse.
Who draws the line between criticising someone and 'pushing others to harass'? Would you block people on the left who have criticised people on the right who were subsequently harassed? Milo had syringes sent to his house and his mobile number published, Totalbiscuit and his wife received a bunch of death threats. We shouldn't ban all the people who criticised them because they were subsequently harassed - I'm sure you wouldn't support that and I'd be right there with you. We should ban people who actually make credible threats, publish non-Twitter contact info on Twitter as a way of harassing others, and similar behaviour.
> Not having a Twitter account doesn't mean you can't express yourself.
Yes, just that you can't express yourself on one of the few places for discussion, and more to the point, that other people who want to hear you (and in Milo's case that was a lot of people) can't do so.
> You're not barred from making sites or publishing your thoughts on innumerable other places.
But due to Metcalfe's law none of those other places have any worth.
As one of the grandparent comments says, we don't trust the free market to protect other values, we shouldn't trust it to protect freedom of expression.
You are, however, forced to live under whatever government gets elected.