Wrong. Saying so is dangerously minimizing the problem.
Tweet something that someone decides is offensive to them, get a visit from the police? I’d say it’s a very rational concern that these regulations would be weaponized against “wrongthink”.
"Arrests for 'offensive' Twitter and Facebook messages up by a third" [2]
"British Police Arrest At Least 3,395 People for ‘Offensive’ Online Comments in One Year" [3]
"Police arresting nine people a day in fight against web trolls" [4]
"More than 3,300 people were detained and questioned last year over so-called trolling on social media and other online forums, a rise of nearly 50 per cent in two years, according to figures obtained by The Times.
About half of the investigations were dropped before prosecutions were brought, however, leading to criticism from civil liberties campaigners that the authorities are over-policing the internet and threatening free speech...."
[1] - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-for-offensive-f...
[2] - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/02/social_media_arrests...
[3] - http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/10/14/british-police-ar...
[4] - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-peo...
[1] - https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/killallwhitemen-twitter-trolli...
And you lack imagination and historical hindsight if you think the concept of "toxicity" can only be wielded by whatever you consider to be the forces of light. So to speak.
Yes. Pretending that the problem of toxicity is just people who can't handle differing opinions is to be willfully ignorant of the problem. As such, a reasonable conversation can not be had.
"And you lack imagination and historical hindsight if you think the concept of "toxicity" can only be wielded by whatever you consider to be the forces of light. So to speak."
Nowhere did I say that in the least.
Do you think the poor bastards in Skid Row feel better because some (literal) white typed in defense against toxicity?
Do you think someone...Let's say Tim Wise! Do you think Mr.Wise has actually interacted with black communities while he lives in a 98% white neighborhood? Do you think Mr.Wise would help some homeless junkie who's trying to figure out how to work his phone so he can message an estranged daughter on Facebook? That's part of what I did in Skid Row. There are issues of knowledge, skills, and plain diet that would offer much better benefits than speaking out against some notion of "toxicity", created by people who have no skin in bleating their stupid moralism.
I'm fine with the down votes, but it should be pretty obvious that it would have been Marco Rubio, or some other sanitary GOP member who got elected if it wasn't for the Russian troll brigade on the internet whipping up a frenzy for Trump.
That's my only point
You raise a wonderful point. Personally, I don't think a "Russian troll brigade" was singularly more effective than all the other attempts to affect the election, but if there was an influence, it certainly may have been greater in the GOP primary than in the general election.
But despite having read an awful lot of election analysis, I don't think I've ever heard anyone else make this point. I've only ever seen the issue framed as Trump vs Clinton, with almost all the proponents of the "Russian hacking" narrative being on the pro-Clinton side.
Besides yourself, does there exist a group of pro-Rubio (or perhaps more interestingly pro-Cruz) supporters who believe that Russia successfully influenced the election in support of Trump? Is there somewhere online I could read more about this worldview?
That being said, my family is loaded with died-in-the-wool republicans, and I remember them all blown away by the fact that trump was winning the primary. None of them could believe it, and they all hated him during the primary!
After trump won, and it was him vs clinton, then the narrative switched. They loved trump at that point.
It was very chilling. It became clear to me that these folks were heavily influenced by some sort of propaganda because their minds changed like the wind!
I tried to find a quote from Dershowitz’s book on defending Nazis but gave up due to paywall.
Toxic is not an objective measure for speech. But like in real life, toxicity depends on the dose. Life doesn’t eliminate toxins, it reduces them to manageable levels (or dies).
There’s also the practical effect that banning is irreversible. Toxicity is not terminal, but banning doesn’t allow for redemption.
Why are people so willing to embrace Orwellian doublethink? My prediction is that such a sword will do decapitate undeserving people of all political aisles.