You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Now that access to large broadcast mediums is the norm, it's absolutely a blow to free speech to selectively censor some of it. Maybe we choose to make tradeoffs, but let's do so with our eyes open.

Thanks to the internet, our eyes are more open than ever before. To the point of information overload. No amount of stupid can ever “put the toothpaste back in the tube.” If some speaker gets filtered from broadcast media, perhaps that speaker might rethink their message. Original cancel culture was even more restrictive—- it silenced voices due to the color of the speaker’s skin. It has always been a competitive endeavor to be heard. The internet might not be much of a fairer place for that game, but the potential reach is what makes the game worth it (or not, in some cases).

If you think broadcast media gets it wrong, push back. But if you call it cancel culture, it’s easy to show what we see today is much less harmful than what came before.

If nobody wanted to hear a message, they would just not subscribe to a person sending it. We are not talking about that, we are talking about privately owned platforms directly deciding what kind of ideas are allowed to circulate in our society. And I find it quite worrying. Because right now it is in their direct interest to make sure an average American doesn't have a family, doesn't have kids, devotes their entire energy to their corporate job, and doesn't accumulate a single dollar worth of savings. It looks great on the financial statements, but it makes people across the board miserable.