Could not agree more. What conspiracies theories have taught us, and yes, I realize this is still an unpopular opinion, is that free speech is overrated.

Free speech, like everything else, needs regulations to work. This is hard, and maybe impossible to do well, but the alternative (no regulations) leads to chaos. Not just chaos of discussion: chaos of society.

Those "opinions" are heavily inflated by bots and other fake accounts. I've observed this behaviour around 2012 on Youtube comments, where the usual tinfoil nutjobs kept running several accounts at once and artificially upvoted their fantasies and downvoted any criticism. It happened on multiple videos on very specific topics from respectable sources. Usually moon landing, 9/11 and so on. It's pretty much the same now on Twitter. It's just the scale that's different, and apparently also the professionalism behind it.

Sure, but I think this also highlights something even worse - if Twitter becomes censorship free, how do you stop the bots? You can't by design!

That's the problem, yes. I fully agree with your point. Just wanted to add some observations. Every community needs some form of "censor", or as we called it back in the day: "moderator". Just to keep things civil.

The only way to stop bots, or at least lessen their impact, would be to make verification via ID (passport, drivers license, etc) mandatory. But that opens up a whole other can of worms.

Another thing i noticed is, that many people don't seem to know what "free speech" actually is. Maybe it's different in the US. I can only speak for the German version of it. It's to protect you from prosecution by the government. It is not a free ticket to attack others and it doesn't protect from criticism.

I'd be perfectly happy to put up with the rampant bot problem forever if it meant the censorship problem went away forever. And don't pretend censorship is actually even an effective solution: remember that today we have a bot problem and a censorship problem.

I think you have the wrong interpretation. Harmful narratives forming is not the failure here, that is an old "problem" with free speech. [0]

The problem Twitter emphasizes is that free speech and anonymity do not work at scale. Pre-internet, speech always had a degree of accountability because you know who's saying what. Now, you don't know if you're engaging with with an ad team, a bot-net, a trained cohort in another country, or just your dumb neighbor's political views.

The reasonable netizen has to assume the majority of what you see online is manipulated and fake. We can't fairly say the worst parts of twitter are purely a failure of free speech.

That being said, its an age old battle which system is better: one that is free, open, optional, and sometimes gets it wrong or one that is closed, managed, unavoidable, and can't be reviewed when it does get it wrong.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

I think people should stop saying today's context is "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" and instead compare today's environment to "Everyone in the theater shouting fire every second throughout the whole movie while everyone smokes a cigarette"

the point is, there's a difference between "shouting fire in a theater" vs. "russian agents disguised as patrons shouting fire in a theater with the express purpose of causing chaos and harm"

Is there an actual difference in the eyes of patrons?

relativism is the wrong answer. intent and identity matter.

knowing who caused you harm and why is necessary in stopping it from happening again.

in the real world, society depends on neighbors working together towards a common notion of the greater good.

if I live in a community that I depend on and I cause chaos, I will feel the consequences.

if I am a foreign agent, I am decoupled from those consequences, and may even benefit by virtue of undermining an enemy.

if the bad actors out weigh the good actors, then society cannot function.

and if you see your neighbors as being as bad as your enemies, then your enemies have truly won.

Real "free speech" is hard and prohibitively expensive to maintain.

But if we can accept that there's not "right" without "wrong" or a coin's "tail" without a "head", we can sympathize with those we deem unworthy of "free speech".

What’s wrong with being anti-vax? Should we kick off the anti-GMO people as well? And QAnon is like the left wing boogie man. Anyone complaining about it sounds like a left wing Alex Jones. It’s silly.

It's factually incorrect and unhealthy. Plenty of science out there on the subject. Bans can cause backlash - it's better to just leave Twitter yourself so as not to be exposed to that particular "reality" which is not at all similar to the one that exists in meat space. Or, at least, to admit that you may be incapable of deciphering truth from fact with that much misinformation around and so many others happy to believe it without applying rigorous examination, vetting sources, etc.

Also, believe it or not but there actually are people who believe the Qanon nonsense. It's been widely reported on.

No, it's silly to ignore QAnon.

A very material number of people believe in that stuff.

More broadly - misinformation is very real.

It's 'silly' to believe that somehow the truth rises to the top. People believe the story that makes them 'feel' a certain way, and will deny the reality in their faces.

I'm on RT and watching Russian commenters indicate that all the 'dead bodies in Bucha' (near Kyiv) were Ukrainians killed by Ukrainians as a 'false flag'. Others say it they are not real. Other say actors. Others say it doesn't exist.

In 2022 you can just make up your own reality and spread it on Twitter, and that's dangerous.

QAnon is "real", or at least real enough that it keeps coming up in indictments of Jan 6 people. Whereas Alex Jones libels the parents of murdered children.