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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35585 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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I am free speech maximalist

Famous people posting swastikas on Twitter -- the steelman version of his picture is that he's telling Jewish people they should forgive Nazis, which seems to be a totally nonsensical position -- is a great way to get the platform shut down.

I don't think you are. There is nothing about a combined swastika + Star of David logo that is even remotely illegal, much less likely to get Twitter shut down. (Wikipedia has hosted this page for over a decade.) This incident has definitely made a lot of allegedly "pro-free speech" people (especially Elon) tell on themselves though.

I will go as far as to say that if a mildly edgy logo, purely visual with no possibility of genuinely harming anyone besides possibly hurting their feelings, is where you hit the free speech red line button, not only are you not a "free speech maximalist", you're not even a supporter of free speech to any degree.

I disagree that posts can be judged in isolation.

If I were Musk and you posted that on Twitter, I wouldn't care. Nobody knows who you are and I agree the image is largely harmless. Maybe some NYT journalist compiles the "500 incidents of anti-Semitism" but it can largely be shrugged off since only the disproportionately-loud chattering class cares what the NYT says.

If you're Kanye West and have been actively in the news for being anti-Semitic, recently required my intervention to un-ban, and have been posting progressively "edgy" things, then you're damn right I'm going to ban you to maintain the commercial viability and existence of my platform.

You're trying to maximize free speech Y-intercept; I'm trying to maximize free speech AUC over time.

then you're damn right I'm going to ban you to maintain the commercial viability and existence of my platform.

Then you're not a free speech maximalist if you're compromising for commercial viability.

You're trying to maximize free speech Y-intercept; I'm trying to maximize free speech AUC over time.

By this logic, I'm a freedom of movement maximalist if I choose a world where seven octillion sentient beings live their entire lives in boxes with 2 feet to move around in over the present one. I don't subscribe to "a sextillion dust specks in a sextillion eyes" logic. It leads to too much transparent absurdity.

I'm not even saying you're wrong strategically. A tactical retreat over X maximalism all the time is sometimes best for X. (Though in this particular case I actually think that it's wholly unnecessary and that it's very unlikely that anyone was actually going to seriously move against Twitter over this.) I just don't think it's reasonable to call yourself what you claim to be.

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