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traditionally we regulated free speech by eschewing prior restraint but using torts and the judicial system to impose some accountability ex post.
it was a good balance! lawsuits are risky and costly so you could speak pretty freely, but outrageous threat and defamation were deterred. 1/
but we now have a class for whom lawsuits are not risky and costly, for whom the expense — even if they lose and some anti-SLAPP law hits them — is negligible. and these people are difficult to sue, since a lawsuit can become an all-pay auction in legal expenses, and plutocrats can outbid. 2/
to some degree it was always thus — corporations have long had deep pockets. but the emergence of ideological, aggrieved billionaires who can speak without accountability but punish others for speech they dislike strikes me in practice as a sea change. 3/
i find when i write in places like this i worry much more about Elon Musk than i ever did about Goldman Sachs. (i said a lot of mean stuff about Goldman Sachs!) 4/
plutocrats championing the traditional free speech regime are championing a regime where no meaningful accountability binds them, but they can hold others painfully to account at will or on a whim. 5/
i dislike some of the censorious tendencies of the last decade, even the ones those very billionaires complain about. but “free speech unless you piss off a billionaire” strikes me as imposing a far worse chill than any excesses of wokeness or public health overcaution. /fin
@interfluidity I think it’s still underappreciated the degree to which billionaires are rejecting the entirety of the social contract. The problem for them becomes, at some point, that that social contract includes the bits about the people not dragging them from their homes and guillotining them in the public square.
Which is, of course, why controlling the media is existential for them.
Historically, that bet has not paid off in the long run. Ask the Romanovs and Ceaușescus, for example.
@interfluidity I’m merely observing, not advocating, of course.
@curtosis @interfluidity Of course.*
(* I won't tell.)
@curtosis @interfluidity (sorry for the drive by reply, but your comment about billionaires owning media summoned me.)
You're absolutely right, and this is why I've personally put so much energy in to building an alternative and participatory media ecosystem for our little small town and the rest of the world.
They can't own what's not for sale.
I wrote a zine: https://communitymedia.network and run a television station: https://newellijay.tv
@curtosis @interfluidity That's why Luigi Mangione's action, however regrettable it may be, should at least have the result of encourager les autres.
@curtosis How long before the word “guillotine” gets banned on FB?
@curtosis @interfluidity I'm always reminded of the plutocrats Ted talk. The same guy also gave another more recent one as well.
@curtosis @interfluidity this strikes me as something the billionaires would regard in the same way they do the environment, i.e., as a future generation’s problem.
@curtosis @interfluidity My personal favorite of these stories is the one about Gaddafi.
@curtosis @interfluidity No matter how much comfort some people can find in that idea ("karma will find you"!, "sweet schadenfreude!", "poetic justice!"), it's statistically false.
Sure, Romanovs and Louis XVI were executed.
The vast majority of oil barons, railroad tycoons died of old age, and current oligarchs still do. And when they don't, it's often because they crash in their Ferraris or think that diving in a toy submarine is a good idea just because tickets have an outrageous price.
@curtosis @interfluidity Just to make it perfectly clear, I explicitly reject unnecessary violence against criminals -- whatever sort of criminal.
Current legal frameworks have become obsolete by individuals and corporations having more power than states, and must be reformed accordingly.
Violence against the powerful may be an understandable, desperate action by desperate individuals, but it's not a solution.
@mbpaz @curtosis @interfluidity
It's a tricky call, though. Is the violence unnecessary?
@Walrus @mbpaz @curtosis @interfluidity
With people in the Power ladder, the entry-qualifications to take part in any meaningful conversations is the ability to wield the stick.
@mbpaz @curtosis @interfluidity I personally take the Zeroth Law approach to this moral conundrum: Violence should always be avoided. But sometimes it is necessary. The challenge is being clear-headed and intellectually rigorous about that choice. Because once that line is crossed, there's no going back.
@wesdym @mbpaz @interfluidity My point was fundamentally that “we don’t solve problems with violence”* is part of the social contract—arguably the most important part—and “opting out” of the social contract, to the extent that is possible**, is largely based on the delusion that it’s a menu and you can pick which parts you want to opt out of.
* Yes, all the caveats here.
** Billionaires don’t exist without the financial system.
@curtosis Okay, sure, whatever.
A lot of people on this planet don't care about your social contract, and that's a harsh reality you have to deal with.
You get a different answer asking the Thiels, Yarvins or Haldemans. #TechnocracyInc is now a world power (with nukes).
@interfluidity I was vigorously agreeing... I'd still like your definition of 'wokeness' though, since you used it
@noodlemaz i don't have an overarching definition of wokeness. in this context i was using it to refer to the tendency of some activists and fellow travelers to put policing of language and commentary at the center of their practice, shunning and shaming people whose language or opinion are deemed regressive or bad.
i don't by any means think this fully characterizes the broad basket of tendencies (some i very much approve of) that are taken to constitute wokeness.
@interfluidity 'are taken'? By whom? Why is their definition more important than the original (being cgnisant of societal injustice, particularly but not limited to racism)?
And do you feel that in the past you might have used 'social justice warriors' or 'PC police' or similar in its place?
Do any of those have functional definitions? I don't expect answers but if your consideration leads you to 'not really', perhaps it's... Worth more consideration.
@noodlemaz words have many meanings, many connotations and denotations in actual usage. “woke[ness]” is an aggressively politicized term. yes it has its historical initial meaning, and other meanings, and proponents of various meanings are politically opposed to one another, rendering use in any sense inherently controversial, inherently offensive to one community or another. 1/
@noodlemaz but also, perhaps paradoxically, in some contexts the very controversy contributes to the clarity of what one is communicating. to refer, as i did, to “excess” wokeness as censorious invites the kind of controversy reflected in this exchange. i think that’s a feature, not a bug, because it communicates precisely what i am commenting on, a censoriousness both claimed and contested. 2/
@noodlemaz i myself am sympathetic to both the claim and the contestation. i identify more closely, politically and otherwise, with the community that would contest, but i view the claim has having a degree (an often exaggerated degree to be sure) of useful descriptiveness. i do think i’ve considered, no doubt imperfectly, the issues around my word choices. of course one can still take issue with them! /fin
@noodlemaz ( some meditation on this stuff — that one might definitely take issue with of course — here. https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/04/10/systemic-means-its-not-your-fault/index.html )
@interfluidity totally uninformed, but makes me wonder about how things would pan out if legal costs had to always be paid with public money, rather than private. Probably incredibly naive day dreaming, just throwing it out there to be happily ignored or learn something if anyone cares 