IMO 2020 wasn’t a turning point, and Facebook is not special. The events that happend lately have been a predictable development in a steadily escalating trend toward censorship. I’ll note that these censorship policies are widespread across every social media platform, and infact extend well beyond social media and apply to the entire infrastructure stack. Everything from DDoS protection services, to cloud service providers, to payment processors have all been getting more bold over the course of several years about pulling plugs on people saying the wrong things or providing platforms for others to say the wrong things. Here’s how I think it went down:
1.From 2010-2020 Social media and other SV companies gained a tremendous amount of power by gaining control over social media networks. 2. By virtue of all being near each other, they formed a political monoculture/ingroup. 3. They found themselves capable of deplatforming anyone they disagreed with. 4. They started banning people, starting with the most deplorable and the outgroup and working their way up from there. This seems to have become especially noticeable sometime around 2015. 5. First the deplorables complained about this by making appeals to free speech, which made free speech low status. 5. Then the outgroup complained about this and made appeals to free speech, which made supporting free speech an outgroup identifier. 7. Everyone falls in line because otherwise they might get unpersoned if they’re mistaken as a member of the outgroup or the deplorables by defending free speech. 8. The overton window of acceptable speech continues to shrink as opinions on the ever changing fringe continue to get silenced in a process that’s not too different from the evaporative cooling of group beliefs.
I expect that the trend towards more censorship will continue unabated, especially on public social media platforms.
IMO 2020 wasn’t a turning point, and Facebook is not special. The events that happend lately have been a predictable development in a steadily escalating trend toward censorship. I’ll note that these censorship policies are widespread across every social media platform, and infact extend well beyond social media and apply to the entire infrastructure stack. Everything from DDoS protection services, to cloud service providers, to payment processors have all been getting more bold over the course of several years about pulling plugs on people saying the wrong things or providing platforms for others to say the wrong things. Here’s how I think it went down:
1.From 2010-2020 Social media and other SV companies gained a tremendous amount of power by gaining control over social media networks.
2. By virtue of all being near each other, they formed a political monoculture/ingroup.
3. They found themselves capable of deplatforming anyone they disagreed with.
4. They started banning people, starting with the most deplorable and the outgroup and working their way up from there. This seems to have become especially noticeable sometime around 2015.
5. First the deplorables complained about this by making appeals to free speech, which made free speech low status.
5. Then the outgroup complained about this and made appeals to free speech, which made supporting free speech an outgroup identifier.
7. Everyone falls in line because otherwise they might get unpersoned if they’re mistaken as a member of the outgroup or the deplorables by defending free speech.
8. The overton window of acceptable speech continues to shrink as opinions on the ever changing fringe continue to get silenced in a process that’s not too different from the evaporative cooling of group beliefs.
I expect that the trend towards more censorship will continue unabated, especially on public social media platforms.