We Need an Open Digital Commons
January 13th, 2021Via: Reason:
The takeaway from the great deplatforming of 2021 is that we need an open digital commons more than ever, a place where individuals maintain ownership of their own identities and where speech is highly resistant to political pressure.
Decentralized networks are vital to protecting open discourse not only from Twitter, Facebook, and Google, but from Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas), Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), President-elect Joe Biden, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who have the real power to stomp on the free speech rights of American citizens.
It’s easy to forget that Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg embraced the concept of a neutral “public square” not long ago. Zuckerberg told Congress in July 2020, “We do not want to become the arbiters of truth.”
But the shift from digital commons to an actively curated news feed was underway long before the election. In October 2020, Facebook suppressed and Twitter blocked the sharing of a New York Post story claiming that Biden met with an executive at a Ukrainian gas company where his son held a board seat.
Twitter also blocked the New York Post from using its account for more than two weeks.
While the principle of a “free” digital commons sounds marvelous when you say it out loud, in practice such a thing is somewhere between impractical and ludicrous.
So long as infrastructure is functionally necessary (and when isn’t it, really), someone will have payed to build and maintain it, and capital has a long history of exerting a controlling influence over everything it touches, overt and/or covert.
Meanwhile, speech only remains “free” so long as the speaker and their ideas are marginally effective. Gain enough traction and/or speak the right truth to the wrong power and observe how quickly life becomes more challenging.
If history is any indication, economically speaking to begin. Press your luck and watch how fast the external friction shifts from fiscal pressure to more (ahem) life-threatening consequences.
Free speech, like freedom, isn’t free, as the pithy little saying goes. Don’t believe any of this? Just ask your favorite (probably incarcerated, maybe dead) whistleblower.
Of course, language and discourse in the media are already so perverted (and subverted) that the vast majority would willingly suck down (untested) grape Kool-Aid because it’s framed as the “solution” for something. Until it isn’t, probably by next week.
To my mind, these sorts of “think pieces” are laughable, all earnest language and pointy quotes and basically a lot of hot air for the like-minded to get excited about — until the next limited hangout lands in their lap. Probably next week.
Like it or not, the concept of personal “freedom” as it was spoon-fed to us all via state-mandated education has always been a convenient illusion, much like the “American Dream”.
Decades worth of specious narratives are all twining together into a fresh new toxic melange that would *almost* be shocking — if I hadn’t been predicting something similar for thirty years.
Never has it sucked MORE to have been right.
Run for the hills, folks. History doesn’t have a backspace key, yet somehow our current trajectory appears to be jammed in reverse and accelerating at an alarming rate — and straight at a proverbial wall. Berlin, Jerusalem, Mexico; take your pick.
If you’ve been looking forward to the New World Order, congrats. If not, here’s hoping you’ve already put some additional distance between yourself and the rising tide.