Monday, February 20, 2017

Shopify, brietbart, bumbling thoughts on free speech

I have some thoughts, and although they are not nearly as well thought out as Tobi's, here they are any way.

So while I’m still disappointed that @shopify won’t kick breitbart off their platform, I admire them for sticking with their principles of free speech. https://medium.com/@tobi/in-support-of-free-speech-275d62670203#.igl8oeb2a

. @tobi and @shopify are probably correct. I want them to kick breitbart in the shins, but that's more emotional than well thought out. 

Also, I really like @denvan's suggestion for Shopify to donate proceeds from breitbart's store to causes antithetical to what breitbart stands for. Make them mad enough to quit hopefully.

That being said, I do have uneasiness about it: keeping breitbart because of freespeech makes me uneasy not just from the way they use free speech to spread lies and hate and to actively harm people, instead of using it to debate differences of opinion. 

I'm uneasy Not just because of that, but also because of the way they use liberal democracy's free speech to constantly lie and in so doing destroy people's belief in truth, thereby destroying liberal democracy itself. That's straight from the authoritarian/Nazi playbook. 

Others have put that into words much more eloquently than me. Sorry for the bumbling. So yes, free speech is super important, but I feel like there's a limit. Death threats are an obvious example of a limit, but harmful propaganda is on the spectrum there too, and maybe it shouldn't be given a platform. If breitbart is far enough over on that spectrum to cut them off, I'm not sure. 

Another analogy: a restaurant should be required to serve everyone regardless of race or religion or sexual orientation, but they should also be allowed to ban someone who yells at, intimidates, or threatens the other customers.

Addendum: if Milo is still an editor and he's openly promoting pedophilia, is not that a good enough excuse to drop breitbart? 

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