Not sure about this - I’m not saying all on the left are angels but the way he dismisses harassment and abuse of minorities AND implying that it’s some sort of conspiracy with Facebook and Twitter to look like a bigger problem than it is in order to erase right wing people from the internet, makes me feel like his Utopian vision for the digital future doesn’t include people of my ilk.
Quote below: it's well long
Many seem to have bought it hook, line, and sinker that there is something new and unusually nefarious about how the right treats the left, or minorities and women. Never mind that the left slags the right arguably much worse than vice-versa, and they have the weight of giant corporations and governments on their side. It seems to me that if you did buy this, then you might well wonder if decentralization is the right way forward. After all, it is the centralization of power in the hands of giant (left-leaning) corporations that makes it possible to rein in those evil bigoted conservatives. Am I wrong?
It’s strange to me that nobody talked about how the right was abusing the left (or the disadvantaged, etc.) in the 2000s when the Blogosphere was much more active, or when people abused each other all the time on Usenet and mailing lists; the dynamics were much the same back then. No, the notion that there is something new and nefarious and disproportionately weighted on the right seems to be what the Powers That Be (especially orgs devoted to manipulating the media, such as Media Matters and assorted thinktanks) have decided we must all now believe.
And I think the reason they have decided we must all now believe that, is that this gets people like you thinking about how we can censor ever-larger swathes of undesirable political speech (because it’s harmful of course! It’s violent !) while still somehow persuading ourselves that we really do still respect political free speech. This is politically effective, as the left-wing pundits, politicians, and “media analysts” know—they’re salivating at the prospect of silencing their opponents— precisely because the power is now so centralized and concentrated in the hands of giant left-leaning corporations that can “moderate” (nah, it’s not censorship because corporations can’t censor, it’s just moderation!) their opponents into well-deserved oblivion.
I mean, his quote “nobody talked about how the right was abusing the left (or the disadvantaged, etc.) in the 2000s” is patently not true, at least not in the circles I was running in. But then maybe that’s the point - we were all a bit more segregated.
The stuff about personal data, ability for it to be hacked, forced into using products etc I completely agree with, it’s just this part that doesn’t sit well with me.
