> You have to pick between the Nazis or the people they like to harass.
Nice rhetoric, but no you still do not get to censor people.
> The US consumer economy is diverse enough that businesses can no longer focus exclusively on the (shrinking) white audience
On your "woke", "humane", "inclusive spaces", I hope that celebrating the "shrinking" of the black population of any country on Earth would put you in the category of the terrible people... Double standards etc.
That isn't rhetoric. It's an inescapable fact of running a platform. You have to choose. If you choose the maximalist free speech position, you get the Nazis. You lose the speech of the people they harass, because a lot of them will either leave or stay and shut up. So the maximalist no-moderation position also ends up with a lot of speech suppressed. Plus, as a business reality, a platform that is smaller and with much lower ad revenue.
> hope that celebrating the "shrinking"
I'm not celebrating it. Again, it's just a business reality. In the Jim Crow era, businesses could ignore the non-white market, even be hostile to it. See, e.g., the Negro Motorist's Green Book. But most national-scale businesses can no longer do that, because the non-white market is much larger, as is the chunk of the white market that is reluctant to associate with open bigotry. And that part, I'm happy to celebrate.
Twitter has ample restrictions on harassing people. You are talking about censoring views, not harassment/insults. You core argument, that anyone is taking a "maximalist free speech" allowing people to harass others, is a lie.
> Twitter has ample restrictions on harassing people.
Twitter has never had adequate restrictions on harassment. The were approaching it asymptotically for a while, but that's now in retreat.
> You are talking about censoring views, not harassment/insults.
Yes, I am also talking about censoring views. For example, views like, "the [ethnic group] must be exterminated to ensure white survival" do not belong on Twitter. For many reasons including both that they help shift the Overton Window toward genocide [1], and because it's really bad for Twitter as a business to have that shit running rampant.
> You core argument, that anyone is taking a "maximalist free speech" allowing people to harass others, is a lie.
Nope. It's sincerely held, so at the very worse I could be wrong. But I'm not.
Some free-speech absolutists are absolutely pro-harassment. Every banned jackass has a deep believe that their free speech trumps absolutely everything else.
A good chunk of the rest are just indifferent to harassment, generally because they're comfortable white men who do not normally experience harassment as a means of social control. Many in this group may be inclined to use it themselves when one of the lesser orders is out of line, but they probably wouldn't recognize it as harassment when they do it. See e.g., Manne's "Down Girl" for more.
And the remainder just haven't thought it through. They fail to see it as balanced with other rights, like freedom of association or freedom from harm. Typically, this is the adolescent (or frozen adolescent) view, where they don't have a theory of rights much beyond "YOU'RE NOT MY DAD YOU CAN'T MAKE ME". Which is, y'know, a start on an ethical understanding, but they haven't yet gotten to things like Rawls's Veil.
Regardless, anybody who takes a maximalist position on free speech, by which I mean an expressed or implied view that it trumps all other rights, is in effect pro harassment. Because any sort of platform that tries to follow it, as Twitter did in its early years, will be absolutely full of it.
An insane slippery slope, from "Non-inclusive Language" straight to genocide! This is laughable...
> they're comfortable white men
What a weird thing to say. You're not like the other comfortable white men, that's what you mean right?
> Typically, this is the adolescent (or frozen adolescent) view, where they don't have a theory of rights much beyond "YOU'RE NOT MY DAD YOU CAN'T MAKE ME".
Belittling people does not make you superior. It makes you sound full of fear and resentment, which by the way is still not justification for pro-censorship positions.
> Regardless, anybody who takes a maximalist position on free speech, by which I mean an expressed or implied view that it trumps all other rights, is in effect pro harassment.
Yes, and anyone who is pro-cars, is in effect pro-car accidents!
> Nice example of speech that is currently not allowed on Twitter.
It is an example of speech that free-speech absolutism would permit. And example of the sort of view that I would not permit on a platform I am running. And yes, Twitter and most platforms ban it for good reason.
> An insane slippery slope, from "Non-inclusive Language" straight to genocide! This is laughable...
A great example of the way free-speech absolutists don't engage with the consequences of their views. Which is why I'm done here.
> And yes, Twitter and most platforms ban it for good reason.
Thanks for pointing out that you are wrong in pretending that Twitter is governed by this "free-speech absolutism" strawman.
> A great example of the way free-speech absolutists don't engage with the consequences of their views.
Calling normal people nazis doesn't mean normal people are nazis, it just means that you have a serious problem. It might also indicate, depending on how much control you want to exert on said normal people, that you are a totalitarian.
> Which is why I'm done here.
Cool! This was always allowed. At least, on platforms with freedom of expression.
Nice rhetoric, but no you still do not get to censor people.
> The US consumer economy is diverse enough that businesses can no longer focus exclusively on the (shrinking) white audience
On your "woke", "humane", "inclusive spaces", I hope that celebrating the "shrinking" of the black population of any country on Earth would put you in the category of the terrible people... Double standards etc.