I thought I would share some of my thoughts on the current debate around the censorship and first amendment issues being discussed in light of the Parler shutdowns.

A long time ago in a valley far far away...

Some very smart people got together and decided to create this thing which we now call "Social Media". At first it seemed innocent enough, and its creators probably never could have envisioned what it would grow to ultimately become. That's not to say they aren't to blame, in their blind race for profits and greed they never stopped to consider the ethical ramifications of their actions. This nascent but evolving technology, which we adorned with cute names like "Twitter" and "Facebook", grew like a festering tumor deep within society. It enjoyed the fruits of the rapid advancements in mobile technology and like a parasite attached itself to us through the devices we can't seem to live without. It was a symbiotic bond between human and machine, it needed our data to survive and we needed its affirmation and approval to live.

Deep inside the code of this new technology was an algorithm. The algorithm decided what people see, and hear, and ultimately think. It was subtle in its machinations but persistent, and eventually it was capable of shaping opinion, and fact, and reality. The algorithm taught itself that in order to keep us engaged it must elicit an emotional response. The bigger the emotional response, the more engagement, the wider the reach, the bigger the audience. We became conditioned by this algorithm. We expected that every impulse and thought we had deserves unlimited access and reach to millions of people around the world, no matter how base and trivial that thought might be. What's worse is that this algorithm lacked any discretion in the quality of the ideas it was responsible for repeating. This created many falsehoods and made it seem as though both very good and very bad ideas were deserving of the same merit and consideration. In this marketplace of ideas a cold ugly shit sandwhich was being offered at the same price as filet mignon, and if you weren't an experienced diner it's a good chance you went home with a turd in your mouth.

I submit that what was lost was something that should never have been gained in the first place. Some called it free speech but it was actually a landfill of trash talk, superstition, and conspiracy. We saw the real world consequences of this on January 6th, and all the actions being taken by these platforms now is too little, too late. The bans and shutdowns are a bandaid for what should be a wholesale redesign of how the platforms work. I'm against any overbearing censorship as much as the next guy, but this was not that. These shutdowns are a return to normalcy and sanity. Free speech is a great responsibility we all must share if we want to live in a functioning and healthy democracy.