Websites need to reserve themselves the ability to moderate content, or white supremacists and Neo-Nazis will take over.

there's a reason social networks like Parlor that are all about "free speech" are hellholes

They'll just go somewhere else. It's not hard to find an unregulated platform. I'm vehemently opposed to extremist ideologies, but this would only drive proponents of them further underground, and validate their conspiracy theories that the deep state or the Jews or whoever they want to blame is out to get them and they need to do something about it(like committing a mass shooting or other act of domestic terror, take your pick).

Free speech also applies to people like you and me who oppose them, if they have a right to spew hateful nonsense, we have a right to call them out for their bulls*** and expose them for the fools they are.

That’s the classical argument, but the last few years (and especially this last one) have pushed me away from that view for the following reasons:

1. Logical, evidence-based, well-reasoned arguments change people’s minds with depressing infrequency. Out of innumerable hours spent debating on “politics,” I literally can’t tell you a single instance where someone said that their mind was changed;

2. The Overton Window is unfortunately a real thing. The more dumb arguments are heard and shared, no matter how boneheaded, the bigger of a following they get and the more credibility they have;

3. Alternative platforms for hateful views exist and probably always will. But I think “quarantining” them to the greatest extent is best. Those looking for them will know where to find them, but casual users of the much larger and more appealing mainstream platforms won’t.

That is ultimately what the right-wing “free speech” war is about: legitimacy and reach. They know they have the Parlers and Gabs and Bitchutes and such, where they’re free to say almost anything they want, but they want to maintain access to the Twitters and Facebooks and YouTubes specifically.

But no private platform has an obligation to air the views of someone they don’t want to. That’s an aspect of free speech, too.

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