1. As Zuckerberg abandons fact checking in the name of “free speech”, let’s take a moment to examine this concept. 🧵 2. While we all claim to favour free speech, there’s currently a major transatlantic difference in perceptions. In the US, it's often treated as an absolute value, overriding all others. In the UK and Europe, it is generally recognised as one among many essential values, which sometimes conflict. 3. So, for example, we tend to recognise that hate speech leads to acts of hate. Your freedom to utter racial abuse erodes other people’s freedom from persecution. I believe that elevating one value at the expense of others can lead to illiberalism and social harm. 4. Of course, we can also see profound hypocrisy at work. Some of the loudest advocates of free speech are among the first to attack it when it suits. Elon Musk, self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist”, is a prolific censor, using lawsuits, suspensions and algorithms to shut down competing voices. 5. Zuckerberg's new assault on fact-checking and moderation is not a boost to free speech but an attack on it. The resultant flood of lies and abuse will, as on X, help make his platforms unbearable for many, shutting down reasoned argument and thoughtful discussion, driving people away. 6. But here’s where it gets interesting. Just 3 generations ago, during the House Un-American Activities “investigations”, support for free speech was equated with Communism. The theme was taken up by the media, the FBI and other Establishment pillars. If you believed in free speech, you were a Red. 7. In other words, the *threat* of free speech was used to try to shut anyone to the left of Vlad the Impaler out of public life. Today the *promise* of free speech is being used, by a similar suite of characters, to try to shut anyone to the left of Vlad the Impaler out of public life. 8. What this shows is that any value, however beneficial, can be picked up and weaponised against us by capital and its concierges, in the most cynical fashion. Never take their claims at face value. Never accept their premises. Never let them define the agenda. The thread on one page: skywriter.blue
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