New Defaults
I just do not understand how somebody like Ben Thompson, clearly at ease with the internet age, can continue to place so much emphasis on what a handful of large corporate information outlets do or do not do.>the default is to push for censorship, if not by the government — thanks to that pesky First Amendment — then instead by private corporations.It's the goddam internet. You don't have to write on FB. You don't have to write on Twitter (and please don't try to actually write on Twitter). Dozens of companies will offer you essentially one-click wordpress installations for you, with 10 more clicks to customize it to match your aesthetic inclinations. Write your stuff there .... oh wait, just like Stratechery does.Nobody is coming for your blog. And, in the foreseeable future, nobody will come for your blog. You can write whatever you want. Getting people to read it might be slightly harder than if you use some corporatist social media platform, but arguing along those lines merely cements those platforms in their pseudo-monopolist places, which is hardly desirable for all manner of reasons.Is it a good thing that FB/Twitter et al. can make wrong-headed decisions about the content they allow on their platforms? It's not great. But compared to the information overload issues mentioned here by other commenters, it's not obviously bad either. And it does nothing to reduce your freedom of speech.Ben Thompson could post articles on Stratechery that make non-libellous false claims about anything he wants, and nobody will stop him. He could this every day for the rest of his life and nobody will stop him. He doesn't like the monopolistic aspects of current social media giants, but continues to insist that they are so important that any "censorship" on these platforms is a significant social issue. I find this contradictory, and naive, and in almost every sense, simply wrong.