🍑 Free Peach
Forcing me to eat your rotten fruit is not your first amendment right.
I am a Free Peach Absolutist.
Stay with me… it’s important.
Nobody would argue with your right to plant a tree, right? Anyone should be allowed to gather some earth, a pot, some seeds … and grow themselves a peach tree.
And when your tree grows and produces ripe, juicy peaches then I think we’d all agree that no-one should stop you eating them, right? In fact, I would go further and say — you should be allowed to give your peaches to anyone you like. That is your right.
So yes, I believe in Free Peach.
I also believe that if you would like to offer your peaches to others, you should be able to do that too. In likelihood you would probably find a grocer to take on your stock of peaches and give or sell them to others. That’s the beauty of a free society.
So okay: if I believe in Free Peach as a principle then it’s fair to say that I also believe in your right to sell or distribute your peaches as the market will bear. Fair enough.
Rotten Peaches
But what happens when your peaches are rotten … what happens if they ferment?
Are you still okay to sell them on the open market? Peach wine is alcoholic … and that should be regulated, yes? It’s ABV should be known and labelled, it should be manufactured hygienically, it shouldn’t be marketed to minors.
I’m not anti-peach-wine, I’m not anti-alcohol. You should be free to drink and I should be free to sell you my carefully rotted peaches.
But there are standards.
Alcohol is dangerously addictive and acutely lethal if it’s not manufactured properly. In the west it is distributed only under license, it’s illegal to distribute it to under-18s (in America, under 21s!?).
We take rotten peaches seriously. We are still free to make homemade hooch and we’re all free to drink. But we regulate distribution. It matters.
Bootleggers
By now I know you know what I’m getting at here. The issue is not your right to grow, sell or buy peaches — rotten or not — no-one is taking that away.
The issue is about the total lack of regulation around the artificially-monetised distribution of free, dangerous peach wine to minors and peach-wine addicts.
Free speech is just the same.
For all Musk and Zuckerberg’s hype of being free speech absolutists, they’re really showing themselves to be grotty backroom bootleggers of rotten, unregulated, harmful and often downright dangerous rotten speech.
Why?
For Zuckerberg, because it’s politically expedient to bow to the MAGA call for “masculine energy”. As I wrote earlier in the week, he is just obeying in advance.
For Musk, it’s all part of a broader strategy to wrest control of the American state and further his commercial and ideological interests.
Neither of them give a flying fuck about what you say, think or believe. They’re not protecting your rights. They are protecting their own interest and literally nothing else.
Anarchy branded as “Freedom”
The bottom line is this: the concept of “Free Speech” that Musk and Zuckerberg are now selling is snake-oil.
You were always free to say whatever you like … they don’t control speech, they control reach … and those are very, very different things. You can say what you like with or without their help and you always could.
The question is whether or not you have a right to have your hate-speech amplified by an algorithm that is singularly interested in selling your attention to advertisers. They are not interested in what you say, nor are they offering you freedom to say what you like.
They are only interested in deregulation to improve the potency of what they can sell.
They are only working to exploit your propensity to react to hatred.
And at what cost? Probably at the cost of a free and fair society, ironically.
With no regulation of the kind of speech that is artificially amplified across these vast networks we are putting free society at massive risk.
Content that encourages suicide or toxic masculinity or violence against those of a different race or gender or political leaning is all fair game according to Zuckerberg.
Consequences be dammed…
We can’t do much to fix all of this, of course. But you can stop supporting hatred. For fuck’s sake please stop using Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Free peach. Love it!
Also clever that you explored the difference between free speech and free reach.
I might argue that now political influence is much more important value to Musk than advertising. (He hardly wooed his advertisers when he acquired Twitter/X).
Trump’s tech bros’ advocacy for ‘free speech’ on the grounds that the traditional media system is suppressing ‘the truth’ is of course laughable, public awareness of the truth not generally being of the remotest interest to them.
The speech you would ban is subjective and gives us an easy and obvious place to start in fighting back against this censorship movement you are currently campaigning for, it is just so damaging for our society.
TOXIC masculinity, when was this phrase first used, who was it used by and for what purpose? Is there actually a non toxic masculinity in the minds of the people who say toxic masculinity?
Let’s say that Elon accusing Jess Philip’s of being a rape apologist is an obvious example and we ban it. Do we also ban Jess Phillips from accusing George Galloway of the same in 2015 on the same platform? Is it ok to say the words if you’re of the correct sex? Is Phillips guilty of inciting the verbal and physical attacks Galloway suffered around that time?
You defined toxic masculinity in a way that EVERYONE agreed with of course. It stands to reason that you now should now define and ban toxic femininity, while you’re at it you should ban narcissistic behaviour, that’s toxic, oh and food recipes that aren’t healthy that’s literally toxic.
These are old and obvious arguments (shame we have to keep making them really) but the evidence around us of the slippery slope is everywhere and you’d have be blind to ignore it. To call for mechanisms to be in place for states to have such control over individual expression is self harm.
Do you want Reform to have the levers to control public discourse around race after the next election? Then don’t create them.
Let’s hope that Trump doesn’t pressure the American social media, fund ngos and “rights” groups, charities or just demand censorship directly in emails from the white house the way the Biden administration did. You better really pray that he doesn’t bring in his very own version of speech laws like we have in the uk. Say goodbye to your opinion for sure if Toxic Masculinity definitions were written or amended by people who think your opinions better reflect the words. I’m not sure I’d totally disagree with them.
There is a much more important group with toxic ideologies that we need to ponder. They fight to preserve the moral bounds of society and are oblivious to the consequences of censorship which are literally the studied and stated path to the worst societies humans suffer under. You deny reality and have to create new terms that have undefinable meanings. It’s interesting to see the new “absolutist” moniker for people who are anti censorship. It’s reminiscent of the recent “denier” moniker that folks added to global warming sceptics it’s great propaganda repetition though, top marks. You should try to go professional.
We have not found out yet in Britain exactly how our state and wealthy elites use (you would say corrupt instead of use) our speech regulations to their advantage to control the narrative and keep their statuses BECAUSE we have a small, scared shitless of the consequences, independent Media and a highly “regulated” Broadcast and now, almost unbelievably in a free society, print media also.
It was hard fought to get the establishment control out of the uk for example the blasphemy laws that allowed the church hideous undemocratic power (Ireland also of course). We are a whisker away from Blasphemy’s new incarnations in the UK again and the Scott’s have already crossed over that bridge. This will not create the haven of religious tolerance that you might believe.
Free speech is bad, people can be whatever they want, they can choose to openly hold toxic “false beliefs” but it shouldn’t be regulated, your authoritarian opinions turned into law have destroyed all trust and created a paranoid
The internet is printing the court transcripts that our media chose not to, believably because they feared being incendiary, it’s always been in the broadcast regulations that they will get in a lot of trouble for that. I bet it’s no 1 in the new print media ones. The stifling heat of regulation and law around race and fear of radical Islam leads to the continued rape of thousands of children. Not in all cases, but in thousands. Apparently we are again to be told we are only allowed to have the conversation if we don’t use hurty words. Well it’s happening and not pretty but it is unfortunate for the girls we couldn’t have it at the time because it has facilitated action already that other campaigns had failed to produce the pressure for and if it keeps up we might even see some accountability for the first time from anyone in authority. Censorship was a root cause in these cases, further censorship will likely further facilitate the coverup and the continuation again.
Whether an authoritarian establishment stooge or a useful idiot (get the reference) your dangerous words and malinformation can and may be used by an authoritarian state to justify the further removal of power from its population to organise and express opinion against it and that sir is why your words are far more dangerous than trolls on the internet.
I still think you should have the right to express them even though I’m pretty sure that their propagation and acceptance if by the majority or their misuse by a powerful minority (as in now maybe) will be the end of our dream of living in a liberal democracy.