The Internet and Free Speech

In my webcomic post, I mentioned that the webcomic world has somewhat fulfilled the promise of the internet. People have been given voices and those voices have found an audience. However, I also mention that quite a lot of the internet has not really met this goal.

In specific, I'm gonna talk about (*siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh*) Reddit. The community and its admins claim to uphold a strong ideal of free speech ont he internet. They are often the first and most vocal opponents of stuff like CISPA or SOPA, etc. They try so so very hard to defend their creepy sections like /r/jailbait and /r/creepshots under the banner of free speech.

The core problem is: Reddit doesn't have free speech by its very design. It has democratized speech. That's not free. That's called tyranny of the majority. There's a firm reason why the first amendment to the Constitution was about free speech and gives absolutely no limitations to it. There is no clause stating that you cannot be heard if the majority disagrees with you. The writers of the US Constitution understood that even in a democracy, democratized speech isn't good enough. It's still a limitation and one that should not be allowed.

Now, I'm not saying there's absolutely no good to Reddit's system. If it really existed such that straight up lies were consistently ignored, buried, and destroyed, that sounds amazing. A world where people only have to encounter things that are true? Magical. But that's not what happens. People vote based on their opinion. So the net effect is things that are true can end up buried and falsehoods end up voted higher than them. I saw an incident this last week where a dude went on a rant about how people want to bury history because they don't agree with it, citing that of course Jews have always be associated with money and profit, look the word jewel comes from Jew. Got 30 upvotes.

Yeah, every bit of it was completely wrong and utter nonsense. The root of jewel comes from the same root as joy. But enough people saw it and said "Yeah, that sounds about right." So misinformation rises to the top because of opinions.

Meanwhile, just today, someone made the statement that "Real woman have vaginas." Subsequent posts responding that "Uh, what about trans women?" not even attacking this guy, just politely pointing out that that's not a cool thing to say? Ended up about -10. Bury what you disagree with so you don't have to deal with it. That's the philosophy of democratized speech. That's the philosophy of Reddit.

These are the ideals of the internet at large. The gatekeepers promoting free speech, as long as it agrees with what the majority want to see.