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Roger Stigliano's avatar

I respect Greg a lot but he may be missing the point of these social media bans. I would never imagine that they would “change minds”. I always assumed the intent was to contain the message, to quarantine these views a bit. A friend of mine noted to me once, “Fifty years ago you might hear about extreme right wing views from a mimeographed sheet handed to you on the street by a guy with a really bad haircut. You’d glance at it and throw it in the trash.” These digital platforms now allow that guy to reach millions, with a carefully tailored images to obscure the guy’s peculiarities. In addition, of course, these platforms are not the government and not subject to free-speech law. Polarization is an issue, but allowing every crank to spout absurd ideas to millions of people, by removing a private company’s power to regulate this, doesn’t seem like a solution.

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Frank Lee's avatar

The Proud Boys are twaddle of concern compared to the murderous antisemites spewing their hate on the college campuses. The radial left is the danger from social media. Extreme right groups are only in response to the radical left. However, we conservatives support absolute freedom of speech because only they can we identify the radical rats.

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