In 2016 I pointed out that social media was a frictionless platform for the spread of propaganda. It was no longer necessary to afford a printing press or a broadcast license. Anyone could spread propaganda.

Five years later, celebrity university sociologist celebrity Zeynep Tufekci made the same observation – but then went onto suggest maybe, perhaps, censorship was needed.

HERE’S HOW THIS golden age of speech actually works: In the 21st century, the capacity to spread ideas and reach an audience is no longer limited by access to expensive, centralized broadcasting infrastructure. It’s limited instead by one’s ability to garner and distribute attention. And right now, the flow of the world’s attention is structured, to a vast and overwhelming degree, by just a few digital platforms: Facebook, Google (which owns YouTube), and, to a lesser extent, Twitter.

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Not to put too fine a point on it, but all of this invalidates much of what we think about free speech—conceptually, legally, and ethically.

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Even when the big platforms themselves suspend or boot someone off their networks for violating “community standards”—an act that does look to many people like old-fashioned censorship—it’s not technically an infringement on free speech, even if it is a display of immense platform power.

Source: It’s the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech | WIRED

Tufecki herself spread massive disinformation on face mask usage in early 2020, so much that the CDC admitted it had to mandate masks because her NY Times promoted celebretity status made it too difficult for them to discuss why cloth face masks would not work. She and her partner on masking claimed that Czech and Slovakia had stamped out Covid because of widespread use of homemade cloth masks. As of 20234, Czech has the 10th highest mortality and Slovakia the 11th highest mortality rates due to Covid, in the world. She was wrong and should have recognized that the disease did not arrive in each country simultaneously and spread synchronously with all other countries.

Tufekci spread disinformation.

She advocated that it was time to discuss how to control “free speech” on the Internet.

We can be sure that the technocratic elite like herself would be in charge.

In reality she should apply her own censorship and misinformation rules to herself and vanish from the online world.