What do You do About a Problem Like Social Media?

Freddie deBoer laments that social media has turned everyone into cops:

“Endless surveillance. Everybody is to be judged. Everyone is under suspicion. Everything you say is to be scoured, picked over, analyzed for any possible offense. Everyone’s a detective in the Division of Problematics, and they walk the beat 24/7. You search and search for someone Bad doing Bad Things, finding ways to indict writers and artists and ordinary people for something, anything.”

While it’s easy to see the problem, it’s hard to think of a way to “draw people away from the crack of social media” (Alan Jacob’s words). Because we are treading on very tricky ground here, namely the freedom of speech. Don’t we already see contradictory stances like this one described by Scott Alexander:

“It’s okay for me to say that the President sucks, but not okay for you to say that I suck for saying that.”

Besides, aren’t there scenarios where “out’ing” a person for their views can be a good thing, muses Alexander:

“Suppose Alice has the opinion “hand hygiene doesn’t matter”… it’s pro-social to tell other people not to eat at her restaurant either, and not to hire her as a nurse – and if she’s already a nurse, maybe to get her fired.”

Consider Alexander’s thought experiment on how free speech can escalate by drawing more and more people into the “conversation”:

“Alice writes a blog post excoriating Bob’s opinion on tax reforming, calling him a “total idiot” who “should be laughed out of the room”. Bob feels so offended that he tries to turn everyone against Alice, pointing out every bad thing she’s ever done to anyone who will listen. Carol considers this a “sexist harassment campaign” and sends a dossier of all of Bob’s messages to his boss, trying to get him fired. Dan decides this proves Carol is anti-free speech, and tells the listeners of his radio show to “give Carol a piece of their mind”, leading to her getting hundreds of harassing and threatening email messages. Eric snitches on Dan to the police. How many of these people are in the wrong?”

All of which is why I feel that whatever the flaws with social media, turning it off shouldn’t be an option, even if that was possible (which it isn’t). Because, as Alexander put it so well:

“Let’s face it; a lot of speech is criticism, sometimes really harsh criticism, and the line between “criticism”, “insult”, and “harassment” is vague and debatable (see eg all of Twitter). Everyone has a different set of speech acts they consider beyond the pale, with no real way of sorting it out.”