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A young friend of mine, a newly minted lawyer, earlier this evening lamented how he has had to self-censor. He told a morbidly amusing story about his encounter with former bosses at a state agency over social media posts of his that made unnamed colleagues feel "unsafe."
“Unsafe”? Mere words? Man, we’ve come a long way. (I know well how lacerating words can be. But, let’s face it, that isn’t what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about opinions that make other people feel uncomfortable. “Uncomfortable” is miles away from “unsafe.”)
I commiserated. I told him that if I were his age, I would be inclined to be careful, too. No point in self-immolating over a bad joke or even a cutting observation—especially on Twitter, where it’s not like I’m even getting paid for it.
(Though Lord knows I’ve squandered a lot of really good material on this platform—or, should I say, publisher.) (I’m not counting this as THAT, however.)
But people have their opinions and they want to share them. Not just their opinions. Their lives and their secrets. Anyone remember the great Detective Frank Pembleton from “Homicide: Life on the Street”? People want to CONFESS.
Resist the temptation to confess on social media. You’re free to think anything you like. But you are not as free as you think to confess to the world. (Confession is good for the soul, but the public is not your priest. And absolution is not as easy as you might think.)
My guess is that, no matter the outcome of the election, this place and Facebook (and maybe places like Instagram) will become increasingly inhospitable to people whose views depart from the progressive orthodoxy. So be it.
I think for those of us who are in the business of writing, the ideal would be to delete these accounts. Or most of them. Certainly, it’s a good idea to ditch Twitter. I have no idea how most of you people get your work done, being here what looks like all the damn time.
Mainly, though, I think it’s a good idea to get out ahead of the blast. The shockwave is usually what kills you.
Twitter and Facebook continue to insist they are neutral platforms when they are, in fact, publishers. They make editorial decisions all the time. They do so, in part, in the name of safety. That’s entirely euphemistic. Here is another way to think about it . . .
Every newspaper, from college to small town to big metro, pretends it is open to a wide range of viewpoints from its readers. That is true up to a point. But every editor has to draw a line. Anyone who has ever worked on an editorial page knows about the crazies.
I’ve worked for newspapers professionally off and on for more than 25 years. But I saw this even in college. People are nuts. They write nutty stuff. They think they have insights that nobody else has every seen. That’s true—because they are obviously insane.
So editors get to make choices. “Well, we obviously don’t have enough space . . .” Fact check: True. But it’s also the case, generally unspoken, sometimes not, that you just weed out the crazy. That’s just what you do.
Social media is different. No space constraints. But here’s the other thing about editors. We obviously have our biases. I sure do. I know what I want to publish and I know what I don’t want to publish. Every editor does. I’ve been a paid moderator, too. Same story.
Nevertheless, social media isn’t—wasn’t—supposed to be like that. Not exactly. Maybe the founders of Facebook and Twitter thought mistakenly that people would engage in civil discourse befitting a democratic republic. Ha ha ha.
Maybe they thought people would be perfectly progressive in their opinions. If so, they were far gone in utopian speculation.
The reality is, a lot of people think and say a lot of crazy stuff. Silly stuff. Wrong-headed stuff. Repugnant stuff. Vile stuff. Untrue stuff. Which, if you are a publisher, you can readily filter out. That’s your business. But if you are a “neutral platform” . . .
. . . you have a big problem. The behaviors of Facebook and Twitter in the lead-up to the 2020 election is that of publishers, not platforms. This isn’t about “safety.” They have said one thing and done another, in contravention of the law. Cook ‘em and eat ‘em. Metaphorically.
