blog: twitter free speech zone

Signed-off-by: Xe Iaso <me@christine.website>

2 files changed, 164 insertions, 3 deletions

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+---
+title: "You don't want Twitter to be a free speech zone"
+date: 2022-10-24
+tags:
+ - twitter
+ - elon
+ - mastodon
+ - fediverse
+ - noxp
+---
+
+<xeblog-hero ai="Waifu Diffusion v1.3" file="fire-in-the-starbucks" prompt="starbucks, coffee shop, lo-fi hip hop, cozy, on fire, fire, burning, fire everywhere, absurd res"></xeblog-hero>
+
+Every so often I get another update about the Elon Musk buying Twitter saga and
+every so often I get this unspecified feeling of dread for the future where that
+purchase goes through. Among the things that I've seen, the biggest thing that
+worries me is the idea that Elon Musk wants to turn Twitter into a "free speech
+zone". In terms of red flags being raised, this should be the biggest, reddest
+flag ever raised in the history of social media.
+
+If this happens and Twitter is made into a "free speech zone", I am going to
+drastically lessen my use of it in favor of more ethical social media protocols
+like [the Fediverse](https://fediverse.party/). I really hope this is an "if"
+problem and not a "when" problem, but I'm getting the feeling that it's a "when"
+problem. You can follow me on Mastodon or another ActivityPub server (such as
+Pleroma or Pixelfed) at [@cadey@pony.social](https://pony.social/@cadey). If
+Twitter really does fall, you probably should [get on Mastodon
+too](https://instances.social/list).
+
+## Why "free speech zones" are bad
+
+If you have also been raised in the USA, you may wonder why something being a
+"free speech zone" is bad at all. One of the prevailing myths in American
+culture is that the US is exceptional because of government freedoms like the
+freedom of speech. Over time some people have made drastic misunderstandings of
+this part of the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution:
+
+> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
+> prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
+> of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
+> petition the government for a redress of grievances.
+
+<xeblog-conv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">This should not be shocking, but I am
+not a lawyer. This is my own understanding based on lived experience being one
+of the few people that actually paid attention to my US government
+class.</xeblog-conv>
+
+This says that _Congress_ (the legislative branch of the US government) cannot
+place limits on the freedom of speech. Somehow this has been construed to mean
+that _Twitter_, _Facebook_, _YouTube_, and _other private companies_ cannot
+place limits on what can be said on their platforms. The reasons for why they do
+this have some intriguing misunderstandings of the concept of the "public
+square" (not a legal concept as far as I understand) and largely boil down to
+circular logic. If you stand on top of a cardboard box in a public square to
+speak something objectionable, people can tell you to shut up if you are making
+a disturbance. The police can force you to stop under threat of violence
+(financial or physical) if they determine you are making a disturbance.
+
+A "free speech zone" would not be able to make someone shut up. This is how you
+create behaviour that threatens people like me. This isn't something I bring up
+on my blog much (I'd much rather you judge me based on the things I create
+rather than something about me I didn't ask for), but I am a nonbinary
+transgender person. For choosing to self-actualize and live as my true self, I
+get bullied and harassed (amusingly enough, I get both the level of shit that
+men are given and the level of shit that women are given). Here is a recent
+example:
+
+> Subject: you are annoying
+> 
+> And unloveable
+> 
+> You can never escape your real identity with gay cartoons
+
+<xeblog-conv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">Amusingly enough this person followed up
+to this email with "Just to be clear that wasn't transphobic (I am enby) I just
+think you know you're annoying and unfunny shark cartoons won't help", as if
+internalized transphobia is not a thing that exists. Internalized transphobia is
+a bitch and a half to deal with, but I've found it worth my time to fully
+dissect those feelings and then dismiss them properly.</xeblog-conv>
+
+It really doesn't help that most of the examples of "free speech zones" are
+websites where people just want to spam the n-word without a moderator stopping
+them. When I moderated IRC servers sometimes people would just have this rabid
+affinity for spamming the n-word and when asked to stop they would get very
+angry because I was impinging on their "right to free speech". 
+
+There are also politicians in my country of citizenship that want to make [my
+existence anywhere near children a sex offense at the federal
+level](https://mikejohnson.house.gov/uploadedfiles/johnla_083_xml.pdf).
+
+If things are this bad _with_ moderation in the picture, imagine how bad things
+will be when moderation is _out of_ the picture. That is the true horror of
+"free speech zones". They do not have rules. They do not have limits. They will
+self-select for the worst of the worst and that's how you get sites that make
+things like 4chan look like a civilized discussion room.
+
+This is how you scare people like me away from the public sphere entirely. If
+you support "free speech zones", you cannot then go around and say that you
+support the LGBTQ+ community. Those are diametrically opposed statements. I
+should not have to be brave. I should be able to be safe. If you are a _true_
+supporter of free speech, you should be working to help change things such that
+both "free speech zones" and radical self-censorship are not needed.
+
+<xeblog-conv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">God the comments on this one are going
+to be horrible.</xeblog-conv>
+
+---
+
+Now in this article is where my writing classes tell me I should add some sort
+of conclusion, resolution, or other kind of "wrapping it up" sentiment to the
+article. This usually involves making your closing arguments in some kind of
+conclusion and suggesting a remediation or an alternate path that people could
+take to avoid the core problem of "free speech zones" entirely. Maybe actually
+moderating things properly would help, but then you have [the problem where the
+people doing content moderation have horrible mental health
+issues](https://www.theverge.com/interface/2020/5/13/21255994/facebook-content-moderator-lawsuit-settlement-mental-health-issues)
+as a result of doing the moderation. So that may not be viable, meaning that I
+don't really have any good solutions to propose.
+
+At least the status quo is somewhat tenable, if not slightly shitty for people
+like me (right-wing hate against trans people is allowed to stay up on twitter
+but if you're trans and you reply to any of that hate with a "hey can you please
+not do this", you're likely to get ~~banned~~ suspended from twitter
+indefinitely when people mass-report you for trying to be reasonable).
+
+Maybe Twitter is too big to moderate effectively and something more
+decentralized with human moderators you can actually know as people (like you can
+with Mastodon) is better. I'm good friends with the person that moderates the
+Mastodon server I use and he lets me get away with crazy things like operating a
+Waifu Diffusion image generation bot on that Mastodon server. Maybe that won't
+scale either because of [the same burnout
+issues](https://ashfurrow.com/blog/mastodon-technology-shutdown/). I don't know.
+I certainly know that basing it all on something like an immutable blockchain is
+about the worst decision we can make though.
+
+I don't have a good conclusion here. I don't have a good suggestion for what
+people should do about this situation. I am wholly powerless in the equation
+besides taking my ball and going home. I'd really hate to have to do that with
+Twitter, but I'm willing to do it if I have to. It really sucks that my job
+involves me using Twitter.
+
+I may just pivot a lot of my DevRel stuff over to
+[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/xe-iaso-87a883254/), but I really hate
+that so much of the industry is forced to use LinkedIn because so much of the
+industry uses LinkedIn and then you get isolated from connections without it.
diff --git a/templates/contact.rs.html b/templates/contact.rs.html
index 8ed0022..05191f2 100644
--- a/templates/contact.rs.html
+++ b/templates/contact.rs.html
@@ -15,10 +15,10 @@
       <li><a href="https://github.com/Xe">Github</a></li>
       <li><a href="https://twitter.com/theprincessxena">Twitter</a></li>
       <li><a href="https://keybase.io/xena">Keybase</a></li>
-      <li><a href="https://ko-fi.com/A265JE0">Ko-fi</a></li>
       <li><a href="https://www.patreon.com/cadey">Patreon</a></li>
       <li><a href="https://twitch.tv/princessxen">Twitch</a></li>
-      <li><a href="https://pony.social/@@cadey">@@cadey@@pony.social</a></li>
+      <li><a href="https://pony.social/@@cadey">Mastodon</a></li>
+      <li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/xe-iaso-87a883254/">LinkedIn</a></li>
       <li>Fortnite: Within Reason</li>
       <li><a href="irc://irc.libera.chat/#xeserv">Liberachat: #xeserv</a></li>
     </ul>
@@ -31,7 +31,23 @@
     <p><a href="https://t.me/miamorecadenza">@@miamorecadenza</a></p>
 
     <h4>Discord</h4>
-    <p><code>Cadey~#1337</code></p>
+    <p><code>Cadey~#1337</code> (Please note that Discord will automatically reject friend requests if you are not in a mutual server with me. I don't have control over this behavior.)</p>
+
+    <details>
+      <summary>Cryptocurrency Addresses</summary>
+
+      <h4>Ethereum</h4>
+      <p><code>xeiaso.eth</code> (<code>0xeA223Ca8968Ca59e0Bc79Ba331c2F6f636A3fB82</code>)</p>
+
+      <h4>Bitcoin</h4>
+      <p><code>bc1qw0pa3zdus94nyehmys6g8td2xfaqtl9pmuv564</code></p>
+
+      <h4>Litecoin</h4>
+      <p><code>ltc1q3zhcs4c2wltmz97gs5a2t6sgxryp0y06s82e62</code></p>
+
+      <h4>Bitcoin Cash</h4>
+      <p><code>qrfyatcurdl8jhqgee6ukhvwl364frx7ds4zgk296c</code></p>
+    </details>
   </div>
 </div>