Or cars. Or roads. Or hammers. Or any other ingredient in the process.
Useful tools like speech and hammers are equally useful for anyone and for any purpose. Fire, electricity, sharp saw blades, the wheel, money, intelligence, good looks, encryption, math, can all be used for good or bad, and there is no way to change that and seperate the utility into only utility for good.
It's misguided to try to address the misuse of a tool by controlling the tool instead of the weilder.
It just becomes a little easier to pick on something like alcohol or guns because you can say they "obviously duh" aren't useful tools or necessities like vehicles or electricity, so it's ok to act like they are somehow less inanimate or neutral or useful than other random equally special purpose things, and easier to evoke emotional reactions about them whether from puritanism or fear, than say, paint thinner or construction tools. And most people will buy that more than any academic arguments, and numbers matter more than academic reason.
So we control speech. And on private platforms, which is all platforms, they can. And only the worst a*holes and the dopiest hippies complain about it.
Or cars. Or roads. Or hammers. Or any other ingredient in the process.
Useful tools like speech and hammers are equally useful for anyone and for any purpose. Fire, electricity, sharp saw blades, the wheel, money, intelligence, good looks, encryption, math, can all be used for good or bad, and there is no way to change that and seperate the utility into only utility for good.
It's misguided to try to address the misuse of a tool by controlling the tool instead of the weilder.
It just becomes a little easier to pick on something like alcohol or guns because you can say they "obviously duh" aren't useful tools or necessities like vehicles or electricity, so it's ok to act like they are somehow less inanimate or neutral or useful than other random equally special purpose things, and easier to evoke emotional reactions about them whether from puritanism or fear, than say, paint thinner or construction tools. And most people will buy that more than any academic arguments, and numbers matter more than academic reason.
So we control speech. And on private platforms, which is all platforms, they can. And only the worst a*holes and the dopiest hippies complain about it.