Its frustrating to see how people, on both the Left and Right, are advocating for the silencing of the individual. It comes as a shock, especially from figureheads among the Libertarian and Anarcho-Capitalist communities, when people point to censorship and shout, “This isn't fair! If our personal friends, colleagues, and others who share our ideology get censored, they should be consistent and also censor those on the Left!” These are people, who for a long time protested against the concept of censoring anyone, Left or Right, but decided to go against their principles to lash out against a system they knew was fraught with debauchery and an inability to adhere to any concrete form of ethics. They knew this, but like children who've been caught doing something wrong, they try to lessen their punishment by trying to appeal to authority and have their peers punished as well.
What possible good will come of getting others banned from major social media platforms, other than a soothing of the ego? They argue, in part, that if these Leftists were to be banned, that this would serve the greater good in “de-platforming” those of an ideology they find to be abhorrent. Of course, we should understand that this is the exact same non-argument that the Left uses to remove Libertarians and AnCaps from social media! Leftists will accuse us of being bigots, racists, of being “homophobic”, greed-driven, and all other sorts of names which, of course, are meant to dehumanize us and attribute wrongdoing where there is none. The same happens when the Right does this, although they happen to be somewhat vindicated in the fact that their ad hominem tends to be accurate when calling a “Democratic Socialist”, like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Communist.
What makes this wrong is the follow-up to the identification, where they identify certain individuals as pedophiles, Communists, Statists, etc. and then express what they feel should happen to them. “X is a ____, therefore, we should have them banned/suspended/jailed/etc.” is the common equation used by both sides of the argument, where X is a specific person or group and they choose which punishment best suits the supposed crime by whichever will soothe their egos the most. It needs to be understood that, no matter how it makes us feel, this is a non-argument and should be addressed as such. As passe as the reference has become the more its been used, this is a very Orwellian style of non-argument, where someone, in your eyes, has done something bad and you not only feel the need to report them to an authority figure, but you do so in the hopes that they will be punished and you will be rewarded for doing so (be it by said authority or by your community).
For the Right, the reward will come from the community, cheering, “We got rid of them! The pedophiles, the Muslim Extremists, the Communists, the AntiFa, and the Democrats have been put in their place! We finally got them to shut up and get a taste of their own medicine!” And even though this, objectively, will have gotten rid of some very violent people, it will have also gotten rid of people who have not committed any crime. People may say that advocating for certain things is a crime in and of itself, but then wouldn't that warrant the banning of any religious text or any philosophical text that might advocate for things we find offensive? Are we saying that people, whom us Libertarians and Anarcho-Capitalists acknowledge as individuals with the capacity to do just as much right as they can do wrong, are incapable of reading or watching something without being able to check what they've seen against their morals and ethics? Are we saying that people are so stupid or mentally-defective that they cannot be trusted enough to view content on their own because they will mimic it?
This is the behavior of an unstable, insecure people, who rely on fear-mongering and the initiation of force to steer others away from what they feel will loosen their grip on others. To advocate for such things is to become the arm of the State and to further cement the belief that the State and their policies should be reinforced to assuage our doubts and insecurities. What do we honestly have to be afraid of with a Communist? We know, historically, that their attempts to model a society after their ideologies will always end in spectacular failure. We know that those who advocate for the abuse of children will be run out of their homes and communities, condemned to live in the fringes of society until they either reform themselves or cease to be. We know that those who advocate for violence and the destruction of the home and community will be isolated and ostracized, even in a Statist society such as ours. The only possible answer is that, those that are frustrated in their fight against the State are afraid of losing that fight.
Its a somewhat rational fear, given the recent events of the past decade, but the reaction to that fear is what determines whether the actors themselves are rational or not. If we champion an adherence to sound morals and ethics, we cannot diverge from those morals and ethics, in an effort to defend them, and still call our actions rational. If we uphold the concept of free speech and the acknowledgment that every living human has the right to it, we cannot attempt to revoke it from those who use it to say things we find unsavory. To be consistent is not to ask ourselves to be tolerant or submissive to evil, but to restrain ourselves from becoming evil in an effort to fight the evil of others. Just as we should not hit a child because they hit their sibling, we should not silence others because the seek to silence or even destroy us. In a time like ours, where every statement made is at the instant access of everyone with a computer or a cellphone, those who do advocate immoral and unethical acts become easy and available targets. Why try to silence them, feeding into a masochistic, Byronic martyr complex, when they've willingly placed themselves in the stockade, ready to be ridiculed and ostracized?
The problem, as always, comes back to a lack of consistency, and where the Left has its advantage. When those on the Left see one of us in the stockade, they are quick to attack and do so with gusto. Granted, this comes out of a visceral neuroticism, but its effective in either eliciting a retaliation or in forcing their victim's submission. When us on the Right see a Leftist in the stockade, it only tends to be a few of us who come out to attack, compared to the hordes of Leftists who are chomping at the bit to get their piece of the action. What's even worse, we even let ourselves be put on the back foot in our attack, allowing for the roles to be reversed and for us to be forced to submit or be seen as an idiot for daring to defend ourselves. This, not our distaste for what others say, is the true root of the advocacy to silence the Left. Our inability to defend ourselves, to adequately promote our principles to others, and to garner the same level of support and comradery that the Left commands is what leads to this fit of envy. What we cannot compete with, we try to silence. And in our inevitable inability to silence those we cannot compete with, we end up seeking to remove or destroy.
In that quest to fight the evils of collectivism and Statism, we fall victim to Nietzsche's prophecy of falling into the abyss we stare down. Yet there is a solution to be found in our seemingly never-ending fight against these evils: shrugging the existing system and creating our own. In seeking to find “alternatives” to social media sites, we've only managed to replicate them and all of their problems. Those who've sought or have been successful in making alternatives to Facebook and Twitter have been trying to approach the issue of censorship from a software standpoint. While this is a noble effort, people can game software and exploit it to their own ends, ultimately turning this effort into a futile one. To approach a human problem, you have to resort to human solutions to resolve them. The first measure is one I've already stated, publicly and relentlessly ostracizing those who act or advocate for immoral and unethical behaviors. The second being a more simple measure, but nonetheless effective: charge people to use your site. The kinds of people who usually advocate for immoral and unethical things are the same people who demand things be available to them for no charge. If you want to curtail their efforts and make them adverse to your platform, simply make everyone pay to be there. You'll still get the odd irrational person, but they won't stick around for long if the first measure is upheld consistently.
The same logic applies to everything else, especially in housing, various service companies, food, transportation, and so on, so why would we not also apply this to social media? People who are given things for free will always take those things for granted and will become ungrateful for it. Charging people for using a social media platform will instill in them a sense of responsibility for adhering to the site's rules and will also instill a responsibility in those who run the site to the people who use it. As we've seen in various models of social media platforms, the “freemium” business model simply does not work, where the basic, non-paying members can use the site as they please, the paying members get minimized in the process, and the owners and administrators of the site are bound to the will of the majority, which always ends up being the non-paying members and (if they go public) to the shareholders. If we alter the model to where everyone has a stake in how the site is kept up, this eliminates the parasites who will demand everything be given to them at no cost of their own.
There is a subconscious telling of the truth when groups, companies, and websites call themselves “alternatives” to their supposed competitors. Its an acknowledgment that they've not done much differently than their competitors and that, in calling themselves the “alternative”, still gives people the option of choosing the competitor over them. The Libertarian Party, cryptocurrencies, and websites like Minds.com and others call themselves this and the people understand what it means. Its a soft invitation to try out something other than Facebook, gold or fiat currency, or from the Democrat and Republican Parties, but you will ultimately get a similar result from them all with some slight variations. The answer to this dilemma is to present ourselves and the new platforms we create as the solution, not the alternative. This creates the image that what we are competing against is a problem or that their policies and actions are problematic. We contrast yourself and what we've created as the solution to this problem, that what you represent, what you've created, and what service you provide with eliminate this problem and create benefits for those who join you instead of continuing to be part of the problem.
We've seen that people are desperate for a solution to their problems in the past few years. A lot of people voted for President Trump because he was a better alternative to Hillary Clinton or because voting for Rand Paul or Bernie Sanders was not an option available to them. People go to sites like Minds.com because it was a better alternative to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. People turn to invest in cryptocurrencies because the US Dollar, Euro, Yuan, and Yen are racked with debt and it was a better alternative than investing in Treasuries and Bonds. However, just because it was the “better” choice does not make it a good choice in and of itself. We cannot keep relying on alternatives to escape the festering problems that plague us, because those alternatives are not safe havens from those problems. We need good solutions to these problems and we need to support the people who provide and contribute to these solutions.
We need to stand firm, as a community that shares the same ideology, to combat those who are turning our world into a living nightmare and to promote those within our ranks who can remedy the damage from or actively fight against the State and its supporters. We need to create new platforms that call upon both the users and creators to bear the responsibility of making the platform a place where ideas can flow freely and those who try to stop that are driven out. And with those things, we need to unceasingly state that these are not alternatives to what already exists. Just as Galt's Gulch was not an alternative to the rotting carcass of the United States that Ayn Rand portrayed, but the model of the solution to it, we must make ourselves and what we do the solution to the problems of social media, of our communities, and of the world. Because, in endlessly creating alternatives, in marketing ourselves and our works as merely another option to what already exists, and in defying our principles for the greater good, we end up serving and becoming part of the greatest of evils.