Yes, such a coherent argument: "no one is trying to restrict your speech, and if they were it would be good actually."

There are people who just can't admit to themselves they actually hate free speech. Because they're people who've never needed it. They've never been abolitionists speaking against slavery, or civil rights leaders speaking against apartheid - whether in South Africa or the American South. They've never been gay people fighting for equality, or trans people fighting to survive. They've never been an unfavoured minority - ethnic, religious, sexual, linguistic, what have you. They don't need free speech, so why should you? Everyone else already has all the rights that they could possibly want or need, so as far as they're concerned, all these people are needlessly disruptive to the public order. So they maintain a fiction of collectivism, in reality a majoritarian hegemony, while silencing anyone who'd speak out against it. They can't quite bring themselves to say they oppose free speech, but they act in practice to undermine it.

It is a contemptible stance.

Somewhere out there is a young lesbian in Russia finding her people on social media, a young atheist in Saudi Arabia making friends online. And the majority is as ever ready to throw the most vulnerable under the bus, so that they, the majority, don't need to take a modicum of responsibility for their own idle doomscrolling. And if they need to whip up a moral panic to do so, fine. More efficient that way, helps override people's rationality.

> Somewhere out there is a young lesbian in Russia finding her people on social media, a young atheist in Saudi Arabia making friends online..

The real problem is, the oppression of these people is already happening. Mark Zuckerberg is not your friend and he’s come out saying he wants to make it harder for LGBTQ+ youth to find each other and be safe online.

Idle doomscrolling is not the problem, monopolization and the lack of real choice is.

You really want young women looking for information on abortion to be connected to anti-abortion support groups? Young gay folks to be sent conversion therapy literature, that young lesbian in Russia to be turned into the police? This isn’t speculation, it’s happening now.

Your ideals are noble, but you’re trying to protect something we’ve already lost. The days when social media was owned by folks pretending to be in the left are long gone.

I’m not one of those people, I hate free speech.

Also, wtf are you on about, none of the people you mentioned need infinite scroll and addictive algorithms to connect with eachother.

Aside from the fact that these social media companies have LITERALLY put their finger on the lever to prevent the kind of people you’re talking about from connecting with eachother! If you want to defend those people then what we need is better protocols and platforms, not giant trillion dollar companies with three people in control of speech.

There is zero excuse to defend addictive algorithms with “but won’t you think of the underprivileged”