“On social media: A podcast.”
The censorship regime and its discontents.
In an exchange this evening, Scrum founding editors Marshall Auerback, Patrick Lawrence, and James W. Carden discuss Marshall’s latest piece, “Social media’s reckoning,” written in response to Silicon Valley’s extraordinary speech crackdown after the events on Capitol Hill on January 6th.
Auerback believes that “Congress might laud the fact that Donald Trump has been ‘cancelled’ and at writing has just impeached him. But that does not give its members the right to abrogate their constitutional responsibilities by sub-contracting the role of free-speech policeman to Big Tech.
“This dangerously empowers Silicon Valley further without necessarily addressing the problems thrown up by the events of last week. It’s perfectly acceptable to criticize Donald Trump’s affinity for right-wing authoritarians, but, somehow, when Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey behave this way in the service of an ostensibly ‘liberal’ agenda, anything goes.”
Auerback, Lawrence, and Carden discuss, among other things, the naked hypocrisy of social media apps such as Twitter, the implications for free speech, and the broader societal implications of Silicon Valley’s unchecked power.
