You Can Actually Ban The Nazis
The “marketplace of ideas” has failed, and Twitter should pay attention to what Medium is doing.
Companies like Twitter and Facebook strive to meddle with how people want to use their platform as little as possible, as if only doing it a little, sometimes, means they can remain mostly neutral. Most recently, Twitter, purged a number of bots from its platform causing some users to take to their digital soapboxes to allege that partisan bias had played a role in the purge (a claim which has been disproven). These platforms have long hid [sic] behind comfortable (yet utterly meaningless) vagaries like “the free speech wing of the free speech party.”
“In all this time, no company has actually tried totally depriving bad ideas of oxygen. Trust me, this is a sentence I never thought I’d say, but in times like these, Twitter (and the tech world as a whole, really) could learn a thing or two from Medium.”
Congratulations, Medium!
On February 7, Medium totally overhauled the rules governing its users and the site as a whole. The company completely eschewed the bullshit, buzzword-filled platitudes that had padded its policy section for years (what does “We believe free expression deserves a lot of leeway…” honestly even mean in this day and age?), and replaced it with a modern and realistic set of policies designed for the disinformation-ridden hellscape of today. Medium explicitly took a stand against those who spread disinformation and hate, both on and off the platform, writing: “We do not allow posts or accounts that engage in on-platform, off-platform, or cross-platform campaigns of targeting, harassment, hate speech, violence, or disinformation. We may consider off-platform actions in assessing a Medium account, and restrict access or availability to that account.” (Emphasis ours.) Then Medium moved to act on those stated beliefs and suspended the accounts of a number of prominent alt-right scumbags, including Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec, and Laura Loomer.
